Twilight Vendetta

by Maggie Shayne

  And the woman said, “We have no choice.”

  Half afraid to, Emma touched her tongue to her teeth, then drew it away with a gasp when it touched the razor sharp length of her newly modified incisors.

  “Oh my God,” she whispered. “I’m a vampire.”

  Chapter Ten

  Devlin woke, sat up, and shouted Emma’s name all at the same time. Then he sat very still and looked around to try and get his bearings. He’d expected to wake in a cell or someplace worse. But his expectations hadn’t even been close to the mark. He was in a bed with a mattress that cushioned him like a cloud, covered by a down-filled duvet of whitest white. Around him was not a cell, but a bedroom. Creamy walls and sheer ivory curtains over sun-blocking panels. Elegant furnishings, plush carpeting.

  The door, painted white with an ornate brass knob, opened slowly and the human man he remembered from the night before–Willem Stone–came in, along with the scent of warm blood. Devlin’s muscles tensed. He got quickly to his feet only to find himself wearing a pair of pajamas, white with gray-green vertical stripes. What the hell?

  “Don’t be alarmed, Devlin. We’re friends,” the man said.

  “No mortal is my friend,” Devlin replied.

  “Not even the pretty blonde one back in the cell?” The stranger held up a coffee mug that wafted the scent of life so strongly it nearly made Devlin’s eyes glow. “It’s from a bag, I’m afraid, but I warmed it for you. And I am a friend. My wife is–”

  “Right behind you, darling.” The woman who entered the room was all vampire. Masses of ebony curls danced halfway down her back and her eyes were huge and expressive. “Sarafina,” she said. “Aunt of Dante.”

  Devlin took the mug from the man’s hand and drank it down in a single draught.

  “You were on that ship with Rhiannon, weren’t you?” the vampiress asked.

  He nodded. “You a friend of hers?”

  “Not initially, but after trying our best to kill each other, we wound up getting along.” She shrugged, the fond memory showing in her eyes. She looked like a Gypsy, all multicolored skirts and golden baubles. Bracelets on her wrists, hoops in her ears. “Do you know how she is? I heard the Anemone was blown to bits by missiles. Did she escape?”

  He lowered his head. “I didn’t know.” The news rocked him in spite of himself. “I haven’t heard from her, from any of those who were still aboard....” He let that answer trail off.

  “You were close to them,” the vampiress observed.

  “As close as I am to anyone.” It would do no good to dwell on what might have happened to Rhiannon and Roland, to the children in their care. He would find out when he could and until then there was nothing he could do. So he cleared his throat and changed the subject. “How is it a vampiress is married to a mortal? He’s not even one of The Chosen.”

  “Suffice it to say, we have ways. Ways too complex to bother you with at the moment. No doubt your chief concern is in rescuing the beautiful hellion you left behind in the secret DPI internment facility. We’re with you on that.”

  “Then why the hell did you take me out of there?”

  “Because you were about to be caught out of your cell,” the mortal said, “and believe me, they’d have made sure you didn’t get out again. We had to move when we did. We didn’t have a choice.”

  Devlin’s eyes narrowed on the man. “How did you know any of that?”

  Sarafina glanced at her husband. “My Willem is an experienced military man. A decorated colonel and a war hero before he...retired. He speaks their language. Put an old uniform on him, and he can walk among them undetected. That’s what he did to plant the cameras in that place when he came to get me out.”

  Devlin blinked. “You were a prisoner there?”

  “Briefly, yes.” She lowered her eyes. And I’m not going to discuss what was done to me. My love still doesn’t know, or they’d all be dead.

  That would be preferable, Devlin said to her, mentally.

  Willem cleared his throat, looking from one of them to the other as if he knew they were having a silent conversation. Devlin went on. “I scanned for cameras, sensed nothing.”

  Sarafina smiled. “Rhiannon and I swap spells, charms and incantations whenever we get together. I’m pleased to know that the cloaking spell I used on Will’s electronics is still holding.”

