“Enough; it’s time for you to choose between the two, Emma. Which one shall live and who shall die?” Trina asked coldly.
“Easy answer, I would never choose between them. I love them both,” I said as I tried to figure out her move. This wasn’t part of what I had seen in the vision and my faith in what I was doing faltered a little.
“A Knight would choose the innocent. A pawn would choose to run. A Queen would pick that which could be of most use to her,” Trina growled.
“A human would pick her loved ones,” I said giving nothing away, or at least I hoped I wasn’t.
“She’s chosen, I’ve never seen a postulant choose outside of the three,” Dagan said with a puzzled look.
“Kill him,” Trina sneered and I watched as Dagan slit my dad’s throat. I almost lost it, but I’d seen it happen. Three times to be exact. He died in every scenario I was shown. My heart shattered and there was certain calmness came over me as the Sentinels watched.
The sky thundered as lightning slashed across it, as if forces in nature or in the universe were aware of what was going to happen and approved. It had been what my mom and the Sentinels wanted, but as I’d always been told, you should be very careful for what you ask for. I knew the pain was coming before it hit, so I had time to prepare for it mentally.
Shots rang out from the tree line as I moved toward my brother, but a sickening pelting noise made me pause as sharp pain and an extreme burning sensation shot through several places around my heart. Dagan watched me, and I knew from the look in his eyes that this wasn’t my death. It was a rebirth to them, their kind.
I could hear their mental chatter and they didn’t seem to know that I’d already died, and been reborn. This would be my second death, the cliff being my first. My eyes shot to Jimmy who looked at me grimly. He must have thought Addy was exaggerating when she told everyone at the shelter that I was dying. He probably thought I was at the estate being a vampire’s plaything. No wonder my mother said I was a vampire’s whore. I could do this; I could handle it for Grayson. I could handle anything to save him.
Right? It was too much! It felt as if my entire body was being torn apart. My veins pushed poison through them, and the entire time, I somehow managed to stay upright. The bullets had been laced with something, ensuring death would be swift. I swallowed until I couldn’t, and the air left my lungs in an exhale.
“She’s amazing,” Trina whispered with pride.
I closed my eyes and tried to think of what Dad would have said if he’d seen me like this. I discarded the thought quickly and focused on the process. I listened to their thoughts, and then to the others around me.
I could feel Jaeden as if he was with me, a part of me, but then I’d seen it in my vision. I had his blood, and it had done something to us. I felt the glyphs as they seared the skin inside my forearms, showing my rank in the army I was currently staring down. Thankfully, it was soon to end. Grayson was too young for it to happen to him, and right now he was fighting them to get to me.
I looked up and met Trina’s eyes. Grayson broke free, as my vision changed so that I could now see an outline of everyone’s heat signature. This was an improvement in the vision I experienced when I fought the wolves and I knew from my visions that my blue eyes now had a luminous glow to them.
“She’s not a Knight, Trina, she’s a fucking Guardian,” someone whispered.
Wait, what? Knight was so much cooler than Guardian.
“Move!” she screamed, her eyes flashed in a blue luminous glow that matched mine, and the Sentinels scattered and melted into the woods, Dagan grabbed Grayson and strong armed him into one of the waiting cars in the distance and I was frozen, unable to make myself move through the pain.
“Now!” I breathed, barely above a whisper, but Jaeden still felt it and the woods exploded with life.
They attacked as a well-oiled unit, but the car that held Grayson in it sped off before anyone could stop it. I screamed for Jaeden to get Grayson, but the car was gone before I could get the words out.
Lachlan in wolf form broke away from the scuffle and darted to my frozen form. He whined and then howled, which brought a very blood-covered Jaeden to me.
“Emma,” he whispered as he stared into my eyes.
“They took Grayson.” I’d failed. I was alive, but the plan had failed. The change had taken longer than my vision showed me it would; I watched in silence as the wolves and vampire tore the only two remaining Sentinels apart. It didn’t look like they were going to save anyone for interrogation, that much I could see.
