Frequency (The Frenzy Series Book 3)

  Table of Contents

  Frequency

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Frequency

  Copyright © 2016 by Casey L. Bond. All rights reserved.

  First Edition.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any way by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording or otherwise without the prior express permission of the author except as provided by USA Copyright Law. The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of a copyrighted work is illegal. Copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by fines and federal imprisonment.

  This book is a work of fiction and does not represent any individual, living or dead. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Scripture quotations taken from the Holy Bible,

  King James Version, Cambridge, 1769. All rights reserved.

  Book cover designed by Marisa Shor of Cover Me, Darling.

  Cover Model: Nathan Weller

  Cover Photography by Dark Feather Photography

  Professionally Edited by Stacy Sanford, Girl with the Red Pen

  Paperback and E-book formatted by Allyson Gottlieb of Athena Interior Book Design and Marisa Shor of Cover Me, Darling.

  Published in the United States of America.

  ISBN-13: 978-1530755042

  ISBN-10: 1530755042

  To the hubs.
  There are moments in a person’s life that happen at a slower speed. Time slows, and so do you. Then there are other moments that fly by so fast you’re powerless. You become overtaken by their current, only able to ride out the momentum until something stops either it or you. Most moments fit into neither category. Time is just time; neither fast nor slow, but steady and predictable.

  But there is fourth kind of moment: the kind that seems as though it’s happening at a snail’s pace, but in reality is a building wave, ready to crash over you and speed you into a new phase of your life. I was trapped in the fourth kind of moment. Slow but fast. Agonizing but all-consuming.

  The frigid dark water was damning and comforting at the same time. My shoulder was on fire. It sizzled, bubbled, and burned. I was done being bitten by creatures who assumed they had the right to do as they pleased; creatures that weren’t human anymore and had forgotten what it meant to be. Humans didn’t do this to other human beings. I’d been bitten by vampire fangs until I felt like a piece of Swiss cheese, holes and all, and now an Infected had bitten me? And not just any Infected…Porschia’s crazy sister. I could feel my skin blistering where each of her teeth cut through my skin, like their enamel was infused with hellfire. Maybe the Infection was made up of exactly that – hellfire. In any event I was about to find out, and powerless to stop the change coursing through me.

  Icy cold water splashed onto the makeshift raft as the angry current carried us away from the forest crossing and Blackwater. The sound of Porschia’s frantic voice echoed through the valley. “Saul!” She cried out for me, but she had already seen what her sister did. “Use your ring!” She knew I couldn’t go back now. It was pointless. The ring wouldn’t help me now. Mercedes bit me and now I was as good as dead. I was Infected. Now I would rot like the others. Eventually I’d roam the forest, desperate to find my next meal, regardless of what that meal was; dead or alive.

  Mercedes held onto my shoulders as we curved around the city. The guy with us was using a long piece of wood to try and guide the raft, but the river had its own agenda. He growled as the muscles along his back and arms began to shake.

  Motioning to me, he held the wooden pole out. Take it, he said in my mind. What the hell? We need to stop in the calm stretch of river, but we won’t make it if the raft gets torn apart by those rocks, and even you can’t survive the rapids now. The Infection is weakening you quickly. He pointed ahead to a row of jagged rocks that dammed the river slightly. If we hit those, we’d all be swimming in the glacially cold river. Cold chills crawled up my spine.

  Standing and moving toward him, I reached out for the pole. If I let the raft smash apart, it would take him and Mercedes both out. It would end the misery I knew would be waiting for me in the city. I wouldn’t rot. Drowning sounded better than wasting away. The stench from his skin and hair almost knocked me back down. Rot.

  “Saul!” Porschia’s voice faded the faster the river took us. The water was the only thing faster than her, and it was just as deadly. The guy’s eyes zeroed in on my face and he threw the long stick at me. I caught it easily, holding it level at my waist. We’re close to finding a cure. Don’t be stupid, he said. The sloshing of the water on the raft rocked us and the row of rock spires was getting closer by the second. Digging the wooden pole into the river bottom, I gritted my teeth and hoped the raft would slow. It finally relented and we passed between the widest gap between two of the sharp rocks, only scraping the right side a bit as we slid through. When we reached a wide stretch of the river and the water calmed, I eased the raft over to the bank.

  The guy jumped off the raft and onto the bank. Mercedes struggled to stay upright as she jumped off behind him, slipping and sliding on the wet earth. My pants were soaked and I was freezing as I leapt off behind her. “Do you have fire?” I asked softly.

  She nodded and motioned toward the flood wall. In one of the wall joints, the metal had corroded and one could squeeze through the small barrier. Once we were inside the concrete barrier, I grabbed Mercedes’ bicep. “Why did you do it?”

  Her brows touched one another in confusion.

  “Why did you attack? Why the hell did you target me?”

  She looked at the guy who was walking ahead of us and then back to me; silent, but swallowing thickly.

  “He made you?”

