“You said yourself they’ve probably moved him.”
“Right, because this is where they imprison vampires. Not humans. If that’s the case, then they’ll move me, too. Maybe to the same place.”
“That’s a leap of logic.”
“It’s all I’ve got. If I walk out of here, I won’t have a clue where to begin looking for him.”
He pushed his cell closed again. The lock didn’t engage, but from the outside, it appeared to be shut. “You don’t understand what these people are capable of, Emma.”
“They don’t understand what I’m capable of.”
“They can just make you disappear. They can erase you, as if you never existed.”
She shrugged her shoulders. “Maybe so. But they’ll do far worse to you. The experiments. The tests.” A shiver raced up her spine. “Sheena said...she said they hurt her. They’ll do worse to you. You need to get the hell out of here, Devlin.”
He met her eyes, shook his head firmly, then walked to his bunk and lay down on it. “Will they feed us, do you suppose?” he asked.
She sat there watching him, afraid for him, even as a rush of pleasure flooded her soul. He wouldn’t leave her. And it wasn’t because she was one of The Chosen. It was because he felt the same way for her that she felt for him. It had to be. She wasn’t going to doubt it again, and sooner or later, she would make him admit it.
The night wore on, and there was no sustenance brought to him. Devlin was weak because of the blood they’d taken from him, and without feeding, it was impossible to regain his strength.
His vitality had taken another hit too, when he’d seen that the unconscious body in the cell across from him was Emma’s. He thought he would explode with frustration, being unable to go to her, to touch her, to make sure she was all right.
Boots came clattering down the hall just before dawn, when he felt the sleep calling out to him again. He would be glad to sleep. At least it would get rid of the hunger pangs clawing at him from the inside. But he wouldn’t be able to see what happened to Emma while he rested, and that thought terrified him.
“You, human,” a man said. He had a saggy face, jowls like a hound, and he stopped outside Emma’s cell, his back to Devlin. But other men, armed crows, stood beside him, and their eyes were on him. So were their rifles.
Dev moved toward his door, and Emma met his eyes over the man’s shoulder telling him to wait, without uttering a word. She couldn’t speak to him mentally. It was all in her eyes. Her beautiful, expressive brown eyes.
“Hello Commander Hobbs,” she said, rising and going up to the barred door to face him. “Wish I could say it’s good to see you again.”
“Who are you and why are you here with this creature?” Hobbs didn’t ask. He demanded.
She looked past the commander at Devlin and blinked repeatedly. “Who, him? I’m not with him. I came here because you took my father and are holding him without any cause whatsoever.”
“Your father.” It wasn’t a question.
“Doctor Oliver Benatar,” she said.
“So you’re the daughter. Emma, the thrill-seeking adventure writer.”
“The one and only,” she said. “I want my father, Commander. You took him from his home without a warrant, along with thousands of dollars’ worth of radio equipment and–”
“Yeah, he’s been moved.”
“Moved?”
“That’s right. This facility is a temporary holding unit. He didn’t belong here, long term. Neither do you.”
She lowered her head a little, but snuck a look around Hobbs’ body at Devlin and wiggled her eyebrows as if to say, See? I was right. He read the look clearly and wondered why she wasn’t cowering in fear instead of telling him “I told you so” with her eyes. Then she pasted a serious expression on her pretty face again and lifted her head to look at Hobbs.
“What’s that mean? Long term? Where is he? Where did you–”
“Don’t you worry. You’ll be joining him soon enough.”
“Will I? When?”
He grunted, ignoring her question. “How did the Offspring escape?”
“What the hell is an offspring?”
“The two prisoners who were here when you arrived. My men said that my voice came over the radio, ordering their cell doors opened. Who did that?”
Emma shrugged. “Wasn’t me. Someone snatched the radio off my belt and shoved me into this pen so hard I banged my head and knocked myself out. I didn’t see who it was. I didn’t see anything.”
“You shouldn’t have been in here.”
“I agree completely. My father shouldn’t have been in here either. He’s done nothing wrong. You’re trampling all over his constitutional rights. Mine, too.”
“This is DPI, ma’am. We’re trying to save our species from extinction. That trumps the Constitution.”
“Nothing trumps the Constitution,” she told him.
He lowered his head. “So you’re one of those.” Then he turned on his heel and faced Devlin’s cell. “You, vampire. Did you see the two Offspring escape? Do you know where they are?”
“Do you think I would tell you if I did?” Devlin answered, glad to have the man’s attention on him instead of Emma.
The commander smiled very slowly. “I know about vampires and pain,” he said. “I know that the older you get, the more acutely you feel it. The more debilitating and unbearable it becomes. And you do not appear to be a fledgling to me.”
“The older we get, the more powerful we become, Hobbs. And you’re right. I’m no fledgling.”
It was a threat. Hobbs clearly recognized it as one. He even took a step back from Devlin’s cell. “I’ll be back for you.” He looked at his watch, shook his head. “Once you sleep, I’ll be back. And when you wake again, you’ll be in my special room. The one where we make vampires talk. And howl and weep and scream, and eventually, die. But not until long after they’re begging to.”
