Vicki shrugged, basically ignoring her words. “Being his does have some privileges,” she said as she looked around the room one more time.
“I don’t care about the room.”
“Is he… violent?”
It sounded as if Vicki was hoping the answer was yes. Was this what it was all about? So much darkness around them and people were still worrying about who got the better house and the shinier car. Or, in this case, the fanciest room.
She didn’t have the patience to deal with this stuff any longer. Or maybe she just didn’t care anymore. The past twenty-four hours had been exhausting, she was in a bad mood and she hadn’t done any of the things she wanted—needed—to do, including finding the door and searching for Lori’s friends. Petty jealousy was the last thing she wanted to deal with at the moment.
“I need food,” she answered, wanting to hurry Vicki up towards the door. “Let’s just get out of here.”
Vicki’s gaze was fixed on hers but she was quiet. Even more obviously, she was annoyed. And all of a sudden, Belle was annoyed too. How long had Vicki said she’d been at the compound? At least four years. So she had jumped into the compound opportunity as soon as it became an option. And now she was wondering how come the newcomer had ended up with the shinier car. As if the whole thing had anything to do with seniority.
She pointed to the door again and made a motion for both of them to go. No way she was leaving this woman alone in her room. Vicki let out a sigh of frustration and then headed out without saying another word.
If it came time to fight and pick sides, Isabelle was pretty sure Vicki wasn’t going to stand on her side. The shinier car side was apparently a lot more appealing.
Chapter Fourteen
It had been a day of nothingness. She had spent most of the afternoon trying to find Lori’s friends without luck. How in the world did somebody disappear within the walls of the compound? Unless they both happened to be walking constantly ahead of her without her knowing it.
On top of that, the encounter with Vicki nagged in the back of her mind. The whole conversation had left a bad taste in her mouth and a sort of heaviness in her stomach. Vicki had followed her to the kitchen, trying to continue a conversation she had no intentions of indulging. Only when Vicki realized she wasn’t going to get any answers had she finally had left Isabelle alone. Even then, though, the ringing of poorly controlled jealousy had stayed with Isabelle throughout the rest of the day.
So much that even when she had managed to find what she thought was one of the secret doors—tucked away at the end of one of those going-nowhere corridors—she just couldn’t get excited enough about it. Not that it would have made any difference, because finding the door didn’t mean she could open it. There was some sort of hidden mechanism or code needed for the door to slide open—and she had no idea how to get it to happen.
So when Marcus had sent for her that evening, just as the sun was setting down, she’d been more than just glad to go to him. She hadn’t even realized it until then, but she’d been looking forward to his company, to his voice undulating in the room and into her body and her blood like music. Looking forward to his touch that awoke every single cell in her body. It was as if her body was organically hungry for him, missing him, aching for his energy. She didn’t like the feeling of urgency she was experiencing, but that didn’t mean it was any less real.
The second she stepped into his room, however, the air was different. He turned to look at her and his whole expression was darker than usual. Still, at the sight of her, his body relaxed, the ripples of his muscles easing down as she moved closer. He still looked massive and no doubt intimidating to anybody else, but she was beginning to understand the subtleties of his movements. To learn when the king had things weighing on his mind.
All of a sudden, she felt an unbearable urge to hold him and that set alarms off in both her mind and her body. It was a visceral reaction to his discomfort and one she could neither control nor deny. She wanted to comfort him, take the worry away. Comfort the monster. Comfort her monster, her mind corrected, and her heart went into a race.
He noticed right away, his eyes moving to her chest to trace the source of the sound. Then they immediately softened and his breath changed cadence to match the beating of her heart.
“Can you keep a secret, Belle?”
She froze, her body suddenly on edge. A secret. Another secret. For a second, she wanted to say no. Don’t tell me your secrets, Marcus. I’m the enemy. Then she remembered her brother and the people back at the house.
“Of course,” she replied, hoping he wouldn’t notice the slight wavering in her voice.
He hesitated for a fraction of a second. Just a slight flicker of apprehension while his eyes probed hers. Never had she been more glad she couldn’t be charmed. What kind of information would he have been able to get out of her if she’d been under his spell? Everything? Then he headed towards the door, his perfect form filling the room as he walked away from her.
“Follow me.”
And Belle had a fleeting thought: she was almost sure she’d follow him to the end of the world.
This time she stayed close to him as they walked down the tunnels. She still couldn’t see anything and twice she tripped and ended up crashing against his massive back. The tunnels had obviously not been constructed with humans in mind, as they were pitch black. Darkness down there not only looked thick, it also smelled thick. She had the distinct feeling that if she stretched her arms to the sides, she would be able to actually touch the shadows.
There was also a sort of murmuring quality to the tunnels. At first she’d thought it was her ears playing tricks on her, but after a couple of minutes, she realized the sounds were real, even though she couldn’t quite place them. It was like the tunnels were breathing all around her, whistling a tune of dense obscurity into her ears.
“Are we alone down here?”
