She couldn’t see it, but sensed the night closing in. Just under an hour later the bus turned onto a rutted road or drive, coming to a slow stop only a minute later.
Jasmine put her hand over the vid camera once more, signaling Xylvar the coming of a change of scenery.
The screen between the driver and the back passengers rolled down. “We are at our destination. After the demonstration, we will return to our original destination, where private links, etc., can be collected. Please understand these creatures are dangerous. Stay away from the cells unless we tell you it is safe, because if they grab you, they could snap your neck before we have time to react. And remember, though most appear human, we must at all times remember they are not. We aim for the greater good.”
We aim for the greater good? She’d heard that several times now, so it must be a slogan or popular catch phrase. She’d use it for some cyber digging.
Jen slapped her hands together. “This will be fascinating.”
Yes, watching a fellow human get tranquilized and have a needle shoved into their vein, and then watch their metal-rich blood fill a bag. Fascinating.
“Crea and Eli are everywhere.” She was proud of how she didn’t growl, spring fangs or claws, or turn into her beast and rip everyone within a twenty-foot radius into tiny chunks. Staying cool meant staying alive, and hopefully saving many Crea and Eli. And ultimately crushing the dark tide of hate washing across their country, and the world.
As her grandmother was fond of saying, if you eat the cream, there’s none for the cake. Killing this busload of scum would be the cream gone. And they needed the cake, mixed, baked, with cream on the side.
Jen stood, bounced on her feet. “Phht, I know they’re everywhere. I meant to see how they mix the blood with water and let it sit until the solids settle. The process, not the creatures.” She pulled her hair back into a ponytail as if arming herself for war. “They’re common as mud after rain.”
Perhaps, in the end, another war would be inevitable. Maybe this time they’d manage to eliminate ninety percent of the populations, and the natural world would have a chance to flourish once again.
33
Chapter Thirty-Three
Jasmine climbed out of the bus and took in the small cabin half obscured by trees. A long driveway led back behind them to the dirt road they’d travelled over the last couple of miles. Lit by the rising moon, she made out a ring of low hills surrounding what she took to be a narrow valley. By the positioning of the brightening stars relative to the lay of the hills, she guessed they’d come northeast.
“We’re not here for the view, please head this way.” An authoritative voice directed everyone toward a metal door.
Two men, a woman, and Jen ahead of her, a couple and single man trailing behind, Jasmine stepped into a small foyer. The last man, extremely tall and rough-looking, was the only person in line who looked the part of an asshole—the sort you’d cross the street to avoid. The others appeared to be everyday people. The person in the street you’d nod a greeting to.
The bus driver, a stocky man in his thirties with bright red hair and bright blue eyes, held up his hand. “At the end of our talk, we will supply each of you with details about how to set up your own compound in your home or place of business. As you have agreed, we expect you, our new chosen ones, to convert one place of residence or work into a holding cell. Once you have a cell or compound ready—” He held up his hand, bowed his head, then raised it as if making a grand announcement. “—we will supply the blood donors. Any questions?”
Jasmine’s neck itched and burned. CeeCee never indicated she had space anywhere to keep anyone. A tiny alarm started to ping. The blade between her breasts feeling suddenly conspicuous, she turned to Jen.
“No one has talked to me about having space.” She made the comment casual, although her were senses roaring to the surface. Her beast snarled and clawed to be let out. She gritted her teeth and shoved it down.
“Oh, I vouched for you. Said you’d for sure be able to find room.”
“My place has just one bedroom.”
“You’ll have to move. I mean, if you want to be in you have to make sacrifices, and put yourself on the line like I’m prepared to. The movement needs credits, and beyond the costs of food and water to keep the donors alive, there’s gold and silver to be had for free. We’re allowed ten percent. To cover costs.
The door opened, and the putrid air within hit. Everyone jerked back, covering their noses. Someone gagged.
