Chandra fumbles along the wall near the open door. The room beyond is pitch black. "Anyone here?" she sings out. "Show yourself."
"Like that's going to work," I say. "There was never a more useless phrase—"
"Hush." A click, and light flares in the room.
Sergeant Perez lies on the floor, her uniform torn and her skin mottled with bruises. Her wrists are secured with rope, and her dark brown hair, usually so neat and smooth in its bun, straggles across the floor like a jagged crown.
Chandra darts forward, slicing the rope knots with her fangs. "Sergeant! Are you awake?"
Perez's lips are swollen and darkened, apparently from a blow. Anger roils inside me. "That monster. I'll kill him."
Perez pushes herself up slowly. "Get in line." She grips Chandra's hand and rises, her chin lifted in resolute dignity. "What's the status?"
Chandra quickly explains the layout and our hope of finding Darius. "He might be in the cell across from yours." She points at the other locked door.
"I'd say that's likely," says Perez. "I've heard a lot of noise from that direction lately. Something went on in there—something bad."
"Maybe he fought back," I say.
"Maybe." Perez meets my eyes. The dread in her own slithers into my heart, and suddenly I don't want to open that door.
Clearly Dr. Corbin feels the same way. She has come to herself, and she's worming her way across the floor, clearly intent on escaping us. I walk around her and stand in her way, my boots blocking her progress down the hall. "Not so fast, you piece of shit. We still need you."
She looks up, her eyes frantic, shaking her head. As Chandra catches her under the arms and hauls her over to the locked door, Corbin thrashes harder, her eyes bulging, muffled roars of protest pushing through the gag. She kicks and strains, trying to keep her thumb off the keypad, but all it takes is a second of contact, and the door is unlocked.
This door is heavy as well, and I lend my right shoulder to the effort, shoving it inward. A crack of darkness opens and widens as I push—and then I freeze.
I've only been around Darius a few times, but vampires have a very unique scent. I know he's in here. But my nose is telling me something else—something I can't make myself grasp. There's a sourness to Darius's smell—a rank, raw, primal stench. Wrongness. Something twisted, something torn down to blood and bone and then remade.
"Close the door," I whisper, and then I yell, "Chandra, help me close the door!"
"Why?" Her voice shrills, anxiety and fear, and I know that she smells it too.
I haul on the door, but it's too late. A thick forearm slams through the crack, sleeved to the elbow in drying blood. Its knuckles arch, wicked claws scraping concrete.
I freeze, the breath sticky and slow in my lungs. "Darius?"
A growl ripples from the dark—but it breaks, hitching into a sob.
Slowly I ease my grip on the door, pushing it further open. Darius cringes away from the half-light of the hallway. His close-cropped blond hair is pinked with blood, and from his forehead protrudes a pair of sharp, curving goat's horns.
"Dios mío," whispers Sergeant Perez brokenly.
Darius opens his mouth, moaning, and his jaw unhinges, dropping wide, stretching the skin at the corners of his lips until it nearly splits. His vampire fangs are still there, but along with them he now has a mouthful of sharp teeth, like a shark's. From his hunched shoulders, spikes of bone have burst out, rupturing flesh and skin. More bony spears thrust from his spine, a long row protruding from his arched back.
When he looks up at me, his eyes have changed. They're black from corner to corner, with lime-green irises and slitted black pupils, like a cat's.
He creeps forward, and I notice something wrong with his legs. They're jointed in all the wrong places, crooked and scaly, ending in three enormous reptilian toes fitted with thick claws. His genitals still look human, but a thick, barbed tail has grown just above his buttocks.
"Oh, hell, man." I can hardly form the words. "What did they do to you?"
A word grates from his throat. "Blood."
"Yeah, man, you're covered with it. Are you—can you walk? You wanna fight back against these bastards?"
He snarls, struggling with his jaw for a second, then says, "Blood. Need blood." His glossy black eyes fix on Sergeant Perez. "That blood-bag."
Oh, damn. "She's your superior officer," I tell him, keeping my voice as steady as I can. "You can't drink from her. We'll find someone else."
