“The cure is attacking the virus. He’s sleeping finally.”
“Good.”
“How are you doing?”
Jodie shrugged. “A little numb. I thought experiments were long behind me. I just wanted to make the world a better place and find my cousin. Can’t seem to make either of those happen.”
“That’s not true. Don’t be so tough on yourself.”
“I think June is dead,” Jodie whispered. “I mean…what other explanation is there?”
“That’s not the only explanation.”
Jodie opened her mouth to respond, but Tye came rushing into the room. “Reyna, come quick.”
Reyna dashed after him. “Is it Brian? Is he okay?”
“I don’t know. I’m sure he’s fine. It’s an email.”
“An email?” she asked in confusion.
He turned the computer to face her and she glanced down at the inbox.
“It just came in from Everett.”
Reyna had a bad feeling about this. A chasm opened in the pit of her stomach and remained there as she clicked on the new email. There was no subject line. No text in the body of the document. Just an attachment.
“Is that safe?” she asked.
“It didn’t pull up any viruses, but…I can’t be certain. We could get Zoya?”
“She’s busy.”
Reyna clicked on the attachment. A video populated almost immediately. They exchanged a confused glance. Jodie sidled up next to her as she realized what was going on. Reyna knew it was probably a bad idea, but she pressed Play anyway.
“Oh fuck,” she whispered.
Jodie clutched Reyna’s shoulder. “Holy shit!”
“Whoa…I…I…” Tye stammered.
“We need to get the others,” Reyna said. Except she couldn’t pull herself away from the video that was playing. None of them could.
“I’m going to kill that motherfucker,” Jodie spat.
“Get in line,” Reyna said.
Tye disappeared finally to get the others. Reyna couldn’t stop watching the video. It was hours’ worth of material. She could stay riveted to this spot for days probably.
“What’s so important that you pulled us from the cure?” Katarina asked, storming into the room with her bright red hair flying. “Seems counterintuitive.”
“Yeah. What’s going on, Reyna?” Meghan asked.
“Everett sent us a video.”
Reyna turned the laptop toward them so they could all see exactly what was on the disturbing video. He’d said he was going to prove himself…and he had.
“The camps,” Meghan whispered.
“An inside look at the feeding camps. He turned himself in and somehow kept a video camera on him. I have no idea how he got the footage out to us, but it shows us everything we feared and were told in real time. Being sorted by blood type, the vampire army, being administered an antidote, the feeding frenzy, the general dehumanization of Harrington’s supposed housing project. We need to get the footage edited and mass distributed as soon as possible. This is what we needed, to show the public the atrocities of Visage.
“Everett’s inside that facility. I want to get him out. It was a huge sacrifice to be able to get this for us. I don’t want that sacrifice to be in vain.”
* * *
—
Reyna divided her time over the next two days between looking in on Brian and helping with the time-consuming process of digging through Everett’s video footage. It was an enormous file and they’d had to process the most impactful parts first. They’d distributed it to the public only an hour ago. She felt buoyant that they were finally having an impact.
Especially with Brian.
After two days of observation, he was eating human food again. The virus had completely detached from his blood. Though it wasn’t fully gone; it was still powering some of his vamp powers. But hearing went first. One day he could hear whispers down the hall and the next he was back to normal hearing.
Reyna was almost giddy with excitement. She knew that she should guard her heart for the worst, but it was so hard to do that when she saw such marked improvement.
“Little One,” Beckham said against her hair. She’d sensed him coming her way long ago, but it was nice to wait for him to embrace her before reacting.
“Mmm?”
“Give him some peace.”
She’d been watching Brian sleep. He’d been doing a lot of that.
“All right. Fine,” she said, turning into him for a kiss. “I’m just so…pleased.”
“We need to go back to the cabin. I want to test to see if I can give you my speed again. If I can heal you. What else we can do.” Beckham kissed the shell of her ear. “A battle is coming. We should prepare.”
“Ever the lord.”
“This is simply the calm before the storm. The troops should rest, but never the general.”
She glanced up at him, feeling her sense of ease evaporate. “How are we going to find Harrington?”
“Leave that to me.”
“How are we going to stop him?”
“I have an idea about that too.”
“Going to share?”
He kissed her lips. “Letting it percolate.”
“Your ideas are coffee now?”
His laugh was a full-bodied thing that made her tingle in all the right places. “Oh, my love. Come. Let us practice.”