by M. J. Scott
“What does that mean?”
“She’ll be taken to a secure facility, held where she can’t infect anyone else.”
Where she’d be poked and prodded and hidden away from the world. “Treated like a prisoner and a guinea pig? She hasn’t done anything wrong.”
Dan’s eyes had gone opaque. “No, she hasn’t. But neither have any of the people who could become her victims if she’s free.”
“What if she can be controlled?” I was clutching at straws. The thought of Rhi locked up—studied like an amoeba—was unbearable.
“Controlled how?” Dan said. “The vamp who sired her is dead. And we have no idea of his lineage.” Meaning there was no way of knowing who was next up the chain of command so to speak and therefore who might be able to control Rhi. Newly turned vampires sometimes went a little wild for a time. Just like new werewolves, their control was shaky and the bloodlust could lead to them killing without meaning to.
Werewolves weren’t quite as risky unless they were separated from their pack somehow. Their control can be shaky sometimes—which Dan had learned to his cost and mine—but the only time a new wolf has the uncontrollable need to change is under the full moon. And a full wolf pack can take care of most problems that arise. A vampire, on the other hand, needs to feed to survive—and young vampires have to feed more often than the older ones. Daily, usually.
I pressed the heel of my hand into my forehead, trying to think. If Rhi couldn’t be controlled, then there was no way the authorities would let her go free. But without a vamp from her lineage to take charge of her, she really was a danger. So the question was, could she be controlled any other way? “What about Marco?” I said suddenly.
“What about him?” Dan’s lips pressed together. The smell of agitation intensified. He obviously didn’t like my suggestion.
“Tate was his lineage. Isn’t it likely that Tate sired the vamps who’ve been given the vaccine? So Marco could maybe control her.”
Dan grimaced. “Maybe. But we don’t have much time.”
Dawn was only hours away. If the doctors were right, if Rhi was infected, that’s when she’d turn. I bit my lip. “Marco can be here pretty fast.” I knew Dan was going to flip when he heard Marco was in town and worse, that I’d seen him earlier and hadn’t mentioned it, but Rhi was more important than Dan’s feelings right now.
Dan stepped toward me. “What do you mean pretty fast?”
I dug into my pocket for the card. “He’s here in Caldwell. Call him.”
The look Dan directed at the card had me surprised it didn’t burst into flames.
“You have his number?”
“Yes, I have his number. He gave it to me. I didn’t ask for it.”
“You have his number,” Dan repeated, voice low.
If I didn’t know better, I’d think he was jealous of Marco. But that would be just dumb. Sure, I was in debt to the guy but that didn’t mean I wanted to do the nasty with him. I was having enough trouble with the man I was sleeping with without adding another one to the mix. “Don’t be an idiot, Dan. We don’t have time. Call him. He might be able to help.”
He shook his head. “I don’t think they’re going to let her go free, no matter whether she’s under control or not. They want me to tell her parents she died.”
“What? I surged to my feet. “You want to lock her up and not even let her family know? Dan, you can’t do that. It’s beyond cruel.”
“They can’t know why she’s being held,” he said, shaking his head as he got to his feet. “They might tell people.”
“Get them to sign something.” The FBI had wrapped me up pretty good in nondisclosure agreements and other legal bonds after Tate. Why couldn’t they do the same to Mr. and Mrs. Anders?
“Ash, they’re from Caldwell. You really think if they find out there’s a new breed of supervamps out there, they’re going to keep their mouths shut?”
My stomach turned over. No. I didn’t. He was right. They’d talk. But telling them their daughter was dead? That was torture. “If they think she’s dead, there’ll be a whole lot of trouble in town.”
“What’s the alternative?”
He’d moved closer to the door. If he left, would he do what the government wanted? I had to convince him there was another way.
“Can’t you say she needs to be transferred to another hospital; a military hospital or something for specialist surgery? You can control her there.” And buy us some more time to solve the problem.
“Maybe.” He didn’t look very hopeful.
“Won’t you try? Please, Dan. For me?”
He rubbed his wrist. “Okay. I’ll ask. But I’m not promising anything.” His body language relaxed a little and he reached for the door handle.
“Thank you,” I said. And then, because I’m an idiot who doesn’t know when to stop, I added, “You should still call Marco.”
Dan’s hand jerked away from the handle. He turned back to me. “Why?”
“It will be easier on Rhi if she has somebody there to control her.”
“I’ve asked a couple of the Taskforce vamps to come here.”
“None of them will be Seattle lineages,” I pointed out. Taskforce vamps were generally assigned outside their home cities. I think the government figured it lessened the chance of conflicting loyalties. Good policy but really not helping in this case. “And none of whom is an Old One.”
“The vamp who bit her might not be of Tate’s lineage,” Dan objected.
“Marco’s an Old One. Maybe he can do something anyway. He’s the best chance she’s got.” I held out the card again. “You know it’s true. Call him.”
Dan snarled. “Maybe you should call him; you’re such good friends with him.”
Pain started throbbing behind my right eye. Lord save me from idiot men. “You really want me to ask for another favor from Marco?” I watched a wave of frustration and anger break across Dan’s face as he figured out what I was getting at.
