I made my way through the snow back to the Vampire holding facility. Flurries came down on my head. I questioned why I was out taking the trek and not in bed with my girl about a hundred times. I squared my shoulders. I was doing it because it had to be done and I’d really regret not doing it later. The best time of the day to visit a vampire holding and hope not to be killed was right this very second. The sun was out. Hopefully, I could be in and out without anyone knowing I’d ever come.

The gate was still open from our last visit. We’d opened it to let the men out.

I walked right in and made my way to the Vampire hole. It was still open. Like before, but with more ease than the last time, I took the rungs two at a time until I got to the bottom. It was eerily quiet but devoid of monsters. I walked around in relative ease. My internal warning system would tell me if I had to pay attention.

Instead, I wandered around. There was dust everywhere, which was pretty gross if I let myself think about it. The Vampires’ remains had coated the place. I tried to think about literally anything else. I made my way down the hall to get the map off the wall when I heard it.

My father’s voice. “Deacon, put your frickin’ head down when they come in or you won’t see another day.”

I stopped moving. My father wasn’t actually there. It had been years since he told me anything even remotely like advice. I’d attack a Vampire before I would hide. But at ten… yeah, I’d put my frickin’ head down every time. And they had picked off person after person. Never me.

Why was that? I took the map off the wall, folded it, and put it in my pocket.

“Help me, Deacon.”

“Help me.”

“Help us. Someone do something.”

I knew every voice calling out. I shook my head. What in the fucking messed up world was happening? I was hearing voices?

“You’re not crazy.”

I whirled around. A small, dark-haired woman stood there. She was petite, pale, and had huge brown eyes. She might be considered beautiful, but no one held a candle to Lydia.

She wasn’t setting off my monster alarms. Still, where the hell had she come from? “Who are you?”

The brunette held out her hands. “I’m just passing through. My presence… it tends to stir memories. I could see you were suffering, so I made myself known. I’ll go. When I do, the memories will cease. Be calm, and all will be well for you.”

This was an incredibly weird moment. There was something surreal about it. I almost felt like I knew her from somewhere.

“What are you doing here? Do you need some kind of help?”

She shook her head, a small smile on her face. “That’s very kind of you. No one has ever offered before. I’m afraid there’s no help you can give me. Good luck to you, Deacon.”

“Do we know each other?”

She laughed, a small sound. “Once upon a time, I knew you. Don’t worry, I’m told memory of me fades quickly.”

The woman disappeared, moving like a blur of light. I stood there for a second, my head pounding just a bit while I did. What in the heck had happened?

At least the voices had stopped. I took the rungs two at a time again, this time to get out. That had been odd to say the least. I didn’t know what the woman had wanted. She’d seemed older although we had to be about the same age.

The sun was shining. I’d gotten what I had come for. The place was still empty but would only stay that way until the coal disappeared. Then when they came for more, things would implode. Days maybe. Hours? I didn’t know. I pulled my coat closer around me. All I could do was what Micah and I planned. I had to hope it was enough.

Geronimo was a mess of a place, but it was becoming my mess of a place. I would find a way to get it through these times and out the other side or we would all go down together.

I walked through the door of my temporary house, knowing I had about three hours to sleep before I had to get up and train. Lydia launched herself at me. The jump was so unexpected I caught her then went down onto my back, Lydia on top of me. She’d knocked the frickin’ wind out of me. The room spun for just a moment.

“Where have you been?” Her eyes were huge. “I thought you were dead.”

It took me a second to speak. “Why would I be dead?”

“Because I woke and you were gone, just nowhere. I looked everywhere.”

Okay, at least that made sense. “Did you not get my note?”

She blinked a few times. “You left a note?”

“I did.” I pointed at the table. “Right there.”

Lydia jumped off and rushed to the table where she picked up the note. She must have read it over and over because she didn’t answer for a long moment. “You left a note.”

“Sure did.” I managed to get up. Maybe she should be the one jumping on Werewolves. She’d be good at it.

“You went to the Vampire holding?” Her voice rose with every syllable until she practically shouted the last word.

Were we going to have a fight? My back stiffened. I didn’t know what fighting with Lydia would be like, exactly. But I knew already I hated it.

“Yes.”

She sucked in a long breath. “You could have been killed, and I’d never have known.”

“Well, you would have known when you found the note I left.”

