“You won’t,” he says with confidence. “I know you and I know you wouldn’t choose to be like them.”
“But what if I didn’t have a choice?” I’m not really talking about the half-breeds anymore, but about a Higher. “What if I turned into something horrible and I couldn’t help it? Would you hate me then?”
“As long as you don’t put the medicine into you, you’ll be fine.” He puts his arms behind his head and rests back against his bag. “We should try to get some rest. Do you want me to take first watch?”
“No, I got it,” I say, stirring the fire with the tip of my knife.
He yawns. “Are you sure? Because I can—”
“I’m fine,” I assure him. “I’m not even tired.”
It doesn’t take him long to doze off and I relax against the wall, letting the vampire screams drown out my thoughts.
Chapter 31
I don’t fall asleep. I stay up all night listening to the sounds of screams. At one point, I take the vial and stare at the black liquid, bubbling inside the glass. The only person I know of who could create such a medicine is Monarch. He had to be the one who gave them to The Gathering members—he just had to be. Maybe he did fake his own death for some reason. But then where is he now?
When Aiden starts to stir, I quickly shove the vial back into the bag.
He sits up, his eyes blurred over with early morning confusion. He stretches his legs, pops his neck, and glances around. “You let me sleep the whole night?” He yawns.
“I wasn’t tired.” I stand up and stretch. “Besides, it kept pretty quiet all night,” I lie.
He stands and kicks out his legs. “You know I can tell when you’re lying.”
“No, you can’t,” I argue. “And I’m not lying.”
“Yeah, I can.” He pauses, considering carefully. “You used to tell me things that didn’t seem correct and after a while, I started to think you were a liar. So I began paying attention when you spoke to me—the little things you would do. And I noticed sometimes you scratch at your wrist. It took me a while, but I realized it’s like a nervous itch or something, when you’re not telling the truth.”
“I don’t do that.” I drop my hands to my side. “And I’m never nervous.”
His eyes sparkle as he balls his jacket up and stuffs it inside his backpack. “Is that so?”
“Yes.” I self-consciously tug the sleeves of my shirt over my wrists. “I can promise you I’ve never been nervous.”
“But you can’t promise me you’ve never lied before.” He swings his bag over his shoulder.
“You’ve lied too.” I pick up my bag and secure it on my back. “So don’t stand there and be all self-righteous.”
“I’m not.” He walks over, reaches around me, and grabs the straps of my backpack. “I’m trying to make a point.” He clips the straps together.
“And what point is that?” I adjust the bag so it’s comfortable.
“That we’ve lied to each other.” He steps back, dark bangs falling across his forehead. “And I think we should just forgive each other right now and move on. No more lies. Only the truth from now.” He sticks out his hand to shake on it.
I feel like I’m five years-old as I take his hand. “This is kind of ridiculous, don’t you think?”
“I promise to tell the truth from now on,” he says, discounting my remark.
We shake hands and he waits for me to say it back.
“I promise too,” I say, but like usual, my words are fake and I know it. Because there’s so much I still haven’t told him, and I don’t plan on telling him any time soon.
He seems satisfied, though, and we drop hands. Then we sneak out the back door and step onto the ashen streets of the city.
“So these half-breeds or whatever you call them,” I say. “Can they only come out at night?”
“I try to not call them anything.” He starts down the road. “However, they like to call themselves the Day Takers.”
My eyes examine the windows and doors of the buildings as we pass them. “So they can come out during day.”
“No,” he says “They can come out in the shadows of the day.” He gazes up at the smoky sky, spreading his arms out to the side of him. “But standing out here … they’d burn alive, just like the vamps would.”
“Well, then their nickname is a little misleading,” I say, gaze lifting to the roofs.
He hooks his hands on the straps of his backpack. “You have to think of them as everything that’s in between. They can walk in the shadows of day, they thirst for blood, but don’t frenzy for it.”
Blood. Blood everywhere. My mind flashes back to the red door, where the broken child sits in the corner feeding off his own arm.
“Do they ever eat themselves?” I ask, sidestepping a pothole.
He shoots me a disgusted look. “Eat themselves?”
