As usual, he only blinked back at her, although this time he seemed a little taken aback by her forcefulness. Again, she squashed the urge to shake him and instead waved a hand back and forth in front of his face. “Hello? Are you functional? Do you understand anything I’m saying to you?”
Not a word . . . not a single, damned word. Just that same lightly wary expression she’d almost come to expect and which was growing increasingly infuriating. Violet exhaled, and her air came out through gritted teeth. Some kind of techno-classical crap was blaring through the mall’s speakers, and the burbling, pseudo-happy notes coming from every direction made her feel like screaming. Who the hell chose that stuff? “Look, let’s start simple. They had to call you something, right?” She pointed to herself, then tapped her chest with a forefinger. “I’m Violet. Pleased to meet you.” On a whim, she grabbed his limp hand and gave it a perfunctory shake, then dropped it. “Your turn,” she said. “Go.”
But the boy only stared from her to his hand, as if he couldn’t believe she’d done what she had, that she had given him a touch that was friendly and not meant to just hold on to him and run, or maybe drag him back to her. The smile that slipped across her face was one of grim resignation. “I could just as easily be a barking dog, couldn’t I?” Still no response. “Hey,” she said as an idea occurred to her. She motioned him to come closer and he obeyed, regarding her cautiously as she leaned down and put her lips close to his ear. “Woof.”
When the child only stared at her with wide, amazed eyes, Violet sighed and straightened, scanning the crowd automatically for signs of trouble. Just as automatically, she glanced back at the boy—
And jerked when she realized he was holding up both his hands, one with all five digits splayed and the other with only his forefinger raised. Now it was her turn to be confused, but at the same time she felt more than a little desperate—she needed to be able to communicate with him, to understand. “Six?” she asked. “What’s ‘six’?”
He didn’t answer, but that no longer annoyed her. They were making progress here—maybe he couldn’t speak, maybe he wasn’t physically capable of doing so. She wasn’t a doctor and she hadn’t a clue how to check, so his sign language would have to do. As if to confirm this, the boy raised his hands higher, trying to reinforce whatever he wanted to tell her. Violet chewed her lip for a moment, then experimentally put her hands over his, intentionally folding his smaller fingers into fists. When she let him go, he brought up the same six fingers. At least now she knew it wasn’t an accident. “So . . .” She tried to think, to turn it over and work it in her mind like it was a Rubik’s Cube. One plus one, two plus two. “So ‘six’ is . . . is . . .”
The child looked at his own raised index finger, and when he was certain she was also looking at it, slowly turned the end of it around and pointed at himself.
Violet stared at him, her mouth dropping open. Of course! “It’s you!” she blurted. “It’s your name? Your name is Six? Like a number?”
This time he actually nodded. She watched the up and down movement like it was in slow motion, then abruptly the moment ended as she caught a glimpse of another damned security team headed in their direction. God, they multiplied like lab rats. “Damn it!” She started to pull the boy in the other direction, but a wild glance over there showed a second team already on its way. Would this never stop? They hadn’t been spotted yet, but it was only a matter of time . . . of seconds. She had a moment of crazy indecision, then she knelt jerkily in front of the child and pulled a syringe out of a flat-space pocket in her coat. “Give me your arm,” she said and reached for it. But no one was more surprised than she when he pulled away from her. “Give me your arm!” she repeated sharply.
But something about Six had changed at the sight of the syringe—his eyes had narrowed while his brow had twisted in terror. His eyes were so wide that the whites completely surrounded his blue irises. Any trust she’d managed to establish in the previous few minutes had been swallowed up by the accusation that was suddenly in the boy’s eyes. “Damn it,” Violet growled. She glanced over her shoulder—so far, so good. “I may not be able to get you where I need you to go, but I sure as hell will get your blood there. Now give me your fucking arm before I take the whole thing!”