Darius's chest heaves, his neck and shoulders tensing. "Blood! Blood and meat!"
"Hey!" I move between him and Perez. "Hey! Get a hold of yourself, Darius. Come on. Look, this is—we'll figure this out, what's happened to you, but you can't hurt your team, okay? We've got people to save. We need to get out of here. You hear me?"
"You let this happen." His voice rasps painfully. "My team let this happen to me."
"I'm sorry," says Perez. "We didn't know."
"We couldn't have known." Chandra inches forward, her arm hooked around Dr. Corbin's neck.
Darius's eyes dart to Corbin and he cries out, hate and pain and hunger. "Give her to me."
"I nearly drained her," Chandra says. "If you drink from her you'll kill her."
"Not drink," rumbles Darius. "Eat."
"No," I tell him. "We need her for leverage, to save Finley."
"Finley," he repeats. "Who's Finley?"
"My—my blood-sl—my—" I don't know what to call her anymore. My everything? Would that be too dramatic?
Chandra intervenes. "His girl, Darius. The human girl who interfered with Harry's punishment, remember?"
Recognition gleams in Darius's face. "The little blonde, the fighter."
"That's the one." A swell of pride fills my heart. "We need to trade Corbin for Finley. We'll find you some meat after that. Can you help us?"
"Sure," he grates. "Why the hell not?" Clinging to the doorway, he draws himself upright, slowly and clumsily, his new reptile feet scrabbling for a second before finding a stable stance. He turns his head aside, choking, and then spits. Where the blob of saliva hits, the wall steams and hisses, bubbling with some kind of chemical reaction.
"So you spit acid now?" Chandra asks cautiously.
"Guess so." Darius inches out of his cell, holding onto the wall.
"How did they do this?" I ask him, offering my shoulder. He leans on it, his thick arm a massive weight. He's a lot bulkier in the torso and arms than he was before. We used to be about the same size, and now I feel like a toothpick next to him.
"Injection," he tells me. "Some DNA concoction. Like the vampire serum."
"Well, look at it this way—you were badass before, and now you're a damn fearsome son of a bitch," I tell him. "Nobody's gonna mess with you. Think how many more zombies you can kill like this, no weapons required."
"They've got a nice cocktail for you too, Atlan," says Darius. "They call it their 'chimera serum.'"
I suppress a shudder. What if they'd stuck the needle into me first? What if I'd changed into a hulking patchwork monster like this? Would Finley still want me? Pretty sure the answer to that is no. Though she didn't seem too put off by Reuel's form—
A door opens up ahead—the one where I saw the dark-haired man and the cages. The dark-haired doctor is there again, with a pair of other people. Their backs are toward us as they hustle a shambling figure down the corridor.
Any moment a head could turn and they could see us here. There's a side hallway a few steps ahead—we could hide there.
But Darius groans under his breath. "Blood. Meat."
"No," I whisper fiercely. "No, Darius, wait—"
Too late—he's plunging ahead, abandoning the effort to walk on two legs—ploughing toward the little group on all fours, clearing the distance with frightening speed. He hits the black-haired doctor square in the back, bearing him down, and in the same movement he hooks both horns into a second man, catching him right under the ribs and tossing hi
m aside. The man slams in the wall and slides down, hands clasped over his bleeding wounds.
And then Darius tears into the doctor, blood and bones and slippery red flesh.
Sergeant Perez shoves past me, racing toward the group. I take off after her, because in this state Darius is likely to rip her to pieces. Hell, he could tear me apart.
The other white-coated member of the group abandons the shambling figure they were escorting and races away down the hall, screaming. Slowly the figure shuffles around to face the mess that is Darius and the doctor.
It's a zombie.
A zombie, just standing here in the hallway. Not even restrained in any way. But it's not trying to bite anyone, which is super weird. I'm reminded of the zombie that mimicked Finley, out in the Hordelands. It didn't show any interest in her until she got really close, and this one is very close to raw human flesh, without having any visible reaction.
