Recombinant

by Shannon Mayer

  “Bioterrorism? What would I know about bioterrorism? I’m just a vigilante seeking justice, remember?”

  I released a sharp laugh, which sent a new round of pain to my throbbing neck. Blood trickled down my chest from the open wound. It was taking both hands to keep the gun steady. “If you’re a vigilante, I’m the Queen of Sheba.”

  A genuine smile tugged at her lips. “I can fix that for you.” She nodded toward my neck. Something flickered in her eyes…hunger.

  “Yeah, I’m gonna pass on that.” I had to get out of here. If I lost consciousness down here with her, I was as good as dead. I slid backward toward a wall and pushed my back against it, thankful that she stayed where she was. “I have a friend waiting outside for me.”

  “He’s not going to be of much help to you.” She said it as matter-of-factly as if she’d told me it was raining.

  “I’ll be the judge of that.” She’d lie to me without one ounce of guilt. I could see that in her. But I’d left Derrick in bad shape. Why hadn’t I called 911?

  The look in her eyes shifted to something that resembled compassion, and it warred with the hunger residing in the dark depths. Maybe I could use it to my advantage.

  A wave of dizziness washed through my head. I needed to get my answers and get them quickly. I pointed at the mangled body between us. “What was his name?”

  She grinned again. “Caine. But you already knew that.”

  “What do you know about the bioterrorism?”

  She took a step toward me. “I know that this matter does not concern you.”

  It was time to go for broke. I had to convince her that I was a player in this game—someone worthy of confiding in. I decided to throw out the name from the text. “What do you know about the Asclepius Project?”

  Genuine confusion drifted over her face, but it only took a second for her eyes to harden again. “Never heard of it.”

  That, I believed, but now it was obvious she wanted to know what I knew. I took a backward step toward the stairs, my legs shaking. I worried I’d never make the one-story climb. “Do you know where the facility is?”

  That got her attention. “What facility?” She took two more steps toward me.

  I jabbed the gun toward her. “Stay back. I will shoot you and I’m an excellent shot.” She didn’t seem to know much about anything, which meant she probably wouldn’t be able to help me.

  “I am sorry. I can’t let you leave.”

  I released another short laugh, hoping my fear didn’t seep into my false bravado. “My gun says you can’t stop me.”

  She leapt for me and I pulled the trigger, aiming for her heart. I expected her to crumple to the ground, but she kept coming. The impact knocked the gun from my hand, sending it skittering across the broken tiles. The shiny glint of metal caught my eye, and I tried to flip over to grab it, but a pair of men’s shoes appeared next to it and a wrinkled hand picked it up. I was about to beg the newcomer for help, but he handed the gun to the woman who was still holding me to the ground. My gaze shifted to her chest, blood seeping through her shirt directly over her heart. Her face was contorted with pain and rage, but just as I was wondering how she still had the strength to pin me to the floor, the butt of the gun headed toward my temple.

  And then there was nothing.

  CHAPTER 13

  LEA

  The bullet trail burned, the silver sticking to me even though the thing had gone straight through me. I clamped a hand over it and stared at Calvin. “How the hell did you get away from them and back here so damn fast?”

  He shrugged. “I might be old, but I’m not feeble yet. And you know that taxis in this town are fast when you pay them well.” He let out a breath and waved at the woman on the floor. “What are we doing with her?”

  I couldn’t help but stare at him. Something was off, something was different…and not in a good way. A subtle scent clung to him that made the hair on the back of my neck stand at attention.

  He pushed at the leggy blonde on the floor with his foot. “If I were forty years younger, I’d be begging to take her home with us.” His shoulders were tight and even the cadence of his voice was off.

  What the fuck had happened to him?

  I wasn’t fooled for an instant; I knew his avoidance tactics well. “Wrap her neck up. I don’t want to get too close.”

  Stepping back, I watched as he bound her wounds from Caine, checked her pulse, and then stood. Calvin moved faster than he had even a few hours ago. Only one explanation made sense.

