by Unknown
"You're scared of that? They couldn't kill you."
"They could catch me. They could lock me up. Think about it, Robb. They'd stick me in a cell in a max security prison, do all kinds of tests on me. Leave me there until I waste away into nothing. Look how I am now."
His eyes bulged. His lips were bleeding from the cracks. His gray-white hair stuck out from his head. More white than gray, actually. Robb didn’t know if it had been like that the last time he’d seen Thad.
He looked like a wild man. Robb knew what would happen if he was deprived for a long time of blood. He'd turn into a living skeleton. He'd seen it before. He'd lived it before.
It wasn't long before the hunger took over, and then you turned into an animal. A wild thing. A monster. Monster...
"Can you imagine being in a dark room by yourself?" Thad said, continuing without paying any attention to Robb's response. "All by yourself, chained up. You remember, back then, when you were caught. How it was."
"I remember." Robb shut Thad up with one glance.
"Sorry. I shouldn't have brought it up."
"No."
Thad licked his lips, wetting them. The cracked skin glistened with the thin layer of moisture.
"So you'll help?"
"I said I would," Robb said. He regretted it already.
"Great. Okay. I gotta get out of here." Thad looked around hungrily, his eyes sweeping around the bar from person to person, seeing nothing but the blood flowing inside of the body. Robb knew that look, knew it all too well. "I'm gonna go crazy with so many people around."
Thad chewed at his lip, and the blistering skin cracked. The blood welled but did not get the chance to drip before being licked away by the tip of Thad's pointed tongue.
"I'll see you later," the old vampire said.
Robb watched Thad lurch out of the bar. He looked for all the world like an escaped convict. But soon he would be gone, and Robb could wash his hands clean.
One favor, one more favor, and that would be it. He could cut Thad out of his life completely after this one deal.
God, he was thirsty. He reached for the wine bottle and tilted it to the lip of his glass before realizing that it was empty. When had that happened?
Immediately he was sober. A whole bottle and he didn't feel a damn thing. One of the worse downsides of having a body that cleared out toxins so quick you didn't get the chance to enjoy them. He couldn't get drunk. The vampires had taken him too young. He'd never felt drunk. He'd never loved, not except Eliza.
"I wonder what it's like to love," Robb said to himself. He licked his lips. Liz had made him so damn hungry for blood, and Thad's talk had driven the ache of hunger to the surface. He'd have to take another one home tonight. Just one.
He looked over to the blond beauty at the end of the side table near the bar. As if moved by a magnetic force, her head turned slowly, evenly. She looked over to where Robb was sitting, meeting his gaze. He saw himself then as she saw him: handsome, obviously wealthy, young enough to throw her into bed and old enough to know what to do when she was there.
A catch. That's what he was.
Really, though, it wasn't him being caught. He was the predator, the hunter in the grass, and he would seduce his prey carelessly and quickly. It had ceased to be a challenging game a long time ago, he couldn't remember exactly when. There was no more joy in winning, only the ephemeral satisfaction of his hunger.
She smiled at him, and he smiled back.
Got you.
CHAPTER TEN
Liz parked down the street from Robb's apartment and got out of the car, clasping the cell culture to her chest. As she walked up to the building, she looked around furtively. The sidewalk was empty—it was two-thirty in the morning, after all. She wasn't sure what she was expecting. Robb's car wasn't in the parking space in front of the apartment where he'd parked it before. She went to punch in the elevator code.
"Excuse me!" A voice from behind her made her jump. She spun around, her purse held out in front of her. It was a security guard. Dammit.
"Excuse me, miss, you dropped this." The security guard handed her a slip of paper, the one with Robb's phone number on it. It must have fallen from her purse when she'd put her keys away. She stuffed it into her pocket, hoping that the guard couldn't see her face turning bright red.
"Thank you," she mumbled.