Holding their victims against their will for days, weeks, months, with only buckets for toilets and unable to wash, was surely one of the most inhumane parts of this whole process. It spoke of poor planning, and maybe the rush to harvest the gold and silver. The recruits into the movement were being pushed hard and fast, too fast, which spoke of needing credits to fund something beyond training. It spoke of something big being planned soon.
If the movement wanted to do this long-term, surely plumbing would be essential?
She followed, head bowed slightly, as she took in everything without looking more interested than she probably should. These cells were smaller than the ones at the hot springs, not long enough for a large male sub to lie down and stretch out.
Through the appalling stench came a scent she recognized. A pallet of old blankets lay on the old, full-concrete floor of each cell, providing a bed, but all of them were naked, except the ones who bothered to use one of the blankets to cover themselves.
Shit.
A large Crea, his nose and right eye swollen to a blackened slit, his wrists red, weeping, and inflamed from what they’d used to hold him down, looked up, cold anger and hate in his gaze. “Looks like we’re for show and tell, boys and girls.”
Jasmine met his ice-blue and gold gaze, looked away. She felt rather than saw Ramine’s good eye come back to settle on her a moment. He’d recognize her scent as she did his, and would be able to see under the face goo. Know help may be on its way.
Even beaten and bloody, he was a professional. He wouldn’t give her away.
And now she knew where he’d been taken. She rubbed the back of her neck, used her pinkie finger to tap the vid view four times. The agreed code for friend in need.
She swallowed, and her stomach sank to her pelvis. Had Rich given up Ramine’s identity? Shared his plans to stay in Katoom? And then she recognized the man she’d thought familiar earlier. He’d come to Katoom Eli clan land to install new wiring, as he’d also done on Crea. A spy with Pure connections, but was he also linked to Rich?
She’d be finding out. She held her claws in, but she couldn’t stop her small, malicious smile.
In the end, on her beat, all traitors would die.
After everyone finished entering, they heard the distinctive rumble of several vehicles pulling up. Eight armed men trooped in. Everyone from the bus look around nervously. Jasmine inched her hand toward her belt and her hidden blades.
The red-haired bus driver put up his hands up in a classic, take it easy signal. “Easy everyone. Just precautions. These guys are here to aid us if we are in need. The Crea and Eli are stronger than all of us.”
Behind them, an iron bar locked into place, then the distinct multi-clicks of the door’s locking mechanism.
The redheaded guy put up his hands again. “That’s so no Crea or Eli if they do escape their cell can escape the building.”
So, they were now locked in with armed guards. Stay down, stay calm. She moved her hands from her waist and forced her beast to remain calm, to not freak at the very evident danger. Were the guards for the Crea and Eli in the cells as stated, or for the new recruits?
The man she’d recognized came to a stop facing the new recruits. At least as a human, he wouldn’t recognize her scent, and luckily if he had noticed her on clan land he saw her as Jasmine, not CeeCee.
He ran his eyes over everyone, his cold assessment causing several people to shuffle their feet, some to look down at the floor, others to
stare in defiance right back at him. Jasmine knew the process. The asshole’s version of finding potential leaders, troublemakers, and the ones who would always remain the workers.
Jasmine kept her eyes steady on him.
Ego game finished, he turned and walked to a cell holding a male Crea. “For today, my name is Ted. As you can see, though this male is large, we were able to apprehend him.” He shared a smirking smile, showcasing his crooked, yellowing teeth.
Ted walked to the next cell, which held a Crea female. “I have a secret to share. We have found when we take mates, it makes them both easier to control by threatening the other.” Ted picked up a long rod with a small electro-charger on one end, jabbed it through the bar onto the female’s arm. She spun to pull away. Ted hit a button, and she started to jerk, dropping to one knee. Her mate roared and rushed to the bars while gold flooded his skin.
Ted’s laugh was dark and slightly manic as he danced backward, releasing the female. “As you can see, easy to manipulate.” He said it as if caring for loved ones was a Crea- or Eli-only weakness. That Earth humans wouldn’t react this way. Which spoke volumes about his mental state. Hopefully the deadshit didn’t have a partner, a dog, or even a pet spider. Jasmine itched to snatch the blade from between her breasts and throw it into the man’s neck, watch him bleed out.
