Never Fade

that why you keep trying to prove her wrong? Because you’re scared of what’ll happen if she’s right?”

“C’mon,” came Brett’s voice somewhere near my right. “You have to admit it sounds too good to be true. We’ve been up and down the river a million times looking for food and never found so much as an empty bag of chips.”

“So you’d blow an opportunity like this?” I asked. “After you already saw the proof?”

For his rough exterior, Brett was surprisingly reasonable when it came to hashing things out. “I could go with her—make sure she’s not trying to pull a fast one. I’d be happy to take another trip back with a team and get the supplies—”

“Oh, you could?” Michael snarled. “You’d be happy to? Whose team are you talking about—mine? You think I don’t know what you’re trying to pull, dickhead? That I haven’t been watching your weak-ass attempts to steal my game—?”

Knox held up a hand, stopping them before they could start circling each other like starving feral cats. “The answer is no. Not now, not ever.”

“I should have known,” I said, pushing myself onto my feet. “You left those kids out in the freezing cold to die. Why would you ever care enough to give everyone here the food and supplies they need?”

You can push someone’s button over and over again to get what you want, but there comes a point when your finger slips and you finally hit the wrong one.

“Michael,” Knox murmured, suddenly very quiet. Vida had worked enough of a spell over the room that it took calling his name twice to get him to snap out of it. “Take these two…pearls of girls outside.”

“Knox,” Brett began. “What about the supplies…?”

Knox’s fist flew out fast, clipping the other boy under the chin. “Take them outside. If they’re so damn eager to be hunters, then they can prove it at initiation tonight, like everyone else had to.”

Vida pushed herself up off the chair and dropped onto the floor next to Knox. Whether he meant to or not, his eyes flicked down over her face and body, over every exposed inch of rich, dark skin. “If you get through it, you’re on. But if I see your faces one more time before I send someone to get you, I will burn them off myself.”

“Shake on it,” I demanded, fighting to keep the smirk off my face.

I stuck out my hand, my head trilling with anticipation of how it would feel, of what, exactly, I would do to bring him as low as he had brought everyone around him.

Knox came toward me, his face steeled, jaw clenched. He raised a hand toward mine, and just when his fingers came into reach, he shifted to grab the ends of my loose braid. It came down to him being just a second faster than my instincts. He pressed the burning red end of his cigarette into my palm, snuffing it out against my skin before shoving me away.

The pain was raw and blinding; I didn’t cry, didn’t so much as give him a gasp. But I knew, from the moment he glanced back over his shoulder at me with that smirk, I hadn’t gotten my hooks into him, either.

They brought us around to the other side of the warehouse, out of sight from the tents and door, to a caged-in area where dead power generators and AC units were locked up.

Vida took one look at our future habitat and began to kick and snarl, struggling against the two guys holding her. With one ear-splitting shriek from her, they lifted Vida into the air and tossed her in. I was in such a state of blind pain, all it took was a nudge from the guy holding my arm for me to walk into the chain-link cage.

I waited until they had secured the locks and were making their way back to the building before dropping to my knees. I pressed my blistered palm into a puddle of freezing slush, swallowing back the whimper. The burn had sliced through every other thought in my head.

Next to me, Vida pushed herself up, dragging her legs over so she could lean against the fence. She took a deep breath in, closing her eyes.

“Let me guess,” she said after she had steadied herself. “You found Prince Charming in the White Tent?”

“Him and about twenty others,” I said, hating the way my voice shook. My entire hand felt like it was on fire. I tried shaking it out, but the burn felt like it was tearing its way down through each layer of skin.

“Show me,” Vida said. When I didn’t flip my palm up, she did it for me. I was surprised to feel her vibrating with her own kind of rage.

“Damn. I’ll kill him.”

She carefully placed my hand palm down in the slush again.

“I blew it,” I said. “I was right there. He was right there. I should have just…used my other hand or…”

“Bitch, please,” she said. “If you had been able to recover fast enough to do something, then you really wouldn’t be human.”

“As opposed to what?”

She shrugged. “A mannequin? An unfeeling, heartless bitch who feeds on others’ misery and is physically incapable of crying, unless it’s tears of blood?”

I flexed my good hand in my lap. “Is that my rep at HQ?”

“They call you Medusa,” Vida said. “One wrong look and your brain turns to stone.”

Creative. Also, fitting.

“Where are the others?” she asked.

“In the White Tent outside,” I said. I sat back against the steel AC unit so I could look at Vida. “They’re all really, really sick. Half of them look like they’re already dead.”

“They’re that bad?” she asked. “Stewart, too?”

“Yeah.”

“Damn,” she muttered. “That explains why you looked so pissed.”

“Yeah,” I said, feeling my anger start to prickle again. I’d had him—he was right there, and I had been too stupid and too slow to end it. “It does.”

“Hey, boo,” she said. “I’m in this now, too, and I got a lot of experience playing assholes like they’re fucking harps. You need backup, I got you. Stop trying to convince yourself that you’re in this alone.”

I looked up, surprised.

“But just so you know,” she said, sounding like herself again, “if it turns out that we have to fight each other for this initiation shit, I’m still going to kick your ass.”

SIXTEEN

WE WERE LOCKED UP LONG ENOUGH that what little sunlight there was seeped into winter’s early night. Long enough that hunger started to set in, for a fine mist of rain to turn to flurries of snow, and a worried Jude to leave the shelter of the White Tent and come looking for us.

Without any kind of electricity to pump through the light poles in the parking lot, it was damn near impossible to make out anything other than someone’s or something’s general shape. I gave up looking for a friendly face and turned my full attention back to the kids standing at the corner of the warehouse, about a hundred yards from where we were locked up. I was so absorbed in the horrifying conversation they were having about Knox putting down a wild dog, I didn’t see Jude until he popped up at the other end of the cage.

“Roo!” he whispered. “Roo!”

Vida whirled around, reaching for a gun that wasn’t there. “How did you…?”

“Holy crap, holy crap, holy crap. I had to go the whole way around the building to get by without them seeing me.”

I cast one last look over my shoulder at our “guards,” and then moved toward his glowing face. To his credit, he knew to duck down so Vida and I could block him from the other kids’ sight.

“What happened?” The chain-link fence rattled as he pressed himself up against it. “I thought you were just going to chat with him, but you were gone so long, oh my God, why are you in there, what did you do? Chubs was—”

“Jude,” I tried to interrupt, “Jude—”