Fangs of Fate (Untish #1)

Chapter 4

CHAPTER FOUR

TATE

The Glenn had been my home since I could remember. Not that I liked it much with its oppressive, ugly walls and pristine buildings. Most of which were made of glass, trimmed with bright, shiny metal: cold, calculated, sterile.

I headed to the collection office and entered the cataloging room. I needed to drop the bag of blood before heading back to the clinic. I hated these types of shifts. The nightly drop-only shift was given to me twice a week. Two days on, two days off. The ‘on’ days meant I had to make the blood drop by six AM before heading back for my eight AM shift at the clinic, and then back again by six AM the next day. It utterly sucked. But at least I had my world-walking pass. Not all young vampires my age were granted it; we had to earn it by age or job, and I chose the latter. The labor was much better than waiting until I was fifty.

Glenda took the bag and began indexing it, cross-checking my list with her system. This process was remarkably fast considering the amount of blood I brought each time. She approved the list and sent it back for testing, after all, we didn’t want any diseases. That was one bonus of testing blood before partaking. Within five minutes, I was on my way out.

“Hey, TK, wait up!” a familiar voice called from behind.

“Blood, what were they thinking letting you back in?” I teased as my blue-haired bestie engulfed me in a bear-hug. Her thin body smashed my cushy one as her arms locked around my back. Skin, bone, and muscle—that was Shae, through and through.

“Annnnd...what do you think?” She pulled back and spun in a circle, showing off her new pixie cut. The black and blue tattoo of a dragon crawled up the back of her neck, poking out from underneath her black T-shirt, and danced with her movement. “I just got it done, human side of course cause let’s face it, vampires suck at cutting hair.” She blew a stray lock out of her eyes. “They always take too much and leave me with a nick, something about the predator in them,” she nudged me as she spoke.

“It looks like you, Shae, although I’m surprised you let anyone touch it since the last debacle.” Six months ago, she had elbow length brown hair with purple highlights framing her face. That is, until a newer stylist, human side, lightened her hair and totally fried it—Shae had to have someone else cut it shoulder length just to remove the dead ends.

“Yeah, you know what they say, get back on the horse and all.” She linked her arm through mine and strolled with me toward the business sector of the city.

“Sooo…suck on anyone hot recently?” She wagged her eyebrows as she side-eyed me, bumping me with her bony hip.

“Oh, you know, new perp every now and then. I love a good vessel,” I shot back, ignoring the obvious innuendo in her question.

“While I do find your certain delicacies interesting, and deserving of being your meals, I was inquiring about a certain rookie detective, you know, what’s his name…Bob or Richard? Or does he just go by Dick?”

“For corn Shae,it's Tim and you know it.” I elbowed her in the ribs, earning me a yelp directly followed by a chuckle.She unlinked her arm from mine and jumped in front of me, walking backwards.

“Corn, yes, do tell me, TK, did he ever succeed in finding the hole?” For the love of blood, she knew how to really go for the jugular.

“Say it any louder and the whole Glenn might know I’m having sex problems,” I whispered the last two words. Red bloomed across my cheeks; surely it was from the temperature, I was warm that was all. When I was challenged by a male, I held my cool, but for some reason girl talk made me uncomfortable, nervous—perhaps it was the vulnerability of it all.

“So, you are still having sex problems.”

I rolled my eyes; she always wanted the deep and dirty.“I wouldn’t say problems exactly, he’s just...uninspired.” We turned down toward Perry’s Coffee and each ordered a large blood latte before heading to a nearby metal bench withchipped paint.

“So, the uninspired man-child,” Shae began, never one to let an interesting topic drop, especially if it meant she got to poke fun at me. “Tell me, does that affect his ability for his teeny weeny to salute or is it just bland vanilla when he does rise to the occasion?” She took a sip of her latte, red foam forming a mustache across her upper lip. The girl loved her puns.

“He rises, and by human standards it is good, it’s just not exciting with him. Not like it was with?—”

I stopped myself, I wasn’t going there. From the look in Shae’s light blue eyes, she knew exactly what I was thinking.

“He’s grown you know?” She paused, swirling her coffee. “He’s been a dux since last year I, uh, just ran into him. He really does seem to care about his soldiers, so much so that he says he misses the arches at the Southern Outpost now that he’s stationed here. He seems…well. And I know he misses you.”

A dux since last year? The timing was too conspicuous. It couldn’t be a coincidence, could it? I willed the pounding in my head to stop.

“He should have thought about that before he hid the truth from me, before he defended his father’s actions. You of all people should understand that. My mother was a second mom to you.” I bit down on my tongue before I lashed out at her any further, this conversation never went well.

Years ago, Chance, Shae, Nora, and I were besties. But things changed, paths diverged.

“I heard from Nora,” Shae chirped. The change in topic was welcome. Shae knew when to push and when to let things go, it was part of why we were both so close even with all the dynamics constantly changing.

“Oh, how’s she enjoying freezing her butt off in the Northern Outpost?”

