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Back some twenty years ago, when she had begun seeing a vampire, she’d been viewed as compromising the integrity of the research—and there had been a fear, never expressed, that the program had all been a very grave mistake. Their bloodline hadn’t wanted to be punished for what had been a heretical idea to begin with, so she had been sacrificed for the protection of her family for a number of reasons.
“How many of these… labs did you close down,” she said.
“All of them.”
Xhex leaned forward onto the balls of her feet. “I’m sorry, what did you say?”
“Every one of them,” came the rock-solid reply. “I took them all out—well, except for the one under us now, and Daniel tells me they do no experimenting on your kind. So I am leaving it be.”
“You closed down…”
“All of them. It took me over two decades, and it does not feel like enough.”
The male’s face seemed to change shape for her, the features at once familiar and yet completely new.
“You did that for me?” she whispered.
“It was the only way to make amends.”
All around, the howling continued, becomingeven louder still, if that were possible. And that was when she saw it, over in a clearing by a stream… a wolf that was like no other, a silver lupine form who was watching them as if in approval.
Finally, she thought, as she raised her hand in greeting.
As Blade caught the direction of her focus, he glanced over to the side of the trail. And then he said the strangest thing: “It’s her.”
Xhex did a double take. “You mean… she came to you, too? Up here?”
“An entity like none I had ever seen before. An old—”
“—woman,” Xhex finished. “With a message.”
“Yes, did you—”
“She told me I had a journey and that my only hope was for me to start on it or die.” Xhex glanced down at the ground, and saw that her brother’s boots and hers were toe to toe. “A journey…”
To this spot here. Right here.
Her whole adult life, she had been meant to come here, to this spot on the trail that led up the mountain, to… her brother.
She looked at Blade. Over twenty years. All the labs. And he had never said a thing to anybody—a wise survival skill up in the Colony, but something that would have gotten him help if he had told the right people in Caldwell. But that hadn’t been the point for him, had it.
The Federal Bureau of Genetics, she thought. Blade as Daniel’s boss. The work that Blade had gotten humans to do with him because he’d needed backup that no one knew about.
Because all that had been his journey.
And now they were both here.
Xhex reached up to the slick cheek of her brother. Swiping her forefinger down the red tears he cried, she retracted her hand and turned her fingertips around.
After a long stretch of silence, she streaked her own cheeks with his blood. “I… forgive you.”
All at once, the howling stopped, and the silence of the night returning was such a shock, they both jumped as if the void were a loud noise.
And then Blade refocused on her, his eyes gleaming with the red wash of his emotions. “You do not have to.”
“I know.” Xhex put her hand on his shoulder. “I forgive you. Now forgive yourself and let it go. We both need to… let this go.”
As she spoke the words, a soaring feeling buoyed her body sure as if her feet had left the ground, and all at once, a rushing sensation in her head burned—but not in a way that hurt. It was like a reinflation.
