“Ugh,” I muttered, “I knew exactly what to say.”
“Mm,” agreed Yzzy, “and terrified Michael and his soldiers in the process.”
“You terrified Michael?!” Lexi exclaimed.
I looked curiously at her and she blushed a little.
“Yea, they haven’t seen me in full shift before… I think they were a little, um, taken aback.”
“That’s an understatement. They nearly shot you.” Yzzy said wryly,
I grinned at her.
“What does Michael think of it?”
“Hm, I forgot you’d met our esteemed leader…” I commented, noting again the slight, telling change in Lexi’s scent with a smirk. Ysabel tutted at me.
“Stop teasing, Beth. We don’t really know what he thinks to be honest. We were a little too angry to stick around to talk.”
“You’re ok now though?”
“Yes,” Yzzy replied with a smile, gesturing to our relaxed postures.
“Well… good. Look,” she hesitated, “I’ve been meaning to talk to you for a while anyway, so this seems as good a time as any.”
I cocked an eyebrow at her, waiting for her to continue,
“I want to work from the base, and join in with some of the unit’s activities. Even if it’s just the odd guard duty or patrol. I really think that I would be able to help! And it would make working through leads and things easier as well because I would have some first hand experience to work from, rather than always just relying on reports to tell me what’s happening!”
She paused for breath, and I took the chance to raise my hand, in an attempt to halt any further verbal flooding. Lexi frowned and curled herself further into the corner of the sofa, flipping her long ponytail over the back of it to keep it out of the way.
“You can’t stop me, you know.” She said quickly as I opened my mouth to respond.
Her jaw was set and she glared at me mutinously. I aborted my half-formed response and just raised an eyebrow instead.
“Pretty sure I can, actually.” I said blankly.
Lexi huffed, her frown deepening.
“I’m bored, Beth! I spend all my time fielding calls and emails from the other IGS people who are out doing something, while I’m sat on my ass in my safe little house under my father’s overprotective eye.”
She paused briefly to take a breath and then ranted on,
“I’m worth more than this! I’m smart and I understand vampires and I can fight, whether you believe it or not. And I’m not helpless or incompetent, you don’t need to protect me! I can do a lot more if I was working from the base.”
“Good grief, Lexi. I don’t protect you because I think you’re incompetent, I protect you because I happen to care about you. And you also happen to be very good at what you do.”
“Ugggh. A half trained monkey could do it.”
She folded her arms and glared again.
“OK.” I said simply, chuckling as her jaw dropped.
“What?” I asked with a smirk, “I’m not always difficult, you know. Besides, don’t even try to pretend that it’s just for work reasons.”
She looked at me suspiciously,
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
I grinned delightedly, and even Ysabel laughed a little, drawing her own glare from Lexi,
“We can smell pheromones, remember? You seem quite enamoured of our good captain.”
“Oh piss off,” heat rushed to her face and she stared fixedly into her mug, making me laugh even more.
Lexi met us on base the next morning and we meandered through the compound to the gym. Michael and Glen were in the weights room when we got there, looking red-faced and sweaty in just vest tops and shorts. I slanted a look a look at Lexi, waggling my eyebrows. She just glared at me.
“Vamps!” Glen acknowledged us with a grin, “have fun killing stuff?”
“No,” I scowled at him, “they were all hiding like the yellow-bellies they are.”
He pulled a face, which morphed rapidly into a grin,
“You should try being more fluffy and friendly; lure them into a false sense of security. Try sticking some cotton wool on your wings.”
I stared at him incredulously,
“Your ideas get weirder by the day.”
Michael nodded in agreement, then smiled at Lexi.
“Morning to you too. I wasn’t expecting to see you again.” He turned to Glen, “this is Lexi, the girl who broke onto base last week.”
“Ahh,” Glen said with a chuckle, “you caused me a real headache you know; I’m the one who’s supposed to make sure the base is kept secure. Michael chewed me out good after your little visit.”
Lexi had the good grace to look a little ashamed,
“Sorry… I’ll show you where I got in if you like.”
“Pff.” He waved a hand at her dismissively, “too late. You already got me demoted.”
“What?!” Lexi looked appalled, “holy crap, I’m so sorry!”
“Stop being an ass, Glen” Michael admonished him, “he didn’t get bloody demoted. He barely even got a slap on the wrist.”
“Oh…” Lexi pulled a face and flipped Glen a crude gesture, making his grin stretch even wider.
“I wouldn’t take anything he says too seriously,” I told her, then turned back to Michael, “we thought it would be good for Lexi to work on base from now on, and maybe do some guard duties, with a buddy, of course. She’s been gathering reports of ferals for months now, so she may be able to help us determine which are real and which are staged.” I finished with a scowl, yesterday’s ridiculous mission replaying again in my mind, as it had been all damn night.
