SURVIVAL (Fire & Ice Book 2)

by Karen Payton Holt

“I have his scent,” said Julian soberly. “It is still early days. If he shows up in the hive, then he’ll be charged with threatening the food supply. Douglas’ body is preserved, and we just have to play the waiting game.”

  The body would condemn the vampire to the certain death of internment where he would keep company, indefinitely, with other vampire offenders in Storage Facility Eight. We are in good shape.

  “So, for now, I will carry on doing fly-pasts of the grave site to make sure it remains unmolested,” said Connor.

  Douglas’ death released Rebekah from a forced marriage to a husband who tried to rape her, but in the same moment, it had revealed a more dangerous threat. Connor smiled as irritation warmed into pleasure. It was poetic justice for betraying his own kind, and if he had not run, I would have ended the scumbag’s life myself.

  “Play Serge’s game for a while. Keep your enemies close,” Julian said thoughtfully. “I’m sure you’ll bump into him at the hospital. If I know Serge, he will be unavoidable.”

  <><><>

  A couple of weeks later, Connor suppressed a wry grin as he faced yet another showdown with the councilor. Julian was right.

  Serge had been hard on Connor’s heels every day since his return to London, and today’s encounter was tediously familiar. Connor tapped into his genuine irritation at the constant pollutant of Councilor Serge encroaching on his territory. Connor was venting quite convincingly, his glowering anger all the more potent when set against the stark white backdrop of the walls of his hospital, a place where he felt completely at home and in control.

  “Bloody baby-sitting service.” A growl rumbled in Connor’s throat. “I’m a surgeon, for God’s sake.” His pewter-gray eyes flashed as they bored into the yellowed reptilian stare of Serge.

  It was an arresting tableau; Connor, his chiseled features pulled into a sneer, his black hair ragged where he had shoved his fingers through it, and a granite-hard regard, staring down at the aged, feeble gray-haired figure of Councilor Serge.

  Serge’s dry cheeks folded into a grin.

  “My time could be better spent.” Connor’s anger spat the words and snapped his jaw shut, clamping sculpted lips firmly closed.

  “Now, Doctor Connor,” said Serge, “we all have to pull our weight. Or are you too good for us now?” He oozed satisfaction at Connor’s apparent annoyance, his smile revealing a portcullis of yellowed teeth which lost the battle of holding back his saliva.

  “With respect, Councilor Serge, I already have the blood dispensary delivery to attend to.” Connor’s sneering tone trickled icy sweetness. “Allowing Charles to go hunting on Dartmoor today was shortsighted, and I don’t see why Anthony can’t release the vampires sleeping in the morgue. The morgue attendant has been in grave sleep for four hours already, he’ll be surfacing very soon.”

  “I would prefer that you see to it.”

  Serge was making Connor’s life as difficult as possible. Having failed, yet again, to make his charges against Connor stick, in court, he took pleasure in haunting the hospital and treating Connor as an errand boy. A councilor trumps a doctor.

  “Very well,” said Connor, and yanking his white coat straight, he strode away. Out of Serge’s sight, on his way to the morgue, Connor grinned. He was enjoying the pantomime. If it keeps Serge occupied, thinking he is getting under my skin, I’m okay with that.

  In truth, my life was built on far tougher experiences than Serge could ever imagine. I’m used to blood drenched battlegrounds, from the First World War through to Vietnam. Connor was not a sadist, but he had enjoyed the anonymity of the smokescreen of perpetual human deaths. This is a picnic in comparison.

  His youthful twenty-four-year-old face was distractingly handsome, but the century of wisdom in his eyes had a knife edge of fatalistic acceptance. In 1910, the time he was turned, vampires came to terms with what they had become, one way or another. In some ways, Connor pitied the vampires of this new spoon-fed society. They were hunters without prey. As a result, they lacked the conditions needed to hone survival skills, and their intellect was blunt and unimaginative.

  Connor shook his head in amusement. Vampires with any sense keep their personal histories to themselves. Serge had no idea how futile his attempts at irritating Connor were. As a recent vampire, Serge’s intellect was blunt. But Connor’s was as sharp as the scalpel he wielded.

