TRISTAN

"Has Savannah returned yet?" Mr. Coleman asked as he got behind the wheel of the truck.

"No. I'll go look for her." As long as Savannah wasn't inside a building, she would be easy enough to find. All I had to do was follow her thoughts.

Savannah? I thought, looking around and waiting for her reply.

No answer, but I thought I picked up something that felt like the warmth I always associated with her mind. It was in the direction of the nearby hillside. She must have taken a walk that way.

I headed up the hillside then stopped at the fence. It was like standing on the top row of seats in one of those ancient open-air amphitheaters. And there below in a tiny space just big enough for a stage was the star.

Except this one only stood around with her hands in her pockets and her head dropped forward.

The sun had finally risen enough to peek over the tops of the hills, but not enough to shred the shadows in the valley. Savannah stood within that darkness, her mind every bit as shadowed.

Because she was afraid for me.

Her lack of confidence was a real ego booster.

Why couldn't she understand my need to hunt Mr. Williams down and make him pay for what he'd done to my mother? She acted like I was about to commit some crime of my own. But I wasn't the bad guy here-Mr. Williams was. Seeking revenge wasn't wrong. It was a basic need to set things right, and the best way to do that was to make sure Mr. Williams could never hurt or kill anyone else ever again. Even the Bible had talked about an eye for an eye. So why couldn't Savannah see that? Why couldn't she understand that I would never be free of this fury burning me up inside until he was dead and buried in the cold, hard ground just like my mother soon would be?

Savannah and I had argued before. All couples did. But this time felt different, more dangerous somehow. Maybe because this time, instead of outside forces coming between us, it was our own beliefs and needs.

Savannah would come around, though. Eventually she had to. There was no way she could stay this blindly idealistic, especially now that Mr. Williams had declared war on the vamps. Couldn't she understand that he wouldn't stop until every last vampire was wiped off the face of this planet? Including Savannah, her father and myself.

It's different this time, she thought, her back still turned my direction. That's why it hurts so much. Because it's different.

Had she heard my thoughts in spite of the music still pumping into her ears from her MP3 player?

But she never turned to look up at me or showed any knowledge that I was there in the distance watching her.

It's up to him this time, isn't it? I can't save him from making this mistake. There's nothing more I can say or do... It's up to him to choose.

My hands gripped the top rail of the fence hard enough to make the wood creak in warning.

Her shoulders stopped moving as she held her breath. I can't change his mind. And if he chooses revenge, I can't follow him down that road, either. If I do, we'll both be lost.

I froze, forgetting to breathe, too. Had it really just come down to that? Choose between her or killing Mr. Williams?

She didn't know I was listening to her thoughts, hadn't consciously decided to put that choice before me. But the ultimatum was there all the same. She was really that hardheaded, that convinced that she was right and I was wrong, that I might die if I went after Mr. Williams, that even avenging my mother's death wasn't worth it.

I pushed back from the fence, anger rising up like a fever to burn my cheeks and eyes. Silently I turned and stalked back down the hill, past the gas station to the truck, threw myself into the passenger side of the front seat then slammed the door shut.

Fine. If that was how she wanted to see this situation, then that was her choice. But she was f lat-out wrong, and I would prove it to her. When I took out Mr. Williams and was still the exact same guy she'd first fallen for, then she would understand.

"Where is-" Mr. Coleman said.

"She's coming."

A minute later Savannah appeared around the corner of the gas station. She got within twenty yards of the truck and hesitated. I could hear my heartbeat pounding in my ears like a clock ticking off the seconds.

Then she changed direction, opening the trailer's door and climbing the metal steps to rejoin the girls instead.

I shouldn't have been surprised. But after our talk this morning and my hope that we'd made up, it still felt like a slap in the face. And the sting didn't stop there. It traveled all the way down like a glowing ember to join the ache that had already set up camp in my chest hours ago, building the burn into a full-f ledged fire.

The truck engine rumbled to life and the seat beneath me jerked forward as we continued our journey north in the complete opposite direction I should have been running toward.

I closed my eyes and concentrated on taking long, slow breaths past that fire in my lungs and throat.

The sooner I could go after Mr. Williams, the better for all of us.

SAVANNAH

It was during those long and seemingly endless days of driving north that Emily gasped.

I looked up from where I'd taken to lying on the couch. "What's wrong?"

She stabbed a finger at the screen of Mom's laptop, which she'd been using along with one of the many disposable phones Dad had picked up to surf the internet. "Jacksonville made the national news."

I hopped up and moved to sit beside her so I could look, too. What I saw had me croaking out Mom's name.

Rubbing her eyes, Mom emerged from her bedroom.

"Look," I told her, my gaze glued to the screen as Emily clicked on a news video.

Mom slid onto the dinette bench at Emily's other side then gasped. "Is that downtown Jacksonville?"

I nodded. "It's on fire!"

The camera panned to show building after building on fire...including the hills in front of the Tomato Bowl. The fire was so high it blocked out parts of the stadium's brown stone walls so that only the second f loor of the announcer's booth could be seen, and even that was hard to make out behind the rolling clouds of black smoke.

