Hunting the Dark

by Karen Mahoney

  I named her: Hunter. Predator.

  It was an uncomfortable realization for someone like me: someone who was only just getting used to the idea that I’d been irrevocably changed into something other than human. A predator of a different kind. Top of the food chain. But if I was part of a secret world that walked in the shadows, stalking their human prey (at least in the movie-version of my life), who was this girl? I mean, really? Where did she come from and what was she?

  Obviously we were being watched. I figured they wanted me to talk to the girl next door. Luckily for them, that was precisely what I intended to do.

  Gritting my teeth against the pain, I scuttled on my hands and knees to the transparent wall that separated us. I sat down and waited for her to acknowledge me.

  Her eyes snapped open and we gazed at one another across the width of her cell.

  I touched the glass. ‘Hey,’ I said.

  Subject Ten narrowed her eyes. Her silver eyes.

  I leaned forward. ‘Why do you have the same eyes as me?’

  She blinked. ‘It is the vampire virus – some of the effects of vampirism give me similar attributes.’

  I still wasn’t convinced by this whole ‘vampirism as a virus’ deal, but Dr Stark had seemed pretty certain. And why would she lie about it? I honestly couldn’t see what she had to gain, and could only conclude that, at the very least, she believed what she was saying. And maybe there was some truth in it. Maybe it did make more sense than magic.

  I didn’t know anything anymore.

  According to Dr Stark, this girl was a dhampir. Something impossible in a whole world of impossibilities. That freaked me out more than anything, and I wasn’t entirely sure why. Perhaps, on a quantum level, I recognized her as someone who had been bred to hunt me. To kill me.

  ‘So it’s true,’ I said. ‘You’re half-vampire?’

  ‘I am . . . dhampir,’ she replied.

  I swallowed, taking that in. Letting the new knowledge – the confirmation – settle into my bones. Her very existence could cause chaos among all the different vampire factions of the world, but also among the humans who knew about us. I wasn’t naive enough to think that the Nemesis Project was the only one of its kind. There would be others, just like Stark and Co., wanting to study and use us. And if we couldn’t be used: destroyed. A dhampir would give them the means, no matter what the good doctor would have me believe about her so-called desire to find a cure for vampirism. There would be plenty of others who would just be glad to have a killing machine.

  And what about the vampires? Would they want to destroy Ten? What would Theo do with her, if she fell into his hands? Were there more dhampirs out there, somewhere?

  I focused on getting as much information as I could. I didn’t know how long Stark intended to leave us here together, so I had to make the most of my opportunity. ‘How long have you been in this place?’

  She just watched me, as though trying to imprint everything about me in her mind. I got the impression that she wasn’t used to having conversations like this. I couldn’t work out whether she was upset, angry, or . . . anything else. My own advanced senses could still detect the tension in her athletic frame. She wasn’t as relaxed as she might seem on the surface, and yet she didn’t seem in a hurry to try getting out of here. Maybe she was used to being caged.

  I tried another tack. ‘Is this your home?’

  ‘This? No. I am not usually kept in a cage.’ Her face flickered with some hidden emotion. ‘I am being punished.’

  I pursed my lips. Why did she have to take everything so literally?

  ‘The Facility, this whole building, is my home,’ she said, uncurling her body and standing in one fluid movement. You could see the inhuman part of her in the way she moved, her limbs moving with effortless grace. She walked toward where I still sat and looked down at me through the glass. We were separated by what looked like at least five centimeters of reinforced, silver-lined glass, and I was still a little afraid of her. She’d already kicked my ass twice: once up close and personal, and the other time with a dagger to the chest. Her body was lean and compact, hardened by years of training. And yet, she looked so young.

  ‘Who Made you?’ I asked. ‘Where are your parents?’

  ‘I have no parents. I only have the Nemesis Project.’

  ‘Dr Stark is, like, your mother?’

  ‘She is all I have.’