Zombies don't react to vampires because of our altered brain chemistry. Their instinct tells them we're not normal, not fit to eat. And this zombie is having the same apathetic reaction to normal humans—their scent apparently doesn't say "food" to him at all.
Strange. But not so strange that I'm willing to wait around and ask questions. I catch up to Sergeant Perez, pausing to shove her aside with a "Please stay back"—and then I'm skirting Darius and his hideous feast, my fangs slipping from their sheaths.
The zombie goes down easily. I toss the torn head aside and survey the bloody mess Darius made of the doctor.
"You done?" I bark at him.
He looks up, chewing, his mouth painted glistening scarlet. "You want some?"
"Hell no. What is wrong with you? That was a human—we don't kill humans. We protect them. We—" My eyes drop to the splattered carcass, and even though I've killed hundreds of zombies, the sight turns my stomach. "Darius, you—I don't even know what to do with this, man."
Sergeant Perez arrives beside me, her face stern, her hand a warm pressure on my arm. Short and slim as she is, despite her ragged uniform and disheveled hair, she carries herself with authority. Her voice is hard, unshakeable stone.
"Mr. Darius Wilde, you are in very serious trouble. Your actions will be reported to your commanding officer as soon as we return to the Safe Zone. Until then, I expect you to behave yourself as befits a member of our military and a defender of Blue City. I understand that you've been through extreme trauma, but that's no excuse for murder. I'd remove you from this mission, but we need you. Can you serve?"
Darius wipes blood from his mouth with his wrist and offers her a hideous grin. "I will serve." He pats his stomach. "I'm full, for now."
"We'll need to find you some clothes," says Perez, with a glance at his junk.
"This one's dead." Chandra's full lips tighten as she backs away from the man slumped by the wall. "You can try using his pants."
Darius laughs, loud and surprisingly shrill, and a chill quivers over my skin at the sound. "How do you suggest I fit his pants over these?" He gestures to his crooked reptilian legs. "And the tail might be a problem too."
"Do what you can," snaps Perez. "Then we have to move. That lab tech who ran away will have alerted someone by now."
"Yes, ma'am," Darius sneers. With my help, he manages to don a loincloth made of the dead man's lab coat.
A second after I finish tying it on for him, a sound echoes along the hallway—a horrible shrieking and chattering of teeth, and the staccato tremor of dozens of small feet.
"Little hunters," grits Chandra. "Get ready."
11
Finley
Atlan saw us kissing. Me and Reuel.
By the look on his face, he thought I liked it. That I was choosing to kiss the monster. And then he left.
He left. He left me. He—
I wrench free of Reuel, and he lets me go, with a hiss of displeasure. His tail whips back into place behind him.
"You will yield to me," he says. "I'm not above forcing you. This is too important. Whatever quality you possess—combined with my power, it could make the difference in controlling the zombies, and bringing peace."
What is he even talking about? Terror zigzags through my gut, a bolt of lightning that sends my brain into fight or flight mode. On top of the betrayal I feel from Atlan's abandonment, it's almost too much. I want to scream, to run. To kill. But I sense, with a trapped animal's instinct, that an act of physical resistance against Reuel will only unlock his violent side. It could trigger the very trauma I'm trying to avoid.
"So you'd force me, right here and now?" I say softly, sorrowfully. "You'd have to carry the guilt of that."
"Guilt?" He laughs, hard and brittle. "I'm burdened by no such concept."
"Clearly. You seem to have no respect for the free will of others, no matter how much you claim to care about their survival."
His jaw tightens, his upper lip hitching in a snarl, and color flares in his cheeks. I've hit a sore spot with him. There's the tiniest catch in my breath, because his expression, though monstrous, is almost beautiful.
"What about you?" he snaps. "You're so selfish. You would cling to an antiquated concept of monogamy, allow it to keep you from making a difference here, being a part of something. Don't you want to be more than a blood-bag, Finley? More than an accessory that enables your vampire warrior to fight? Don't you want to be worth something—you, intrinsically, unattached to anyone else?"
"I do have intrinsic worth," I say stiffly. "If I joined you, I would still be partnering with someone to make a difference—it would just be you and your team, instead of Atlan. And I think his way is far more honorable than yours."
