Luke snorted, patting Michael's back. Even he had to admit that the guy was smart. Not smarter than him, of course. But smart. And almost as witty, too. It was a dangerous combination, as Luke had learned when he was young. Very young.
In a way, he wasn't wrong. After all, being immortal didn't mean you were unkillable. Especially when your opponent was Luke. And with a senator's protector on his side? What could go wrong? And even more than that, that protector was Kane.
They had lost Mike, though. That was quite a shame. He had probably been most of the reason that Zoe had wanted to go back to the school and search for signs of survivors. Given his nature, Luke wouldn't have been surprised if, after a few weeks of harsh living, they had found Mike leading a group of a dozen or so ordinary students, not only safe but thriving, and lounging about in the shade of one of the park's forests.
Seemed that was out of the question now, though. For Zoe to get that message, Mike had to give up his own life force.
Speaking of life force...
Luke pulled out the gem they had gotten from the mutated zombie earlier.
It was strange to see a being with so much life force that they actually manifested a physical crystal in their body upon death. That was what the Verteiders did in their underground fighting ring. It was really more of an execution chamber. The people who thought they had supernatural abilities would come, and they would die, and then their bodies would be burned. It was the most efficient way to find the gem, because it didn't have a set spot. Luke had started a project, trying to research those that died and had crystals to see if there was any correlation or way to predict where it might form, but the sample size was too low.
He turned it over in his palm, gazing at it.
They had stopped for a while, because the people he had contacted were great trackers, but they needed a reference point to get started, and once they went into the horde that lay on the other side of the park gate, they would have to move, and move fast. But after this, they would be able to find any member of this current group anywhere.
Well, any member aside from Luke. And maybe Kane.
He had heard of Kane before. Everyone in the associate families had. He was nearly a legend, graduating the Verteiders' exclusive combat school before he was seven. It took most members of the family a bit longer than that, especially since they had to juggle those lessons with actual school, eating, and sleeping, the latter two of which are activities that the Verteiders are famously bad at.
The quickest completion aside from his was a girl who had done it years ago. His mother.
She had completed the final exam when she was twelve.
The Verteiders and their associated families sure were an interesting subject. And if Luke hadn't met Zoe when he had, he doubted he would've been able to get quite as far into it as he had, even earning himself a protector. Albeit a broken one.
Evelyn was only guarding him because no one else wanted her. She was a defect, they said. Luke thought she was force-drunk, a condition that has been known to occur when taking others' life force, because your body then has too much, but he wasn't sure exactly how that would work. He had long ago tested to see if she absorbed life force when she drank someone's blood. That was not the case.
It was seen as a disgrace for a Verteider, especially one with as concentrated a bloodline as Eve, to serve someone outside the Verteider family's associate families. But the deeper Luke got and the more renown he earned in the right circles, the more he would feel like a part of the families, and the less suspicion, annoyance, and hostility would be heaped on her.
The poor kid had it rough. Ever since she had asked to lick her mother's finger after it had been wounded, she was shunned by all associate families. Even the lesser senators, the most shameless, slimy group of people in the world, wouldn't have her.
So that responsibility fell to Luke. While some might see it as a disgrace, she was powerful. And anything with power was a piece on the board. A piece that Luke could manipulate.
And it just so happened that this specific, integral piece fell right into his lap.
Checkmate came closer every day.