But usually I can handle it. At least I can better than today, but I’m still agitated from what happened with Abby a few days ago. And the sideways glances that Max keeps throwing my way from the driver’s seat aren’t helping. I know it’s ridiculous, but I prefer that he treat me like a grenade about to go off than a fragile person. It’s easier when he’s ignoring me rather than having to deal with the pitying looks I’m getting now.
Because we both know I’m feeling more than a little sorry for myself right now. I’d finally reached one of my pack members before it was too late, and I still couldn’t save her.
Other Enforcers had come to clean up her body, and that of the old witch. They’d taken pictures, asked questions, but neither Max nor I mentioned the moment when I was going tolet Abby kill me. Maybe Max wasn’t sure what he saw, but it didn’t matter. It was a moment of weakness I can never repeat. I don’t get to just die. I have people to save.
Basically, I have my hands full. So, whatever the hell Max’s problem is, he needs to get over it.
"What?" I finally snap, when I see his neck turn in my direction for the hundredth time.
He turns back to the road, the veins on his hands prominent from how hard he’s squeezing the steering wheel. “You couldn’t have saved her. She was too far gone.”
“Because you know so much about saving Blood Mages,” I tell him dryly. Belatedly, I regret calling my own pack member a Blood Mage, but that’s what the Enforcers call us now. And sometimes it gets in my head.
He’s quiet for a moment, then says, “But as far as Blood Mages go, she was weak. I want you to know that, because we’ll need to be on our game if we want to take them down.”
Maybeheneeds to be on his game, but I'm not trying to ‘take them down’. I want to save them. And I have to keep holding onto hope that the rest of my pack might want to be saved half as badly as I want to save them.
“I don’t want to talk about Abby anymore,” I tell him curtly.
“Okay.” He nods, then clears his throat. "The nightmares you have seem to bother you a lot. Want to tell me about them?"
Great change in conversation.
"Sure, who doesn’t want to tell their captor their innermost secrets?" I say in a sickly-sweet voice. I know it’s nottechnicallytrue, but I want to argue and get things back to the way they were.
I don’t know why.
He sighs. "You're not my prisoner, Asha, you came with me of your own free will."
Free will?I snort. "Yeah, like I had a choice. You would have killed or captured me anyway.”
“Asha–”
“Come on, we both know you hate me and that you're justwaitingfor the perfect opportunity to drive a stake through my vampiric heart." Again, not technically true, but there’s enough about what I said thatistrue that I don’t mind flinging the words at him.
Those big hands of his shift on the steering wheel again, then grip it harder. "You're helping me as much as I'm helping you. You shouldn't see it like that."
His voice is calm and quiet when he speaks, and ironically, it makes me angrier, like he's patronizing me.Oh, Asha, tell me everything about you so that I can kill you when you're at your weakest.Yeah, right.
“But that’s exactly how I see it,” I tell him, glaring.
Like usual, he doesn’t take the bait, just says, “I’m sorry you feel that way.”
“Fucking robot,” I mutter, pushing my sunglasses up higher on the bridge of my nose and glaring out at the woods that surround the little road we’re on.
A few minutes of silence pass and then he says, “We’ll be at our next stop in less than an hour.”
“Perfect.” Damn it, I really do sound like a bitch.
The thing is, I know he's frustrated that I snapped at him, but he needs to get used to the fact that this is just how it will be between us. I’m never going to be a perfect, polite robot like him. To me, this isn’t a job, and he's not my friend or coworker. I’m here because it’s the best chance I have of finding what’s left of my Blood Pack and getting the Enforcers to show them mercy, so they won’t all just be slaughtered for what they are.
Maybe after we’re done, Max will become my enemy. Actually, he probably will be. But either way, I can’t get closeto him, and I can’t trust him. Doing so would be stupid. And a distraction I can’t afford.
I already failed my pack and my family once; I’m not going to do it again.
Although I’ve failed them more than once. When we were attacked. When we were captured. When we were tortured. And when we were changed by the Blood Mages.
I shiver and wrap my arms around myself. Flashes of the sound of screaming, along with the sight of blood, and the painful experiments race through my mind. Moments where I could feel the cold bars of a cage at my back, and the cold metal floor beneath me, stealing all warmth from my sore body. It’s all right there in my mind, just below my determination to survive.