The man turned and tapped away down the hall.
Devlin’s eyes met Emma’s in the cell across from his. Hers were wide and horrified and tear-filled. “You have to leave,” she whispered.
“I should’ve killed him while his back was turned.”
“Twenty armed guards would’ve killed you in return. And then where would I be?”
“I won’t leave you.”
“You’ll be dead. What good are you going to be to me dead, Devlin?”
He lowered his head.
“You heard what Hobbs just said. They’re moving me anyway. Probably while you rest, so you won’t be able to follow. You’ll wake and I’ll be gone, and it’ll be too late for you to get out then. They’ll torture you. They’ll kill you, Devlin. You have to go now, before sunrise.”
He knew she was right. “I won’t leave you,” he said again.
“They’re taking me to my father. That’s what I wanted. Once we’re in the same place together–”
“Stop it!” He yanked his cell door open and lunged across to hers. He put his hands around its bars, and tried with all his strength to bend them, to rip the door open, anything. But it wouldn’t give, not at all, and he let his head fall forward.
She slid her hands over his on the bars. “It’s no use. You’re weak from the tranquilizer and the blood loss.”
He lifted his head, stared into her eyes. Her hands slid upward, palms pressing to his cheeks. And he knew what she was going to do even before she did it. He didn’t even try to avoid it. She pressed her face between the bars and touched her lips to his. His hunger for her exploded inside him, and he kissed her back, one hand moving between the bars to cup the back of her head and hold her to him. The other arm went around her waist, tugging her flush to the cell door as he tasted her mouth, explored every inch of it. His need for her lit a fire in his soul.
As they fed from each other’s mouths his hips arched, his groin trying to press against hers, but restrained by the bars, the damned bars. They could only brush over each other,
tantalizing, thrilling, but not enough.
She thrust a hand through, closing it over the bulge in his pants, and rubbing him there.
“Emma, don’t–”
“You’re weak. I have what you need to make you strong, you know I do.”
“No. No, you can’t–” but then she was kissing him again, her tongue tangling with his. She tugged her shirt upward, baring her breasts for him, and they, at least, were accessible to him, full and beautiful. He feasted on them between the cold bars, tasting, nipping, suckling her.
“Drink, Devlin. Drink from me so you can be strong enough to get out of here. Please, Dev, please. If they kill you, I’ll die anyway. Don’t you know that?”
“I can’t–” He pressed his hand through and down into her pants, touching, rubbing her there. “I’ll lose my mind if I taste you.”
“I’ve already lost mine.” She rubbed him harder, reaching inside to clasp his bulging erection and moving her hand more rapidly. “Go crazy on me, Devlin. Drink my blood. You know you want to. I want it too. I want to feel your teeth in me. I want–”
He bit down. Fangs pierced her breast and she felt the pain, and then the pleasure as he suckled her there, feeding slowly and gently, but feeding, drinking her into him, his tongue flicking over her nipple. He moaned around her breast and she felt his cock throbbing, pulsing as his seed spilled over her hand.
He leaned against the bars, holding her as best he could while her blood rushed through him, healing every injury, clearing every toxin, heightening every emotion. She was a part of him now. She had no idea what she had done.
“I want you to go, Devlin,” she whispered. “I want you to stay alive so you can save my father and me. Please, please don’t let them torture you. It will kill me, I swear to God it will.”
He lifted his eyes to hers. Lowering his head once more, he caught her mouth, kissed it, still aglow with passion and the power of her blood in his veins. “I’ll get you out.”
“I know you will. It’s got to be almost dawn. Hurry, Dev.”
He nodded. Then, fully powered up on Emma’s blood, he did the most difficult thing he thought he had ever done. He walked away from her.
Chapter Nine
“We need food,” Wolf said.
He and Sheena peered out from behind a Dumpster in the back alley of a small building. They had run from the compound without a backward glance, and had been avoiding humans ever since. But now their hunger had driven them into a small village where the smells of cooking food had been too much to resist. A car zoomed past on the road only a few yards away, and they both ducked, startled by the little machines.
“There are so many of those things! I hate them!” Sheena said.
“They’re better than boats and cages,” her brother told her.
A foreign feeling rose up in her chest, one she’d been noticing ever since they’d escaped. “Devlin is in a cage now. And that woman, Emma, she’s in one, too.” Sheena had thought and thought on this. “The way she spoke, it was as if she thought we should stay and help them.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Wolf said. “How would we survive and escape ourselves if we helped them? They can take care of themselves, same as we did.”
“But we didn’t, Wolf. We only got out because they came.”
“You got us out! We could’ve grabbed any talking box from any of the guards if we’d only thought of it.”
“I thought of it because I saw the human called Hobbs use his. And he only did that because Devlin and the woman came.”
“He’d have used it sooner or later. Some other captive would’ve come.”
“How do you know that?”
He looked at her as if she were stupid. “You should know as well as I. All those empty cages. What do you think they’re for, if not to hold others. Others like us, I bet.” Then he closed his eyes, and picking up on his intent, Sheena did too.