“We suggest you get yourself a similar item.” He held the electrifying prod bar out, making a pass of it so each person could get a better view of how it was attached, and how the taped-down wires ran up the bar to a small control at the top. “We have a member in the group who can arrange for these at a reasonable cost.”
He swung the bar towards Jen, who leaned over closer and put her hand on the end. It buzzed. Her arm jerked spasmodically and she fell back against the wall.
A cruel bark of amusement, Ted lifted the bar up and waved it slightly in the air. “Don’t touch. As you can see, just the tiniest of hits can affect us. Even the Crea and Eli, with their enhanced strength and senses, can’t block a shot from one of these. Electricity is a great leveler.”
Jasmine helped Jen stand straight. The woman jerked her top down and glowered. “That’s a prick of a thing to do.”
Jasmine bit her tongue. Yet Jen was excited about doing the same to the Eli and Crea?
“Language.” The man retorted, angling the prod toward Jasmine so she could get a good look at it.
“Of course, on a Crea or Eli, we have to hit the bastards hard and fast. Jab in and zap. There’s no time, especially with their beasts, to get picky about where you’re going to hit. Jab in.” he poked the zapper against Jasmine’s arm, gave her a cold glance, then pulled it away.
“Who wants the first turn on a monster?”
On Jasmine’s left, a stocky man in his mid- to late-thirties volunteered. “I’ll go first.” His partner beside him nodded quickly several times, a silly, excited grin twisting her mouth.
Stocky man took the bar, and Ted walked him toward Ramine. “This button here. You have to hold it down.”
On a quick nod, he jabbed the bar through, and electricity buzzed in a bright blue light along the front of the machine as it hit Ramine in the side of the neck.
“Fuck.” Ramine screamed as he vibrated. Head lolling back, he fell, hitting the old, hard, concrete floor, knees, then headfirst, with a sickening thunk.
Jasmine clenched her hands, her Eli claws sprouting and digging into her palms. She stared at her feet, forcing her Eli to stay in hiding, praying no silver bloomed to give her away.
The buzzer went again. Eli beast in control, she looked up to see the same man had moved the electro-prod down over Ramine’s chest, where he keep the current running, laughing and looking around at the other recruits while Ramine convulsed.
“He’ll kill him,” Jasmine yelled.
Ted pulled the bar away. “Yes, true. Enough fun. We don’t want them dead. Alive, they make far more money in the long term.”
The stocky man stopped laughing, blew out a disappointed sigh, and nodded. “Still funny.”
Jasmine mentally marked him as one of the first on her list for a claw throatectomy.
Ted turned toward Ramine. “Since we have him down, I want to show you how to quickly get the most blood from his system.” He held up a shorter bar. “I’m going to insert a syringe full of tranq into the end of this. I’ll then inject it into his arm. Give it a couple of minutes to run through his body before I go in.”
Jen looked at the bottle of dirty orange liquid he used to fill the syringe. “What sort of tranq is it?”
“For large wildlife. It’s used in zoos and on the African continent to take down elephants, rhinoceros, that sort of animal. We can use the stuff for bears on them, too, but we get more out of bottle of this, so it comes out less expensive.”
Good to know the Pures liked to budget. “How do we get ahold of such large quantities?” Jasmine hoped he’d give his source. All links to all areas and resources needed to be hunted down and destroyed.
“We will supply it through the group at cost. Now, keep in mind we can only milk sub-cattle twice a week at the most. We can take four pints of blood from a large male like this.” Then he pointed to the smaller female. “Two for a runt like her. Take more, and you could kill them, or they could take far too long to regenerate. Plus, we’ve found if you take too much, the blood provides less metal for the next few withdrawals, so it’s a false boost to the metal take.”