"Have a good night," the guard said, winking. Liz flushed even harder. He thought—that is, he assumed—
Well, what else could he assume? She was entering Robert Chatham's private apartment building in the early hours of the morning.
"Thanks, you too," she said, turning around to the elevator. Her fingers trembled as she punched in the numbers. Five, four, two, seven. She waited, and for a second there was no noise at all. Her heart rate doubled instantly. Had he changed the code? Would the security guard see? Maybe it would set off an alarm!
Then the lock clicked open and the door slid back. She stepped into the elevator and waited, then pressed the button to go up.
The elevator's motor seemed incredibly loud in the middle of the night, and when the doors opened with a loud beep she expected Robert Chatham to leap out from the doorway to catch her. She stepped out of the elevator and only jumped a little when the doors closed behind her. Taking a deep breath, she strode across the tile floor and swiped the card across the door reader, just as she had seen Robb do. The reader flickered green and the door unlocked automatically, swinging open. She stepped inside, the bright lights above clicking on and washing her in light.
She closed the door behind her, then reconsidered. If Robb came in, she didn't want him to think that she was a burglar or something, sneaking around. Well, technically, she was sneaking around, but it was for a good reason. Anyway, she had already lost all trace of her dignity. But if there was one thing worse than being caught by Robb in his lab in the middle of the night, it was being caught by Robb with pepper spray or a gun, or something worse. She imagined the door lock snapping shut behind her and tear gas being piped in through the vents.
"Oh, shut up, Liz," she said to herself. Booby traps! Robert Chatham wouldn't booby trap his own lab. Still, she left the door behind her slightly ajar.
Liz set the cell culture on the lab table next to the cytometer. She brushed her hair back with her fingers and dug into her pocket for a hair tie, but there was only the slip of paper with Robb's phone number on it. Rats. She turned her attention to the cytometer.
Lord, it was beautiful. There were ten lasers, each with multiple detectors on it. She could label any kind of antibody she wanted with this machine. And there was even a digital imager so that she could analyze the fluorescent signal location on the surface of individual cells.
Perfect, perfect. This was the kind of cytometer she'd always wanted. With the old one at the lab, it would take six times as long to analyze the samples, and she would have to change the settings on the machine for every run. Here, she could press a single button and be done. Again she marveled at the scientific power that money could buy.
Liz loaded up the cultures into the machine and wiped down the glass front with alcohol—the equipment was so clean that she couldn't imagine anyone else having ever used it. She didn't want to be the first person to leave a fingerprint on the cytometer. But when she went to throw the wipe into the trash, she noticed a few vials carelessly tossed inside.
"These should be in the hazardous waste container," she murmured. She bent to pick them up and thought better of it. Looking around, she found a box of latex gloves on the lab table and pulled one on, then returned to the trash. Blood vials were like batteries - they should never be thrown away with the regular trash. She frowned to think that with all of this equipment and cleanliness, whoever was working here last had neglected this important safety precaution. Crossing the room to the bright yellow waste container, she was about to throw away the vials properly when a label on one vial caught her eye. It had been ripped off hastily, and part of the printed
label was still legible under a smear of blood. That wasn't what caught her attention, though. What caught her attention was the name on the label.
Robert Chatham.
Her hand paused, suspended over the hazmat container as though waiting for the label to change. Why would Robb be testing his own blood? Control groups were always done by random samples, and the last geneticist to use his own blood in a breakthrough method to sequence DNA had been ridiculed by the scientific community. But if he wasn't using his blood as a control, what was he testing it for?
Liz realized that her arm was no longer extended out toward the hazmat container. She looked at the vial gleaming red in her fingers, then looked around. Curiosity prickled the back of her neck. The mysterious, handsome Robert Chatham had a secret, and she was holding it in her hand.
She didn't want to throw it out. Why not? Something about it attracted her, a puzzle that she had not yet figured out. With a shrug, she pulled the latex glove off and around the vial of blood to protect it, and slipped it quickly into her pocket. In the back of her mind she told herself that she wanted to ask him about it later, but in reality she didn't know why she'd taken the vial. A dark curiosity.