That was apparently the wrong answer. Her cheeks turned red. She grabbed her coat and stormed out of the cabin. I was left standing there, alone, with nothing but the fire to keep me company. Nothing had changed; I still had to go to sleep if I was going to get up and take care of training. I rubbed my eyes. The bed was a lot less inviting without Lydia in it.

Why had she just left? Would she come back? Was she… done with me? My heart rate kicked up. I’d left her a note. I hadn’t vanished. I’d been downright considerate. No, she didn’t simply get to walk out.

She couldn’t leave because of this. She was mine.

I stalked toward the door just as it opened. Lydia stood there, tears running down her cheeks. “I was scared. When I’m scared, I’m unreasonable. I apologize. But that was a really awful thing for you to say given how afraid I was.”

“I…” Shit, she was crying. I hated tears. I didn’t understand them. I’d never been allowed to cry myself once I was out of the nursery holding. Vampires didn’t like tears.

I pulled her to me. “Don’t cry.”

“I can’t simply turn them on and off. It’s not like I like doing it all that much.” She gripped me hard. “I was scared.”

She kept saying that.

“I’m sorry you were scared. I did leave a note.”

“If I’d gotten the note, I would have taken off after you. What part of I’m here with you was confusing?” She trembled.

It was right then I remembered she’d killed a Werewolf. Her first one. I might be immune to most things monster but that didn’t mean she was, yet.

“Lydia.” I kissed her head. “My precious girl. I’m sorry you were afraid. I preferred you sleeping to trekking through the woods again. It was a bit of an odd errand, but I needed to get the map.” I pulled it out of my pocket. “I want to study where the other holdings are. Are you doing okay? With the Werewolf killing?”

She pulled back a bit, the tears kind of stopping. “I’m pathetic. You take care of monsters all the time. And you don’t end up a lunatic over it.”

“I threw up in a bush the first time I killed one.” I picked her up and set her down on the bed. “I had a weird experience at the Vampire holding.” I told her about the woman I’d met down there and the weird memories her presence triggered.

Lydia lay on her side, looking at me. “What do you think that was all about?”

“I don’t know, really.” I had no clue. “The entire thing spooked me, and I don’t scare easily.”

My girl cuddled up next to me. “I shouldn’t have walked out.”

“I thought you weren’t coming back.”

She shook her head. “I’m always coming back. You need to sleep.”

Lydia was right. I scrunched down and rolled over until we were face-to-face. “I was thinking maybe I’d stay. When this is over, if you want me to. I’ll stay.”

My heart rate kicked up. What if she had changed her mind? Thinking she loved me and actually loving me on a day-to-day basis were two different things. I was grumpy, moody, difficult and I had a bad temper.

She squealed so loud my ears rang then buried her face in my shirt. “Yes. Yes. Stay. Forever.”

There were no forevers. “I’ll stay as long as I’m breathing or you tell me to go.”

“Do you think there’s a life after this one? A prophecy? A destiny? A place where we meet again when this journey ends.”

“No. I think this is it. Dirty, gritty, awful, ours and the only chance we get.” I smoothed her hair back. “Do you?”

“I would have said no. But then you showed up.” Her eyes were so clear, probably from the tears. She looked at me right then, with such hope in her gaze. I’d never asked her something important.

“How old are you?”

She gave me a sideways grin. “Are you thinking I’m too young now? Maybe you should have asked me that before we got all naked.” She pinched me, and I laughed. “I’m twenty-one. How old are you Deacon? I took you for around my age.”

“I’m twenty. Look at me with an older woman.”

She laughed, and I kissed her until I had to go to sleep. I listened to the fire crack. It wasn’t destined for me to show up, it simply turned out that way. That’s all that life was. One random event after another.

It wasn’t that I wasn’t grateful for the randomness that gave me Lydia. I simply wasn’t made to believe. But then again, the small part of my brain that liked to argue with itself reminded me if I didn’t believe in anything, what did I want redemption from?

I was wearing a new coat. One of the older ladies named Trina made it for me. It was warmer than my other coat. Her friend, Jessie, had given me new gloves, and one of the men I’d gotten out of the cage, Blake, handed me a new pair of shoes. The night was cold, but I was not.

Everyone was doing well. I had three-quarters of the town training now. Only the infirmed were staying home. Even then I had to gently suggest the elderly didn’t need to come with their canes and try to fight Vampires. They wanted to help. It was like everyone had woken up from their enforced slumber.

I heard laughter and saw smiles on people’s faces.