Ted threw open Ramine’s cell. “This guy’s out, so let’s go in, and you can watch me insert the catheter and take the blood.” Everyone shuffled into the cell, and Ted hurried over to a large steel cupboard, where he pulled out a cornstarch plasto-wrapped package. Back inside the cell, he pushed his way to Ramine’s left arm.
“This is our first drain from this male, so we don’t need to worry about which arm we choose. If I’d already taken blood from his left, I’d go for his right this time. We don’t want those precious veins shutting down on us.”
He ripped open the package and rolled Ramine’s arm outward to expose the inner arm. With a speed speaking of practice, he wrapped a tight band around Ramine’s upper arm, gave the inner elbow area a quick wipe with alcohol—“we use alcohol first, because infection could also stop a good flow of blood,”—and then slid in the needle. As soon as he connected a thin, clear tube, the bag attached began to fill.
Everyone except Ted and Jasmine oohed and aahed at the obvious gold shimmer in the blood.
Jasmine’s Eli demanded release. To stop the injustice. To deliver an Eli and Jasmine brand of justice. Her head started to ache from the effort of staying human, from not allowing her silver to rise, not allowing her beast to leap to the defense of those in need. She would get Ramine out. She looked at Ramine’s face.
He would be safe, as would the others. But it had to be the slow, shitty way, or there might be no way. Even in full beast, she could not fight all these people and survive the blasters.
Ted turned to Jasmine, giving her an up-close, hard look. Something wild sparked in his eyes, and she tried to jump back.
He lunged, grabbing her hand before she could knock his away, and held it up. “Well, lookie here. Thought your eyes looked funny. And Is that silver on that finger?”
A swirl of silver ran down the edge of her pointer finger.
He twisted her hand until the skin turned both white and red, trapping the silver under her skin so it had nowhere else to go other than bloom. She spun, and using her Eli hit his hand away.
Think fast or die. “I’m part Eli, doesn’t mean my human three-quarters side can’t agree with you.” Saying those words was even harder than watching them drain Ramine.
Some of the onlookers surged out of the cell, skittish of the monster in their midst.
Ted advanced toward her. “A quarter Eli is still Eli.”
“Lots of people have Crea or Eli blood in their ancestry. You might if you looked into it.” She covered her vid necklace with her hand. A signal she
hoped Xylvar would notice. This was going so far south, she could hear macaws.
She opened her mouth. A shocking burn hit her back, and she convulsed, lost control of her body, and fell. The burn and convulsions continued, and her world full of pain turned swirling black.
34
Chapter Thirty-Four
Jaz was down in the midst of a group of rabid animals.
Xylvar grabbed his link while digging the fingers of his other hand into the gnawing tension in his neck. The jeering of the monsters surrounding her horrified him more than the fact she’d been outed.
Her quarter Eli lie hadn’t held. As she lost consciousness, she must have lost control of her beast and flashed full silver. The crowd’s excitement over a free, easy-to-grab blood donor crackled through the small feed buried under her wig.
Oh yeah, there’d be dead tonight, and he’d be the one doing the killing.
Hopefully her wig stayed in place. Though he’d hidden the device in her bun, it didn’t equal safety. Pins fell out, buns unraveled. The feed from Jasmine crackled in and out, the distance being too great. He’d stopped following the bus forty minutes earlier. At several points of the drive, he’d spotted surveillance cars, and the road Jasmine’s bus took, ultimately turning to gravel and ending at a final property, would normally have local traffic only. A different van, out of hours for deliveries, would set off alarms.
And he and his chair would easily be recognized as Todd.
He had to call in help, and Katoom clan was his only alternative.
No time to waste. He hit contact and Kaid answered. “Where the fuck have you two disappeared to?”
“That’s the least of my worries. I need backup. Jaz’s been captured by a blood draining cell.”
“Fuck me. Where are you, and where is she?”
Xylvar gave them his whereabouts. “Pick me up, and I’ll show you where.” He wasn’t letting anyone go in without him. Rage rolled like boiling lava deep inside him. He wanted in. Pure sympathizer blood would soon be warming his hands.
Flames of Hope Page 27