“Well, she swears her ass is rock hard now and honestly, it looked it.” Shae’s eyes gleamed a bit with mischief.“But her personality is perky as ever, annoyingly so, and that’s a lot coming from me.”

I wonder how close of a look Shae got. “Perky, eh?” It was my turn to tease. “Doesn’t surprise me.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Shae rolled her eyes. She was ever one to dish but did not receive it well. “She’s back for a few days. Her Dux Phillip’s summoned her last week. She uh,” Shae cleared her throat, “misses you, Tate.” She dropped her grey-blue eyes down to the paper cup.

“I miss her too, but she chose to leave.”

Shae huffed. “It really wasn’t much of a choice. You know we are all required to support the Glenn at twenty-one. She doesn’t like the human realms and her gifts align better with enlistment.”

“Well, she could have world-walked with us. Even if she has little self-control, she could have just been a transporter like you. She could have stayed.”

Shae’s eyes filled with hurt, widening at the corners. Shit. “I didn’t mean it like that. It’s just a hard topic for me.”

“I know.” Her smile was sad. Thank blood Shae saw more to me than my temper and quick tongue. “We all make choices, TK, and we don’t always have the luxury of a bird’s-eye view.”

The comment jarred me. Even with our closeness, I’d never confided in Shae about certain abilities.

“Well, hopefully she makes the most of her time here before heading back to being a popsicle.” I glanced at the clock; it was about time to head back to the clinic. I stood and threw my cup in the trash bin near me. “You coming?”

“I don’t world-walk anymore, Tate. Last night was my last shift at the clinic.” Shae focused intently on her barely touched coffee, guilt smothering her face.

I stood there dumbfounded.“What?”

“I joined the Internal Intelligence Team. They’re sending me to the Southern Outpost for training, to learn from their IIC.”

The world suddenly was too cold, the streets too full, my brain too fuzzy. My reality was about to shift again.

“You did what! Why? You have another three months before they assigned you somewhere. I thought you’d stay here, with me.” Hurt began to claim my heart, my soul. Stars shimmered in my eyes as my vision blurred.

Another one, gone.

Shae yanked up her sleeve and showed me the tattoo on her shoulder. Blue, periwinkle-blue covered her shoulder in a diamond symbol with a sword and fangs through it. The symbol of the guara.

“I got tired of just drawing blood and carting it around,” she started. “You knew I was weary of spending so much time human-side. I crave a good challenge and I’m a wiz with coding.” Her eyes pleaded with me to understand. Willed me to hear her out. But the thrumming in my ears made it hard to focus, to feel anything but betrayal. “Tate, we both knew they’d enlist me to join the Internal Intelligence Team. This way I got to choose a location and picked the SO instead of the WO for its training center.” She gulped. “Plus, the location is closer to my family.”

“Bullshit. You and your family never get along, and besides, they’re desert people. They’re stationed closer to the Eastern Outpost, not Southern. Why the hell would you join the guara?”

“TK…” She reached for my hand, but I pulled away.

“No! You don’t get to pretend to be my friend after you just stabbed me in the back!”

“I know you feel that way, Tate, and I’ve really tried to talk to you about this when I chose this path months ago?—”

“Months!” I exploded.

“—but you’ve been human-side so much, and when you’re here you never let me broach the topic and?—”

“You’ve known about this for months and have pretended to still care about me when you chose them! Chose to leave me knowing that I would never follow.” My head spun.

Joining the guara was a nightmare, plus they’d made it clear when I turned that my uneven footing would be an issue—it would takeintensetraining to make up for my 'deficiency'. Even if that weren’t the case, I’d never want to be a part of the unjust system. Murdering and fighting for sport wasn’t my scene.

I exhaled. This was all too much. “We had a plan. We were both going to stay here. You could have opted to join the HQ Education Allegiant Team like we talked about. The guara was never something we discussed.”

“Tate—”

“No!” I spun around, not caring that I was raising my voice and making a scene. “You’re worse than Nora.” I kept my back to her. “She was at least up front about it. She’s always been violently inclined. She chose before these monsters destroyed my mom without so much as a trial. But you?” I scoffed. “You could have followed our plan, the one you came up with, or hell, you could have run away, and I would have followed.” I glanced over my shoulder, locking eyes with grey ones that seemed suddenly so cold. So foreign. “You voluntarily joined the fricking guara.”

The look in her eyes saddened. “There’s so much I wish I could tell you…I wish I could make you understand.”

“Don’t bother. If you are going to throw your life away, leave me out of it.” I focused my eyes on the crowded sidewalk in front of me.

“I leave on the next transit to the Southern Outpost. It could be any day. Please don’t leave things like this.”

But her pleading fell on deaf ears. I was already halfway down the block.

“TK! I’m going to be at Frankie’s tonight, please come! I really would like to explain this to you!”

Her voice faded as I pounded the cement and sped for the veil. My chest hurt, it constricted. Betrayed. I’d been betrayed again. I couldn’t leave the Glenn soon enough.