by Rye Brewer
“We’ll get out of this. I’m sure of it. We won’t suffer here forever.”
“Oh, I know we won’t.” He said this with such lighthearted certainty, as if he were reporting on the weather outside.
“You do?”
He turned away from them, looking straight at me with enough sadness to almost break my heart. “Certainly. They’ll take us out of here once they’re finished with their tests, and they’ll kill us. It’s the only way out now.”
“You can’t believe that!”
“I do,” he murmured, nodding slowly. His lips barely moved when he spoke, and I understood why. He didn’t want our observers to read them. “Don’t get me wrong, please. I don’t normally possess a defeatist attitude. It simply seems to me that we’re doomed. We were never supposed to leave this place alive.”
He was right. I knew he was right, knew it in my soul. Knew it the way I knew the color of my eyes, the two freckles on the back of my left hand. “That’s what you were thinking of? About our dying?”
“No. It wasn’t that, either.”
“Then for the love of all that’s right and good, what was it? What were you thinking of when I was trying in my own awkward way to get you to move closer to me?”
He paused as if this surprised him—why not? It surprised me, too. I hadn’t expected to say it.
Then, he slid over. Closer to me, until our arms and thighs touched. “Why didn’t you say so?”
I wondered if I was glowing. I felt as if I was. “I didn’t want to presume. And it isn’t the same as being in private, is it?”
“What difference does it make now? Who are we trying to hide from? I only wondered if you felt it was, you know. Proper.” He offered a smile as his hand crept over to touch mine.
“You should have said something, then, because I would’ve set you straight from the get-go.”
“You would have, huh?”
“I would have, because I can’t stand being in the same room with you every minute of the day without reaching out and brushing your hair out of your eyes. It’s too long now.”
He chuckled. “I doubt anyone upstairs cares much about the length of my hair. But is that all you wanted to do? Brush the hair away from my eyes?”
I wrapped my fingers around his before leaning against him, finally resting my head on his shoulder. “What do you think?”
He rested his head on top of mine. “I don’t want to waste any more time,” he whispered.
“Neither do I.”
“And for the record, the only place Anissa occupies in my heart is the corner reserved for old friends. Nothing more than that. She went on with her life, and I wish her well. I spent more than enough time pining for her—yes, I can admit it. I wouldn’t face the fact that she would never think of me as anything other than a good friend, no matter how I tried to convince her otherwise. I’m certainly not going to spend my remaining days yearning for something I never had when I have you here, beside me, with your hand in mine.”
“It feels nice,” I whispered.
“Very,” he agreed.
“I do care very much for you,” I admitted. “It’s crazy, feeling this way when everything might be over. I finally have a chance at something I’ve missed for so long, and now…”
“Don’t think about it,” he murmured, and I thought I felt the pressure of his lips against the top of my head. “I shouldn’t have spoken as I did. I only brought you down.”
“Please, don’t blame yourself. You’re not the one to blame in all of this.” I couldn’t help but look up at the camera, at its unblinking, unflinching eye. “You didn’t do any of it. They did. This is their choice.”
Minutes later, the lock on the door clicked. That was our signal. We were to line up in front of the furthest bed from the door, hands where they could be seen, while our hosts entered the room. I stood next to Raze, the backs of our hands brushing as we waited.
The door swung open, and into the room strode none other than Gil himself. How the sight of him turned my stomach. How I wished for nothing more than the satisfaction of draining him—no, better yet, to tear his beating heart from his chest and hold it up before his eyes that he might see it for himself before death took him.
It would be too quick a death for the likes of him, but I’d always possessed a flair for the dramatic.
“Congratulations on winning your push-up match,” he smiled at Cari. “It was a close call.”
“Do you have nothing better to do than watch us?” she asked with a bored little sigh.
I had to give her credit. She wouldn’t let him break her, even if she played nice with his underlings. I wished more than anything that I could’ve seen her stare him down with a gun to her temple, but I’d been too busy marveling over the luxury of shampooing my hair at the time.
“This is why we’re here,” he reminded her in a slow, patient tone which I knew from our conversations got under her skin like little else had the power to do. She loathed being talked down to, being treated as nothing more than a child.
He seemed to know this. He seemed to enjoy watching her squirm. I had no idea why this would surprise me, yet it did. Perhaps I wanted to believe he still possessed a soul, even if all of the evidence was to the contrary.
“Why are you here?” she asked, concealing her irritation by only the thinnest margin. “To congratulate me? It could’ve waited.”
“No, dear. I came to announce the development of a promising antidote.”
I gasped before I could stop myself, and Raze’s fingers clenched over mine. An antidote? To vampirism? Yes, I knew that was the cover story for why we were there—that Gil wished to cure Cari—but none of us had seen it as anything more than a ruse. A joke.
“An antidote?” Gage asked, staring at Gil with his mouth hanging open. “What makes you think you’ve found one?”
“That’s none of your concern,” he spat, not bothering to favor Gage by even looking at him. He remained focused on Cari. Gage might as well have been a noisy ghost.