"The vamps set Jacksonville on fire as retaliation?" Emily whispered.

"That looks more like spell fire," Mom said. "See how it refuses to go out no matter how much water's thrown on it, and it twists around almost as if it's alive?"

"But that doesn't make any sense," Emily said. "Why would the Clann do that to their own headquarters?"

"How much do you want to bet the council sent some vamps to go after the Clann and things just got out of hand?" I pressed a shaky hand to my forehead. This was so much worse than I'd imagined. It was one thing to see Paris on fire as Mr. Williams's war declaration, and another to see bonfires blazing all over the town I'd grown up in. Paris had never seemed truly real to me. I'd never gotten to see much of it in the two times the council had summoned me there. What I knew of it was more from movies, and who knew how much of that was even the actual city itself instead of some Hollywood set in California?

But this...this was far too real to be any movie set. I'd gone to countless home football games with the Charmers at the Tomato Bowl, walked down those smoke-covered streets and sidewalks before and after the games and to shop. That antiques store was where Nanna used to sell her crocheted blankets and custom filet crochet names.

"That's the Jaycee building there," Emily murmured, reaching out to touch the screen as a pile of crumbled timbers and a partial wall collapsed across from the Tomato Bowl. "All those homecoming dances we organized there..." She meant the dances that the JHS cheerleaders organized every year. The Charmers dance team always held our fundraiser dances out at the Junior Livestock Barn at the edge of town.

I sat back on the bench, unable to watch anymore. Then I gasped.

Oh, no. Anne and Carrie and Michelle and Ron...

I grabbed another of the burner phones and dialed Anne's number from memory.

"Who are you calling?" Mom asked.

"Anne, to make sure everyone's okay. Can you call Dad and let him know what's happening?"

With a quick nod, Mom grabbed a phone.

"Hello?" Anne answered in a cautious tone.

"Anne!"

"Oh, my God, Sa-I mean, Cousin Sally!" she corrected herself just in time. "Did you hear the news about Jacksonville? The whole friggin town's on fire!"

"I know, we just heard. We're looking at the news videos online now. Is everyone okay? How's Ron? Was he hurt in the attacks?"

"Everyone's okay. He wasn't on patrol when the v-when the fighting broke out. He went on patrol afterward, of course, but by then they were long gone. Can you believe the news is blaming this on gang violence?" She snorted.

The trailer lurched and rocked as Dad slowed down and pulled over to the side of the road.

I sighed and rubbed my pounding forehead. "What about the high school? Did it get hit?"

"Not that I've heard. Oh, by the way, I thought you said T, uh, you know who killed Dylan."

"He did."

"Not unless Dylan's the next Jesus, because he was totally in school this week."

I froze, feeling the blood draining from my face. "Are you absolutely sure?"

"Yep." There was a beep. "I'm getting another call. It might be Ron checking in. He's been calling me every half hour to make sure I'm all right."

"Okay. Just save this number under, er, my name, and I'll call or text again soon. You can text or call me, too, if anything else happens. Stay safe, and hug Ron for me."

As we ended the call, Dad and Tristan entered the trailer. Tristan's and my gazes connected and held as I relayed everything Anne had said with one notable exception...the news about Dylan. But before my brain could figure out a way to deliver that tidbit of information in some gentler way, my stupid lips just blurted it out.

"Dylan's alive."

Tristan's pupils dilated and he went still.

"Anne was positive?" Dad asked. "She saw him with her own eyes?"

I nodded, still staring at Tristan, feeling the relief wash over him so hard his knees threatened to give out. "I don't know how. We all heard something in him crack when he hit the fireplace."

"Maybe it was other bones in his body, like his ribs?" Mom suggested.

"Mmm, I don't think so. I heard it, too. I definitely thought it was his spine," Emily said.

"Maybe his father used the old ways to heal him," Mom said.

"Mr. Williams? He's too selfish for that," Emily said.

Their ongoing debate faded into background noise as I watched Tristan grab the edge of the kitchen counter to steady himself. His reaction was everything I could have hoped for, and my vision blurred as emotion filled my chest. I stood up and walked over to him with a smile, stopping to rest my hands against his chest. There was the Tristan I knew and loved. I knew, in spite of all his claims otherwise, that he really had been torn up over Dylan's death. His overwhelming relief now was the proof.

See? I told him silently. No one else needed to hear this, just him. I told you you're not a killer any more than I am. We're still the good guys, no matter how much blood we have to drink to stay alive.

He stared down at me, too many emotions racing through his mind for me to follow at first. His hands slowly rose up to cover mine.

"I may not be a killer yet. But I will be as soon as I can get close enough to Mr. Williams." His hands gently but firmly pulled mine down and away from him. "Mr. Colbert, we should get this rig back on the road before anyone notices us here."

My lips parted in shock as Tristan turned and exited the trailer without a backward glance. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Dad staring at me for a long moment before he left, too.

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