  Putting his hands on his hips, he gave a slow nod. “There, she’s good to go.”

  I swallowed hard, fearing the worst. Fearing that I would lose my only friend if I was wrong. Calvin didn’t like to be touched, even more so when it came to me, but I had to know, and there was only one way to know for sure. Before he could react, I grabbed him and yanked him to me. The reporter’s blood was everywhere and my fangs itched to feel flesh under them. A poor excuse, but it wouldn’t take much to push me over the edge if I ate nothing. His skin gave way with a quick pop and the warmth of his blood coursed over my tongue. Calvin struggled for a split second before the pleasure hit him and he slumped in my arms. “I hate you,” he mumbled.

  I took only a little of his blood, enough to tie him to me. Rougher than I meant to, I pushed him away from me. “You taste like shit.”

  He glared at me and I drew in a deep breath, focusing my mind and putting power into my voice. I wasn’t strong with this ability, but it would have to be enough. “Who took you from the restaurant?”

  Calvin’s eyelids fluttered and his breathing shifted. “I’m not supposed to tell you.”

  “Did they give you blood?”

  “Yes.”

  Gods above and below, had he turned on me? “Did you...ask them to?”

  “No. They forced me and told me to forget.”

  Someone wanted to control Calvin, but how did they even know he was my helper?

  There was only one answer. That fucking asshole Victor.

  “Forget that you took blood, forget that I bit you. It was Caine who bit you, but we killed him.”

  Calvin frowned and then nodded. “That bastard.”

  I let go of the power and he shook his head. Now to act as though nothing had happened.

  “So what are we going to do with her?” I frisked the woman and pulled her wallet out of her back pocket. Flipping it open, I stared at her driver’s license, her blue eyes seeming to glare at me even from the photo. “Rachel Sambrook.” I turned the wallet upside down, but nothing fell out except for a single business card.

  I caught it in mid-air and turned it over in my fingers. Some government official named Sean Price. Tapping it against my cheek, I tried to think past the burning sensation in my chest. Fucking silver bullets, someone had come prepared. Obviously there were more ties to this facility than Calvin and I had realized. The pieces were scattered around us and it looked like Rachel was about to become one of them.

  “Why don’t you just let her go? We can follow her,” Calvin suggested.

  I considered it for a split second before shaking my head. “No, that will take too long.”

  “We on a sudden deadline?”

  The itch along the back of my shoulders and neck had nothing to do with the bullet hole that still burned inside me. No, it had to do with following my instincts for so many years. I knew when something bad was coming, long before it showed up. A trait of being a Cazador. “Yes, I think we are. Even if we don’t know why or how long we have.”

  He put my bag of tools away, being careful with the blood on the silver netting and pincers. “Then what in God’s name are we going to do?”

  There was only one answer.

  “You’re about to get your wish, Calvin. She’s coming with us.” I tucked the business card into my shirt and scooped up Rachel. “Looks like we’re going to get to know each other better after all.”

  Calvin pulled a small tin of gasoline out of my kit,
poured it over Caine’s body and struck a match. The whoosh of flames curled around me as I turned away.

  Carrying her up the stairs should have been easy, but damned if my body hadn’t suffered enough damage for the night. Breathing hard, something all but foreign to me, I reached the top and had to wait for my heart to catch up.

  “Looks like I’m not the only one who’s getting old,” Calvin muttered. I glared at him as he walked past me, minus his trademark limp. The vampire blood coursing through his veins was making him stronger than he’d been in ten years. Whoever it belonged to could control him—even from a distance. The smart move would have been to kill him, end it fast and painless. Draining him at this point would turn him. He would hate me forever if I did that.

  We made our way through the fence and to the car with no problem other than Rachel muttering in her unconscious state.

  The sound of a gunshot echoed through the night and I ducked low, holding Rachel against my chest. Slowly, I stood and peered over the car. A dark figure stood beside Derrick’s car, yanking his boneless body out and onto the pavement.