“Kind of weird, kiddo, isn’t it? Knowing you can help people?” I nearly jumped out of my skin as a memory of Keith moved through me. “We can save our people. We can know at the end of the day that we didn’t sit back and let the world beat the crap out of us.”

Keith had been trying to talk me into being a Warrior. I’d wanted nothing to do with it outside of the fact it got me closer to Rachel. Everything had been about Clancy. I hadn’t even realized I was learning anything else—except I was, things much more important than whether or not Rachel liked me, Chad, Micah, or Jason.

I hoped this wasn’t going to be a thing now—sudden memories threatening to overtake me. I caught Lydia’s gaze, and she winked at me. All we had done earlier was sleep. I wanted a good hour before patrol tonight. I wanted her in my bed, and I wanted to be inside her body. I took a deep breath. Lydia threw Cherie to the ground and pretended to stake her. The exercise was to learn how to hit the heart and to hit it fast as well as accurately. She wasn’t right on point. But likely she’d be close enough to nick the heart and that would be that.

I was only correcting major flaws. Details came with experience and practice. I didn’t even have to think about it anymore.

“All right,” I called out. I hadn’t told anyone what I was doing so I’d just have to see how this worked out. “I need volunteers to watch out for monsters tonight. Eight of them. Who’s in?”

Lydia’s hand shot up. I smiled. I had sort of counted her in my head as volunteering already. I needed eight in addition to her. I ended up with twelve people who wanted to help. All of them were between the ages of twenty and thirty. I narrowed it down to eight who had been with me since the second lesson and thanked the other four. Everyone would have a turn eventually.

When I had my nine—including Lydia—with me, I explained what I wanted. “Micah’s fence is going to come in handy in a way none of us expected.

“You’re all going to stand on it in assigned spaces and basically keep watch. My body’s been messed with, so I have the ability to sense the fuckers—ah monsters—when they’re out there. You can’t. That’s good thing. The less changing DNA, the better. But I digress. There are still ways to spot them, even if you don’t have super-duper night vision.” I pointed out into the darkness. “I’m going to give you a spotting-monsters-when-they’re-hiding lesson, and we’ll take it from there. The good news? I can feel them. So if you miss it, tonight, no big deal, I’ll catch the slack. I might not always be available, so you’ve got to get used to doing it yourself.”

Monsters didn’t hold up a sign and announce their presence. They weren’t interested in having humans catch them. They were better in the darkness than we were, even more so than Warriors. But they weren’t flawless. And they could be found.

“First things first, the snow is our friend right now. Vampires don’t fly and neither do Werewolves.” Thank goodness for small favors. “The snow also keeps the nighttime somewhat lit up, right? We can see the ground. It’s white. Keep your eyes on the ground tonight. If you see footprints that weren’t there a minute ago, shout out. If you see a glare you can’t quite reconcile, shout out. I’ll feel it. The point of tonight is for you guys to alert each other. Of course, we’ve had no monster activity for a little bit except for the ones Lydia helped kill. We may have a quiet, boring nothing of a time.”

Ideally, I’d have three people hiding and jumping out to keep them paying attention until they were trained. But we didn’t have that luxury, and if they weren’t interested enough in simply not dying or losing their families, then there wasn’t much else I could do for them anyway.

As it turned out, no monsters showed up at all. Walking back to my cabin, I really hoped Micah got Genesis invested in getting to us in time. The longer this took, the more Vampires would be coming. I just knew it.

I held Lydia in my arms, listening to her breathe. Freezing rain pounded on the roof of the cabin. I sighed. No teaching tonight. The last thing I wanted was everyone getting sick. I’d patrol and keep everyone, including my Lydia, inside where they belonged.

She turned abruptly, her face scrunching up like she was in pain. She made a noise of fear. Bad dreams. I rubbed her back, hoping not so much to wake her but to help her move on to something else. She sighed and leaned into me again. Living with the monsters and killing them were two different things. I didn’t envy her this time. I’d been through it myself. Waking up screaming and alone had been a regular thing for me.

A tap came on the door, and I rose quietly to open it. Outside in the pouring rain was Trevor, a guy my own age. I knew him from training. He was married and had a young baby. Tall, strong and motivated, he’d stood sentinel for me earlier.

“Hey, what’s going on?”