She crouched there, very still, for a long moment, focusing on the others who were like them. Their siblings. Then she nodded. “The Betas are well,” she whispered, using the term their original captors had always used for the four eleven-year-old Offspring. “I feel them, north. They’re together and they’re well.” She frowned. “They’re...laughing.”
Wolf frowned as if even more perplexed by that than she was. “The Deltas are together too,” he said, referring to the three seven-year-olds. “But not as well. They’re upset. Afraid. Farther away than the Elevens. East, I think. A long, long way east.”
“They’re young. Not strong like us,” Sheena said.
He nodded his agreement. “I can’t feel the Thetas at all.”
“Do you think they....”
“I think they’ve gone so far away, we can’t feel them,” he said. “They’re only two-year-olds. No one could perceive them as a threat.” He sighed, and she wondered if he really believed that, or was only saying it to soothe her fears. “We have to get food, Sheena.”
“And then what?” she asked. “What do we do after that, Wolf? I do not know how to...how to be in this world.”
He clasped her shoulders and stared into her eyes. “We know how to do the only things that count. Stay alive and kill our enemies. This, our keepers taught us well.”
She searched his vivid blue eyes, and there was a feeling in the pit of her stomach that there was more. There had to be more to living than just that. “Our keepers taught us that vampires are our enemies. But that was a lie. Vampires saved us from those cages, and when we found ourselves again imprisoned, they came for us once more. Vampires are not our enemies.”
“That is true.”
“And yet we killed them. In our training, on the ship. I killed many. Too many to count. Ever since I was the age of...of Nikki.”
“I, too.”
“I feel...something when I think of that. That they were not truly enemies, that I killed them because our keepers told me to. I feel something....here.” She made a fist and pressed it to her chest, where the pulse of life bumped over and over from inside her. She had always wondered what that thump-thump, thump-thump was.
“We did as the keepers told us to do. We did not have a choice.”
She nodded, knowing that to be true. “But we have a choice now, Wolf. We are free. We can choose. And I do not believe we can trust anything the keepers ever taught us. They lied to us. Maybe about everything.”
He studied her for a long moment. “They did teach us some things of value, Sheena. They taught us how to fight. They taught us how to survive and how to destroy our enemies. Those things are useful.”
“But what if the keepers are our only enemies? What if all the people we see hurrying around out there...are as kind as the vampires were to us?”
He looked out at the street. Sheena did, too. A woman walked by with a small child on either side of her. They held her hands and looked up at her with an expression in their eyes that she had never seen before, and the look the woman returned was one that brought back the odd ache in her chest and the tightness in her throat. “Our keepers never looked at us like that,” she whispered. “No one has ever looked at us like that. It’s different here. Can you feel it?”
“Maybe,” Wolf said. He wrinkled his nose. “There is food in this big box,” he added, tapping the Dumpster. “But there is also food in there.” He nodded at the small brick building. “And the food in there smells better. Let’s go in and get some of it.”
Sheena looked down at her torn, dirty clothes, and touched a hand to her tangled hair. “We don’t look like the others. We should look like them before we–”
“We should eat!” Wolf rose up to his full height, went to the metal door in the back of the building, and gripped its knob. He twisted it, but it did not give, so he pounded it with his fists in frustration.
Sheena hurried to stop him, but then froze as the door suddenly opened, and a fat human female stood there, wiping her hands on a scrap of cloth and looking from one of them to the other. Her face
, which had been smiling, changed. “Oh, my! Oh, my, you poor dears. What’s happened to you? Were you in an accident?”
Wolf looked at Sheena, a question in his eyes. He was wondering what on earth this woman was going on about.
Sheena said, “We are very hungry. We need food.”
“Well, of course you need food. Come, come on inside now, and I’ll fix you up a meal.” She held the door wider, waving them in with one chubby arm.
Neither of them moved. They looked at each other, eyes wide and wary. There might be a new set of cages awaiting them beyond that door.
And then the female said, “You’re scared, aren’t you? Good Lord, what has happened to you?”
“We want food. Will you give us some or not?” Wolf could’ve said, “Or will we come in and take it.” Sheena was proud that he didn’t. But she knew, whether he said it or not, that was his intent. And the way hunger was gnawing at her insides, she would not try to stop him.
“Of course I will. Wait here.” She hurried back inside, leaving the door open. They did not follow her, but they did move closer–close enough to watch what she did.
The room the woman entered was a cooking room. Several other humans wearing white clothing and hats stood in front of long hot surfaces where many kinds of food sizzled. The others, males, poked and flipped the food with long handled instruments. There were flame burners where pots bubbled. Several of the cooking men looked toward the open door, and every face registered surprise and alarm. None, however, seemed hostile.
The fat woman hurried around with two large plates in her hands, stopping here and there so a cook could scoop food onto them. By the time she finished, both plates were heaping. She carried them back to the door and held them out.
Wolf snatched his so fast some of the food tumbled off the edges. Sheena took hers more carefully, not wanting to waste a morsel, but still afraid to be so close to the female. She backed away quickly. Neither of them touched the food, keeping their eyes on the woman. They knew better than to be distracted by hunger or the delicious smells wafting up from the plates while a potential enemy stood so near.
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