“I want to know, too,” Cari muttered, grinding her teeth together.
I could hear them from where I stood. She tended to do it when she really wanted nothing more than to commit murder.
“Leave that to me,” Gil grinned. A grin utterly devoid of real feeling, one which might as well have been made of plastic or paper. It never reached his eyes, which remained empty. “Our next phase is testing, which is where three of you come in.”
I knew what that meant, and the certainty of it left me feeling sicker than ever.
Testing.
Testing which we might not survive.
28
Cari
I felt like he had just punched me in the stomach. There was a tight knot there, like my muscles were clenching up to protect me.
Testing.
“You won’t test on them,” I hissed. “Not on your life.”
My father tilted his head to the side, making his hair glisten as the overhead light caught each strand. “You seem to forget, daughter, that you have no control over what goes on here. You think you do. I’m willing to grant you leeway on the important issues, even. I think that says a lot about me, and about how seriously I take this research.”
“It says a ton about you,” Raze muttered.
Naomi snorted.
“I don’t believe I was speaking to either of you.”
The coldness in his voice was almost enough to make me shiver. He hated them, really and truly hated them. Which meant he hated me. I had to keep reminding myself of that. No matter how nice he pretended to be, he hated me for being one of them. He would only love me again if he could cure me. I would be acceptable then. I could be his daughter again. If not? He would dispose of me, just like he’d do to them.
I stood up taller, glaring at him. “What if we refuse to be injected?”
“Once again, Carissa.” He sighed as if this was all too boring and too far beneath him. “You will not receive an injection until we’re certa
in you won’t be harmed.”
“What happens if it affects me differently than the others? We’re all different people with different blood. Different genetics.” I was going wildly off the rails, and I knew it. Anything to keep him from going through with it. Anything to stall.
He scoffed. “As if we haven’t thought of that. Why do you think we’ve drawn so much blood? That’s what we’ve been testing on, for heaven’s sake. And we’ve had some promising results as of late. The formula our technicians have come up with seems to separate a protein in the blood before destroying it. I have high hopes for this.”
“Can’t you… I don’t know. Test it on rats first?”
He chuckled, shaking his head. “I wouldn’t inject rats with vampire blood. Who knows what it would do to them?”
Gage snarled, and I understood how he felt. I wanted to do the same thing. I wanted to show my father and anyone who happened to be watching on a monitor just how scary we could be when we put our minds to it.
“I would start seriously considering it if I were you,” I replied. “Because I’m not going to let you inject any of us. There’s no room for compromise here. You won’t do it.”
His jaw tightened. “You have no say in this. I’ve let you get away with far too much already. You might have gotten it into your pretty head that I’m a pushover, that it’s easy to get around me, but you have another think coming. I can put my foot down when the time comes.”
“Wait!” I called out when he turned his back to me. “You can’t do this to us! It’s cruel! It’s inhumane!”
“Good thing I’m not dealing with humans, then.” He closed the door, then locked it behind him.
“No!” I threw myself across the room, slamming into the door, pounding on it with my fists. “No, no, no! You can’t! You bastard! I hate you!”
Gage wrapped me in his arms. “Don’t do it. Don’t. It’s not worth it.”
“I hate him! I hate him…!” I sank to the floor, and he came with me, letting me clutch him as he rocked me like a baby. I wept like one, too. Why not? Why hold back anymore? They were about to start testing on my friends. On Gage.
And I knew they would start with him. I knew it because that was exactly the sort of thing my father would do. He’d use him as the first guinea pig and make me watch because I’d made a fool out of him in front of his people. That would be my punishment.
He wanted to make me wish I’d let him take Gage away when I had the chance, so I wouldn’t have to watch him suffer through God only knew what. Instead, I would now have a front row seat for the torture.
“I love you,” Gage murmured in my ear, and it somehow leaked through as I wept brokenly. “I love you so much. It’ll be okay.”
“How could it possibly be okay?” I squeezed my eyes shut and willed away the images that kept coming to mind. Gage, writhing in agony. Gage, sweating bullets as some so-called antidote tore him apart from the inside out.
Gage, begging me to let him die. To take mercy on him and let him die.
“Because I had you for a little while. You made me a better man than I ever was before I met you. I mean that, every word of it. I knew you, and I’ve loved you, and that’s enough.”
“It isn’t enough for me,” I sobbed. “It’s not enough. I won’t let this happen.”
“Cari, I need you to listen to me.” He pulled away from me, his hands on my shoulders. “I mean this, so listen well. I don’t want you to do anything that might put you in danger. I mean it. Don’t try to stop them.”
“I can’t just—”
“You can.” He squeezed my shoulders, then shook me a little. “You can because you have to. You’ll only make it worse for yourself and all of us if you try to fight back again. He won’t go for it this time. He’ll push your hand. I’m sure of it. And I will not have you take a chance like that for my sake. I swear, I’ll haunt you for the rest of your days if you do.”