“Can she get a flat?” Ysabel asked,
“Sure, sure,” Michael smiled again at Lexi, and started walking towards the exit, beckoning to her, “come on, we’ll get you a key now. I’ve got a little time before I have to run drills.”
Glen frowned after them,
“Did you fiddle with his head?”
“Uh, excuse me?!”
“He’s just… being weirdly cool all of a sudden…” he shook his head, dismissing the thought, “never mind. I’m going to take a shower. Your first group are already in the hall. You need a hand today?”
“Nah, Yzzy can help out. I’ll see you later.”
“Right-o. Laters, fang-face, Ysabel.”
He strode towards the changing rooms with a short wave over his shoulder, and Yzzy and I headed for the hall.
Lexi was given an office in the communications building and one of the tiny flats being used by the clerical staff. I stopped by to see how she was settling in after training, to discover she had already managed to just about entirely take over an entire half of the work space shared by the unit’s own data analysts. My eyebrows shot up as she held court, bustling around, shamelessly flirting with the soldiers helping her get set up. She grinned at me when she spotted me standing in the doorway,
“have you come to give me a hand? You’re a bit late if you have; we’re almost done.”
“Actually,” I responded drily, “I came to see how you were settling into your office.”
“Oh, pff,” she scoffed at me with a dismissive toss of her ponytail, “why hide away in an office? I’d just have to keep coming out here to talk to the others anyway.”
“You know that these guys actually have jobs to be doing? And running around after you is not one of them…”
The soldier scurrying past me with a box of papers at that moment went a bit red and stepped up his pace even more.
“Shush. This makes perfect sense. And I needed to move some of their stuff before I could unpack mine. It’s quicker if they help.”
I chuckled at her,
“I wonder how long it is before you’ve sweet talked your way out of your tiny flat and into Michael's faaar nicer one.”
She turned away from me quickly, not bothering to respond with anything more than a scowl. I laughed again and left them to it, wondering i
f the soldiers knew what they were letting themselves in for.
After a couple of weeks Lexi had fully established herself as the unofficial boss of the communications building. She happily lorded it over the soldiers working there, and Michael quickly learned to leave her to it. Her easy smiles and relentlessly bubbly demeanour fitted easily into the soldiers’ dynamic, so they were more than happy to humour her demands.
Chapter 31
Michael
With Lexi at the helm, I was forced to admit that working through the data that poured in from our various patrols and other sources seemed to be going much smoother. Previously, there had always been delays while the IGS information and our own was sent back and forth to be collated, and Lexi’s vampire-hunting-experienced eye was a very useful thing to have around. Despite that, I found myself wishing that she hadn’t come. She was a distraction, and was also causing Glen to nearly have an aneurysm trying to hold in crude jokes whenever the three of us found ourselves together. So when Lexi asked Glen and I to go and see her about something, I dragged my feet, finding excuses to do other things until I absolutely couldn’t put it off any longer. As a result, Glen got there long before me, and I found him and Lexi hunched over a laptop screen, scrutinising what looked like a CCTV feed. Glen glanced up distractedly as I walked in,
“took your time, old man.”
“Sorry, got held up. What are we looking at?”
I leaned over their shoulders to look at the screen, noting the code in the bottom corner that marked the feed as coming from a camera that we had placed to cover a suspected nest. Lexi turned to talk to me, her sweet-smelling curls brushing against my face as she did.
“We’re pretty sure this is a nest. There’s been what look like high generation ferals going in and out on occasion, but the last couple of days there have been humans going in too.”
My eyebrows shot up,
“humans? Are you sure?”
“Aye, Beth and Ysabel confirmed it… something about the way they move.”
“Hmm. That’s new,” I mused.
“Might be worth seeing if we can pick one of them up? See what the deal is?” Glen muttered, not looking away from the screen.
“That’s my instinct too.” I agreed, “I’d rather not have to go into the nest if possible though, not with high gens kicking about. Can you scour the CCTV feeds from the surrounding area, try and follow one of them and see where they’re going?”
“Sure, I’ll get on that.” Lexi hopped up and went over to one of the other screens. Glen huffed a sigh and turned away from the monitor.
“You think they’re recruiting humans?”
“Who knows?” I grouched, “it wouldn’t surprise me though. Well-funded, powerful vampires? They could offer people the world and it wouldn’t seem impossible… and people do funny things when large sums of money are put on the table.”
