“Carrie, you don’t understand. She’s completely unpredictable, and she’s got this telekinesis thing…. She can kill you, Carrie. With her mind. Now, I’ve got no one depending on me. If I get poofed to dust, fine. But you need to be around for Nathan. I’m not gonna be responsible for getting you killed.” His mouth set in a grim line. “And my impassioned speech is not moving you at all.”

“Not an inch.” I eyed the door. “Do you think this general will go along with your plan?”

Max considered a moment. “I think we have a better chance with him than with some of the others. Just let me do the talking, okay?”

My jaw dropped. “You know I want to help Nathan! Do you think I’d do something to jeopardize our chances?”

“Not intentionally.” He opened the door and motioned me inside.

“What do you mean, not intentionally?” I demanded. But he wouldn’t say anything more. I sighed and walked in to our meeting with General Breton.

Chapter 5
Resistance

“What were you like before you died?”

The question startled Cyrus. He’d thought the Mouse asleep. If anyone could sleep through the noise the Fangs made upstairs. It seemed almost as soon as the sun went down, the music started and the engines roared to life, and then there was the inevitable screaming. Usually, the Mouse endeavored to be asleep before then. Having days of experience with them, she knew the Fangs’ feeding schedule.

Cyrus would have been asleep himself, if he’d had the testicular fortitude to take the bed from her. He comforted himself by reasoning he liked the sounds of the screaming upstairs. He tugged his thin blanket in a futile attempt to cover his entire body. The hideous, polyester preacher clothes bunched with every movement, but he shuddered to imagine the rough upholstery against his naked skin, so he kept them on.

“What do you mean?” he asked now.

She rolled to face him. She’d stopped cringing from him, at least. Maybe the dark helped. “They brought you back from the dead. What were you like before you died? Were you…the way you are now?”

“Human?” Cyrus sniffed derisively. “No, I wasn’t human.”

“No.” Wrinkles of frustration creased her brow as she sighed. “Did you…hurt people?”

He flinched when her hand strayed to her bandaged throat. He hated himself for regretting he’d hurt her. It was growing tiresome, this feeling of shame at doing something he would have found perfectly natural in the past.