  In this new order, he was hailed as the surgeon essential to human survival. I enjoy effortless control around humans, with one obvious exception, Rebekah. Her presence had hit him in the chest like a sledgehammer and hot-wired a path to all his pain sensors. Connor remembered it with masochistic pleasure, and today his confrontation with Serge was spiced with impatience.

  He grinned as he tuned into her deliciously moist heartbeat. It warmed his chest to feel her vibrant presence nearby. She was in London. She had dosed up on beta-blockers, and her signature was a muted canter, easily missed with the ‘white noise’ of the farm cattle nearby. Pheromone suppressant spray reduced the risks further, so anticipation overwhelmed his concerns. I will see her soon.

  He would check on the vampires locked down in the morgue because it suited him to do so. And then continue on out of the side exit of the hospital, and go to her.

  Almost a month had passed since Serge’s last attempt to haul Connor up in front of the council, thanks to Julian. If councilors trumped doctors, then principals were higher than both. Serge had to get through him, before any charges against Connor would be taken seriously. Serge does not help his own cause. He had cried wolf too many times.

  Serge was so sure all he lacked was proof that Connor was protecting a human, and his desire to see the doctor condemned consumed him. His frustration gave him an air of desperation, and the man was unpredictable. Julian’s ear to the ground is keeping us ahead in the game, and my own constant needling, of course, makes it hard for him to reason. Connor was enjoying the battle of wits.

  He moved along the corridors sweeping aside doors, not caring when they bounced from the walls in protest. Of course, Julian’s interests were keener now, his nineteenth century repression gave the illusion of imperviousness, but Connor knew better. I wonder, if he knew how miserable his pretended indifference is making Leizle, would he unbend or resist harder?

  “What the hell?”

  As he rounded the last corner, the shrieking noise of metal trolleys crashing against walls urged him forward. Breaking into a vampire run, he unlocked the morgue doors and swept through them in less than the two seconds it took to think about it.

  He swung into action, unhesitating. A stainless steel-lined door of a cadaver vault hung open, and a vampire careened around the room, scrambling as if hunting an invisible prey. Connor grabbed his shoulders from behind, hooked his fingers under the collar bones and swung the vampire through the air, landing him heavily on the sliding bed of the cadaver drawer. With a sharp kick, Connor drove the drawer home and snapped the catch into place.

  “What the hell?” he breathed again, with a frown.

  The vampire – his pupils distended to oil-black pools of hunger – was in grave sleep. So much for the morgue being a safe method of confinement. They can’t get out until someone releases them. “So, what happened here?” he muttered.

  Connor had locked them in himself. So, I can’t blame Anthony for this one. He had watched them drink the vials of blood he handed over. In the confines of their locked morgue drawer, each surrendered willingly to grave sleep, knowing they would wake refreshed and still in one piece. That’s the theory anyway. An ironic grin hovered before it shifted to puzzlement again.

  This was the baby-sitting service Connor had referred to, the feeding, locking up, and eventual release of vampires who needed grave sleep. “So how did one escape?” Connor mused, taking in the devastation the vampire had wreaked.

  In a blur of movement, he began to gather the metal autopsy tools scattered across the floor. As his fingers closed over a heavy bone saw, still useful, even on vamp
ires, a physical reaction stabbed through his preoccupation. His stomach churned as a cloying scent stung his nose, and, even as his mind registered it, the sluggish heartbeat he detected suddenly picked up pace.

  His eyes darted unerringly to the spot where the metallic scent of blood drew the compass needle in his head, and he was sure. The laundry basket. Blood specks on white linen were the final piece in the puzzle of his unease. He crossed the room, plunged his hand inside the linen hamper and pulled – tempering the inescapable force – on the arm that his fingers closed around. I want answers, and humans with broken bones are not too good at talking.

  “Ouch!”

