I thanked him, and he left. Before he got too far around the corner, I called him back.
“Sorry,” I said. “But there’s one other thing.”
“That’s okay. Go ahead.” He wandered closer.
“That night at the complex. I was almost certain there were people in the surrounding buildings. In fact, there were lights on when Beth and I were knocking. And then when the shit started hitting the fan, those lights turned off, one right after the other. It was strange. It left me feeling like someone was out there watching. Someone other than Jessup, that is.”
Mac took everything in and said, “I’ll look into it.”
I smiled after he was gone for good. The fuse had been lit.
Settling In
Mac came through. The next time I was given a new bucket of blood, there was a set of clothing next to it. Jeans and a white t-shirt. They were mine, too, which meant they fit. I’d left them in my locker when I had changed into my uniform that last time. I was not given any shoes, socks, or underwear to go with my favorite everyday, plain Jane ensemble, but that was probably because the bosses were worried about me doing something questionable with my bra. What morons. The last thing I wanted to do was to hang myself. Hanging one of them, that would certainly be something I’d consider.
Later on that next day, a paper plate of finger food was delivered through the cell bars. One of the orange men in the puffy suits came in and used a pole to maneuver the saran wrap-covered dish through the slats. He also tossed in a water bottle with a plastic nozzle. It sure beat the slop they had left me before. I ate some of it, but I’d found that I didn’t need much in the way of solid food. A few bites were enough per day—a half a sandwich and a large swig of water. The blood was a different matter. That remained a necessary thing, and I was really pounding it back. I seemed to be needing more and more of the stuff, but it was also making me feel stronger. And in an attempt to be more civilized, I started using the emptied water bottles to scoop from the blood bucket. I could sip at my meals that way, and I made less of a mess than I did when I was drinking it with my hands. I also didn’t feel so disgusting afterwards.
The days themselves were a drudge, and to better know my limits, I attempted to go as long as I could without ingesting any of the red stuff. The longest I ever lasted was six hours. I felt at my worst then, like I wanted to tear out the throat of the next person I saw. When I drank some of it every three hours, everything about my system was better. I had energy, and I wasn’t thinking about it constantly, which made my overall mood much, much improved. An equilibrium was being established. But I was by no means comfortable with it.
At the same time I was testing my intake parameters, I received these constant visits from Castellano, additional interrogators, doctors, and even Mac, whenever they actually allowed him in. The others all wanted the same shit from me—obedience and information. I think the plan for me was to eventually go to work for somebody as a vampire hunter, or maybe even an enhanced soldier. But I wasn’t interested in being anyone’s pet Rottweiler, so I refused to respond to every word that was said.
On the other end of the spectrum, I found Mac’s queries highly stimulating. He wanted to know, in as much detail as I could give him, everything about the night I was turned. The fuse was still burning. He did not seem to be buying the official cover story any longer. But we had to speak carefully, in these whispered, improvised codes words that centered around how we felt about each other.
His primary concerns about the attack revolved around two issues—the call Beth and I were given to go to the complex, and the situation with the lights turning off in the surrounding townhouses. We didn’t get much in the way of a back and forth, but I answered everything he threw at me, with a smile and a giggle.
Our exchanges were these crazy tightrope walks. I knew how important it was that my body language toward him be genuine, both for Mac’s benefit, but also for any possible observers. My goal was to have everyone’s head spinning. I wanted them all off their guard. Mac included.
Way Down
I found a surprise waiting for me in the blood.
It was early on the tenth day of my incarceration, and I was gathering my first cup of the morning when I glimpsed it—a note written in black marker on the inside of the bucket. I had to tip the container to one side before I could read it completely. The chicken scratch scribbling said: BLOOD COMES FROM BENEATH THE BED. PEDESTAL RAISES UP, TUNNEL BELOW. BE ON YOUR TOES. HOLIDAY. MINIMAL STAFF. MUST ESCAPE NOW.
Whoever it was who wrote the note underlined the word ‘Now’, twice. Instinct told me it was Mac, but there was no way to be sure. My heart began to race. I guzzled down as much blood as I could stomach and got off my knees. I inspected the bed, strutting my way around it in my bare feet. The thing had been the center of my world since I’d first woken up, and it turned out to be my way out the entire time. I stopped suddenly, planted my left foot and kicked out with my right. I connected with the pedestal, just beneath the mattress cradle. The round post made a cracking noise and tipped over to a forty-five degree angle. I knew I was more than capable of something extra, but the power I’d put into the kick astonished me. The bed was steel, or something just as strong, and after one solid blow, it was now tilting away from me. I kicked at it a second time. The cracking sound was louder, but it buckled no farther. I closed my eyes and summoned all of my focus. I kicked again and the bed and the pedestal went hurtling into the bars. The collision made a racket, but did no damage to the outer cell, not in any way that would assist me. A coil from a pulley system lay strewn out across the floor like a snake, dropping down into the circular hole that had been left in the bottom the cell. Pieces of the lower portion of the pedestal remained connected to the open chasm in jagged, upward formations. I took the time to admire my handiwork. Without shoes on, little ol’ me had wreaked some significant destruction.
