Barely Alive by Bonnie R. Paulson Read Free Book Online

just been in there. What was he playing at?
    “ Come on, I’ll show you where.” He crooked his finger at the suddenly very interested followers. It was like they couldn’t think for themselves. The excitement lit their eyes, hunger controlled them and Dominic, who had frightened them from eating, was giving them the go-ahead to go crazy on meat. All they had to do was retrieve it.
    Intrigued by morbid curiosity, I followed, pulling Heather with me. The slight thing wouldn’t let go of my arm. She’d stopped whimpering and her shakes had simmered to a manageable tremor. I glanced down. Heather’s chin was up and her eyes steely. And there she was – the girl who’d shoved me and held me at bay with a dull knife.
    Thirty feet from the warehouse, the heat reached a comfortable level for me, which meant it had to be unbearable for Heather. We stopped and backed up ten feet and watched from afar.
    Dominic rounded the invisible heat force field, coming close to the building but not as close as the boys would get. He pointed toward the door and hollered to John who led his group into the door. I say “his group” because I washed my hands of idiots who couldn’t think for themselves. I get they were afraid of Dominic, but what the hell did they think was going to happen in a burning building? John could be the leader of the dung-for-brains. I was out.
    The final boy went into the building and Dominic raced up to the door – fighting heat – and pulled it shut. He dashed back to the “safe zone”, turned, and watched.
    In the handful of seconds, my heart went from sixty to one-hundred-and-eighty. I backed up another step, two, three, four…
    Heather gasped beside me.
    I expected to hear screaming, yells, something. But nothing came from the building. No one tried to get out.
    At first.
    A pounding on the thick, shatter-proof window jarred us. I don’t know who jolted first, but we both jumped. I stepped forward. But Heather pulled back. With one arm in her hands, all I could do was watch and listen as fourteen of my kind burned alive – or dead. I blocked the possibilities of what was happening in the basement at the same time. I didn’t need that reality to stack on top of the rest.
    Part of me was glad they were going. Fourteen less mouths to feed. But the part of me that hadn’t yet died, maybe my humanity living in the flesh, ached for them. They’d had varying numbers of weeks left and, who knows, they could have done something with that time. Besides stealing, pillaging, raping, and killing.
    John’s reign as leader was shorter than mine.
    Dominic turned from the horror, seemingly unaffected. He walked by us, looking at Heather with the eye of an appraiser. I bristled. He met my gaze. “Inside. We need to talk.”
    I wanted to run. Screw my impending death in ten weeks. For all I knew, Dominic put something in the water and I’d be fine once I left. But deep down, my gut told me that wasn’t true. The tingling in my toes and fingers declared something was happening to me. Not to mention my insatiable need for meat.
    Dominic had the answers. I’d have to bite the bullet and get them.
    But I wasn’t alone. Heather was smack in the middle of the mess, too. And that terrified me. She was a human girl – not worth much in the whole scheme of things, but for some reason I was entranced with more than just her honey-blood. Damn it.
    I turned to face her. “I need to talk with him.” Her dark brown hair reminded me of brownies my mom made before the divorce, when she was happy. Her blue eyes had a deep liquid feel like blue-raspberry slushies. She nodded. I rushed on, before she could vocalize the fear evident in her paling face. “You can come with me, of course, but I don’t know what I’ll find out.” I screwed up my mouth. “And you have no idea what it is I am.”
    Her voice had a velvet undercurrent I’d missed when she’d tossed around her spunk and fire. “If it’s all the same to you,