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“I don’t care about me. I just want to help the people back home—”
“What? You want to save Jim, that piece of useless trash in a man suit?”
Jim was my old boss at the 911 call center. She hated him because he never really treated me well and spoke shit about her to everyone. I quit my job after her funeral when I heard him call Grandma a cunt.
“I don’t care about Jim,” I say.
“Then who? Those useless townies who were destined to be nothin’ more than a cum stain on a dirty sheet, but by some miracle they ended up being real people.” She throws her hands in the air. “Fuck them! Idiots deserve to be eaten by monsters! They never did deserve the lives they have, always talkin’ and judgin’ us. Always looking for reasons to raise their noses up at us Norfolk. Meanwhile, we were givin’ up our daughters, sons, and parents to keep ’em safe.” Her eyes grow more intense, filledwith vitriol. “Let ’em die, Lake. Let them all die like they deserve. They never gave one damn about my daughter.” She spits on the ground.
Grandma Rain was always bitter, always angry. She loathed the “townies” for how they treated her after my mom and dad disappeared. Now I understand why. They both died because of the Proxy Vow. Like me, I’m guessing my mom would have done anything to keep our world safe. So when she was summoned by Alwar for the Blood Battle, she went. Only, my father went after her. He died, too, though I don’t know who executed him. Probably Benicio. The point is they never came back, and the people from my town, oblivious to everything happening, pointed so many fingers at Grandma that she was arrested. They eventually dropped the charges due to a lack of evidence, specifically my parents’ bodies, but she never got over how the community treated her. In her mind, she lost her daughter to keep our world safe, and they rewarded her with jailtime and an arrest record.
“I’m sorry, Grandma Rain. I’m sorry they did that to you. I’m sorry I didn’t read your journals or trust you when I should have. I’m sorry for everything. But I won’t let everyone die. Not because any of them have or haven’t lived lives worthy of all the sacrifices our family’s made, but because the truth is I don’t know. I don’t know if they’re good or bad or deserving. It’s not my place to judge. So until I’m God or I can see into every single soul on the planet, then all I can say is that they—we—deserve a chance to live and choose our paths. If that inevitably leads to humans being wiped out, then so be it. But if these monsters come, it’s game over. They’ll use us for meat, and unlike the last time, we won’t be able to fight them off. There are just too many, and we’ll go extinct, never knowing what we could have become.”
“Fools. That is what they are and will always be.” Grandma huffs. “But go on, stubborn girl. Let yourself believe that humans deserve a good life.” She shakes a bony finger at me. “But I say let the wall fall. Let the monsters come. What do I care?” She spits again.
“Wait. But didn’t you say you wrote down the steps to seal off our two worlds from each other?”
My mind trips on her words, and I’m snapped into the vivid sensations around me. I’m standing in a dark, muddy cave.I’m speaking to my dead grandma.
“This isn’t real,” I mutter.
Grandma Rain claps slowly. “Well, looks like your mama didn’t give birth to a complete piece of shit after all. Though, that’s what she said. Did ya know she tried to abort you? Your daddy’s stock was nothin’ but a bunch of inbred, white-trash hillbillies. She went in to the doctor, but they told her she was too far along.”
“Shut up. I’m not listening to this anymore.”
“Why? Because the truth hurts?” She leans in. “You shouldn’t be here right now. No one ever wanted you. It’s why your mama and daddy abandoned you to fight the Blood Battle.”
“Stop it!”
“Not even Bardolf would fuck your sad little virgin pussy. You’re a waste of skin, child. Monsterfood.”
“Fuck you!”
I blink, and she’s gone. I feel completely drained of energy, both mentally and physically. I look down at my muddy clothes to find all sorts of things crawling on me. The blood is being drained from my body.
“Get off!” I rip the leeches away and stomp on them, each one making a shrill sound when I end its life.
Finally, I exhale. “What was that?” I’ve never had a full-blown hallucination before.
Whatever the case, it’s left a horrible, heavy feeling deep inside my chest. It seemed so real. And also not. My grandma was a nasty, mean old woman with a dirty mouth. She always said exactly what was on her mind, no matter how offensive, but she would never say those hurtful things to me. She loved me.
Master barks, sitting in front of me.
“Where were you?” I fume.
He turns and starts running toward the light, and I follow.
CHAPTER SEVEN
When I catch up to Master, he’s standing in front of an enormous steel door big enough to be the entrance to an airplane hangar, with a smaller door built into the middle. The metal is covered in raised geometric tribal symbols like the ones on my body.
It’s the No Ones’ language.Why would it be here?
“What are we supposed to do now?” I ask Master.
He looks up with his big eyes.
“I have no idea what that means. And, by the way, thanks for leaving me back there to be sucked on. Now I’m starving.” It’s worse than that, actually. The bloodlust has turned from a niggling feeling in my stomach to a deep, ravenous hunger. “Please tell me there’ll be something to eat inside.”