  The slightest nod of her head said I was right.

  “Who is he?” I jutted my chin toward him.

  Mercedes parted her lips and tried to speak, but small screeches from her throat were all she could muster. In my mind, she spoke. He is the leader of the Infected. Pierce is well-respected here. No one questions his orders. And if you’re smart, neither will you. Trust me on that one.

  Trust her? She just fucking killed me! One bite and I was already dying. I could already feel the virus spreading quicker than should be possible. My head began to pound. I clutched my temples and steadied myself with the gritty flood wall stretching tall beside me. Had it always been so tall? My vision blurred and then cleared before blurring again. We need to get you indoors and warm, Saul.

  Warm was a good idea.

  Pierce walked ahead, his long, dark hair swishing back and forth. It was stringy and as weak as he looked now. The fight in the forest had obviously taken the wind out of his sails. I watched as he disap
peared between two tall buildings. I’d been in the city before on hunts for supplies and food, but this walk was different. This walk had no retraceable steps. I was never going home to Blackwater. I couldn’t go back to Porschia, and I would never see my parents again. I was completely screwed.

  My legs shook so violently, I didn’t think I would make it to wherever Mercedes was leading me. After passing a few more buildings, she led me into a brick four-story. We live here. Pierce wants you to stay with us – not in his room, but in his apartment. You’ll need someone to stay with you for the first few days. I volunteered.

  Well how nice, considering you were the one who bit me, I thought. Apparently she heard me, because she looked back at me with wide eyes full of pain. She had been through the change recently, and I wondered how someone so small was able to survive this. I was strong and much bigger than her; I towered over her, yet I could barely stay upright. “Who helped you?” I asked. Did Pierce help her after she was bitten? Was he the one who infected her?

  Her eyes were big in her face and her cheeks were sunken in. She shook her head and kept walking slowly to a stairwell. Pointing up, she motioned for me to follow her. On the next floor, she stopped and led me down a hallway. The scent of mold was thick in the air, and dark spots crept up the walls from the floor boards to eye-level. I followed her, trying to keep my legs from breaking in two. Halfway down the hall, she opened a door on the right and stepped inside, grabbing a bucket and pushing it toward me.

  The dingy yellow plastic pail might as well have been a crystal ball. I didn’t make it one foot inside the door before the vomiting began, and when it started, I couldn’t stop it. For days. I suddenly knew what Porschia felt like after changing.

  Nothing helped her. She couldn’t stomach meat. She couldn’t hold down blood. She couldn’t do anything but lie around or scream from the pain. The fluctuation between the two extremes was enough to drive a sane person mad. Ford stopped by during a particularly terrible episode, and she told him to leave and let her die alone. He came back that night with their father and a pot of chicken soup. She refused to take her dress off; the one Maggie made her. She said she still wanted to feel like herself when she died. When I tried to tell her this storm would pass, she would scream that it wouldn’t.

  She was calm when her father visited, or as calm as she could get, simply lying in the bed crying. He sat at her bedside and brushed the flyaway strands of hair from her face. “You’ll be okay. You’re the strongest night-walker I know,” he told her with gentle confidence.

  She just shook her head. She’d been sick often since turning, but this was something entirely different. Ford stood at her door watching the exchange while I sat in the window sill. I didn’t want to intrude, but didn’t want her to hurt someone she loved, either. She didn’t seem to be hungry at all, which was a very good thing, but her heart was completely broken. Saul was gone and she blamed herself. Even worse than that was the fact that she was sick and she couldn’t garner enough energy to leave her bed, let alone go into the city after him.

  But what would she do if she could? She couldn’t bring him back into the Colony, but I wasn’t sure if she realized that or not at this point.

  Her family didn’t stay long. “I need to rest,” she lied. I could see the sheen of sweat breaking out on her forehead. Her father kissed her temple and stood up, the bed bouncing back into shape. Ford waved at his sister from the doorway. Take care of him, she mouthed. Ford nodded and disappeared behind their father, giving her one long, last look.

  That night she tossed and turned, rolling from side to side, moaning from the pain and screaming from hallucinations. She swatted at imaginary wasps and looked at me in terror as she called me Mercedes and scooted away like I was the one who hurt her.

  “Get back! I don’t want you to Infect me!” She clutched her sheets and pulled at the headboard.

  “Porschia, I’m Tage. I’m not Mercedes. You’re safe.”

  She shook her head vehemently.

  “Listen to my voice. I am Tage. Mercedes isn’t here. She’s in the city. You’re at Roman’s house.”

  “You’re my sister. I know my own sister! You’re here to bite me and kill me! You killed Mother. You killed Saul. You ruin everything you touch and I hate you! I. HATE. YOU!”

  Porschia clawed at her face until I held my hands up and backed away. “I’m leaving. I won’t hurt you, Porschia.”

  “You always hurt me. You always kill,” she sobbed.