Marcus continued walking in front of her and at first she thought maybe he was ignoring her question. The silence stretched out for seconds, as the whispering of the tunnels seemed to grow more intense.
“In a way,” he finally responded.
What the hell does that mean, in a way? She sighed and then quickly turned around when she felt something moving in the distance. It disoriented her for a second and she lost track of which way was forward until he spoke again.
“What is it?” he asked.
She swallowed hard and the sound bounced off the walls and intensified before fading off, as if devoured by the darkness.
“I swear this place feels alive,” she finally said, moving closer to him. “Are you sure nobody is watching?”
She could almost hear his smile forming. “I didn’t say nobody’s watching. They’re just not watching from right here.”
“What does that even mean, not from right here? Are there peepholes in the walls?” And as if it made sense, she actually extended her hand and touched the walls, searching for tiny holes. The walls felt dry and softly crumbled under her fingers. She moved her hand away with a cry of surprise.
“Relax, Belle. There are doors along the way, like the one to the room you used last night.” He reached for her and grabbed her hand. “We’re almost there.”
The touch felt electric. So warm and oh-so-right. Screams started to rise from inside her, telling her to let go, to not enjoy his fingers interlacing with hers in a firm grip. But she closed her eyes for a second, trying to silence them. She could convince herself he was the enemy most of the time, but when they touched, the buzzing of electricity between them was impossible to ignore and it made his all-encompassing, powerful presence almost too real to handle.
It also made the darkness a lot more bearable.
Letting Belle into his secrets was becoming some sort of a routine. This time, at least, was to his benefit. Or at least he was hoping it would be.
Her hand wiggled softly in his and instinctively, he squeezed just a little harder. To him, the tun
nels were peaceful. A cry away from the sounds of the night and the whispering of danger outside the walls. When he had them built, he’d specifically requested that they kept them as close as possible to their natural state—crumbling earth rather than perfectly smooth walls. It made the tunnels and the darkness feel welcoming—and he liked it.
Of course, he could also see in the dark, so maybe the tunnels didn’t feel as welcoming for mortals walking blindly through them.
Belle’s heart was thundering. It was a sound he spent hours listening to while she slept. Although vampires had a heartbeat, it was a very different kind. His heart beat softly, sleepily. The kind of sound you expected from somebody ancient and immune to disease or stress—which he certainly was. Belle’s heart rate was very much different. It had a mind of its own, spiking up and softening down depending on her mood and—much to his satisfaction—also depending on how close he was to her.
Right now, her heart rate had been jumping up every time it caught a creak or a shred of movement. But the second his hand touched hers, it went into a race. Her blood sped up and the echoing of the thumps against her chest became all the more clear. It was such an enticing sound, it instantly awoke his hunger. It took a near unbearable effort to push the animal down and keep walking. For a second, he was too distracted to even answer back when she asked a question. Something about the whispering of the tunnels around them.
The smell of her blood blended in with the wildness of the earth around them. It was an exquisite mix and he wished he could turn around and take her right there. Every hunter cell in his body was fighting to take over and he found himself struggling to push them down.
When he saw the blackness ahead slowly melting into grey, he was just glad the walk was almost over.
“There.” He pointed it out to her.
After a few more seconds, the corridors started to become lighter, as if a grey sunset was slowly moving in towards them. It took several more steps before they arrived to the small entry hall and stopped right in front of a metal door.
This was it. Once he opened the door and they stepped in, there was no turning back. Too late to change your mind, Marcus, he told himself, and pushed the door open.
Seeing the tunnels get lighter had prompted her to sigh in relief. Marcus seemed at ease in the tunnels, but to her, they were just frightening. Complete darkness was a scary place to be—you couldn’t anticipate what was coming at you and from where. And after years of being afraid of the dark, being devoured by it was probably one of the most terrifying things she could think of. Her mind kept playing tricks on her, screaming for her to be afraid of the monsters hiding in the dark. It was almost easy to forget that she was holding the hand of the biggest monster of all—and feeling safe because of the warm electric charge surging between them.
She wasn’t sure what to expect at the end of the tunnel, but it certainly wasn’t the bluish metal door that was waiting for them. Maybe because all the other doors seemed to be so secrete, so I’m-here-but-I’m not, that this one seemed out of place—and somehow more frightening than all the other ones she couldn’t see.
Marcus said nothing as he pushed the door open, and her whole body tensed up in expectation. She held her breath and got closer to him, using him as a shield.
The world on the other side of the door stopped as the king stepped in. The brightness of the room attacked her eyes without mercy. She blinked twice, then closed her eyes for a few seconds to fight the tears forming. Breathe, she told herself, just breathe. When she opened them again and was able to focus, she gasped.
She was looking at one of the most advanced laboratories she had ever seen outside of a hospital. The room from the night before was nothing compared to the giant space opening up before her.
Only after she had absorbed every little detail in the lab did she notice the vampires dressed in white coats and staring at her.
“My Lord, we weren’t expecting you here,” one of them said to the king, although his eyes were locked on Isabelle.