“Haunt me.” I tried to smile, but it came out as a grimace—a teary, snotty one at that. “Haunt me forever, please. I don’t want to walk through the world without you.”
He pulled me in for a hug, giving me a view of Raze and Naomi. They watched us from the far side of the room, holding onto each other. Naomi’s head was on his chest as he stroked her back. It didn’t take a genius to know they were in love.
Finally. It took them long enough to figure it out. How tragic that there was so little time left for them. For all of us.
“You never know,” Gage added, tucking my hair behind my ears and doing everything he could to sound positive. “It might work. Yes, it’ll be painful, just like turning into vampire hurts like hell. But the sickness passes. The same might be true here, only in reverse. I don’t think we have to give up hope just yet.”
“You’re not a very good liar. Have I ever told you that?”
“I’m not lying,” he insisted. “I’m turning over a new leaf. Positive thinking. I’ve heard it’s a pretty good idea.”
The lock clicked. I scrambled to my feet with Gage just behind me in time to avoid getting hit by the door. They didn’t even wait for us to line up before opening it all the way.
They were that confident.
“You’re going to be restrained for the time being.” An efficient older woman with gray, frizzy curls and thick glasses marched in and let the door swing shut behind her. “Go to your respective beds.”
“How about you go to hell?” I asked.
“Cari,” Gage hissed, but I hardly cared. Not when my entire world was about to come crashing down.
The woman didn’t seem to care either way. “We can force you into place,” she said, looking up at me from her clipboard. “It doesn’t give me pleasure to force you, but I’ll have the men do it if you prefer it that way.”
“Just go along,” Gage implored. “Remember what I said.”
“I don’t care what you said,” I whispered, feeling the tears starting to well up again. They were going to do this to him. They were going to kill him in front of me, and my father would watch the main event from the comfort of his office or wherever the video feed went.
“Cari.” Naomi shot me a mournful look. “It’s going to be all right.”
“Easy for you to say.” I dragged my feet on the way to my bed and leaned against it, baring my wrist for the handcuff that would soon close over it. She would want to cuff me first, since I was still the wild card. No good leaving me unsecured.
“That’s better,” the woman said, reaching down for the cuff attached to the bed on a chain of steel links.
Suddenly, a scream came from the hall, splitting the air with its intensity.
We all froze.
Including the woman, who clutched her clipboard a little tighter. “What was that?” she gasped.
I realized she sounded even more afraid than I felt. “How would I know?” I went to the door, and she didn’t try to stop me, pressing my ear to it. As it turned out, I didn’t need to do any such thing.
An ear-splitting thud, loud and hard enough to shake the door, and I scurried away.
“What the hell?” I whispered, fleeing to the safety of Gage’s arms.
He looked at the woman, who seemed to be about five seconds away from wetting herself—if she hadn’t already started to. “What else do you work on in this place?”
“Nothing! You’re the only ones!”
“You don’t have any other pet projects lying around that might have escaped?”
“No! I swear! I have no idea who that might be!” She crept along until she stood behind the bed, beside the open bathroom door. I wondered if she would try to hide in there, then wondered if I could somehow lock her in.
Another thud came against the door, this one enough to rattle the hinges, and I suddenly stopped caring about her. I only cared about what was trying to break its way into the room.
The next thud brought with it the sound of splintering wood. Naomi gasped and clung to Raze, her eyes shut tight. We were four va
mpires, stronger than any human in the place, and we were all equally afraid of what might be in the hallway.
Whatever it was, it was breaking down the door.
One more gigantic thud and the door fell off the hinges and crashed to the floor. We jumped back, all of us, then looked out into the hall.
Into the room stepped a tall, red-haired man wearing a long coat and military-style clothing. His face bore scars, but was handsome just the same.
In fact, he looked a lot like…
Gage made a strangled sound, like he didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “Dad?”
The man nodded, sweeping his gaze over the room. “If we’re going to get out of here, we’d better get moving.”
29
Jonah
By the time I arrived at headquarters, the building was full of light which spilled out of the stained-glass windows and created colorful, almost whimsical patterns on the grounds surrounding it.
They wanted to make sure I knew they were waiting. As if I was holding them up, keeping them from something.
I took a deep breath, then another, hoping to steady myself. My head was in a whirl, thanks in no small part to the presence of strangers in my apartment. One of whom had, until recently, been an enemy I’d locked in the dungeon and left to rot.
What if she did something while I was gone? I could only hope she wouldn’t. She’d seemed chastised, humbled. Perhaps she really was.
If so, wonders would really never cease.
Opening the heavy door, I took a look inside before crossing the threshold. The main room, once the nave when the building was used as a cathedral, was abuzz with voices.
I recognized Landon’s over all others, rising to drown out those raised in argument. Who was he fighting with? His father’s son, for certain. “I only want what’s best for the League,” he insisted, to the obvious chagrin of those who didn’t believe him.
I strode inside, head high, waiting for those in attendance to take notice of my entrance. When only a few of them did—the others still locked in a heated argument—I raised my voice above theirs. “Good evening,” I announced.