But freedom beckoned. I knelt down next to the hole and discovered some handholds in the dark. I stuck my right leg into the opening, dropping it downward until I could feel out another bar deeper in. My foot secure, I latched onto the topmost rung and began my descent. Fortunately, with the aid of my enhanced vision, I could see everything fine, this despite the complete blackness I’d found myself in. With no time to waste, I went down swiftly, link by link. I had made twenty rungs of progress when a light beneath me emerged. Somebody down there whistled, presumably at me. I gauged that the glow was coming from roughly thirty feet below. I shouted out a warning and let go. Air rushed by me as I speared toward the light. I slackened up as the bottom grew nearer. My feet collided with the metal and made the sound of thunder. The rest of my body dropped into a crouch.
Springing upward and feeling cool-as-hell, I turned around to the opening where the light was coming in. It was a door, an open door, and Mac was standing in it, dressed in black slacks and a pullover, armed and at the ready with his very own tranquilizer rifle.
“My, my. Look who it is.” I remained in the tunnel while we both made our intentions clear.
“Hello,” he said. “The plan is to get you out of here.”
“Thank you for that. It seems to be going swimmingly so far, but you had better back up. This is the closest I’ve been to a real live human being since, uh—”
Mac took the hint and executed three big steps away from me.
I tried to make light of the awkwardness. “Not that I had any intention of sucking your blood, but all of this is still new to me. I don’t know how long I’ll be able to resist, or if I can resist. Let me say this, it’s a good thing you have that rifle.”
“The rifle is not meant for you,” he said, right before he lowered it. “It’s for anyone else we run into. I’m going through with this breakout, but I don’t want anybody killed along the way. Do you understand that? Not everyone in this building is to blame for what happened to you.”
“But some are?”
<
br /> He nodded. “Some definitely are.”
I glanced at the monitor boards on the wall. We were in a security pod, a high-tech one. None of the equipment was familiar to me. But I didn’t see any red lights or hear any klaxon calls going off. I also saw no guards, which I found surprising.
On a nearby table sat a brand new pair of white tennis shoes.
“For me?” I asked.
“Yeah, you’ll need them.”
I wasn’t sure that I would, but I slipped them on anyway.
“We need to get going,” Mac said, all tough and rugged.
To me, it seemed best to defer to the man with the plan. “Lead the way. I haven’t got the foggiest idea where we are.”
He thumped his hip against the handle and opened the door opposite the one I had come down through. He exited; I exited. Out in the corridor were two men in silver jumpsuits, tied up back-to-back and gagged. Both looked unconscious, but I never got close enough to know for sure.
Sluggishly, Mac moved up the corridor, in no apparent hurry.
“Is there any kind of schedule to this plan of yours?” I asked, trying not to sound too ungrateful.
“Let’s get to someplace secure first. We can go over specifics then, I promise.” He stopped his advance and motioned me forward with his rifle. “You should probably take the point. We don’t have too far to go, and I can direct you if necessary.”
I gave him a wide berth as I moved past him. “You don’t trust me behind you, do you?”
He did not respond. He really didn’t need to.
Two + One
Mac leaned against the notes and memos tacked across the shoddily maintained bulletin board. “The thing is, the sun does not go down for another half hour. You cannot leave here until that happens. And we shouldn’t leave before you can leave. This is what I meant by being in a holding pattern.”
The ‘we’ Mac referred to were he and Sam Racine—his field partner from the Detail. The bulky, grumpy, mustachioed marvel had gotten mixed up in the craziness as well, apparently at the behest of his pal. While I was busy busting out of my cell, Sam had been keeping watch in the primary monitor room three floors up from where Mac and I funneled out. As it was relayed to me, this miraculous place we were all standing in operated as the central junction point where all information in the building was routed. If anybody had discovered I was not where I was supposed to be, warnings and messages to that fact would come through the main console, and Sam could have stopped them in their tracks.
From my perspective as a card-carrying technology hater, the room was just a morass of shining screens and consoles—with another unconscious guy in a uniform tied up on the floor. It was dinky space-wise, practically a closet, and the tight quarters were making things pretty difficult for me. I could only keep so far away from these two men who were risking everything to help me—Mac against the wall, Racine in a chair. I didn’t want to smell the stuff they had flowing through them, but I could. I had to resist. I needed to learn to forget that the blood of others even existed, to ignore it. I tried to think of the smell as cologne or some other manly scent that got me going. I could control those impulses, the sexual ones, and there was no reason I couldn’t control the blood ones as well.
I sunk all the way into the corner and pretended to mope. “So, no one thought about sunrise and sunset times when this plan was concocted?”
“Of course we did,” Mac said, full of instantaneous defiance. “But we didn’t know when you’d find the note. It could have been hours. But you found it right away.”
I rapped my elbow against the wall, repeatedly. “When can we get out of here?”
“An hour or so would be the safest. But we have to be prepared to scram at any time. If someone realizes what we’re up to, things are bound to get rough before we get out on the street.”
“And what are the chances of things getting rough?”