“We will help you find him,” Jaeden said with promise buried in his tone. “We will all help you find him.” Jaeden picked me up since I was basically stuck standing in place and unable to move from lack of strength.
In my first vision, I’d seen Dagan kill my dad, and I had been shot several times and underwent the change. I broke free of the change, then killed them all and saved my brother. The other vision had been them killing me when I’d tried to save my dad. The third option showed they’d killed my dad, and taken me and Grayson to some underground lab. I hadn’t seen what did happen in any of the visions, but I’d learned from it.
One: My visions weren’t perfect, they seemed to more like tactical simulations that allowed me to assess best-case scenario.
Two: I was a Sentinel Guardian, but without google or another Sentinel to explain what that meant, that knowledge was pretty much useless.
Three: I heard voices inside my head when the Sentinels were close to me, and I could use that to find my brother.
Four: My dad was really dead now.
Five: My mother was going to die by my hand, well; she was going to be buried and hidden in some shithole of a grave that had maggots and other things in it and she wouldn’t enjoy it— not a freaking second of it.
Chapter 28
It was kind of anticlimactic. I hadn’t discovered very much information of what I was, and the glyphs on my forearms itched a little as they set and healed. They looked a little like an intricate lacy infinity symbol on the inside of each forearm, but I had no idea as to what they signified other than a rank. As I sat in my dad’s room before the small service that Addy was putting together, I realized I couldn’t put my thoughts and emotions together, much less a service for my dad. I found a bunch of journals in the room while looking for clothes for him to be buried in. I started skimming the entries of one, and found references to him meeting Shamus.
“Is everything okay?” Lachlan popped his head in the doorway, concern in his eyes.
“Yeah, I’ll be out in a few minutes.”
He nodded and left. I watched as Jaeden walked by, carrying a load of supplies he’d brought. It was odd; as I saw him in the shelter, interacting with my people and bringing in supplies, he looked so right doing it, like he belonged with us. I had no idea where that thought came from.
“Emma, it’s time.” Jaeden had come for me, pulling my mind from my distracted musings.
I stood and hid the journal back in my dad’s drawer before heading with Jaeden and Lachlan to the makeshift morgue with my dad’s best blue shirt and jeans. Sven was waiting to replace the blood soaked clothes he’d died in and when I handed them off to him, I spun around and leveled Shamus with a look.
“You knew my dad?”
“Yes,” Shamus smiled as he said it. “He had been doing some research on the internet that was very specific,” he shook his head and made a task-tsk noise of disproval, “which of course, didn’t go unnoticed by the elders, so I came here and met him to see if he was a threat or not. I liked him immediately upon meeting him. I saw the fight in him, and knew he’d be perfect for building a ‘safe haven’ so to speak, if it came to that. You see, once your father understood why I was here and what I was, he told me of a virus that would be put into play soon; that it was going to wipe out much of what I hold near and dear, if you get my meaning. Now usually someone spouting nonsense like that, I wouldn’t have paid much mind to, but a little taste and I knew everything he said was true.” He flashed me a cheeky grin. “So, I gave him a wee bit of help and sent much of the funding used to build this Ark. Do not misunderstand me, Emma. It was for purely selfish reasons. He would attract humans, it was inevitable, and my kind need food. I made a choice to invest in him, and it made sense since this was a secure location that would be easy to hold. Years later when the virus did hit, we only had to had come here and work on the defense of the area. I had already secured the food.” He finished smugly.
“Well then,” I said, at a loss of anything better to say. Food, he’d secured food. And by food, he meant my friends. Peachy! “Wait, you were here before too?” I asked Jaeden who smiled at me.
“I had a peek at you from a distance once. I’m pretty sure it was Addy taking pictures of you in a field of flowers. You didn’t turn in my direction, but from the scent I caught of you, I knew I’d want to have you. Your scent has changed now that you are grown; it is even more enticing now,” he said as his eyes twinkled naughtily.
I blinked. I’d wondered that day if I’d ever do anything good with my life, or find love. And the entire time I’d been plotting my life, a vampire had been watching me. Death had been watching me from afar and I’d not even known it.