Perhaps she had misjudged his level of comprehension, or—and this made her feel very, very small—maybe the things the ArchMinistry had done to Six in their lab were so heinous that the memories overrode every other rational thought in his head. It was a horrible thing to consider, but right now none of that mattered. “Trust me,” she said in a low and dangerous tone. “As bad as these people are, the real monster you don’t want knocking down your door is me.”
She grabbed for the boy’s arm again, and once more he back-stepped out of her reach. Before she could leap for him, he shocked her more than he had since she’d first opened the white briefcase and found him curled up inside it. “If I scream,” he said in a quiet and trembling voice, “we’ll both be dead.”
Violet gaped at him. “So,” she said after a second, “it speaks.” She jerked her head left and right, then slapped the syringe back into one of her flat-space pockets. There would be time for a get-to-know-each-other conversation later; right now, they had to get the hell out of this mall.
Three hallways, two escalators, and an EMPLOYEES ONLY exit later, Violet pulled Six to a stop in the dubious safety of the shipping and loading alley behind the mall. She pushed him bodily against the wall before kneeling to where she could look him straight in the eye. “Daxus has no idea that you can talk, does he?” When Six finally shook his head, Violet didn’t know whether to be amazed at the boy’s ability to keep a secret or at Daxus’s stupidity in not realizing the learning potential of his lethal little lab experiment. Either notion made a slow smile dust her lips—good for Six. And this little guy? Well, he had a surprising amount of moxie.
“But you do talk,” she said thoughtfully. When he nodded, the next step Violet had was trying to work out in her head just how big his vocabulary was, how much she would have to dumb down her conversational skills. She wasn’t skilled in talking to children, had hardly been around them at all since becoming a Hemophage. She also wasn’t pleased that he had put her through what he had—why hadn’t he just spoken up right from the start? Fear, maybe—he had probably been afraid that her getting all the information she needed right from the start would make her abandon him.
“English,” he said suddenly.
Violet started, then stared at him in amazement. “English? English-English?” When he nodded again, she had no choice but to accept it. “That’s what they spoke at the L.L.D.D. labs?” She couldn’t help being astounded when he just kept nodding. “Ad Rasul,” she said, more to herself than to him. “Probably for secrecy—no one speaks that anymore. But you understand Thaihindi . . .” Another nod, so she continued. “And you speak Thaihindi.” This time when he nodded, she didn’t bother to hide her look of relief. She took a deep breath and studied the child. “What do you know about what’s going on?”
He didn’t say anything, but that was all right—she was no longer worried that he didn’t understand. Growing up in a lab, he had no social skills and he certainly wasn’t going to be a conversation whiz. She would have to carry the weight here and trust in her understanding of basic body language. By the expression on his face, it was a good bet that the kid knew next to nothing and he was mightily frustrated because of it.
“Okay,” Violet continued. “Look at me, Six. You at least understand that there’s a war going on, don’t you? Between vampires and humans?” For her trouble, Violet got that same look of bewilderment. Strike one—why would they bother giving him that information? “Okay, it’s not important.” She made a quick, instinctive check of the alley, but for a change they were doing all right. “Just trust me—there’s a war to the death between humans and vampires and . . . and . . .” Her voice faded, then she tried again. “And, well, Six . . . you’re human, an
d . . . you’re human and . . .” She swallowed and finally just looked him straight in the eye. There was no way around the simple, stark truth. “I’m a vampire.”
Clearly he understood the concept, because Six’s eyes widened, then his breath hitched a little and his gaze darted toward the questionable safety of the well-populated sidewalk at the other end of the alley. She placed a hand on his arm, careful not to grab—this time, she just wanted to be reassuring. “Look,” she said gently. “It’s not like I suck blood or anything. I’m just a little . . . sick.”
