Friction (The Frenzy Series Book 4) Page 3

  The shorter man unlocked the door and waved us inside, where he pointed to a small straw mattress. “I’ll fetch Garreth, our healer.”

  “Thank you. Please hurry.”

  The two left the door open and I listened as their boots crunched on the small shale pathway that led back down the hill. Easing Roman onto the mattress, his head lolled back. Eyes snapping open, his hands reached out for my neck, angry breaths puffing his cheeks in and out rapidly. “Who are you?”

  He tried to bare his fangs, but had forgotten that they were gone.

  I knocked his hands away easily and he stared at them as though they’d betrayed him before launching toward me again. Batting him away a second time, he focused on my face.

  “Roman, it’s Porschia.”

  His face relaxed as his eyes glazed over. “I watched you grow.”

  “Because you felt guilt, Roman?”

  “No, because your strength was enviable. Because the experiment could have killed you, but you survived. It didn’t affect you at all, did it? You’re just strong. It’s just you.”

  I rolled my eyes. “I’m not strong. Physically yes, but most of the time, I feel like I’m about to snap and I don’t know if I can keep controlling this feeling much longer. You’re barely lucid, so I’m glad I can talk to you about it.”

  “You’re going to eat me, aren’t you?” he said, crystal clear tear drops flooding his eyes and spilling onto his cheeks. Poor Roman. He looked like a petrified child.

  “Not yet. I’m going to let Garreth help you first. I don’t like my meat overly warm.” I smiled and patted his leg. The others in our little rag-tag party would arrive soon, and I needed to compel the guards to let them in and bring them to me. Then Tage and I would need to make good on our promise to provide meat for them.

  Roman laid down quietly and stared at the ceiling until his eyes grew too heavy. That was about the same time that a new set of footsteps, this one more determined than the last two, approached the dwelling. Garreth was a behemoth. I’d expected a woman, but got a giant man who barely fit through the door. “Before you try it, I can’t be compelled. I’m here because I choose to be.”

  “In all honesty, today is the first time I’ve compelled anyone and I hated it. I wish I didn’t need to do it at all, so I appreciate your willingness to help.” Compulsion might have worked on the two guards, but I didn’t have a full dose of anything vampire and wasn’t sure that three vamps could have compelled a person this big if size were a factor in such a thing.

  He removed a leather pouch from around his neck and held Roman’s head up. “He looks like someone who passed by here a time or two—a night-walker.”

  “He’s human. Check his teeth.” There were things that didn’t add up. I wasn’t offering more information just yet. Garreth used his meaty fingers to lift Roman’s upper lip, huffing when he saw only a row of straight, square teeth.

  “Where are the Infected?” I smelled no rot – nothing – on the way here. Nothing surrounded Mountainside for miles.

  “Some roam the forest, but most are huddled in a small city about sixty miles to the east. The wall keeps those who do find their way here, out of our settlement. It’s a simple but effective layer of protection.”

  So why won’t they hunt?

  “I know what you’re thinking, and there are greater dangers in these parts than rotters.” He held his leather pouch of water to Roman’s lips and let his mouth fill with a little bit of water. Roman gasped like a fish, sputtering water over his chest, clothing, and all over Garreth. The giant ignored him and dug his meaty fist into yet another leather satchel, pulling out two metal containers. He twisted the lid off one and then the other. Roman’s body went taut as he began convulsing, his face turning scarlet. From a belt on his waist, Garreth grabbed a wooden spoon and then Roman’s jaw. He wedged the spoon between Roman’s upper and lower teeth, holding tight to him. I reached out to calm Roman, but his eyes were unfocused. “What can I do to help?”

  “He’s having a seizure. We wait for it to pass,” the giant gritted out, holding Roman’s head as still as he could. When the spell subsided, Garreth and I sank back onto bent legs. My chest loosened again and I made mental notes of what the healer did to my friend, in case I needed to know how to do it again.