He snatched the card out of my fingers with another snarl and yanked his cell phone from his jacket pocket, stabbing the numbers onto the keypad with such force that I was surprised the phone survived.
“Lord Marco,” he said after a few moments, voice tight. “This is Special Agent Gibson.”
Chapter Nine
The conversation didn’t take long. Dan’s sentences got shorter and his voice sharper as he made his request. Finally he shoved the phone back in his pocket, scowling. “I’m going to escort him here. I don’t want the locals freaking out. I’ll meet you at the secure ward.”
“You’re doing the right thing,” I said as he opened the door.
“We’ll see.”
I took a few minutes to compose myself and wash my face. Then I went back to the room where Rhi’s parents waited and lied to them about Dan needing me for a statement and Rhi’s surgery going well so far, guilt slicing through my stomach like shards of glass the entire time. But I wasn’t going to be the one who took their hope away. Maybe Rhi could be controlled. Maybe there was a way to cure her—not of vampirism but of the ability to infect with a single bite—if it turned out she really was that kind of vampire.
Yeah and maybe there was a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
I escaped from Rhi’s room, feeling like her parents had been able to tell I was lying but telling myself that was just a hangover from them knowing me when I was a teenager. These days I had a pretty good poker face.
Finding the secure ward was a little more difficult. Most hospitals have one these days; a reinforced, no windows ward where vampire or were bites can be treated. Wards designed to contain a monster.
They’d never put me in one but I’d been surrounded by pack from the get go. Ani and Sam weren’t the type to let rogues run around their city. I hoped Marco had the same philosophy.
And that he and Dan wouldn’t kill each other over the next few days.
Two guards stood outside the door to the ward. Well, I assumed th
ey were guards. They weren’t wearing uniforms but something about the subdued cut of their black suits and the flat stares I received as I stepped out of the elevator screamed military, or, at least, FBI to me.
I held up my FBI ID. “I’m Ashley Keenan. I work with Special Agent Gibson.”
“Agent Gibson isn’t here right now, ma’am.”
“I know. He asked me to meet him here.” The suits looked at each other then back at me. One of them touched his earpiece, murmuring something I couldn’t quite make out.
My hands clenched as I waited. Dan hadn’t been kidding about how seriously the government was taking this. Up until now my Taskforce ID had been enough to get me admitted wherever I wanted to go.
The guard stopped talking then swiped a passcard through the reader at the side of the door. “You can wait inside. Please don’t go into the ward itself.”
I nodded but didn’t speak. I wasn’t going to leave Rhi alone in a ward if I could get to her. But she might still be in surgery.
The heavy steel door slid shut behind me. The room looked like just about every other hospital waiting room I’d ever been in. Vinyl seats, prints from the blander than bland school of art, and pastel walls. An ancient-looking coffee machine blinked and gurgled in the corner. Old magazines and papers littered the table in front of one bank of chairs. The air smelled like disinfectant, slightly stale air, worry and fear. All perfectly normal for a hospital. If you didn’t count the massive steel door—even bigger and more imposing looking than the one I’d just entered through—that took up most of the far wall.
No windows broke the expanse of metal, so I had no way of telling whether or not Rhi was inside without buzzing to be let through the door. I got the feeling if I did that, the two guys outside might just march in and throw me out.
It seemed I was going to have to wait for Dan and Marco after all. I carefully eased myself onto one of the seats, trying to find a position where my ribs didn’t ache.
I didn’t have to wait too long. Ten minutes later the outer door opened and Dan stalked through, annoyance radiating from him. Behind him, looking so perfectly at ease, I knew it had to be an act, came Marco.
I pushed up from the seat, doing my best to ignore the protesting throb in my ribs.
“Lord Marco,” I said. “Thank you for coming.”
“It is always a pleasure to see you, Ashley,” Marco said as if we hadn’t spoken just ninety minutes ago. Apparently he was practicing discretion. A fact I was devoutly thankful for. “I wish the circumstances could be more pleasant.”
His green eyes glinted at me and I realized he was, once again, enjoying himself. Which meant I couldn’t completely rely on his discretion.
I looked at Dan who was leaning against the back of one of the chairs. “Is there any news on Rhianna?”
He straightened, rubbing a hand over the back of his neck as he nodded. “She’s in recovery. We can go through and wait in her room.”
We filed through the main door—once Dan had used a swipe card and palm scan to open it—and found ourselves inside a hospital ward that looked almost as normal as the waiting room. A nurses’ station guarded the entrance to a short corridor with five or six doors. Only in normal hospital wards, the station wasn’t surrounded by reinforced steel and the doors to the rooms weren’t foot-thick steel.
The sterile scent of antiseptic seemed stronger here, maybe because the air had taken on the bland tinge of recycling. A closed system.
I recognized the smell from my trips to my dad’s lab as a kid. There the closed air circulation system was to prevent and contain leaks of any viruses or pathogens. I wasn’t entirely sure why they needed one here. Unless they used this ward for quarantine or something when they weren’t housing supernaturals. Which, come to think of it, if I knew Caldwell, was probably most of the time.
