by Bocco, Diana
Marcus leaned against the wall, his whole body tight. Maybe stepping away from the hunt had been a bad idea. He hadn’t been outside the compound in a while, so now it was up to his guards to figure out the best route.
“There’s an old gas station on the way to Franklin,” Miles added. “We found a couple of rabids there last time.”
Marcus nodded. “You go and take as many guards as you need. I’ll post some guards at the entrance of the tunnels so they can let you in as soon as you get back. Oh, and Miles…”
“Yes?”
“Try to keep the screams under control.”
Miles frowned. “I’ll try my best.”
Marcus watched Miles close the door before he turned around and walked towards the window. He knew there was at least a chance the night was going to get very wild and very loud.
Last time the groups had gone out to search for rabids, they had made sure not to get too close to Franklin. That was because, much to everybody’s alarm, Franklin was overrun by rabids. The patrols had found them everywhere—hiding in corners, crouched in the darkness, prying from under staircases and through broken windows. None had come out to attack, probably because there was no human scent around, nothing to get their claws out and fight for. But Jaco had been very clear about what they’d seen: the void was a ticking time bomb just waiting for a spark to explode into flames. The look of madness was spreading and fast. So far, the rabids reaching the compound had probably been flukes, lost ones who had stumbled upon the place. But if the void kept spreading, the smells and lights of the compound would soon become a beacon, attracting every rabid from miles around.
And now they were willingly bringing one of them inside.
Open the door to the devil, his mind chanted.
Might as well start right now.
~*~
She was in the lab when Miles returned with a rabid. She didn’t even have to be told what was happening, because she could hear the howling rolling through the tunnels as soon as they got in.
Her breath caught in her throat and she froze. Terrible sounds of agony, of beast-against-beast washed over her. Her heart took off on a race, fueled by a mix of anticipation and paralyzing fear.
The real monsters are out there. Thanks to her, they were now inside as well.
She turned around to look at Cyrus.
He seemed to gather his thoughts before he got up from his work station and made his way towards her. “Let’s just wait,” he said. And she knew he meant, Let’s just wait for the king.
They didn’t have to wait long, because Marcus was down in the lab in what seemed like seconds. The instant the door opened, his eyes searched for her. Once he locked on her, his whole body seemed to settle. She moved closer, the screams still resonating down the hallways and reverberating in her ears. Her mind kept playing images of the rabid escaping and finding his way to the lab, to the only human down in the bowels of the beast. She tried to push the picture away, but the sounds of agony cutting through the silence of the tunnels were too terrifying to ignore.
He’s coming for you, her mind taunted her. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath.
“We’ll wait until it’s secure in the cell before going over,” he told her, and she could hear the hesitation in his voice.
“I’m fine,” she said.
“Like hell you are,” he whispered.
She looked up and into his eyes. There was genuine concern there and it tugged at her. “I’ll be fine,” she corrected, and then she added, “Just stay close.”
He extended a hand and grabbed hers just as she heard a clank in the distance. Metal doors banging shut. “I’m not going anywhere,” he said and then started walking towards the door, tugging her along.
After being inside the lab and surrounded by bright lights for a couple of hours, the darkness of the tunnels seemed even more gripping than usual. She’d started to get used to trampling through the tunnels without lights, but only because the last few days she’d been going in and out of the lab constantly. She always had a guard with her, mainly because the tunnels were a labyrinth of fake walls and unexpected turns she couldn’t decipher on her own. At one point she’d asked about a flashlight but had been told it was best to keep the tunnels in the dark. Whether it was to avoid being seen by potential enemies or to keep her from seeing what lurked in the darkness, she didn’t know. She suspected it was probably a bit of both.
But tonight, the tunnels were just as terrifying as the first time she had stepped into them. This time, it was because she knew what was waiting for them at the other end of the walk. Marcus’ fingers were tight on hers and she was glad for the touch, the warmth spreading up through her arm with a soft electrical buzz.
As they got closer to the rabid, the howls got louder and louder. It was a deep haunting sound that she could only describe as the sound of desperation. The thuds of a frantic beast that found itself caged. The sound of sickness. It could have been sad if it wasn’t terrifying. Her whole body screamed for her to run the other way. Marcus must have sensed her fear, because he tightened his grip on her hand.
“Stay away from the cage, Belle,” he said as they reached their destination. “He’s going to go crazy when he sees you.”
She swallowed hard, reality sinking like a stone in her already queasy stomach.
“Right,” she said, only because she was having a hard time coming up with words.
And then he pushed the door open. It took less than a second for the rabid to realize there was a human in the room, and then all hell broke loose. The rabid threw its body against the door, banging with such force it seemed like the whole room shook in response. She jumped backwards, part of her fearing the door would give. But it didn’t, so the rabid pounced on it again and again and again, oblivious to anything but the human scent attacking its senses. It picked up speed in between bangs, until everything became a blur of momentum and sound lurching around the cell.