When he looked at her, it was with that same overly wary expression, but at least he didn’t seem like he was getting ready to bolt at any second. Violet gestured at herself. “Just listen, okay? Do you remember that I said what’s in your blood might be able to save my life?” When he nodded, she gave him her best gentle smile . . . although it’d been so long since she had had a reason to look that way, she couldn’t help wondering if it was convincing. “Six, your father, Daxus—if he really is your father—he put something in your blood.” She hesitated, then shook her head. No, that wasn’t right. She didn’t know why it seemed so important that she make him understand, but it was. “He grew something there,” she corrected. “And whatever it is, the antigens, they may hold the key to saving my life. But they were first and foremost built to kill me—and everyone like me.”
Six’s eyes narrowed again, but this time with understanding. “Then . . . those men,” he said slowly, “they’re all—”
She nodded, and the look she gave him was more serious than anything he’d seen from her before. “Yes. They’re after you. Right now, you’re the most valuable object on the planet.”
At the Needle, the battle was far from over.
Thanks to Violet’s incredible lapse in obedience and what Nerva could only believe was her sentimental stupidity—what else would you call her having feelings for some experimental human lab rat, anyway?—he and his only remaining two soldiers were facing the most disastrous situation they’d had in years. The human security forces were nipping at their heels like skinny little wolves hot on the trail of their next meal, and the insulated safety of their once-secret conference room was now forever out of reach. He and the other two Hemophages had gone into the stairwell after Violet when they’d gotten the report that she’d destroyed the Blood Chinois team, then they’d gotten trapped by the humans before they could get all the way down. Now they were in even worse shape—the humans had sent forces not only from below but dropped backup soldiers onto the roof from helicopters. They were headed back up and so far they’d managed to stay one floor ahead of their hunters, but now, on the twenty-fifth, they could go no farther. Each landing was segregated from the one previous and the next by locked entry doors, but they wouldn’t be alone long. Even through the metal fire doors, Nerva could hear the men’s boots tramping along the stairs from both directions.
To drive that fact home, Nerva and his men whirled and brought up their weapons as someone burst into the stairwell. So far, so good—it was only another ’Phage, a man they hadn’t realized had managed to survive the outside attacks. His black and violet eyes were wild with fear and fury. “They’re right behind us!”
Nerva gnashed his teeth, feeling the razor-sharp edges of his elongated canines sting against the sensitive skin inside his bottom lip. “They’re not going to stop until they’ve hunted us down and killed every one of us,” he growled. “We have to stand here.” He jerked his head toward the ceiling. “The lights,” he ordered. All three of his men immediately raised the barrels of their guns toward the ceiling; an instant later, at the same time as the hallway door burst open and the human soldiers spilled onto the landing, the roar of their gunfire was washed over by sparks and the hissing of electricity as they shot out the lights.
In the wink of time between the harsh glare of the fluorescents and the sudden darkness, Nerva’s gaze crossed the small expanse of space and locked with the lighter but just as fierce gaze of Daxus himself as he followed his team into the tight confines of the stairwell.
Blackness.
“Night vision!” Daxus shouted. “Go night vision!”
“Sir, we are not equipped!”
The semi-panicked whisper from one of Daxus’s men generated one overlong frozen moment of silence, then one of the humans’ form was silhouetted by a blast of gunfire. Nerva actually laughed as the Hemophages moved around the human like wraiths, enjoying his dark moments of victory as they happened again, and again. In the space of mere seconds there was no gunfire, and no sound.
Clunk! Clunk! Clunk!
Red emergency lights suddenly clanked on around the landing, casting a dark glow on the bloody human bodies crumpled on the floor. Of the humans, only Daxus was still standing, and as Nerva looked over at him, the Hemophage let a wide and ugly grin spread across his mouth. He knew Daxus and what the man had done, and it was high time he paid for his sins of genocide against Nerva’s brothers and sisters.
Incredibly, Daxus only smiled back at him.
Then sidestepped out the door.
Nerva snarled and moved after him. With Nerva leading, the Hemophages went after Daxus, following in an unhurried, ominous line as the Vice-Cardinal of the ArchMinistry walked down the hallway and turned into a doorway labeled SNACK ROOM. Just because they could, the Hemophages watched Daxus as he pulled out a sterile packaged sanitary wipe and ripped it open. He chose a clean coffee cup from a cluster on the counter, then peered into it and grimaced; finally, he cleaned it thoroughly, inside and out, with the sanitary wipe.