  Once Roman’s muscles finally relaxed, Garreth applied greasy, white salve from one container onto the skin of Roman’s inner cheek. The other substance, thicker and dark like tar, Garreth rubbed on Roman’s forehead, chest, and the soles of his feet. “Why do you care about him?” he asked. “Since when does a night-walker care about a human? Is there a familial tie?”

  “We aren’t related. It’s because part of me is still human, whether any of you believe it or not.” And part of me was pure animal, waiting to be unleashed. I swallowed. “My friends will be here soon. They’re a mix of night-walkers and humans.”

  “Traveling together? That’s the first I’ve heard of such cooperation between the two. I’ll yell to the guards to let them in, if you’d like.”

  “Why are you helping me? You obviously don’t trust me.”

  “Not completely, no,” he said honestly. “But part of me can see the humanity in you and wants to believe in it.”

  I swallowed as he stood up in the small space. “Thank you.”

  “Don’t give me a reason to lose faith in you, night-walker.”

  Could I do that? Could I remain in control of myself long enough not to disappoint someone else? “I won’t.”

  “I’ll be back in a minute. Keep the spoon handy just in case.”

  My body was ice, frigid and stiff. Had I been Infected like Pierce? Where was my brother? I couldn’t lift my eyelids and my back and legs were being poked by something hard; spikes or sticks. Straw, maybe? It made the pain worse. This had to be it, what Pierce felt like.

  I was going to rot along with him.

  Voices swirled around me. Some familiar, some not. Identifying the speakers I did recognize was impossible because of the fog. Then, they disappeared into the black void with me. We were gone.

  Floating away…

  Garreth yelled down to the guards, who began to argue with him. I sighed and left Roman to walk outside and see if I could help. Garreth muttered a curse and told me to go work my mojo on them as he stepped back inside to attend to Roman. At the gate, I was able to convince the guards to allow Tage and Mercedes to enter Mountainside, though I had to repeat myself a few times. Tage tried to compel them too, but the men looked away and refused eye contact with him. They obviously knew how to avoid it; so why did it work differently with a woman?

  We would be allowed entrance, but our horse would be held as collateral and it would be killed and eaten if we didn’t provide meat for the people of the hill. Mercedes angrily handed Lady’s reins to the taller guard and he strode away with her, skirting along the inside of the giant wall.

  Tage grabbed my hand as I began to follow my sister beneath the gate. “We have a problem,” he ground out from between clenched teeth.

  “What’s that?”

  “Me,” Saul answered, stepping out from behind a nearby tree. I hadn’t even smelled him.

  “How’d you get here so fast?” I asked.

  “Mercedes let him ride with her,” Tage said sweetly. How did he even catch up to us?

  Saul stepped toward Tage in anger and I put myself between them because I could tell Tage was struggling to control himself. All the scents and sounds, the tension. It was getting to him. “One day my sister will hate you for what you did, so enjoy her charity while it lasts, Saul.”

  “She’ll never hate me more than she hates herself. And one day Porschia, you’ll forgive me.” His eyes were hard, yet pleading, stormy, and angry.

  “You underestimate the level of hatred I feel toward you, and that is a very dangerous thing. For you.” Forget fangs, I wanted to stab him in the throat with a twig; a small twig that should never hurt a human being. Or maybe I would fight fire with fi
re. Set him ablaze and let him try to fight his way free of the flames. Did Mother try to free herself from her confines?

  His blue-gray eyes swirled with emotion. His jaw ticked. My fingers twitched. Tage’s arm on mine pulled me toward him. I looked toward the guard. “Is there another dwelling, a separate one that he can stay in, please?”

  The guard looked down. “You all stay together if you want to shelter here.”

  Tage breathed into my hair. “We could leave him outside the wall.”

  “No!” Mercedes interjected, moving past me and Tage to stand with Saul. I’d honestly forgotten she was even there. “He stays with us.”

  With a growl, I turned to the guard and nodded, rushing off to check on Roman and leaving my sister with her sympathy and the monster who garnered it. Saul had probably turned his sights on her. He was probably preying on her guilt and kindness. If that was the case, he would find that she had the former in spades, the latter only sporadically. Maybe it was best to keep them close. I didn’t fully trust either of them.