He nodded at me. “Sorry, but I’m seeing flashes of light. It’s quite a distance away. I can’t sleep so I’m standing at the window, and there’s unnatural light. It’s not sunlight. Like someone has a fire. I see some smoke.”

“Say no more.” That was what happened with Micah and I our first night in the area. If the Werewolves were far enough way, I might not feel them. Too far but too close for comfort. I could try to go myself. Only this was training. Maybe it was time to take some recruits.

I sighed. I wished I had a manual on doing this. “Get the other seven who were with us tonight. Be quiet about it. I don’t want panic.” I looked down. There was a package by my door. Inside, were machetes. The blacksmith’s timing couldn’t have been better. “It might just be some travelers. You guys get some, obviously.”

He looked down.

“Right. So the point being it might not be Werewolves. It might not be, but it could. Back here in fifteen minutes,” I said.

I turned to wake Lydia. This would be a lesson in something, I just didn’t know what yet.

It was Werewolves. I crossed over town lines and felt them immediately. They were smart shifting canines. Maybe they’d learned how far Warriors’ powers worked or maybe they were simply lucky.

In any case, the five who were lounging by their campfire would not be long for the world. We had the wind on our side. I had nine untrained would-be Werewolf killers with me. Eight who had never killed one before. Two of us to every one of them. I wasn’t one hundred percent sure I liked our chances.

What I needed was to break them apart. I really, really hoped I wasn’t about to make a terrible mistake.

---

I kept my voice down. “Lydia, take three people with you. Rush the campfire. I mean make a real fool of yourself.” I wasn’t doing this because I wanted her in the safest part of the mission. I trusted her. She’d get this done. Or at least that was what I told myself. I’d work out whether I was self-deluding later. Or not. Whatever. “They won’t take you seriously. A few of them will chase you off. Kill them. The rest of us will pounce when they’re separated.”

I was counting on the monsters getting distracted. I needed them to be joyful in thinking they had us where they wanted us. I also knew it was likely at least half, if not more, of my recruits were going to turn and run.

That was how these things went.

Like death. There was that element as well. They might kill us all.

Lydia and her team performed perfectly. She leapt at them like a banshee, shrieked like she was terrified, and three of the Werewolves chased after her, laughing before they shifted, like she was their favorite plaything. I hated not knowing what happened with them. I’d seen her kill a Wolf. I had to trust—not easy for me—that she’d get the job done.

I charged in, not even sure if my people would follow. They actually did. The battle was bloody. The heads didn’t come off easily, and my guys didn’t have perfect technique when it came to head removal. But we succeeded.

Lydia arrived back halfway through our assault. Seeing her meant I could breathe again. How did Clancy and Lyons do this together? Weren’t they perpetually terrified? Lydia was strong, capable and brave. I still would have preferred she never wield another machete for the rest of her days.

The newbies were giddy. They congratulated each other the whole way back. When we were finally near the town, I stopped them.

“I don’t say this to rain on anyone’s day.” There was already enough of the cold, wet, wicked stuff coming down on our heads. “But this feeling you have? The good, over-the-top wahoo of it all? It will stop. I don’t know when. An hour? Two? Ten? And then you will crash. You’ll be terrified because you will realize this all could have gone another way. That’s normal. Still show up for training. If you’re freaking out, tell me. I get it. I’m here. Good work. You guys were spectacular. Things to improve on but a strong first showing.”

I held Lydia’s hand as we walked back to the cabin. “Lydia.” I cleared my throat. “I was terrified, but I trusted you. Thanks for being exactly as good as I thought you would be out there. I’m serious. I don’t know one person in ten who could have executed this as well as you did so early in their training.”

She grinned. “So then I’m not just a pretty face? I can kick ass and kill monsters?”

I laughed. It was pouring rain. I was freezing. I’d taken nine newbies to kill monsters, and now here I was, cracking up in the middle of the street. “Yes, you can totally do all of it and look beautiful at the same time.”

She poked my chin. “Well, I aim to please.” She backed up. “Meet me back at the cabin in a bit. I want to see Charlie and my parents.”

I nodded. “Yep.”

I still hadn’t forgotten I’d promised, in my own head, to make Charlie toys. With my knife and a block of wood from the fireplace, I started to see if I could turn nothing into something. It would be the ugliest toy anyone had ever seen. I was aiming for a dog, but I was pretty sure when I was done, it would look more like a rat. I might burn it up and start again. Charlie didn’t need to be frightened by some toy I made for him.

I wanted to make the kid smile.