  Then her mate said, “We have questions, Devlin. About those two teens who escaped.”

  “I’m sure you do. I have questions about them myself.”

  “Who are they?” Willem asked.

  “More importantly,” Sarafina said, “What are they?”

  “I can fill you in, but Emma first. Have they moved her yet? They intended to move her today, said that place wasn’t meant to house humans.”

  The odd pair exchanged a knowing look. “Not exactly a problem anymore, my friend,” Willem said.

  “He should see for himself what happened to her.” Sarafina held out a hand, long slender fingers, elegant nails painted red. “Come.”

  A cold chill shivered down his spine at her words. He didn’t take her hand, but he did follow her out of the room and into the hall of what looked like an extraordinary house, possibly Victorian, with tall windows, elaborately tooled woodwork, an elegant curving rail along the staircase, deep carpet pillowing his every step. “We used to have a very different home on the East Coast, but it was burned during the war.”

  The war. That brutal period right after humankind learned that vampires were real. Vigilantes had set out to destroy the entire race, and taken out a lot of ordinary humans with nocturnal tendencies in the process. Thousands of vampires had been burned to death while they slept, helpless to defend themselves.

  The stairs spilled into a magnificent space, marble floor tiles, crystal chandelier. A gigantic glass table with a floral arrangement as tall as he was, held court in the center. They crossed this room, a foyer, he thought, and entered a smaller one that was some cross between library and office. Desk, several computers, and bookshelves all around. There were six additional monitors mounted to the wall in two rows of three, and Will picked up a remote and aimed it at them.

  Sarafina put a hand over her mate’s. “First, you will tell us about the two who escaped. What are they?”

  “I don’t have time–”

  “Is it truly that long a story?” she asked. Then shrugged. “The faster you begin, the faster you can finish and see what happened after you left the facility this morning.”

  Devlin’s anger rose up in him, but he decided to comply just to get out of here and back to Emma more quickly. “DPI developed a drug that turns The Chosen into super soldiers. The drug gave them strength and speed similar to ours.”

  “BDX,” Willem said. “Yes, we’re aware of that experiment and its exploding heart side effect.”

  Devlin nodded. “DPI harvested semen and ovum from the BD-Exers to try to create a more durable super soldier. The result is what they call the Offspring. We found a dozen of them in cages aboard the Anemone, powerful children, trained to kill vampires. The two you observed in the cells were the eldest. The others were a group of four eleven-year-olds. There are three around the age of seven, and four toddlers.”

  Sarafina’s expressive eyes widened. “You freed them?”

  “Yes. Gave them names, worked with them to show them we were not the enemy. When I left the ship, Sheena and Wolf jumped into the ocean after me. I didn’t know immediately, and when I went back for them, it was to see them shot dead in the water by crows.”

  “Crows?” Willem asked.

  “Those black-clad DPI terrorists. They don’t deserve the term military.”

  “Damn right they don’t,” the former war hero muttered.

  “I thought the kids were dead. More than that, I felt them die. But somehow they revived, murdered several of the crows, and were tranquilized and taken prisoner.”

  “Then they’re immortal?” Sarafina asked.

  “I don’t
know. And I don’t know what other abilities they have aside from enhanced strength, speed, and ability to revivify after being fatally shot. That and that the girl was able to perfectly imitate the voice of Commander Hobbs.”

  “We saw that too. We also saw the girl, Sheena, fling your friend into an empty cell without touching her.”

  “Telekinesis,” Sarafina whispered.

  “What else?” Willem asked.

  “That’s everything I know about them.”

  “What became of the other children you found on the ship?” Sarafina’s heart was in her eyes.

  “I don’t know. They were still onboard when I left.” He looked at them each in turn. “Will you please show me what happened to Emma now?”

  Willem nodded, aimed a remote at the screens on the wall and brought one of them to life. “This footage was recorded this morning, shortly after I carried you out of there. I headed back, but by the time I arrived, it was done, and since I saw no way to get her out of there alone, I had to leave her. I’m sorry.”