  I pressed myself against the glass, wishing that we weren’t separated. I wanted to shake some sense into her. She was like a freaking automaton, but I also got the feeling there was more going on under the surface. That repressed energy I could almost feel in her was a dead giveaway. It was like an aura that I could sense rather than see; an explosion waiting to happen.

  I nodded slowly. ‘And I’ll just bet that Stark exploited your loyalty for all she was worth.’

  ‘She encouraged me in all ways,’ Ten agreed. ‘Trained me.’

  There was a long silence, and I wondered whether she would speak again.

  She surprised me by resting her hand on the glass. ‘I am sorry that I hurt you, with the blade. It was not my intention.’

  I wasn’t ready for her apology, but I tried to be gracious.

  I failed. ‘If you didn’t mean to hurt me, then why the hell did you?’

  She looked down at the floor. ‘It wasn’t silver.’

  ‘No, but it still hurt.’

  ‘I am aware of that.’

  I blinked. I wish she’d speak more like a human being, but she was entirely institutionalized. I was surprised that she’d survived outside of the Facility for as long as she had, these last few days.

  ‘Don’t you have a name other than Subject Ten?’

  She shrugged. ‘Why? That is my name. I do not have two names like you.’

  ‘Two names?’

  ‘You are Marie, but you are also Moth. It is confusing. I do not see the point.’

  ‘The point?’ I lowered myself back onto the floor and curled my legs beneath me. I was exhausted, and talking to this strange girl wasn’t helping. ‘The point is that I wanted to choose something new when I became . . . different. I was no longer human, so I tried to leave that part of me behind.’

  She folded herself back down and sat in front of me, in one smooth movement that gave her more grace than I’ll ever possess. ‘And yet you hate what you are.’

  I jerked back as though she’d slapped me. ‘Not all the time.’ I looked at her suspiciously. ‘How do you know that, anyway?’

  ‘I can see it in the way you move,’ she said. ‘You walk as though you want to hide. You don’t accept what you have become.’

  I looked away. ‘Maybe because I didn’t ask for it.’

  ‘What does that have to do with anything? What we are . . . we are.’

  ‘None of us ask for what we are born as,’ I said. ‘What matters is what we become.’

  I felt the truth of my own words. It was so simple, and yet I spent way too much energy hating what had happened to me and wishing I wasn’t what I’d become. I wanted things to go back to the way they were, but that wasn’t possible. All Dr Stark’s confident talk of cures was nonsense.

  Wasn’t it?

  ‘Did you believe what I said to you, earlier? I didn’t intend to hit you with my blade,’ Ten said.

  ‘Well, you had a good stab at it.’ I tried to smile at my own joke, but I think it came out as more of a snarl. ‘If the blade had been silver I might be dead.’

  She fixed me with that disturbingly piercing stare. ‘I would have used silver if you had been my intended target. Steel is all that is needed for humans.’

  ‘Wait,’ I said, sitting up straighter. ‘You’re telling me that Jace – the guy I was with – was your real target?’

  ‘Jason Murdoch,’ she said. ‘Yes.’

  I took a moment to process that. ‘But he’s human.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So why would you want to kill him? If Jace was your target, you had
a chance to kill him when we found you backstage at Stark’s talk. It would have been far easier to do it then.’

  ‘A crossbow at close quarters is not the best weapon.’

  She had a point. I’d thought exactly the same thing at the time.

  ‘And,’ she continued, ‘I was . . . surprised. I am not often taken by surprise.’

  ‘When I kicked down the door, you mean?’

  She nodded, and I had to smile. Perhaps my hasty actions had saved us after all.

  ‘If you were trying to escape from Nemesis – from Dr Stark – what were you doing sneaking around the University in the first place?’ Oh. The penny dropped. She had been going after Stark.

  Ten scowled. ‘You got in my way, and then caused her guards to find me.’

  ‘So you killed Nicole and Quinn, you were going to kill Dr Stark, and now you’re telling me you were also gunning for Jason Murdoch.’ I shook my head. So much death. ‘I don’t get it. He has nothing to do with you being trapped here. He’s innocent.’