  Her wails filled the air as I closed the door and pressed my shoulder blades against the wall. Roman appeared in front of me. “She’s not getting better.”

  “No shit.”

  “It was the darts – whatever it was on the darts poisoned her. I haven’t felt well since then either,” he admitted. His dark eyes searched me for weakness.

  “I got hit and I feel fine,” I argued. I’d thought about the darts, but the couple I took didn’t take me down; then again, the tips barely touched me because of my jacket. They didn’t faze me at all. But maybe they had used something else on her...

  “How many times did you get hit?” Roman asked. “Once? Twice? Porschia looked like a well-used pin cushion.”

  I beat the back of my head against the wall once. Porschia’s cries and whimpers came from behind me, soaking through wood and wallpaper, soaking into my flesh and bone. “What can we do?”

  Roman smiled. He’d been waiting for me to offer. He looked out the hallway window, saying, “We find out what poisons a vampire.”

  “And how do you propose we do that?”

  With a wide smile, he ticked his head toward the city. “We destroy every one of them until they tell us what we need to know.”

  I pushed away from the wall, cracking my knuckles. “I’m down with that.”

  “Thought you would be,” he said, walking toward the stairs. “We need to find someone to stay with her. And she’ll have to go into the cell until we get back so she doesn’t hurt anyone.”

  “Ford will do it.”

  Roman paused at the bottom of the steps. “I’ll go ask him. You stay with her. She’s happy to see you when she’s lucid.”

  “She isn’t lucid often now.”

  He looked at his feet and then up at me. “Then let’s change that.”

  Mercedes stepped into my room. This had been my room since childhood, while hers was just across the wall. She didn’t knock and she didn’t even ask to come in from outside the door. She just barged in there like she had the right to speak to me and invade my privacy. “Get out!” I yelled. “I’m still angry at you.”

  “What for?” she asked breezily, easing the door closed behind her with a soft click. “I didn’t do anything to you.” Mercedes tried to look innocent, but she knew she was guilty. She knew it. She. Knew. It.

  She knew.

  She knew.

  She knew.

  “You did. You got Infected. You hurt Mother. You took Saul and I saw you bite him. I love him!”

  Mercedes smoothed her dress over her stomach and sighed sadly. “I didn’t hurt Mother and I’m not Infected. You are. That’s why you’re locked up in this place, that’s why they’re all afraid of you, and that’s why they sent the mosquitoes. They’ll eat your blood and rid you of this affliction. Don’t you hear them buzzing?” Mercedes smiled. “They’re coming now.”

  A high-pitched squeal sounded near my ear and I swatted clumsily at the air. More buzzing. More tiny shadows. She was right. Mosquitoes, first a few, then an entire army of them, flew into my room from the open window. I leapt from the bed, trying to get to the window to close it. It was open, just a few inches, but enough to let them in.

  Pushing harder and harder, gritting my teeth, I tried to close the window. Finally the wooden frame gave way, but I’d pushed too hard and it slammed shut with a bang. The glass pane fractured, splintering slowly up the middle with the tiniest pinging sound at each start and stop. A thousand tiny buzzing sounds swirled around me and I re
alized the mosquitoes were pushing on the outside of the glass. They saw the weakness in the barrier separating us and were using it to their advantage. Acting as one, they landed on the pane and pushed the glass in until it shattered, spraying me with shards and splinters.

  Tiny cuts spread across my skin until I looked as though I was made of lava, like something primordial and deadly. But I knew their plan. The blood was what they wanted, and the splintered glass brought it to the surface for them. They were coming for my blood, my life.

  The bugs swirled through the air and came for me; a black, seething mass. I ran, slicing the tender soles of my feet on the discarded glass shards and shredding them into slivers of flesh and sinew. With one last cry, I lunged and finally reached my bed. I covered myself with the blankets but the mosquitoes were too strong. They tore the fabric from me, landing on me and drawing from my skin. Mercedes’ laughter echoed through the room as I fell to the floor and they fed from every exposed piece of flesh.

  They fed.

  I fell.

  I died.

  Mercedes laughed.

  Mercedes killed.

  Mercedes ruined.

  A lifetime later, strong hands lifted me from the floor. Had the mosquitoes cleansed my blood? Did they really take the Infection from me? Was I really a rotter or was my sister, whom I’d loved so much, a liar?

  My eyelids were heavy, filled with dead mosquitoes and tainted blood. My ears were filled with the same. “This is only temporary, Porschia,” a voice called out.

  What was only temporary? Death? Life? Infection? Cleansing?

  “Porschia?” Ford asked tentatively. I blinked my eyes open and saw my brother peering cautiously at me from between two metal bars. The cell. I was back in Roman’s basement.

  “Why am I here?” I rasped. “What did I do?”

  He shook his head. “You didn’t do anything, Porsch. This is just a precaution. I have to stay with you for a little while today.” The tiny window let sunlight spill into the room, just enough to illuminate my baby brother’s concerned face.