  Garreth held a dampened cloth to Roman’s head. He didn’t bother acknowledging us when we came back into the home. “How is he?” I asked.

  “Fever is drawing out.”

  That was good. “Do you know what’s wrong with him?”

  Garreth stood, his scalp almost touching the ceiling. “I’m not entirely sure, but it seems flu-like. We haven’t had it here in years, but it’s very much a human condition. It’s caused by a virus, and he has an extreme case of it from the looks of him. But it’s not usually deadly for young people. How long has he been sick?”

  “Not long,” Tage said from beside me.

  Pursing his lips, Garreth looked over Roman again. “Early on, the flu makes you feel like you’re dying. Body aches, chills, fever. His fever is causing the seizures because it spiked too high, but he’s fighting hard and it’s been a long time since I’ve heard of anyone passing from it. We’ll watch it closely and in a few days, he should be better.”

  “Thank you,” I said as my sister and Saul stepped into the room. Garreth looked them over. “They’re human. Both of them,” I answered his unanswered question.

  Garreth shook his head with a slight smile while he stared at each one of us in turn.

  “I told you.”

  “I guess seeing is believing,” he mused. “You’re an odd bunch. Night-walkers and humans...” He paused, handing the water bag to me. “See that he drinks every half hour. He needs to stay hydrated. If something changes, send a human for me. It’d be best if you and he stayed inside this room,” he said, motioning toward Tage. “I’ll be back at dark and can stay with him if you’d like. The illness tends to worsen at night, and I know that the two of you will be hunting.”

  Motioning between me and Tage, I assured him, “We won’t bother anyone, and we’d appreciate it if you’d help him tonight.” We needed to find food for the people. Although I hadn’t seen many of them, the guards, who were likely the strongest among the people other than Garreth, seemed gaunt and thin. There was a hollowness even in the giant’s cheeks.

  A smile split his face. “You let me focus on your friend. You focus on finding food. I look forward to the meat. Good luck tonight.”

  “Thank you,” Tage and I said as he ducked out the doorway.

  Mercedes looked around the place. There was a small wooden table with two chairs, Roman’s bed, and a wooden chest at his feet. A few utensils hung on the wall next to an assortment of charred pans. “I can see if someone will let us have some food for today,” she offered.

  “You noticed the food was gone?”

  “I did. Tage told me it sank in the river,” she answered, looking down.

  “I’ll look for firewood. There’s a pit outside.” Saul shoved his hands in his pockets.

  Tage smiled. “I’ll go with you, Saul. We can look for animal trails while we’re collecting wood.”

  I almost laughed out loud at Saul’s expression; half surprised and half angry. Squeezing Tage’s hand wasn’t enough for him. He caught me by the waist and planted a gentle kiss on my lips. “Be back soon.”

  Saul glared at the two of us from beside the door before disappearing outside. Mercedes huffed, following him.

  “Stay with Roman. Saul and I will get firewood from the forest,” Tage added, kissing my temple.

  “Be careful.”

  “Wild horses couldn’t keep me away from this hill hole, kitten.”

  Mercedes was at another door thirty feet away, asking for anything our new neighbors could spare. There wouldn’t be much, if anything. I hated to break that to her, but she was from Blackwater, where resources were richer and neighbors dutifully helped one another. She would understand soon enough. Saul was striding down the pathway that was carved up the mountainside. I jogged and caught up with him quickly. “Leaving without your chaperone? Not the smartest idea.”

  “I don’t need a babysitter,” he replied gruffly.

  Laughing, I pointed toward the forest. “Something has these people scared enough to build a twenty-foot tall wall around their homes. I wouldn’t take that lightly. You were Infected once. We wouldn’t want that to happen again.”

  “We both know you wouldn’t care if I was out of the picture for good.”

  I smiled. I would love it if he were gone – from Infection, a fall off a cliff, a tumble down the mountain...

  “You rub me the wrong way, Saul. What can I say?”