  I had no doubt that Rachel’s friend was dead. And somehow, she seemed to know it too, as if she’d lost a piece of herself.

  Rachel stirred in my arms, her eyelids fluttering. “Derrick, I’m sorry. I tried.”

  Reflexively, I tightened my arms around her. “That makes two of us.”

  I climbed into the back of the car with her, stretching her out across the mangled backseat.

  “Keep her head higher than the rest of her,” Calvin said as he pulled onto the road.

  I boosted her up against my shoulder, her breathing a bit uneven but her heart strong and steady. I handed her license over the seat to Calvin. “Let’s go to her place. She’ll be more comfortable there.”

  “Since when do you care about a mark’s comfort?”

  “She isn’t a mark,” I snapped. “She’s a part of this, though, and we can use her and the info she has to find the nest. There aren’t a lot of old vamps left, Calvin. And if they’re all holed up in some government facility, we could take them out in one fell swoop.”

  He was quiet for a moment. “You really think you can take them all out?”

  “I have to. Or I might as well give up and just accept that I’m one of them.”

  Calvin sucked in a short, sharp breath but said nothing more for the rest of the drive. He pulled up to a smaller apartment building in East Harlem. The night was waning, and the humans were mostly in bed. I scooped her into my arms again and headed toward the building. The front door was locked, but Calvin picked it in a matter of minutes.

  Rachel’s apartment was, of course, six flights up. Damn. Gritting my teeth, my canines clinking against each other, I started the climb. This wouldn’t be such an issue if I’d had a chance to feed. And that thought made me consider the scent of fresh blood wafting up off her wounds.

  I jogged up the last few stairs, surprised to find the door partially open. Not waiting for Calvin, I pushed through the door and beelined for the couch, not even pausing to take in my surroundings. I dropped her onto the cushions and backed away.

  The urge to feed swirled up in me, growing and groaning as my belly rumbled. I closed my eyes and sank to a crouch.

  “Shit, how long has it been since you ate? You know you can’t heal this many wounds without feeding.” Calvin’s voice seemed to come from far away.

  I couldn’t stay here. I ran for the door, letting my senses guide me as I bolted up the stairs to the rooftop. From there, I hopped my way to the next building and slid down the fire escape. When I landed in a crouch in the alley, I picked up the scent of a homeless man, his sleeping body slumped under a pile of cardboard. The odor of his unwashed body wasn’t enough to deter me, not when I was this hungry. I took him to the point of death and stopped.

  Tipping my head back, I licked my lips and let out a huge sigh of relief. “Thank you.”

  I tucked him back under his cardboard house and slipped a hundred-dollar bill into his shirt. At least he would eat for a few days. A week if he was careful. It helped to assuage my guilt over the fact he wasn’t a willing participant. He probably wouldn’t even remember my late-night visit.

  Once more in control of myself, I climbed the building, hopped the roof, and was back inside Rachel’s apartment in no time.

  Calvin sat in a recliner across from Rachel, a beer in his hand. “Five minutes?” He lifted both eyebrows at me.

  I shrugged. “I got lucky.”

  “Did you find anything?”

  He snorted and took a slug of the beer. “Didn’t even look.”

  “Lazy ass helper,” I muttered, but there was no heat to the words. I was better at the whole search and destroy thing anyway. Lifting my head, I tasted the air. Rachel’s unique scent was the top layer. But there were a few others as well.

  I pulled the card with Sean Price’s name on it. He’d been here—his smell of leather and gun oil was mixed in with the scents of several other men, including the now-dead man who was her friend. Derrick. Focusing on his scent and Rachel’s, I followed them through the apartment, retracing their steps. The other men who had been here had tossed the place as thoroughly as any human might. I was betting on government boys based on how similar each of them smelled. Uniformed from top to bottom.

  Rachel had gone into her closet several times, and there, under the floorboards, I could pick up Derrick’s smell again. Something hidden away that belonged to him.