“So,” Daxus said without bothering to look up. “Are you going to kill me?”
Before Nerva or any of the others had a chance to answer, Daxus stuck his hand beneath his jacket; his fingers came back out wrapped around a small pistol wrapped in a medical-grade sterile covering. A small smile played at the corner of Daxus’s wide mouth as he methodically unsheathed it and fussily dropped the leftover packaging into the trash. “Do you think you can?”
The Hemophages’ eyes widened at Daxus’s nerve, especially when the human set the gun down on the counter, then lifted a coffeepot from one of the burners and filled his cup, all the way to its rim. He returned the pot to the coffeemaker, then carefully picked up the overfilled cup.
While Nerva stood back and watched warily, his soldiers saw their chance and went for it, yanking their guns up as they counted on the fact that the human was more concerned with his precious coffee than his own safety.
And Daxus killed all three of them before any one of them could so much as squeeze a trigger. One shot each, no fanfare. Just a triple blaze of incredible, almost superhuman speed, and that was it.
Daxus lifted his gaze to Nerva’s astounded one, then raised the coffee cup he still held in one hand, toasting the Hemophage with it. Not a single drop had spilled over its edge. “Now,” said Daxus as he brought the cup to his lips and took a sip, “I think you and I have matters of mutual self-interest to discuss.”
THIRTEEN
You’re unbelievable, Violet. You jeopardize everything by coming here!”
Violet faced Garth with her shoulders and back ramrod-straight, although she really wanted to wilt beneath Garth’s accusing stare. He was right, of course—the traveling eighteen-wheelers that the vampires used as bases of operations, medical labs and facilities, and weapons storage were safe only because no one but the Hemophages knew about them. The boy was human, and everywhere he went the human security forces eventually showed up. The semitrailer in which she and Garth were standing right now could be closed up and out of here inside of five seconds, but God forbid the humans should actually find out just how the vampires had been avoiding them all this time.
She swallowed hard and made herself meet his intense, intelligent eyes. “The humans want me,” she finally said in a voice that sounded very, very small. “Nerva wants me. I . . . didn’t have anywhere else to go.”
A muscle in Garth’s jaw ticked in anger as h
e stared at her without answering. His normally calm face was hard along the edges beneath his light brown hair. She didn’t think he’d ever looked at her so sternly, and it wasn’t like she hadn’t pulled enough stunts to justify it. But this one . . . oh, boy.
“Besides,” she gave him a smile that came out weak, “You have all my guns.”
He opened his mouth to snap at her, then shut it as a reluctant smile softened his tough, worried features. Finally, he looked back into the trailer, where the boy—Six—was nosing through the laboratory equipment. Clearly he was familiar with this kind of machinery; he kept his hands safely in his pockets and while he examined everything, he touched absolutely nothing. “So what’s his story?” he finally asked.
Violet tilted her head, feeling a little of the anxiety bleed out of her muscles. Paranoia had worked hard at her, and she’d had the horrible notion that Garth was going to stand strong and turn her away. That would have been a death sentence for her and the boy. “You tell me,” she ventured. Instead of answering, Garth inhaled deeply. Then, his face troubled, he climbed inside the truck and motioned at Violet to follow.
Thanks to flat-space technology, the interior of the trailer was much more spacious and well equipped than the outside implied. Rows of lights gleamed overhead, illuminating space that stretched out to at least four times more than the outer walls implied. The floor, like all the countertops and the walls, shone with medicinal cleanliness—Garth was a stickler for that, and just as anal retentive about having things put away where they belonged. His habits couldn’t be faulted; on more than one occasion he’d saved her life by knowing just where the right surgical instrument was to close up a badly bleeding wound, just what to combine to bring her back from the edge of eternity. In times past, Violet had wanted that, though now she was feeling her age and exhaustion.
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