“Yeah, like the vampires do.”
“No, they’re more human than that.” He pauses, gaze finding mine. “Why?”
I bite at my lip, my eyes seeing red everywhere I look. “Do you remember a red door in The Colony?” As soon as I say it, I want to take it back—it feels forbidden somehow.
He gradually slows, like all the energy is draining from his body. “That’s what you saw when you took the minte? You saw what was behind the door?”
Slowly, I nod. “I saw a child. He was all torn up, like he was part vampire or something.”
Aiden faces me and all the color has drained from his skin. “And what else?”
“Monarch caught me snooping,” I say. “And so he erased it from my mind.”
“And that’s all you remember?”
“So far, yes.”
He scratches at his wrist, tugging the sleeve of his shirt down. “That place,” he says, “is something you might not want to remember.”
“Did Monarch …” I swallow hard, thinking of how Dominic and Gabrielle spoke of experiments. “Did Monarch do that to that child?”
He turns his back on me and makes a right onto a wider road, packed with more cars. The buildings also stretch higher to the sky, obstructing more light.
“Don’t start judging things,” he says, “until you remember everything. Some of the things might be bad, but some are good.”
I don’t say anything, worried about what could be locked up inside my head.
“Did you hear that?” Aiden suddenly stops, his eyebrows dipping together. He glances up at a tall, skinny building with a rounded top that looks like a bubble.
I’m so distracted by my thoughts it takes me a second to understand what he said. “What did you hear?”
“I thought…” His body tenses. “Shit.” He grabs my hand and races for the bubble building. I vaguely remember seeing it from time to time while raiding the streets as Bellator, but I’ve never been inside—I’ve never been inside most buildings.
He stops in front of the doors, cupping his hands around his eyes and peeking through the glass. “There’s enough light in there, right?”
I press my nose to the glass. “Enough light for what?”
“To keep things out.” He glances anxiously over his shoulder, terrified someone’s coming.
“It’ll keep the vampires away,” I say. “But that’s not what you’re talking about, is it?”
He shakes his head, kicks the door open, and hurries inside to the vacant lobby. The walls are stained red with blood and pieces of lost papers and ruptured windows litter the floor.
“It’s the Day Takers, isn’t?”
He shuts the door.
We move back from the glass doors, his eyes locked on the front of the building. “Yeah, they’ve been tracking us ever since we left the hillside.”
“Clear since the hillside,” I say. “Because they want to kill us? Wouldn’t I, I don’t know, repulse them just like with the vampires?”
His eyes are watered over as he shakes his head. “No, they want you more than anything.”
“What?” My voice thunders and Aiden quickly flings his hand over my mouth. I shove him back, his hand falling. “The Day Takers want me? To kill me?”
His breathing is strident, his eyes about to tear up. “Please don’t hate me, okay. I did this to protect you.”
“You know, I’m beginning to think you might be worse of a liar than I am.” I pull out my knife, intimidating him. “You keep telling me lies, which lead to more lies. Even I’m not that good.”
“I don’t even know how they found out,” he mutters, not listening to me. “I thought I got to you before they found out.”
“Found out about what?”
“That you can walk with the vampires.” His eyes grow begging. “Look, if you’ll just come with me, we can find Xander—he can help you.”
“Help me with what?” I say, no longer believing that we came here to find Xander because he might know of a cure.
“With taking it all away,” he says. “All that stuff, the lying, the hearing of the hearts—he can make it all go away. He can make it so you can never change—so they can never have you.”
“Is that why you really brought me out here?” I ask. “So this Xander can change me and make it impossible for me to turn?”
“Juniper.” He takes me by the shoulder, fearing for my life. “Do you know how powerful you are? Think about it. You’re the one and only person who can walk with the vampires. Not even the Highers can do that. You’re basically invincible, and do you know what would happen if the wrong people found out about you? I mean, look what Dominic did.”
“Dominic thought I was a Higher,” I let it slip out and watch how he reacts. “And the Higher he put me in with, didn’t kill himself. I was the one holding the knife.” More fear pours off him, more than all of The Colony members combined. “Still want to save me?”