  The girl emerging like a bedraggled rabbit from a hat was slight, and her bruised neck and shoulders were covered in reddened arcs left by vampire teeth. A human pet? It explained the depressed heartbeat which he almost missed. Vampire venom slowed the heart rate and this pale girl looked more drained than could be healthy. Her blonde hair was matted, unwashed for weeks by Connor’s reckoning, and the terror in her blue eyes did not bode well for the answers he wanted. The pupils had flooded them to black. And her face is almost as white as mine.

  “What the hell are you doing in here?” Connor grunted as he lowered her to her feet, holding her shoulders for a second until he trusted her balance.

  The girl flinched at his explosion of words, and he stepped back and studied her with annoyance.

  A breeze eddying over his skin drew his gaze, and following the logical chain of events provided some answers. The fire exit door was unsecured. That would be how she got in. He stared at the newly replenished chiller cabinet which stored vials of human blood. They camouflaged her scent. If she hadn’t cut herself, she might have gone undetected altogether. That just leaves the ‘what’, the ‘who’ and the ‘why’. Easy. A memory troubled him. He felt sure he had seen her before.

  But where? “What are you doing here?” said Connor. He probed the turbulent pools of fear in her gaze and ran through his options. Which one will get to the bottom of this?

  “I need help. I escaped and I need help,” the girl whispered.

  On an exasperated breath, Connor stepped in and caught the girl as a vibration trembled through her, signalling the collapse which would have sent her to the floor if he had not been there.

  That’s just great! He hoisted her up into his arms. Rebekah, alone in the safe house, loomed in his mind. He just needed this girl out of his way. He shouldered the morgue doors open and headed for the surgical wing where the six beds he used for his patients were empty. I just hope she comes round quickly.

  <><><>

  Her arms swung uncomfortably, her wrist bone making contact with the doctor’s flexing thigh as his stride ate up the distance of the corridor. Emily’s mind raced through her story. They had met before. Will he remember me? It was important that he did.

  Her court appearance was seared into her memory. She was not sure Doctor Connor found the event as memorable, but her life depended upon it.

  Councilor Serge had paraded her around the vampire court as evidence in an effort to convince the jurors Doctor Connor kept a human as a pet. She was a vampire’s pet, but that vampire had secured immunity from prosecution in return for relinquishing her into the custody of Councilor Serge. And so, her nightmare began. The attempt to frame the doctor failed when the results of bite and venom tests cleared him of the allegation.

  Serge would set her free if she discovered the location of the human nest the doctor was protecting. Having looked into his fiercely intense eyes and felt the full force of his disapproval, she was filled with doubt. The weight of the task settled like concrete in her heart.

  The cramped muscles in her neck burned, and remaining rag-doll limp prevented her from thinking. About anything but the stomach muscles rippling along my side and his biceps flexing.

  The waltzing movement of his gait left her stomach behind when Connor whisked around and shouldered his way through a door. Her limbs swung in convincing abandon as she found it was not hard to trust him. Why? Peeping through veiled lashes, she watched a deserted room sway within her field of vision, and a bed loomed. The woozy feeling was real, so her disorientation would not be entirely pretense.

  Connor laid her down on the narrow bed, not roughly, but with little care. Emily dug deep to hang onto her relaxed state while he eased his arms out from beneath her and his fingers found the pulse in her wrist.

  “Malnutrition is only a stone’s throw away,” he muttered. “Who is this waif?”

  Knowing she could not wait any longer, partly because the awkwardly folded arm underneath her was losing feeling, and because she could not fool him now she was the focus of his attention, Emily groaned, coming round convincingly. Hoping that her acting was up to par, her eyelids fluttered open and she let the ceiling drift out of focus. She allowed a second to elapse and then scrabbled, with apparent terror, up the bed. Cowering, she hugged her knees. The trembling of her knees began as an act but soon became a reality when his probing gray stare traveled over her body.

  Fear and Emily were well acquainted; he had taken up residence many years ago and his touch told her she was still alive, and that she was still fighting. Looking at the doctor did the same thing, but it spawned a different kind of sensation in her stomach.

