Page 14 of The Reveal (Bloodlore #1)

After dinner, I get Gran ready for bed, even though she grumbles that it’s early.

“I suppose you have big nighttime plans again,” she says sharply as I settle her in the bed.

“I keep hoping you’ll change, Lilianne.” Her gaze gets sad as she looks at me, and it makes everything in me clench.

Even though I know she’s not talking to me .

Just the ghost of my mom. “You keep promising and you keep breaking your promises. If you can’t do it for yourself, or for me, what about those babies? Don’t they deserve more?”

“They do,” I whisper.

I bend down and press a kiss to her forehead, feeling a kind of trembling deep inside because she is so papery now, so insubstantial, when in all my memories of her she could have taken down a mountain with her bare hands.

And likely did every day of the week before lunch.

When I go out of the room and lock her door behind me, I’m still shaky.

I go into the laundry room and fold clothes, vaguely thinking that it might be time for a snack, or possibly it’s time to walk the perimeter of the property before dusk to see if anything’s lying in wait—then nearly jump five feet in the air when I turn back toward the kitchen.

Because Briar is standing there, silently. Over by the counter next to the stove.

And somehow I know that she’s been watching me for a lot longer than I want to imagine. My temples throb a little bit, like knowing something I shouldn’t be able to is painful.

“What the hell are you doing?” I yelp. “Lurking around is a great way to get shot.”

She only stares at me, and I think for a moment that she’s wearing the exact same clothes as yesterday, but then I recognize that the T-shirt is different. The Dead Kennedys. I guess it’s nice that she’s thematically consistent.

“I know that werewolf was roaming around the property last night,” she says.

“Okay.” But if she already knows, why is she confronting me about it?

“You said there were rules.” Her mouth shifts into that sneer. “Or are there only rules if you don’t happen to be the pretty little werewolf princess who lets everybody kiss her ass from the Cascades to the Coastal Range?”

Meaning the entire valley.

“You have a specific complaint, Briar?” I ask.

“You know what they say.” That sneer deepens and her eyes flash darkly. “Lie down with dogs, get up with fleas. Now imagine if it’s werewolves. You won’t get up at all.”

“I don’t think that’s the thing they say.”

She mutters something at me that sounds a lot like “Go fuck yourself,” but I’m too surprised to ask for clarification, or even to take offense. Then she darts for the back door, slamming her way out so hard that the glasses in the cabinets rattle.

I find all my new tenants confusing, but Briar most of all. Not least because she is still wearing that cap pulled down over her ears when it’s really not that cold outside.

I jog upstairs to my room and tell myself I’m going to have a lovely evening in.

Perhaps mend my clothes, because it’s so easy to tear them to shreds while shooting at things, hiding in the underbrush, and vaulting in and out of the coffee stand when monsters decide that the trash run is an invitation to attack. Perhaps read a book.

Perhaps stare at the ceiling and succumb to existential despair, like you do.

But instead, I think of how it felt last night to sit out on the step behind the house, head tipped back and all the stars there before me. Of how magical it was to do something that I once took entirely for granted.

If Ariel Skinner wanted to kill you, Maddox said, he would just kill you.

This time, when I think it, it actually does feel comforting.

Maybe that’s why I find myself leaving the house as the sun drips toward the Coastal Range, reds and oranges mingling with the smoke into something spectacular.

Jaw-dropping. In another life, I would have hiked up to the scenic overview on the Britt trails and watched the sky turn into art.

I only wish I had nothing to do tonight but sit and watch the sun go down.

Once I’m locked up tight in the car and driving down the hill, however, my head is full of lore. About the vampire king who I’ve had no particular reason to think about with any specificity before now. He was just another element of this new world of ours. Nothing to do with me.

I can’t even remember who first told me that, turns out, there’d been vampires living among us all along.

As I drive through town, I see Samuel engaged in conversation with a few other neighbors outside the local saloon. Normally, I would slow the truck down and make sure that there was at least a little eye contact with him, but I don’t tonight.