"His way is doomed. Do you think he and the other vampires can eventually manage to kill every last zombie on Earth? No. It's far more likely that the virus will slither through the cracks of your walls, filling your safe zones with swarms of the undead. Would you trust humanity's fate to the flimsy grasp of your vampire saviors?"
My control snaps. I can see the twisted logic in what he's saying, but his own plan to save the world makes zero rational sense. Why can't he just admit that this is not about saving the world—he just wants to screw me?
I back away from him a few more steps, glancing behind me in time to see the teenage zombie boy parrot the action. Weird.
I whirl back to face Reuel. "You want me to trust you, to give in to you based on some fragile theory about empathy and genetics and vegetative zombies? No thanks. I won't be your partner, or your baby mama. I don't want anything to do with you or your plans."
The next second I'm caught in frenzied talons, borne down to the floor in an avalanche of muscle and wings and jointed tail. Reuel's hand grips my throat, under my jaw, and his hot breath streams through his bared teeth, scorching my lips.
In that second, every hint of pity I felt for him dissipates, and for a moment all I can see is the vampire Charon, his pale profile, and his fangs glistening as he pins me down.
And then the flash of memory disappears and it's Reuel again, the chimera prince with his crown of antlers and his eyes gleaming amber. His dragonfly wings have spread out to their full span behind him, impressive and impossible.
"Why won't you just give in?" His voice is deeper and rougher now. "A true survivor would see the painless path, and take it. But you—you fight me. Why? Is it my body that offends you?"
"No," I say, trembling. "You're sort of beautiful. But I love Atlan, and I can't give myself to anyone else. Call me old-fashioned if you want—I'm a one-monster girl."
"It's not about emotion, or desire. It's basic procreation. Why can't you see that?" He groans, his own body contradicting him as he grinds against me. "You can still love the vampire, and be with him. But he can't give you children. I can. I'm more fertile than ever. Together, we could create a more powerful race, one that can control the zombies. We'll wipe the hordes clean of instinct, enter their minds, and force them to rebuild the world they've broken. Please help me do this. Our children could be the planet's s
aviors."
"It's all theoretical," I gasp. "It would take years—"
"We have growth acceleration formulas we could try on the offspring—we could propel them to maturity faster."
Okay, no. If I wasn't already against this idea, that would have convinced me. He wants to mate with me and then give our empath monster babies some quick-growth serum so they mature faster? Hell to the no.
But he's so desperately earnest. There are actual tears in his glowing orange eyes.
Despite his lack of empathy, he feels deeply within himself—dramatic emotions of joy, lust, rage, ambition, and frustration. He just can't connect to other people's emotions at all, because he doesn't care about them. They don't feel real or important to him—they're just parts of his grand experiment, so he can't really relate to them.
Unless I can help him. Maybe I can teach him to link his own feelings with those of others.
Maybe I can be the bridge.
Gingerly I lay my fingers over the massive hand clasping my throat. "You feel my pulse, don't you? Can you tell how frightened I am, Reuel?"
"Yes."
"What would make you feel this scared?"
His hand flexes slightly. "I—losing all my research, maybe. Losing my freedom."
"Is that all? There's nothing else you fear?"
His jaw works. "Failure."
"Okay, think about that, about how you would feel if you failed in your biggest, most important task. You'd feel wretched, I'm guessing. Helpless, and angry because of the helplessness."
He growls. "Maybe."
"That's how I feel right now. Angry, and helpless, and sad. I'm sad, Reuel. You're hurting me."
"I don't know you. Why should I care?" He turns his head aside, speaking low, as if to himself. "I shouldn't care. I don't care, because you're just a woman. A framework of bone overlaid with organs and arteries, muscles and skin. You are mammary glands and ovaries and a uterus. Evolved to reproduce, and to care for young."
Oh my god, did he really just—Rage surges inside me again, and I welcome it, because it submerges my fear. "That's incredibly sexist and narrow-minded of you," I tell him in my most poisonous tone.
Captured by the Chimera Zombie-Master Page 7