  Connor reared at her burst of energy. Fierce concentration cast shadows over his face as realization dawned. Indicating her fragile face and shoulders, he said, “Ah, the waif. You’re the girl from the courtroom.” His face was serious. “So, you are a vampire’s pet,” he muttered as he automatically reached out and placed a Band Aid over the deep scratch she had put in her knee when scrabbling into the linen basket.

  Emily found herself wondering if his touch, had she felt it, would have given her the same jolt of shock that his face had. The perfection of it arrested her breathing and occupied the space inside her head where her thoughts should be. Pay attention, he’s asking questions.

  “I won’t hurt you, but what do you mean by escaped?” His gentle tone could not mask the impatience in his penetrating gaze. “You’ve had a shock, I know, but-”

  “My vampire, others came. Wearing uniforms. To search the house. He released me to hide in the yard. He had no choice. He threatened me, said he would find me if I ran, please help me.” Emily forced the words to tumble out. She was terrified, but because she needed him to believe the lie. He remembered her, but that was not enough.

  “Where? Which vampire?”

  The white of his coat and black of his hair lost focus and loomed larger in the magnifying-blur of tears, and Emily realized she was really crying. “He hurts me.” Her voice dropped to a pained whisper. “He gets angry. I saw my chance and I took it.”

  Connor looked skeptical for a moment longer, but as her trembling fingers moved her matted hair aside, his eyes raked over her skin. She wanted to hide, knowing that her hunched shoulders were marred with clusters of fresh angry skin lesions and dried bite wounds.

  As Connor absorbed her injuries, Emily’s flesh crawled.

  Her skin tingled with the nightmares etched into it, as though she was back there now. Serge’s cackle formed the bedrock of her disgust; the wrinkled dry skin on his face, his yellowed eyes alight with excitement, and the cold wet flaccid lips he pressed to her flesh made her insides churn, even now.

  “You have been on the farm for four weeks, you look too healthy,” Serge had said. “Doctor Connor has seen battered, discarded humans.” His grin was sickly. “Before the shortage, vampires were less, careful. They went too far and broke bones. At the very least, he’ll expect fresh wounds. You need to be convincing.”

  She had spent four years being unable to sleep, not knowing when her vampire, Jonathan, would reappear, so for Emily, the weeks on the human farm had come as a relief. Her master’s visits had always been traumatic. The best she could hope for was a bite, which lasted a long time if his mood was sensual. At his approach, terror squeezed her heart. But I never let him know ho
w scared I was. I learned the hard way that it excited him. Emily suspected he exercised more care than he would like. If I was easy to replace, I don’t think I’d be here now.

  It was not all lies. The uniformed vampires had arrived at the house, but it was her owner, Jonathan, who had left.

  Serge appeared as a hideous apparition which overwhelmed her stunned human sight. His cold clasp on her shoulder had frozen her blood where it touched. She was a kid again, and the boogyman had teeth and drank your blood if you made a noise.

  The human farm is a picnic compared to life as a pet, being in a dormitory is better than being locked in a cell alone, with my fears circling like vultures. Even the concentration camp-like processions to the siphoning sheds, drinking iron-infused pureed vegetable concoctions which often left her feeling sick for hours afterwards, and being marched back to the enclosure, all on endless repeat, was a welcome routine. Although being tired made talking an effort, at least I belonged to a group.

  Connor registered her distaste to his inspection of her body and took it personally.

  He held his hands up. “I won’t hurt you,” he repeated, “But you can’t stay here. Look, you can trust me.” He cocked his head, showing her different angles of his face. “Do you remember me? From the courtroom a few weeks ago?”

  “Yes,” she whispered, relieved. Now I can pretend to trust him. She tried not to think of the warm curling sensation she felt inside when she was in his arms while she dutifully studied his earnest expression.

  “What is your name?” Connor asked.

  “Annabelle,” said Emily. Operation Annabelle.

  Connor’s head jerked. “Really? You weren’t pretending for the court hearing, then.” He shifted uncomfortably. It was the name he had plucked from thin air to protect Rebekah’s identity, and he did not like the coincidence.

  Emily released her trapped breath as he finally inclined his head and his tight features relaxed. His rejection was not something she wanted to contemplate.