It reminded her of a caged animal. There was truly no other way of describing it. She could barely see its features because of the speed of the movements, but there were flashes of skin and blood and agony blazing in front of her eyes.
She couldn’t imagine what it was like, suffering from hunger so frantic that it consumed you. Through the years, she’d seen what hunger could do to humans, but she’d never experienced it to an extreme. To the point where madness was the only possible outcome.
“Belle?” Marcus’ fingers moved over hers.
The voice brought her back to reality. “Can we sedate it?”
The rabid started howling again, a mix of pain and despair that sent a shiver down to her bones. Bang against the metal door. Howl. Bang again. The more time she spent there, the louder the room became.
“Miles, get Cyrus here,” Marcus said, and only then she realized there were other vampires in the room.
Miles’ clothes were covered in blood, part of his shirt torn to reveal cuts and scrapes on the skin underneath. Her whole body inched forward, the doctor in her ready to help. But Miles raised a hand to wave her off, guessing her intentions. “I’m fine,” he said. “The wounds will heal on their own in a matter of hours.”
Her eyebrows went up, curiosity pricked. “That easily?”
Marcus let go of her hand and moved towards the cell. Next to the rabid, he oozed serenity. It was a startling disparity seeing the two vampires face to face: the quiet dignity of the king and the madness of the beast in front of him. Just how easily one could morph into the other? “You’ll get a chance to figure out how resilient we are,” Marcus said, his eyes locked on the rabid.
The beast stopped its maddening spell for a few seconds, just long enough for Belle to see the blood dripping, its injuries bright red against its blackened sick skin.
By the time Miles returned with Cyrus, the howling madness had become almost unbearable. Her whole body was now pulsating along with the sounds, the screams grinding down into her bones until it hurt.
&nb
sp; Still, when Miles and Marcus reached into the cage to hold the rabid down so Cyrus could inject it, her heart hammered in terror. She waited for a few seconds for the tranquilizer to take effect and when it didn’t, Cyrus injected the rabid again.
“How much?” she asked.
“Enough to knock down an elephant or two,” Cyrus responded.
When she tried to step towards the cage, Marcus put his hand up to stop her. “Let’s tread carefully here, Belle. We don’t know much about their bodies and how they work. I don’t want it to wake up and find you just inches away from the door.”
A shiver shot through her. No, she certainly didn’t want that either. So she waited for a couple of minutes, her breath frozen while observing the creature spread on the ground inside the cell. It was a sobering sight and hard to believe the beast had once been as magnificent as the other vampires in the room. Now, it looked like a completely different species. The skin was darkened. Burned, maybe? It was possible, she guessed, that it had spent time in the sun and ended up with charred skin as a result.
But it was more than that. The ashy coloring of the skin seemed the color of sickness, as if the blood running under the surface had blackened and scorched the skin along with it.
Even though its eyes were closed at the moment, they still appeared sunken, as if they were slowly being absorbed back into the skull. And its face seemed hollow as well, the skin tight and dry against the bone.
In its quiet drugged sleep, the rabid didn’t look as a fearless beast; instead, it just looked sick.
“Cyrus,” she said. “Can we get some blood from him? A few vials. Maybe some skin samples?”
Cyrus moved quickly, getting what she needed. When the rabid twitched in its drugged stupor, the scientist jerked his hands away and waited for stillness before he resumed searching for a vein. “I think we might want to keep him sedated at all times,” he said. “Otherwise, he’s going to be screaming nonstop, day and night.”
Miles looked at the rabid and then Marcus. “We could bring the UV lamps here.”
She looked at both of them with hesitation. “UV lamps?”
Marcus frowned slightly. “If we turn them on the rabid, the light will weaken it. Make it less feral.”
She winced. “Won’t that burn? Hurt?”
There was a hint of wonder in the king’s eyes. “It will hurt. A lot. But it won’t kill it as long as we keep the voltage low.”
Belle shook her head. There was something intrinsically wrong with the idea. Sure, the thing inside the cell was a monster. But it was a monster because it was sick. Without the pestilence running through its veins, it might have been as magnificent as the vampires around her.
She didn’t even want to dwell on those thoughts. A month ago, all vampires had been monsters in her mind. But right now, the pieces on the chessboard had moved. Suddenly, they each had their own strategic place: the king, the knights, the pawns. And the rabids had become the opponent on the other side of the board. One false move and it was checkmate.
For all of them.
The thing was, she would much rather fix the sick than exterminate them. It wasn’t just a question of being noble—it was also about practicality. Because killing or torturing a rabid here and there would make no difference: the void would keep spreading and putting the few remaining humans in danger. But if they could figure out a cure and in the process also find a way to feed the vampires, maybe they all had a fighting chance.
