The Survivors: Point of Origin (book 2)

Damages, pt. 1

I WAS INCONSOLABLE AT THE AIRPORT AND ON THE PLANE. WHEN Corrina hugged me goodbye, in her mind she said, I love you so much, but I don’t know how much longer I can play your games.

I guess any human I’d ever love would always think it was just a game. Cole had thought it in London. Corrina thought it now. And I hated it. I didn’t mean to do these things. Really, all I wanted was a life without all the secrecy, without complications, without...all of this. When I tucked my head against Everett’s shoulder on the plane, I feared I had reached the end of an era. I had finally gotten good at passing as a human when this mess with the Winters and my family had begun. I had convinced the few humans I knew that I was one of them. But now it was obvious to all of them what a freak I was, and it was painfully obvious to me that, with each step I took toward my supernatural world — toward my family, toward the Winters, toward Everett — I took a step away from humanity.

Absentmindedly, I straightened up in my seat, lifting my head off Everett’s marble shoulder.

I fixed my eyes straight out in front of me, and my mind idly wandered to the time that Cole Hardwick and I danced at Corrina and Felix’s wedding.

“Sadie,” Everett said softly, removing me from the daydream, “can we talk about what happened? Can you tell me more about what it felt like?”

“What’s to tell?” I whispered. It may have been my imagination, but I shivered when I looked at him, as if Everett’s coldness radiated off of him, the way Cole’s warmth had in the reception hall at the June wedding. “I watched my family murder four girls, and I tasted the blood in my mouth when Noah did. There’s not much else,” I answered.

I could feel he badly wanted to say more, but he didn’t know what he could say to make me tell him what I’d experienced or what I was thinking now. Though he could be persuasive, I made it abundantly clear when I didn’t want to be charmed by him. Any charming or soothing he might do in an attempt to lessen the blow of the reality of my siblings becoming monsters — like him — would just upset me. He sometimes obliged.

But I couldn’t see it in any other way. All the violence, the blood, the terror...that’s what Everett and his siblings did almost every day. But look at how apathetic I’d become! My pretending that what they did wasn’t all that bad was just a way of condoning it. Not to mention, the closer I got to him, the more at risk I was for becoming like him. Becoming a monster.

So I wouldn’t ask what I desperately wanted to: Was it like that every time? Was it that horrific every time he drank someone’s blood, every time he killed? Was there so much fear? So much tension? So much...blood?

“I think I’ve lost Corrina,” I finally said.

He sighed, but he did not disagree with me. “Maybe it’s not that you’ve lost her. I do think it will take her some time to figure out how to adjust. It might be shaky for a little while,” he admitted.

“God, Everett, don’t you see?” I sat up straighter. “I don’t want there to have to be an adjustment. I want my friend. I want the life I had before all this began,” I said.

“Before me,” he said quietly. I knew this was his greatest insecurity. “That’s not what I meant,” I said.

“But it’s true,” he countered.

“Don’t make this any harder than it is,” I said, unable or perhaps unwilling to lie to him just then. “You’re the only redeeming thing that has come out of this.”

“I’ll be sure to tell Ginny and Mark that,” he laughed, signaling he wasn’t looking for a fight. He was still upset, but he was willing to let it go, for which I was grateful. “But in all seriousness,” he added, “you’ve got us. We’re going to get through this together.”