She ran the cells through the cytometer, sat back, and waited for the results. She yawned, suddenly tired. The adrenaline from being confronted by the security guard had worn off by now, and the lateness of the hour was beginning to seep into her body like lead. She rubbed her eyes and realized that she must look like a mad scientist, with red bleary eyes and her thick dark hair let loose over her shoulders. If only mad scientists wore oversized sweatshirts, the image would be complete. The machine beeped, and Liz looked at the screen, letting her finger run over the concentration readouts. She rubbed at her eyes and looked again. The results were the same as before.
Liz frowned. Why would there be such a high plasma cell count in a myeloid cell line? She would have to check the cell cultures that had not yet been irradiated to see if they had the same anomaly, but stupidly she'd left those back at the university lab. She bent her head, her fingers rubbing at her temples. She'd have to go through and see if the radiation chamber had somehow become contaminated with lymphoid cells. Maybe another lab had been using their equipment—
Another beep made her look up from the table. She hadn't set the cytometer to do another run. Then she saw movement past the machine, and she peered around, eyes widening as she realized what she’d heard. It was the beep to the elevator. And what she saw next made her breath stop in her throat.
It was Robb. And he wasn't alone.
A high giggle rang out from the foyer, and Liz froze in her seat as she saw Robb fall backwards onto the leather couch, the woman he was with falling over on top of him. He grabbed her ass and said something that made her laugh again. Liz could only see their legs now, as the woman straddled Robb and they began to make out, Robb's hand inching up her thigh and under her dress.
Blood rose to Liz's face as she watched through the sliver of open doorway. Surely he would see that the lab door was open. Maybe she should make some noise to alert them that there was someone there. Or maybe they would go into Robb's apartment soon.
She couldn't tear her eyes away from the couple embracing on the couch, even though she knew it was wrong to watch. Robb's face came into sight, and Liz held her breath as she watched his lips kiss the woman's delicate neck, her blond hair falling straight behind her shoulders and down her back. He brushed back the hair and kissed her just under her ear.
Liz was sick with jealousy, and though she did not want to admit it to herself, the old emotions welled up in her with a twisting pain in her heart. It was always the thin blonde girl that got the guy, and Liz was left to go home alone, or worse, with a guy who'd struck out with all the other prospects. The hot flush on her face was joined by a pressure behind her eyes that could have been tears, if she had allowed them. Instead she blinked hard and stood up, preparing to shuffle some papers, clink together some beakers, and draw attention in that way. She had to get out of here and get home, somewhere where she could curl up and be tired and hurt and sad all by herself.
Her hand was reaching out for the glassware, but before she could make a noise to give herself away she saw something that made her stop. Robb's lips had parted, and he was—was he biting the girl? His lips opened on her neck. Her mouth went dry. No. A trickle of blood began to run down the girl's neck. Blood?
Robb licked the blood, his tongue stained a bright scarlet. His eyes were shut, and the expression on his face was something akin to ecstasy as his tongue slipped across his lips. Liz swallowed hard. Her body was reacting fiercely to the scene in front of her, and she could not control the thrills of desire and envy that tore through her nerves. If it had been her, if Robb had pressed his lips to her neck—
He opened his eyes, and through the crack of the doorway his gaze met hers.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Robb held the woman's gaze for another moment before reaching into his pocket and pulling out his wallet. The thirst inside of him was parching his throat, and it took all of his effort not to lick his lips. He threw the money on the table and walked over to where the woman was sitting alone at her table.
"Mind if I sit?" he asked, pulling out the chair before he got an answer.
The conversation was as bland as he thought it would be, and more than once he thought about standing up and leaving. He could go home and drink more wine and maybe get some rest. Call Doctor Vasin and let him know that he had another client. Get Gerry to make him one or four of his famously strong martinis—as the saying went, two was too many and three was not enough.