  At least, when it came to this situation.

  Maybe Subject Ten really had gone on a rampage, genuinely lost her mind.

  ‘The Murdochs must die,’ she burst out, her eyes flashing with the first hint of real emotion I’d seen. ‘Thomas Murdoch is already dead, meaning there is only his progeny left. I tried to end Jason Murdoch’s life.’

  My mouth dropped open. ‘But . . . why?’

  ‘You said that he was innocent.’

  I opened my hands as though to say, And?

  ‘He is not innocent,’ Ten said firmly.

  ‘What are you talking about?’ I thumped the glass in frustration.

  Her voice was so quiet that I had to strain to hear her next words, and even then I didn’t believe her. Not at first.

  ‘Because he is my brother,’ she said. ‘Because he abandoned me.’

  Holy. Crap.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Never Say Never

  Because he is my brother.

  The words bounced around the inside of my head, like an echo that I couldn’t escape. I stared at Ten through our glass partition. ‘That’s impossible,’ I said.

  She narrowed her eyes, reading me with ease. ‘Your first response is to assume that I am lying?’

  ‘Because even if Jace Murdoch’s sister was alive – which I’m not saying I believe for one minute – she’d only be eight years old. You’re twice that, unless you’re super-mature for your age.’

  She seemed agitated, almost affronted at my words. ‘Dhampirs age differently. At least, they do during their early years. Their bodies develop at approximately twice the normal human rate, before settling during puberty.’

  ‘Honestly, Ten? I find it hard to believe. It seems unreal – like I walked into a melodramatic cliffhanger scene on a daytime soap.’

  Subject Ten shook her head. ‘I don’t know what that is.’

  ‘Don’t you ever watch TV? Movies?’

  ‘Ah, yes.’ Her eyes brightened. ‘Instructional videos on fighting techniques. Pressure points on the human body. Also, video demonstrations of how to kill vampires with a variety of weapons.’

  Wow. What kind of a life had this girl had? Even though she scared me, I couldn’t help feeling sorry for her.

  ‘That wasn’t exactly what I meant,’ I said. ‘But let’s go back to what you just told me about Jace. It’s not that I think you’re lying. I just need some evidence.’

  She raised her eyebrows in a disturbingly familiar gesture. ‘Do we not look like blood relations?’

  ‘It’s not that simple. Just because you’re both blond and pretty, that doesn’t mean you’re related.’

  Of course, it was more than that. I could see a resemblance, especially around the mouth and chin. Even a few of her gestures were now giving me goosebumps. But it would take more than that to convince me.

  ‘You’ve got to see it from my point of view,’ I said. ‘You look at least sixteen, but you’re saying that in reality you were born eight years ago. That’s a lot to process.’

  ‘Interesting,’ Ten replied. ‘You are a vampire, potentially immortal, and yet you still see things in such a black and white way.’

  I grimaced. ‘OK, I can see what you’re saying, but give me a break. Up until a few days ago, I didn’t even know Jace had a brother or sister. Not for certain. Now you’re telling me that not only is she alive, she’s also an eight-going-on-sixteen-year-old vampire slayer. Excuse me for needing proof.’

  ‘I cannot provide you with this proof you need, given our current position,’ she said, ‘but perhaps if I tell you a little of my history . . . perhaps that will help you to understand. Perhaps then you will believe me.’

  Hearing her say that made me feel bad for doubting her. Honestly, she didn’t seem like the kind of girl who told lies. She was very factual in everything she said and did – almost literal. Too literal. To have her make up a story about being a long-lost Murdoch seemed beyond her apparently creative powers.

  But that didn’t mean she hadn’t been ‘programmed’ by Stark to say whatever would draw me in. I didn’t really believe that, but it was good to maintain a healthy skepticism.

  I tried to make myself more comfortable. ‘So, talk. How do you even know who your birth family are, if you were brought up here at the Facility?’