She would sooner do all of that without any pain in the process. There had been enough pain already.
“I’d rather not do that,” she finally said.
There was something unsettling about the intensity in Marcus’ eyes gliding over her. She expected words to come out of his mouth, but he just stood there for what seemed like hours, a stilled expression on his face. Then he turned around to look at Cyrus. “Do we have enough tranquilizers to keep him like this for a while?”
“It depends on how fast he wakes up,” Cyrus said. “Maybe a few days, maybe a week.”
And then what? She shuddered at the idea. “Let’s move fast, then.”
The look on Cyrus’ face confirmed it. Wasting time was not an option.
Chapter 18
Every time he saw Belle at work, in her element, something inside him stirred. It momentarily erased her humanity and made her stronger, larger, more of an equal. And that was when his mind started to run with the idea of making her a partner. Keep her. He had no idea how. Make her a vampire? There hadn’t been a female vampire in centuries and even if he took the risk of turning her into one, he wasn’t sure she would go along with the idea.
He wasn’t even sure how she felt about him.
The only thing he was sure about was that Belle was keeping secrets. He could see it in her eyes now and then. When desire took over, when she truly surrendered to the connection between them, the real Belle was raw and passionate and a force impossible to ignore. But at other times, when they were surrounded by his kind or out “into the world,” she was guarded. She looked like she was processing information, safeguarding it for later on.
Jaco and Grayson had been keeping tabs on her during the day, following her every move. Part of Marcus hated spying on her, but part of him couldn’t resist the idea of knowing what drove her. She didn’t seem to have any friends at the compound. In fact, after a few days of consorting with one other female, she had seemed to lose interest and now spent most of her time either walking around the compound or surrounded by other vampires.
In a way, she seemed to be more at ease around his kind than she was around humans. Even if she wasn’t aware of it, she fit in well. Minutes ago, when she had refused to harm the rabid using a UV lamp, he could feel the wave of compassion extending through the room. He had been ready to hurt the rabid, and she—a human who had every right to want to kill the beast—had spoken in its favor. The whole world was turning a corner right in front of his eyes.
But that didn’t answer the questions he had, like where she had come from and what she had left behind. It wasn’t something she wanted to talk about, which probably meant she had much to say—but was choosing not to.
Whatever connection there was between them, it wasn’t strong enough for her to betray her secrets—so he had let it go, despite his curiosity.
Right now, as she was scrambling around the lab, the questions were back in his mind. Who are you, Belle?
She looked through the eyepiece on the microscope, then retreated back for a couple of seconds before moving forward to look again.
“What is it?” he asked her.
“I don’t know. I’ve never seen blood like this before. It seems… slow.”
“What does that mean, slow?”
Cyrus seemed to understand exactly what she was saying. “The cells, they don’t behave like normal cells. They respond slowly, as if they’re dying.” He paused for a second. “Which they are, I guess.”
She nodded. “I need healthy blood to compare it to this. Healthy vampire blood, I mean. I know what mine looks like.”
A blanket of silence fell over the lab and he knew why. Sharing vampire blood was not something they took lightly. Especially when a human was involved. There had been a lot of blood shed at the hand of human hunters, and over the centuries, vampire blood had become almost sacred. Never give it willingly. Fight to the death to protect it. Even though the circumstances were different, he could understand the hesitation.
He stepped forward, rolling up the sleeves of his shirt. “Take it.”
Alarms went off in every single vampire in the room. He could hear their hearts pounding in response, the halted breath in a few of them.
“My Lord, it’s not necessary…” Cyrus said, and his voice sounded tight.
He raised a hand to stop him. “It’s fine.” And then his eyes moved towards the only human in the room. “Isn’t it, Belle?”
She nodded, her heart pounding deliciously against her ribs. The sound was almost
musical to his ears. Enticing and warm.
The dead silence in the room got even deeper when she pressed the needle against his skin. As the blood started to flow into the syringe, Belle’s heart sped up, her breath slightly faster and more ragged. He blinked, trying to control the surge of heat flowing through his body, but the images of her sucking on his wrist were too powerful to ignore. His whole body woke up and Belle must have felt it, because her breath quickened to match the mood.
She looked up and glanced at him, their eyes meeting in an exchange of understanding. “That’s… enough…” she managed to whisper and there was a throbbing cadence to her voice.
When he moved his eyes away, it was obvious that every vampire in the room had caught the exchange. The sharp look in Miles’ eyes was clear enough, but the other vampires also seemed awestruck with the understanding of what had just transpired in the room. Belle’s heart was still pounding, and the sound alone was luscious enough to tell the whole story. The secret was out.
