Blue Bloods (Blue Bloods 1)

MANY JOURNEYS AWAIT YOU.

She wished Oliver were there to see it.

"Have you seen Jack? Jack Force?" she asked everyone she bumped into.

She was told that he had just left, or was on another floor, or had just arrived. He seemed to be everywhere and nowhere.

At last, she found him in an empty guest bedroom on the uppermost floor. He was strumming a guitar and singing softly to himself. Downstairs was the house party of the century, but Jack preferred the silence upstairs.

"Schuyler?" he said, without looking up.

"Something happened," she said, closing the door behind her softly. Now that she'd finally found him, all the feelings she'd bottled up came out. She was trembling, so scared that she hadn't even noticed that he'd divined her presence from sense alone. Her eyes were wide and frightened. Without thinking twice, she ran to his side and sat next to him on the bed.

He put an arm around her protectively. "What's wrong?"

"I was at a photo shoot today, and afterward, I was walking alone... and I was... I can't remember..." She struggled for the words. For the images. At the time, they were burned into her brain, yet it felt like she was grasping - reaching for them. She held on to the tendrils of the memory - something terrible had almost happened to her - but what? What words could convey what had happened, and why was her memory betraying her? "I was attacked," she forced herself to say.

"What?" He cursed. He shook her shoulders, then held her close. "By whom? Tell me."

"I don't remember. It's gone, but it was... powerful, I couldn't stop it. Red... red eyes... teeth... going to suck... here," she said, pointing to her neck. "I felt it, deep into my veins... but look, I don't have any puncture wounds? I don't understand."

Jack frowned. He kept his arms around her. "I'm going to tell you something. Something important."

Schuyler nodded.

"Something is hunting us. There is something out there hunting Blue Bloods," he said softly. "I wasn't sure before, but I am now."

"What do you mean, hunting us? Don't you have it backward? We're the ones everyone else needs to be afraid of!"

Jack shook his head. "I know it doesn't make sense."

"Because The Committee said we can't be kil - "

"Exactly," Jack interrupted. "They've always told us we live forever, that we're immortal and invulnerable, that nothing can kill us, right?" he asked.

Schuyler nodded. "That's what I was telling you."

"And they're right. I've tried."

"Tried what?"

"I've jumped in front of trains. I've cut myself. I was the one who fell out the library window last year."

Schuyler remembered that rumor - how some kid had jumped off the third-floor balcony and landed in the cortile. But she hadn't believed it. No one could survive a fifty-foot jump and live, much less land on their feet.

"Why?"

"To see if what they were telling us was true."

"But you could have died!"

"No. I couldn't. The Committee was right about that, at least."

"That night - that night in front of Block 122 - you were hit by the taxi."

He nodded. "But it didn't hurt me."

"No." Schuyler nodded. So she had seen him fall underneath the taxicab's wheels. He should have died. But he had appeared on the sidewalk, whole. She'd thought she was just tired from the night, that her eyes were strained. But it had actually happened. She'd seen it.