She was just as fascinated with the view in front of her as they seemed to be with her. Why did he have a medical setup under the compound? Obviously the room she’d used the other night had been just a tiny part of something much bigger. Something beyond her wildest expectations.
“Cyrus, this is Belle,” Marcus said, cocking his head slightly to the side, towards her. As if there was any doubt of who or what she was.
The vampire drifted his whole body slightly forward, and the skin on her arms quivered in response. The vampires here had a different air about them, one she didn’t quite like. The white coats didn’t help, either. She felt like an intruder snooping into a secret testing facility.
She looked around, searching for test tubes and blood-testing machinery. Lancets, tourniquets, and test stripes were spread around the room, sitting on tables and neatly organized on the shelves. Machines hummed in the background: a lab centrifuge, electrosurgery generators, cryosurgical systems. All you needed if you were playing around with blood.
Her heart hammered faster in her chest. Was that what they were doing?
“Belle?”
Was he testing her? Trying to see how much she could figure out before he actually explained what the hell was going on?
Her mind was spinning when she turned around to look at him. “What kind of blood are you testing?”
Marcus’ eyes flickered for a quick second. They got slightly darker, then back to light again. “Fake blood,” he said.
She shook her head slightly, as if that could help make her mind clearer. “What do you mean, fake blood? You mean a blood substitute?”
The vampire in the white coat searched for the answer in the king’s eyes. When Marcus nodded, he shook his head. “No, we’re working on artificial blood.”
It took a second for the information to click, but when it did, her heart skipped a beat. “Artificial blood?” Her mind was buzzing with questions and trying to pick which one to ask first was giving her a headache. “As in, to completely replace human blood?”
“That’s right,” the vampire confirmed.
It didn’t make any sense. The compound was full of people and she didn’t expect any of the vampires up there to be truly hungry. Unless he had something bigger in mind.
“Why?”
“We’re trying to figure out the perfect combination of nutrients for us,” the vampire—Cyrus?—answered. “So far, it hasn’t quite worked. We’re close, but something’s missing.”
Marcus shifted slightly next to her and his arm brushed hers. The electricity of the touch was enough to get her attention and make her turn towards him. He seemed different, as if the whole world had suddenly tipped on its axis and he had been staring at it while it was happening. There was a deep light coming through his eyes—not from, but through them, from somewhere deep inside—and the instant she focused on them, something hit her. She blinked, trying to absorb the emotions and the knowledge he was letting out. Can you keep a secret, Belle? he had said. Never in a million years could she have imagined the magnitude of the secret he’d been holding.
“Is this for the rabids?”
Marcus held on to the answer for a few seconds, as if he was trying to pick the right words. She desperately wanted to urge him on, hurry up the information.
“That wasn’t our original intention for it,” he finally said. “We were just hoping to find a blood replacement in case…” He paused again, his voice softer. “In case humans became extinct at some point.”
The words hit her hard and rocked her to the core. So they were worried about it too. The extinction of the human race. She had been so consumed by the fear of it becoming a reality that she hadn’t even thought about the possibility of the vampires worrying about it too. If humans disappeared, vampires were doomed. It was such a simple, basic truth and yet it hadn’t even crossed her mind all this time.
It was more than just the realization of what he was saying. It was the sudden understan
ding that they had a common goal: keep humanity alive and thriving. Maybe the reasons for it were vastly different, but this secret, this lab, could somehow hold the key to the future of humanity.
When she finally spoke, her voice came out shaky. “So this would make us… unnecessary?”
“No,” he said before she’d finished speaking. “Even if we figure out how to make this artificial blood work, it’s not meant to completely replace humans.”
“Why not?”
“Because it will only provide us with nourishment,” he said, his voice soft. “Drinking from humans brings other pleasures.”
A buzz resonated in her ears before shooting down to her chest and grabbing a hold of her stomach. Pleasure. Her mind flashed back to Marcus moaning while rocking inside her, his teeth grabbing a hold of her neck or her inner thigh. The look of ecstasy in his eyes had been as much about her body as about her blood.
She blushed and turned her gaze towards the lab. The puzzled look in the vampire’s face was very telling. For whatever reason, she was different. Not only couldn’t she be charmed, but all of a sudden she had been given entry to the forbidden kingdom. A kingdom so ancient she could barely manage to grasp bits and pieces of it.
“What about the rabids?”
Marcus and Cyrus exchanged looks, but it was the king who answered. “We don’t know yet, but we’re hoping the void can be reversed.”
The scientist in her took over immediately. “If the void is only caused by a lack of nourishment, rather than by some sort of virus, it should be reversible with enough blood.”
Marcus’ lips curved up slightly. Almost a smile, but not quite. “And that’s why you’re here.”
Chapter Fifteen
He had been waiting to break the news since back in his room. Now that he’d done it, it had just the effect he expected. She froze, her mind clearly going in a million different directions.
What to Read After FSOG: The Gemstone Collection (WTRAFSOG Book 9) Page 122