  Bending down, I worked my fingers around the edge of a barely visible lip until I was able to pull up the wood slats of the floor. “Now that is interesting.” A huge dark green duffel bag was tucked into the hiding place. Taking hold of the handles, I pulled it out and started snooping. Lots of government papers, a laptop, disks, and several binders with seals on them that made me think this was what the army men had been after.

  Taking the bag with me, I left the room and sat across from Rachel’s sleeping form. The sun rose as I stared at her, wondering how she fit into this mess. Regardless, I would find out and either she would become an asset…

  Or a necessary casualty.

  CHAPTER 14

  RACHEL

  The first thing I was aware of was the pounding in my head and the fact that every part of my body felt like I’d been run over by a truck. My mouth was dry, and judging from my crazy dreams, I realized I must have one hell of a hangover. Only I didn’t remember drinking more than a couple of glasses with Derrick at dinner. Did we drink more after he came back from his meeting?

  I forced my eyes open, not an easy feat considering my eyelids felt like they were attached to ten-pound weights, and was surprised to find myself on the sofa. Had Derrick taken the bed? My clothes felt stiff, and when I looked down, I realized my shirt was covered in dried blood.

  I bolted upright in alarm. Oh, God. It wasn’t a dream.

  “Derrick!” I tried to shout, but my mouth and throat were dry and it came out in a croak.

  Sensing movement in my peripheral vision, I swung my gaze to the worn leather armchair, panicked to see the woman from my nightmare.

  “He’s dead,” she said, sympathy in her eyes.

  An overwhelming fear for Derrick along with fragmented memories of the torture dungeon returned to my memory, and I inhaled sharply. She had overpowered me after being shot point blank in the chest. I had no idea how I’d escape from her.

  “I shot you.”

  She should be lying in a morgue, or at the very least in a hospital bed, not stretched out in my chair with her feet propped on the coffee table.

  A sarcastic grin tilted up the corners of her mouth. “Yeah, and it hurt like a son of a bitch. But it’s all healed up now.”

  A grunt of disapproval steered my attention to the kitchen. An older man stood at my island, holding a cup of coffee. I recognized him as her buddy from last night.

  I was surprised to see her grimace. Did that mean the old guy was the one calling the shots? />
  “How are you still alive? Or not in a hospital?” She looked perfectly fine, and her clean shirt was minus a bullet hole.

  “I’m not like most people.”

  “No shit,” I said, scooting several inches away from her on the sofa as I tried to assess the situation. She’d knocked me out with the gun, and then she and the old guy had brought me to my apartment. I knew they hadn’t been holding a vigil, which could mean only one thing.

  They wanted answers.

  But I wanted answers too, so maybe I could use this to my advantage. Then I remembered she’d probably wanted answers from Caine. At least I wasn’t in a torture chamber, dangling from the ceiling in a net with my guts spilling out. Score one for me, but I knew if I didn’t tell her what she wanted, I was a hair’s-breadth away from her unique brand of questioning.

  Even the Taliban hadn’t resorted to those measures.

  The older man moved with more agility than he’d seemed to possess the night before, and handed me a glass of water. “Drink that. You’re probably dehydrated after all that blood loss.”

  I took the glass from him, not liking the way he was staring at my chest. Was he some old pervert? Was that why he was with the woman who was still stretched out in my chair? I could see why he’d want to be with her. She was gorgeous. Her nearly black hair was pulled into a French braid, but tendrils had spilled out around her face. Her eyes were dark and exotic, the perfect complement to her darker complexion. She was tall and her body was lean, but she had curves in all the right places that men loved.

  But for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out why she was with him. His body was slightly stooped and his thinning hair was gray. Wrinkles covered his face, and the thought of them sleeping together made me sick, kind of like Hugh Hefner and all those hot blonde women in his Playboy mansion.

  But maybe I could use that to my advantage, too. I’d study them both and try to figure out the dynamics of their relationship.