This Time Tomorrow (Phenomenal Fate 2)

She welcomed death.

“No, I haven’t seen anything on the news. I don’t think…”

“Do you doubt me now? Do you doubt that this happens all the time and humans aren’t safe as long as those abominations walk the earth?”

“No,” she hiccupped. A worm of pain wiggled between her ribs and she started to shake, blood, screams, expressions of death and shock on her friends’ beautiful faces painting themselves on the backs of her eyelids. “It was my fault. I told him. I told him where we’d be…”

“Who do you speak of?” Inessa asked sharply.

“A man,” she whined, rolling over and screaming into the carpet, guilt bombarding her from every side. Guilt and loss, even for Elias. Even after what he’d done, her heart was nothing but shards, his initials engraved in every single one. How dare she feel anything but hatred for him? How could this have happened?

“A man.” Inessa patted her on the head. “No more explanation is needed.”

“At least, he was a man when I met him…” Roksana said uselessly.

Her mother was silent for long moments. “Let me guess. He approached you.”

“Yes.”

Inessa laughed. “Some people are desperate for eternal life, Roksana. They’ll stop at nothing to get it, even if it means relinquishing their humanity. Slayers might operate in the darkness, but occasionally someone does enough homework to get close. Your mother is the Queen of Shadows, in case you’ve forgotten. My position puts us at the highest risk for visibility. It’s why vampires have always lurked in your midst and I brought you to graveyards instead of playgrounds, to learn our trade. This man you met must have known you would attract those that could give him what he wanted.”

Could that be true? Elias showed interest in her merely to attract vampires?

To appeal to them for eternal life?

Something about that didn’t sit right, but her instincts were clearly unreliable. She’d only felt the briefest of tingles before the slaughter took place. Oh God, she’d done this. All of this was on her shoulders. If she’d just followed in her mother’s footsteps, instead of wandering down a selfish path, she wouldn’t have endangered her friends.

She wouldn’t feel as if her chest was being sawed open every time she thought of Elias.

“I can’t live with this.” She dry heaved, rocking back and forth on the carpet. “I can’t breathe. I can’t live. They’re all gone!”

“You will live.” Her mother’s words were more command than comfort. “We will channel this pain into something extraordinary, daughter. To lay down and die would be smiting your friends even more than you already have. Is that your plan? To let their murders go unavenged?”

“No.” Tears leaked from Roksana’s eyes like a faucet. “I don’t know,” she managed. “I don’t know what to do. I can’t even think.”

“Because you’ve become weak. Easy prey.” On the heels of the ache caused by her mother’s statement, Roksana was shocked into silence when her mother knelt down, cradling Roksana to her chest, her hand roaming comfortingly down her daughter’s back. When was the last time her mother had hugged her? Had she ever? It was like a dose of morphine after an amputation and she swayed into the embrace, warmth stealing through her limbs. “You are forgiven for going astray. You are back now and I can make you strong. I can show you how to find purpose. You and me, daughter. We will get through this together.”

Together.

Roksana’s eyelids fluttered under the inundation of comfort.

Oh, the bliss of being held. Cradled. Accepted where she never had been before.

Yes, yes she would trust in her mother. The only person she had left. The only person on the planet that knew her at all was right here and…and she would avenge her friends. To do anything else would be dishonorable.

“Make me strong, Mother,” she whispered, hope suturing despair in her chest. “Make me the strongest.”

Coney Island

Present Day

Roksana trailed a fingertip along the perimeter wall of the rooftop, a breath of nighttime wind lifting the hair away from her neck. Stars were pinpricks in the black sky and down below on earth, apartment building windows glowed, a Ferris wheel turning slowly in the distance. The faintest sound of carnival music floated along the breeze, along with muted laughter and the scent of buttered popcorn and ocean salt.

The tingle at the back of her neck was in overdrive, but that was no surprise, since—in her infinite wisdom—she’d accepted an invitation to a vampire wedding.

Are you a guest if no one knows you’re here?

Keeping her position among the shadows, far removed from the jovial glow of the wedding about to take place, Roksana reached down and felt for the sharp, wooden stakes strapped to her leg. The outline of them was visible through the bold orange-red of her gown. She didn’t go anywhere without her weapons anymore and their presence would undoubtedly be noticed and unappreciated.