Opposition

“You can read?” Daemon looked into the rearview mirror. “Holy shit. I’m so surprised.”

Archer sighed. “Well, that was clever.” There was a pause. “I just don’t want to end up crashing into a fiery ball.”

“You’re an Origin. You’ll be fine.”

“I don’t want to be a skid-mark Origin or a crispy Origin.”

“Mmm,” Daemon murmured. “Crispy Origin reminds me of fried chicken. I could go for some of that right now.”

“KFC?” Archer asked, and I was surprised that he even knew what KFC chicken tasted like. “Or Popeye’s?”

Huh. He also knew Popeye’s.

Daemon’s lip curled. “No. I’m talking homemade fried chicken. Dipped in egg and flour, fried up in a skillet. Dee can fry some bomb chicken.”

“I’ve never had homemade fried chicken before.”

His eyes rolled. “God, you’re such a freak.”

“I wonder if I can get Dee to make me some,” Archer replied casually, ignoring Daemon. “You know, when she’s not on Team Kill Everyone.”

“She won’t make you any chicken,” Daemon retorted.

“Oh, she’ll make me fried chicken.” Archer laughed deeply. “She’ll make me all the chicken I want.”

A low sound of warning rumbled from Daemon, and I couldn’t believe they were now arguing over the hypothetical situation of Dee making fried chicken or not. But I shouldn’t be surprised. An hour or so ago, they were in a heated discussion over whether or not Shane would’ve been a better father than Rick on The Walking Dead. Somehow that had digressed into Daemon arguing that the governor, sociopathic tendencies aside, was a better father figure. The fact that Archer had never eaten at Olive Garden but knew about The Walking Dead absolutely befuddled me.

Archer sighed like a petulant teenager stuck in a car for too long. There was a beat of silence. “Are we there yet?”

Daemon groaned. “I’m going to sew your damn lips together.”

I covered my smile with my hand as I stared out the window. That smile faded, though, as I took in the scenery. I had no idea what state we were in. Everything from about a hundred miles outside of Billings had all looked the same.

Wastelands.

Absolute destruction.

For the last two hours, we hadn’t seen another car on the major highway. Not a single moving car. There were a lot along the road. Some were abandoned with their backseats piled with personal items, as if the owners pulled over on the side of the road, got out, and left everything behind for the great unknown.

The others . . . the others were scary.

Burned-out shells of cars. A sad and twisted graveyard of wrecked and charred metal. I’d never seen anything like this. Read about it in books, seen it in movies, but viewing mile after mile of it in real life was something else.

“What do you think happened to them?” I asked when there was a lull in the arguing.

Archer pushed back from the seats, bending over so he could see out his own window. “Looks like some of them met up with unfriendly aliens. Others ran.”

We passed an SUV with its back open. Clothing was strewn about it. A small brown teddy bear lay forgotten on the road behind it. I thought about that little girl in the grocery store, and I wanted to ask if they thought those who’d run for it made it to safety, but I didn’t, because I was sure I already knew the answer.

Humans couldn’t outrun Luxen.

“While you guys were doing things I don’t want to know about in your room, some things were happening out here.”

Daemon didn’t look fazed by that statement, but my face turned into a ripe tomato. “Do tell.”

“You know how they were saying there were cities completely lost, under the Luxen control? Well, those cities are functioning—TV is up, internet is blasting, and phone lines are working. It’s like nothing happened there, except that more than half the population is made of human-hating aliens,” Archer said, returning to his perch between our seats. “But there are a lot of cities that just . . . have been destroyed.”

“Why would they do that?” I leaned back, shifting in the seat. “Wouldn’t they want the cities virtually untouched so they were livable?”

“They do.” Daemon glanced in the rearview mirror. “But if the humans found a way to fight back, even if the fighting back was pointless, then . . .”

“The cities get taken out in the process,” Archer finished. “Things are going to be rough afterward, even if we stop them. A lot of rebuilding. There’s going to be a lot of changes.”

“Not a lot,” I said as we coasted past a burned-out school bus that was more black than orange. I didn’t want to even think about if the bus had been full or not, but the backs of my eyes still burned. “Everything will change.”

We took the long way around Kansas City, since we didn’t want to get within a billion miles of the Luxen-controlled city, and we ended up stopping outside of a small, unknown town in Missouri for Daemon and Archer to switch off driving.

Sleep was fitful over the next couple of hours, and it wasn’t just the uncomfortable seating or Archer’s questionable taste in music. My body was a bundle of nerves stretched too thin. We were about to literally drive into an Arum stronghold, and while Luc swore up and down that Hunter was cool, I hadn’t met an Arum yet I didn’t want to run from. But it was more than that.