  ‘I came here as an infant, but I was not born here. As I grew, Dr Stark told me a version of my background, but in recent years I have become more . . .’ She struggled to find the words.

  I helped her out. ‘Suspicious?’

  ‘Yes. I knew she hadn’t told me everything, but I did not realize that most of what she had told me was pure fabrication. I set out to discover the truth.’

  ‘Which somehow involved killing a lot of people,’ I said. ‘Interesting approach to investigation you have there, Ten. I see that morality wasn’t a huge part of your education.’

  ‘I admit that I have done terrible things, but I had my reasons.’

  ‘Well, it’s good to know that you recognize that murder is a “terrible thing”.’

  Her eyes flashed silver. ‘I am what I am,’ she said. ‘Killing is what I was taught to do, even from a very young age.’

  Listening to her was terrifying, and not because she herself was all that scary. Not anymore. If anything, I was beginning to understand that to some extent she really couldn’t help the way she was. Maybe I should be impressed that she was able to understand and acknowledge that murder was wrong. I very much doubted that Stark had taught her that, along with teaching her pet dhampir how to kill. If Ten knew something like that, had independently developed a sense of right and wrong, there might be hope for her.

  ‘Go on,’ I said. ‘I won’t interrupt you again.’

  This is what she told me: Her mother – also Jace’s mother, of course – had been attacked by a vampire while she was pregnant, and very close to giving birth. It turned out that Thomas Murdoch wasn’t the only hunter in the family, and his wife was also in the business. It was, incredibly, how they had met. (How romantic, I thought. The family that slays together stays together.)

  The vampire had tried to turn its victim, but something went wrong. Jace and Ten’s mother became what is known as Unmade. Not a fully transformed vampire, but no longer human. Very far from it. An Unmade vampire is closer to the true undead – sort of like a zombie. I should know, because I’d run into them before. As the poor woman lay between life and death, Murdoch Senior made the life-shattering decision to end her suffering.

  All of this had been enough to transform Subject Ten into a dhampir while still in the womb. It was a freak incident, something that might never again be replicated even if the circumstances were exactly the same.

  That’s how ‘Ten’ came into the world, but that is not where the story ended. Thomas Murdoch didn’t hand his motherless baby girl over to the Nemesis Project so that they could turn her into the perfect vampire-killing machine. Not only did he spare his daugh
ter’s life, helping his beloved wife to give birth even as she struggled with her own horrific transformation, he then found the baby a home. Somewhere she would be safe, hidden from those who might seek to profit by her. For he recognized what her true nature was, as soon as she had emerged from the womb.

  ‘I don’t mean to be weird or anything,’ I said, ‘and I know I wasn’t supposed to interrupt, but I can’t stop thinking about this. How does Quinn fit in? Did the Nemesis Project order you to kill him?’ That didn’t make sense either, considering that Ten had supposedly escaped herself, but I couldn’t make my brain move fast enough to keep up with the levels of crazy we were uncovering. I could almost imagine a video game powering me up. I pressed my hand against the glass. ‘Hey, I asked you a question.’

  Ten watched me for a moment. I could see the emotion on her face; tightly locked away, sure, but it was there. She was very definitely a Real Girl, and somehow that reinforced my hope for her.

  ‘Philip Quinn and his wife, Diana, were the couple that my birth father gave me up to for adoption. They were supposed to take care of me.’

  My brain almost short-circuited as I made the connections. Jace’s father hadn’t killed his unborn child along with his unfortunate wife. I bit my lip. Thomas Murdoch had given his potentially monstrous baby to Quinn and his wife. Murdoch must have known the risks, and yet he’d made an effort to save her – in a way.

  Subject Ten blinked hard, almost as though she were blinking away tears. I couldn’t see any sign of moisture, but her silver-gray eyes were looking a little red-rimmed.

  ‘Quinn was meant to keep me safe. Instead, he handed me over to Stark and her project when I was two years old.’

  Oh God. This was even worse than I could have imagined, and we all know what a vivid and twisted imagination I have.