“Slim. It’s Memorial Day. And most all of us who work here are ex-military, and honor the tradition. That left a skeleton crew in the building to watch over you. And you know people—they only work hard when they have to. Sam and I have always been the exception to the rule. Kind of like you.” He tipped his head at the guy on the ground. “Ignoring the parking attendant, who isn’t able to get any farther in than the garage, we have everyone else in the building bound and KO’d. I think we’re fairly safe. But that doesn’t mean we don’t need to get far away from here as quickly as possible. All three of us. Out of the country.”
The guilt of it all was beginning to eat away at me. The sacrifices being made on my behalf were incomprehensible.
“Not that I don’t appreciate it,” I said to them both. “But why the hell are you doing this? You’ll never be able to come back, you know. They’re going to realize it was you who helped me.”
Sam sprang to life, reaching backward and giving Mac a nudge. “Tell her. She needs to know.”
Mac exhaled. “Well, the digging around I’ve done the last few days has born some fruit. I was given access to transcripts from several intercontinental briefings, from here to DC.” He waited until he was sure he had my full attention. “This has all been about you from the beginning, Grace. None of us grunts knew it, but the bosses did. They arranged it. They schemed to bring you into the fold. They needed someone, and you fit the bill.”
“Fit the bill how?”
“They wanted to know how the vamps are made,” Sam said, blunt and to the point.
Mac gave him the evil eye and went on. “The science geeks didn’t know how it was done. For years, they have tried and tried to recreate the human-to-vampire transition in a laboratory setting, but it’s never worked. Then they found Jessup somehow—the specifics of that I’m not at all too clear on. He agreed to show them how it was done, as long as he could keep his victim afterward. He insisted their test subject be “blonde and pretty”—that was the quote. The DC boys, of course, never had any intentions of letting you or anyone else go with him. If they could not recreate the ‘turning’ technique on their own, then the plan was to use you to ‘infect’ the people who they wanted to ‘infect’. The papers I was given did not explain who or what you would possibly be turning, but you can imagine.”
“People with experience,” I said. “People who know how to fight.”
“People like you.” Mac had the dreariest look on his face. “I think that’s why you were singled out. Your name was brought up in one of the briefings by a bigwig on the East Coast. There were no names on the transcripts, just identification numbers. This person informed everyone of your covert employment with the LAPD. This made you usable, he said. Special note was also made of your aggressive nature, and your unparalleled abilities in hand-to-hand combat. ‘No woman has better skills.’ The guy was real adamant about that.”
A stream of names flashed through my mind, all close associates of my father. “Do you still have possession of these transcripts, or were you just allowed to read them?”
“I still have them. They’re in the safe in my office.”
“I need them,” I said. “Before we go. Codes can be broken. It is not impossible to identify those people.”
“Are you planning something?” Mac asked me. “I can’t give you those papers if you are going to kill anyone over this.”
I was about to take a poke at his naiveté, but Sam did it for me.
“Oh, go grow a pair,” the big man said. “The scumbags who pulled this shit are way, way above the law. She should kill every single goddamned one of them. Drain them all dry.”
“Thanks for the support,” I said. “But I will not be doing it that way. I refuse to live like that, killing people for their blood. I control this thing. It does not control me. Besides, wiping all of them out is going to have to be a part of the long game. I need to get out of here first.” I held out my cupped hand. “And I ain’t doing that w
ithout some kind of weapon. What do you have in terms of firearms? I’ll take whatever you got for now.”
“You think you still need firearms?” Mac asked. “As strong as you are?”
My open hand hung there, waiting. “I’m not sure what I can or can’t do yet, or how much punishment I can take. But I would feel a fuck of a lot better with a gun in my hands. That way I won’t have to operate up close.”
Sam dragged out the duffel bag stowed beneath the main console. “Tranquilizer or gunpowder?”
“No tranqs. I want stopping power.” I bent down next to the bag. Tranqs were about all they had in there. After a moment, I spotted a Glock, the street cop’s stand-by, and a half-dozen magazines. I shoved the mags into my pockets, racked the slide of the scratched-up automatic, and tucked it into the back of my jeans.
“We are very friendly with the people who work inside this building,” Mac said as he propped the butt of his rifle against the carpeting. “Not all of them are bad people. You know that. You knew a lot of them, too.”
I wanted to be patient with him, but boy was it tough. “Look, the only people I intend to shoot are the assholes who wanna prevent me from walking out of here.”
Sam chuckled to himself. “You aren’t walking out of anywhere.”
“What does that mean?” I said, my focus swinging left, to where Sam was seated.
“Ask Mac,” he said. “All of this is his doing.”
My gaze volleyed back to his cohort. “Well, Detective, what is he talking about? How do you plan on getting me out of here?”
“The problem is,” he said, “we cannot take you out through the front entrance or the parking garage. There are too many cameras that will mark our vehicle and the direction we end up taking off in. That forced me to think out of the box. You have extra abilities now. That makes a lot of stuff possible that wouldn’t have been possible otherwise.”
One of Them (Vigil #2) Page 4