  Devlin’s heart froze in his chest. “You’re sorry? My God, she’s dead, isn’t she?”

  Sarafina’s hand closed on his shoulder. “No, Devlin. Your love is not dead.” She nodded at the screen as the recorded scene began playing out.

  Devlin opened his mouth to deny that Emma was “his love,” but the nightmare playing out on the screen rendered him speechless. There was no sound, but he could tell what was happening all the same. Hobbs, shouting at her in her cell, gesturing angrily toward his. Emma, shaking her head and pretending not to know anything. Hobbs, striking her, then taking her from the cell and back down the hall. The screen went black, and Devlin’s throat went tight, so his voice came out strained and coarse. “Where’s the rest?”

  Willem was pointing his remote at a different screen. “We have to switch. The torture room is on a different feed.”

  Torture room? He recalled seeing it. The table, the instruments. Please don’t let them have taken her there.

  Willem pressed a button and a different screen lit up. Emma was strapped to a table, and Hobbs was holding a plastic bag over her head, his hands around her throat, while she fought as best she could within the restraints.

  “Take heart, Devlin.” Sarafina touched his shoulder. “She did not die.”

  He could barely stand to watch, and every cell in him was crying out for the blood of that bastard Hobbs. He wouldn’t even drink it, he would let it flow into the earth. It was too putrid to imbibe.

  “Look, her hand,” Devlin said, watching as his smart, resourceful Emma managed to grab hold of a scalpel. She held it in her fist for a moment, and he expected to see it jammed into part of Hobbs’ anatomy as soon as he moved into range. But then a woman entered the room, pointed at Emma’s hand and said something, probably a warning. Hobbs panicked, grabbed Emma’s wrist to jerk it away from him, and the blade sank into Emma’s thigh.

  Her sweet blood spurted and she began to fade. He watched intently as the light slowly left her eyes while the two scrambled to save her. Eventually, they got a makeshift tourniquet into place, but by that point the blood was no longer pulsing from the wound. It was trickling.

  It was too much. He knew it. They could not save her.

  And yet, the woman in the white coat rushed on, as if she still could, hanging a bag of blood from a pole, and inserting a tube into Emma’s arm. She gripped the bag, squeezing it to move its contents into Emma’s body more rapidly.

  “It’s too late,” Devlin said. It felt as if his heart had stopped with hers. “They can’t bring her back. I know death when I see it. She’s crossed the threshold.”

  Willem said, “That’s your blood, Devlin. The blood they took from you. See the label on the bag?”

  He frowned, looking again at the screen, noting the numbers on the bag. V-21464. “They gave her my blood....” Then he shot a look at Willem, who just nodded at the screen again, so Devlin watched, unable to look away. Emma’s skin took on the pinkness it had lost. And the heavy cloud of death hovering all around her evaporated like dew in the summer sun. He watched her body refill itself with life. The white-coated masochist replaced one bag with another, and then another, until they had used all they had taken from him, and Emma was beginning to fade from the screen.

  Willem said. “They wheeled what looked like an empty gurney back to Emma’s cell. I’m sure she was on it, but she won’t show up on film anymore. She’s a vampire now, Devlin. She woke to discover that with the sundown.

  “We have to get her out of there,” Devlin said. “We don’t know what the hell they’ll do to her next.”

  Sarafina looked at Will and nodded. Will said, “They’ll torture her. Clearly they were only so desperate to save her because they thought she could tell them where you had gone, or maybe where the uh...the Offspring had gone. They had no other reason to go to such lengths to keep her alive. None that I can think of, anyway.”

  “The pain will be intensified,” Devlin whispered. And silently, he knew that Emma must be completely confused right now, with no one to help her understand her new nature. She hadn’t even decided if she wanted the Dark Gift. To take that decision from her...that was unforgivable.

  But they would pay. He would get her out of that place, and those bastards would pay in every way he could imagine.