Still, the government funding that had been provided to all hospitals to upgrade facilities a few years back when they were trying to prove how inclusive they were being of the supernatural community, had been put to good use.
The nurse on duty inspected Dan’s ID and mine and ran them through a scanner. Marco she studiously ignored. After her scanner had beeped approvals, she led us down the corridor to the only one of the doors that was shut and typed a long code into the keypad.
The room we stepped into had no windows. A long strip of fluorescent lamps flooded the room with harsh white light that blasted every corner and left nowhere to hide from the fact that this was a hospital room. I took one of the two visitors’ chairs and tried not to picture Rhianna lying in the big empty hospital bed. Marco stayed near the door.
“It shouldn’t be much longer,” Dan said. He’d taken up position between me and the bed. Between Marco and me as well. “They’ll bring her in as soon as she’s cleared from recovery.”
I knew how hospitals worked. I’d spent too much time in them. Dan knew that too. So he was just filling in time. Trying to distract me. I decided to play along. “What’s her prognosis?”
“They’ve confirmed she’s carrying the Stoker Variation. A mutated strain.”
“She’s a vampire.” My hand slipped down to my jacket pocket, curled around my cross.
“She will be by dawn.” Marco’s voice sounded almost...sad. But that couldn’t be right.
“Can you help her?” I asked him, blinking back tears. A vampire. Julie’s beautiful little sister was going to be a vampire. Worse than that. A vampire who couldn’t be let loose in the world. Who couldn’t have any semblance of a normal life at all.
“That remains to be seen, cara,” Marco said after a wary look at Dan. “If she has been sired by someone in my lineage then I should be able to ease the transition. If not, we shall have to see.”
“Has Dan told you what’s going on?” I didn’t care if I was breaking five kinds of rules. Anything I could do from this point to make life—unlife—easier for Rhi, I would do.
“He said it is a new strain of the virus. One that can infect without the exchange of blood.” His face was grave. “This is not a good thing.”
“No shit.” A bitter laugh tore itself from my throat.
“I would’ve thought you’d be happy,” Dan said. “An easy way to increase your population.”
“An easy way to increase fear and prejudice,” Marco retorted. “We have worked hard to get to where we are now. This is an act of—” he muttered something nasty sounding under his breath in Italian “—it can bring no good things.”
“Maybe we’re wrong,” I said. “Maybe it’s just a random mutation.”
“Cara, apart from the small variations in powers bestowed, the source of our power has operated in the same way for millennia. To become a vampire, one must give and receive. It is a gift.”
Some gift. About as welcome as the Spanish Inquisition from where I stood. Still, some did choose to turn voluntarily, lured by the promise of near immortality or power or whatever else it was they saw in vampires. Something I’d never understand.
Jase had made that choice. To live as a vampire rather than die a human. But it had, at least, been his choice. Rhianna had been denied that.
I rubbed my arms. “What happens when they bring her here?”
“Marco will try to control her while she changes. If everything is okay—” Dan meant if she survived“—then we’ll take her to a military hospital.
“I want to go with her.”
“Ash, that’s not—”
“I want to go.” I glared at him. “I’m not letting her be locked up alone. Surrounded by strangers.”
“What about the case? And your practice?”
“They can both survive without me for a few more days.”
“It will be full moon in a couple of days. What about that?”
“I’ll worry about that when the time comes. Surely Ani and Sam will understand if I can’t go to the retreat.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“I’m staying with Rhi.”
; Dan made a humphing noise, his gaze sliding to Marco. I knew he didn’t want to make a scene in front of the vampire. It would be a sign of weakness or something.
“How will you help her?” I asked Marco, more from the desire to turn the conversation to something that wasn’t an argument, than from any burning desire to know the ins and outs of how a vampire becomes a vampire.
I knew the general process but had never paid attention to the finer details.
Lycanthropy is different to vampirism. It takes hold in your body, changing you and doing whatever it is—the part the scientists haven’t yet figured out—that lets werewolves change shape. It ramps up your immunity and sharpens your senses but there are no outward physical signs until the first time a werewolf changes. For me, it had felt like going through a second puberty on ultrafast forward. Aches and pains and mood swings like you wouldn’t believe. And waves of the overwhelming need for sex the waxing moon ignites in adults.
Vampires however, change physically. They grow fangs. They get fatally sensitive to ultraviolet light. They grow cold and pale. They start to drink blood, to need blood to live. There were other changes too. Did it all happen at once? Or gradually? I wrapped my arms around myself. I didn’t want to know the answer to my question.
“Ashley?”
Marco’s voice was quiet and I realized I was staring off into space. “I’m sorry. I was thinking.”
“You asked a question.”
“Yes. Yes, I did.”
“Do you wish for an answer?”
I nodded slowly. If nothing else, I wasn’t sure how many more surprises or shocks I could take today. Better to know exactly what the next few hours might hold.
“Bene. Very well. When the doctors bring Signorina Anders here, I will attempt to establish a bond with her.”
“How?”
“It is something like a thrall. But not exactly. If she is my lineage then her mind will—I cannot explain it exactly—her mind will recognize mine. Recognize my authority over her blood.”
“And if she isn’t?”