Maybe I don’t want to have another conversation with him if he’s only going to yell at me about my tenant situation. Maybe I’m enough of a disappointment already, even if it’s secondhand, my grandmother thinking that she was talking to my mom.

Maybe, I think as I take the road out of the safe zone of Jacksonville, a wide curve past fields gone to seed, you should concentrate on the fact that you’re now driving unprotected to what is almost certainly your death.

That feels like a bit of a wake-up call, and the truth is, I need it. I need to pay attention to this insane thing I’m doing. I scan the road, making sure that my weapons are within reach, and happy that I attached more steel to the bumpers only recently to discourage swarming attacks.

For a few moments, as I drive through the sunset, I can almost forget .

.. everything. There’s just the glow of the setting sun, making the valley look as beautiful as I remember it being all throughout my childhood.

The Rogue Valley is shaped like a lazy rainbow and stretches from the north side of the Siskiyou Mountains on the California border to the north and the west, following tributaries of the Rogue River until it meets up with the river itself.

The Applegate Valley nestles in close beside it to the west, with Jacksonville as the linchpin between the two—the place where gold was discovered in 1850.

The Cascades sit to the east, the Coastal Range to the west, and the passes farther north along the interstate are dramatic enough to make the valley itself feel completely isolated. Especially in bad weather.

Ashland is in the hills near the California border, the southernmost town in the valley, once famous for the local university and a Shakespeare festival.

Grants Pass is north and west, and inaccessible these days.

Medford was always the biggest town in the valley, with the mall, the big movie theater, all the hospitals, and a whole lot of people.

But thinking about people brings me back to reality with a thud, because there are a lot fewer of those around these days.

I blow out a breath as I drive farther into Medford proper, past the rubble of old apartment buildings that the monsters turned into buffets. Then I brace myself as I take the turn that will lead me into central, downtown Medford.

I don’t come here much anymore, not even in daylight.

Back before, Medford was a relentlessly pragmatic sort of town, filled with the big-box stores and the fast-food establishments and sprinkled through with various attempts to bring a little burst of new ideas and brighter lights to the place. These attempts never quite took.

Now there’s not much left but ruins. Humans don’t live in Medford, unless they’ve been taken by the shadows and the streets.

The ones that didn’t succumb were eaten years ago.

The safe zone for humans is Jacksonville, though I know there are human enclaves down in Ashland, and there are always whispers of others in harder-to-reach places.

I take a longer route than I need to, despite the debris in the street and too many eyes in the dark recesses of the squat, low buildings.

I can’t help myself. It’s like a physical compulsion to drive around the perimeter of Hawthorne Park, situated at the end of Main Street, right there on the river, where drug addicts used to congregate.

There were always homeless initiatives, drug outreach attempts, and all the rest. Addicts are still here, though now they’re after a different drug.

I drive slower than I probably should, scanning the faces.

Always desperate to see Augie and relieved when I don’t. All those gaunt, ruined faces. All those wild, pleading eyes.

The route I take goes past the front of the martial arts school, propped up there across from the park on the other side of the bridge. I drive past it, seeing lights on inside, and then take Savi’s advice and go around the back.

It’s dangerous to drive here. The roads in downtown Medford are covered in garbage, and there’s no question that half the shit I navigate around is a deliberate trap.

I make certain not to catch the eye of any of the shuffling blood addicts on the street who come out as the sun goes down to hunt their next fix. There’s no telling what they might do.

But it’s the things that don’t show themselves that worry me more.

Around the back of the building, I drive up as close to the back of Archangel MMA as the parking lot allows. I find the alley and can see, way down at the other end of it, the very small sign that still says Spartan Arts , like a relic from a different world.

I park, then I sit there with my heart so loud in my chest that I’m surprised it doesn’t bring every vampire in Medford running.

I know I can’t stay where I am. The longer I sit here, the more likely I am to draw attention to myself.

I hate doing it—it actually hurts —but I peel off my weapons and conceal them in the truck’s door pockets and beneath the seats. Then I sit there, feeling completely naked, before I force myself to open the door, crawl out, and then ... not sprint all the way down the alley to that far door.

Running invites a chase.