  “You think you don’t do the same to me? I hate seeing her with you. You were always getting in the way, even from the beginning. The blood bond, holding her hand, telling her she could get through the transition, telling her that this entire thing was a blessing and not a curse. You’ve been waiting for this since you saw her!”

  “I have. And you know what? You’re not angry because I’ve wanted her all along. You’re angry because you threw it all away. You had her and in one moment, lost everything.”

  He strode down the mountain in brooding silence. Poor guy. Had he even seen it before now? Did he know how much he hurt her?

  “Scent is one of the most intense senses for a human being, but for a night-walker it’s even more overwhelming. Do you know what she smells when she looks at you?” Saul stopped just inside the gate, waiting for the humans to lift it for us. Once outside, as we stepped into the forest he turned to me.

  “What do you mean what she smells when she looks at me?”

  Let me inform you, asshole. “A vampire can detect the slightest of scents even a mile away if we choose to focus intently enough.”

  “So?”

  “So, the night you decided to singlehandedly burn the city down, the first thing she smelled was the burning bodies.”

  Saul inhaled sharply.

  “Even more specifically, she knew her mother’s scent and could smell when it...when she began to burn. She smelled the flesh of her mother being overtaken by smoke and flame.”

  I watched as the realization hit him in the gut. “She smelled her burn?” His voice was quiet and pensive.

  “Yes.”

  He exhaled sharply. “No wonder she hates me.”

  “And yet you think you did nothing wrong,” I said, looking out into the forest. “Let’s go east.”

  “I didn’t realize,” he stammered. “I was trying to do the right thing, especially after Pierce had his way with most of them,” he said quietly.

  “You thought wrong—about her mother, at least. The others, Porschia could have forgiven you for.” It was cold, but true. He needed to stop sniffing around Mercedes to get to Porschia. He needed to stop looking at her like he could still have a chance if only he bided his time. Saul needed to man up and accept what he did like a man—a man with no chance in hell of getting Porschia Grant to love him again.

  I knelt next to Roman. The cloth on his head was damp and warm, having absorbed the warmth from his body, but it wasn’t doing enough because the skin of his forehead was still hot to the touch. I remembered
a time that Ford had a fever when he was small that was worse than all the other occasional ones he picked up here and there. He and Mercedes were always the social butterflies of our family, whereas I stayed home, had few friends other than Meg, and even then, she did most of the work in keeping our friendship going. I didn’t want to hear the whispers about Mother and was too embarrassed to leave the house and yard except for when it was required.

  But I left home for help when Ford got sick and Mother decided to lock herself in her bedroom. Father told me to ask Mrs. Bracker, who lived three streets over, if she had anything that would help him. And though I didn’t know her well then, he also sent me to Mrs. Maggie Dillinger’s. Both of the women arrived at our home minutes later and rushed to Ford’s side. At their instruction, Father and I brought buckets of water in and Father laid my brother in the cool water. It was the only thing that saved him.

  There must be a water source somewhere...

  Roman groaned, his eyes blinking open. “Are you here to kill me?”

  I shook my head, making sure he could see my face. “No.”

  “You will,” he said. His voice was weak but his tone was adamant.

  “I won’t. I’m trying to help you.”

  “I wouldn’t blame you. I did a lot of things that were wrong, even to your Mother. I’m no better than Saul, if you think about it.”

  I didn’t want to think about it and I didn’t know why. Maybe because right now I didn’t want to think about Saul or Mother. “I’ll be back. You need to cool down. You’re way too hot, Roman.”

  “That’s what all the ladies tell me.”

  “Still an arrogant ass, though.”

  “They say that, too.” He closed his eyes. “I’ll stay here and guard the place.”

  “Brilliant idea.” I looked him over. Garreth said people didn’t die from the flu very often; however, if we couldn’t get his fever to break, Roman might be one of the rare few who succumbed to the ravages of this virus. If he died from the flu, it would be a huge blow to his ego. Someone had to do something and I was the only one around. I eased the door closed behind me and started down the pathway, meeting a woman who held the hand of her small, toddling son. “Hello, could you point me in the direction of your water source?”