But he was hungry.
Hungry. Thirsty. He used the words interchangeably now. Food and drink passed through him as it would any human, but neither one sated the dark appetite that they had given him. When he went without blood for a long time he would inevitably grow empty inside. His body would weaken, his energy would be sapped.
Black ghosts. That's what he'd used to call them. A better term than vampyr, or whatever they called them nowadays. He felt as though he moved through the world without touching it, his only mark the traces of darkness he left behind in the healed necks of his victims.
Once he had tried to commit suicide, a long time ago. Before he knew how to satisfy his cravings without killing. He had walked into the deep forests of England until he was too weak to walk, and then he lay down on the forest floor waiting to die. He lay there for days, weeks. His body shivered and his limbs jerked with pain. His stomach turned on itself and his lips bled freely, scabbed, cracked, and bled again. The only water he drank was the dew that condensed on his lips. He became little more than a pale skeleton, eyes hollow, heart empty.
Still, he did not die.
Finally a squirrel had come too close and he'd killed it. He waited another day before drinking the stale blood, and then he gave up and crawled back to London. There was no way to kill himself, and dying for all eternity in the middle of the forest was no way to live. Even for someone who'd given up hope at feeling human emotion.
Since then he'd figured out that you didn't need to kill to survive, though he'd had to change names a few times before settling on Robert Chatham. Robert—his real name, his given name. The name he'd had back when he'd been human. Life couldn't have been better. He invested his money wisely and soon was living the lifestyle of a billionaire playboy, without any thought to what came next. He'd had so much fun as Robert Chatham that he'd lived three lives under that name—the second Robert Chatham travelled abroad, and by the time Robb came back as Robert Chatham III, those who had known him the first time believed that he was the grandson of the billionaire. It was a clever ruse, only made possible by Doctor Vasin.
Lately, though, he'd been starting to grow itchy. Not for travel—he'd been from Fiji to Zimbabwe and back, and everywhere he went was the same. What he couldn't truly admit to himself, what he was starting to realize, was that he was lonely. The other vampires he knew were k
illers, ruthless and fiercely independent, and he stayed away from them as much from respect as from fear. But how could he relate to humans? There was only blackness in his heart, a huge, bulging cancerous emptiness that ate away at the roots of all of his relationships, rotting them from the inside out.
"How's your wine?" the woman asked. Her name was Michelle, or Melissa, something like that. She was gorgeous, of course. One of her perfectly manicured nails tapped against her wine glass and Robb's tongue thickened at the sight of the fire-engine red nail polish. Fast. Get her home fast, done fast, get her out fast.
"Terrible," he said, pushing away his glass and checking the time only to show off his expensive watch. The girl had practically salivated while looking him up and down, and he knew the type. So many girls wanted a rich man to buy them toys and play in all of the exotic and expensive ways London let you play. He wouldn't disappoint her, at least not tonight. "I have a 1972 vintage from my personal acreage in the Loire in my cellar. Care to join me?"
Of course she did. Robb caught himself yawning as he walked her out to his car.
"What do you do for business?" the woman asked, her fingers smoothing the leather armrest between them. Her eyes had widened at the Porsche, but now she was prying. Trying to see exactly how lucky she was going to get, how hard to try. Depressing.
"I work at the university," Robb said on a whim. "In the chemistry lab."
Her plucked eyebrows furrowed.
"You don't like chemistry?" He was needling her, seeing how much it took to annoy. A stupid game, one he played on occasion when he was too bored or the woman was too stupid. In this case the latter.
"I'm not really a science person," she said, laughing and twirling her hair. "Unless you mean, you know, chemistry." She leaned over and touched his shoulder, giggling.
"Chemistry itself is quite fascinating," Robb said in a professor's didactic tone, trying not to burst into laughter at her disappointed expression. "I specialize in chromosomal transformations inside of organisms, specifically the NK cells in the lymphoid cell line."