  After her torture and transformation, Emma had fallen into a deep and dreamless sleep for the remaining hours of the day. When night fell again, she’d come awake all at once, and since then, had been pacing her cell like a caged lion, wondering about the extent of her powers. She was a vampire. There was no questioning it. The fangs were her proof, but the way she felt was even more proof. She wanted to get out of here. She wanted to see how fast she could run, how high she could jump, how well she could talk to other vampires with the power of her mind alone.

  She felt like Spiderman after the bite. Like a super hero. Like a goddess.

  And then some a-hole guard marched up to her cell and darted her with DPI’s favorite vampire tranquilizer, and she was out again.

  When she woke again, she was strapped to that same table in that same room where she’d been before, when they’d almost killed her. Only this time the table had been tipped upright, so her feet were on the floor, and she was standing. The straps were back in place, and this time they’d added one around her waist and another around her forehead to keep her from moving it overly much.

  Emma felt the texture of the straps against her skin, the tackiness of the vinyl covered padding on the table behind her. She felt the coolness of the cement floor beneath her bare feet, and the low thread count in the cotton hospital gown she wore. It had been put on her from the front and wasn’t fastened in the back, so it barely stayed put on her shoulders.

  The two people in the room with her were the same two from before. Commander Hobbs, who was apparently in charge of this secret DPI-run prison, and the woman in the white lab coat, who was, she gathered, in charge of the torture itself.

  “Dr. Mengele, I presume,” she said, and almost smiled at the beautiful music that was her own voice. She’d never heard it so thoroughly before, and during her time alone in the cell, she’d had little call to speak out loud.

  “That’s not funny,” the woman said.

  “It’s accurate, though.”

  Emma thought she heard the woman say, “It’s not the same at all. It’s really not. They’re not human beings. They’re vampires. Animals.” Only the doctor hadn’t moved her mouth at all.

  Oh my God, I’m reading her thoughts! Emma realized it with a little surge of awe at her newfound powers. So many of them. So much to learn. She said, “I was a human being until you two changed me. And now you’re going to torture me for information I don’t have. When what you should be doing is talking to me. My God, don’t you want to know what I’m feeling? How this change has affected me?”

  The doctor did want to know. Emma felt it in her, but Hobbs spoke first. “The only thing we want
to know right now is where your friend is.”

  He’s so wrong. We want to know so much more than that, the woman in the white coat thought.

  “I can tell you one thing you’ve had wrong all along,” Emma said. “I don’t feel like I’ve lost my capacity for emotion. I still feel. My love for my father, my fear for him, it’s all just as strong as it was before. Maybe even stronger. Other than that, it’s pretty amazing. My senses are so sharpened, so heightened, I...I can see colors and textures in such vibrant detail. I can smell everything. Like right now, somewhere not far from here, there are men eating chicken. Fried chicken and mashed potatoes...” She wrinkled her nose. “...from a box. And gravy from a jar. God, didn’t anyone ever tell you people how bad processed food is for you?”

  She honed her senses further and heard the men talking. This was their last meal here. They were prepping to “bug out” as they called it. The vampire who had escaped knew their location and would likely return.

  This was good news for Emma. Or she hoped it was. If they were all leaving this place, they wouldn’t have as much time to torture her.

  “We need you to tell us where he went,” said the woman. So far, Commander Hobbs seemed content to stay quiet and observe.

  “I don’t know. We were both wandering when we met on the road. I was in trouble and since I’m one of The Chosen–at least, I was–he came to my aid. I told him about my father’s arrest, and he came with me to help get him out. I don’t know anything more about him than that.”

  “She’s lying,” Hobbs said. “Let’s get on with this, Dr. Bouchard.

  “And what about the two Offspring?” Bouchard asked her.

  She frowned deeply. “I don’t know what that is.”

  Hobbs rolled his eyes. “The two mutant fucks we had in cells when you arrived. We know the vampire was here to get them out. What do you know about them?”