Lexi managed to track one of the human men seen going into and out of the house over the next couple of weeks, following him until he disappeared from the not-so-all-seeing-eye of CCTV cameras about half a mile away from the nest. But the good news was that he traveled the exact same route every time. I sat in the comms room with Lexi as Glen led the fire team out to ambush him. Beth and Ysabel were on standby to help if necessary, but we thought we’d try and avoid letting our target know we had our own vampire allies if possible. I tapped my foot against the leg of the desk, impatiently waiting for the crackle of the radio, keeping us informed as to what was going on. Lexi tutted and slapped a hand down on my leg, stopping its convulsive movement. She glared at me for a moment, and squeezed her hand once before releasing my leg and going back to staring at the CCTV feeds playing in real time on the screens in front of her. Just as the urge to start tapping my foot again became almost overwhelming, Lexi sat bolt upright in her chair,
“there! He’s leaving!”
She jabbed unnecessarily at the lone figure crossing one of the screens as I snatched up my radio to tell Glen the update. He fired back a confirmation, then we fell silent again. Lexi and I watched the man travel through the cameras until he disappeared in the same place he always did. Another ten minutes of toe tapping passed before my radio buzzed again, it was Glen,
“we got him, no problem. Bringing him in now.”
Lexi breathed out an explosive sigh and flopped back in her chair with a grin, which I happily echoed.
We left our prisoner in a holding cell to stew overnight. All the food and water he was offered was refused, with nothing but a steady, blank stare, and he only moved from his bolt upright position on his cot when he succumbed to exhaustion; slumping sideways as he fell asleep. Beth scrutinised him through the small window in the door,
“I could just take a peek and find out what we need with no hassle…”
“No.” I shot her a hard look, “we do this properly. By the book. If we start letting you take information from peoples heads, we’re no better than them.”
She pursed her lips, pressing them into a thin, unimpressed line, but said nothing.
Later that afternoon, I found myself drumming my fingers rapidly against my thigh as I watched Nathan continue to interrogate our prisoner. The man was just sitting there, smirking at Nathan, as he had sat and smirked at me while I had been in there. Infuriating. Beth watched next to me, her arms crossed and her face unreadable, Ysabel was sitting on a chair a little way back.
“You know this isn’t going to work, right?”
Beth spoke without turning to me, the tight, clipped syllables betraying her annoyance.
“He’ll break eventually, he has to.”
I had seen plenty of interrogations; eventually the prisoner always started talking, even if it was nothing to do with the questions, but at least that was something to work with.
“Pff,” Beth huffed, raising an eyebrow, “why? Because you’re offering to give him a lighter sentence if he does? It won’t work,” she scowled.
“Oh? And why not?”
“Because he thinks he’s going to be made immortal,” Ysabel spoke quietly, coming up beside me, “I imagine that he’s probably even been told that he’ll be resurrected if he dies. He has nothing to fear from you.”
I frowned, not sure what to say to that, but they had a point. If he thought that his imprisonment was just going to be a moment in a life centuries long… we had no leverage.
“What do you suggest then?”
“I’ll make him talk. Or squeal, anyway.”
Beth said grimly, then strode out of the room before I could say another word. I swung back to the one-way glass in time to see her walk into the interrogation room and lean her hands on the table next to Nathan.
“Give us a minute would you?” she said to Nathan.
He frowned and looked at the glass, obviously wanting to know my thoughts. I turned to Ysabel,
“Will she find out?”
“Yes.”
I frowned, “will she find out without torturing him though?”
“She won’t hurt him physically,” Ysabel hedged, “she’s not in a great mood, though...”
“Is she ever in a great mood?” I muttered mostly to myself, but reached out and knocked on the glass, signalling Nathan that he could leave, hoping I wouldn’t regret it.
Nathan came around to stand next to me,
“I hope you know what you’re doing.”
Beth turned and locked the door, then went back to leaning on the table, but now she shifted, her massive wings flaring out to touch the walls on either side of the room. The prisoner jerked back, shocked, and his eyes widened.
“You’re a vampire?” He said quietly, the first words he’d uttered since we’d captured him.
“No,” drawled Beth, her voice dripping with sarcasm, “I’m the fucking tooth fairy.”
She paused, cocking her head to one side as he watched her cautiously.
“Here’s the deal,” she said, “you tell us what we want to know and I won’t leave you a gibbering wreck
.”
“Why are you working with humans? Are you a traitor?”
I cringed as a growl ripped from Beth’s throat.
“Don’t you talk to me about traitors, you little shit. How many humans have you sold out to those lousy excuses for vampires that you’ve been working for?”
“It doesn’t matter. Soon there will only be human cattle and vampires. And I will be a vampire.”
Beth laughed at him, a harsh, cruel sound.
“They’ve lied to you, you pathetic halfwit. Even if they actually did have any intention of making you a vampire, it would only be into one of those drooling dogs that they send out to do the work that they don’t want to.”
“No,” he shook his head, “no, I was promised!”
Beth sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose with one hand, the other clenching into a fist. I glanced at Ysabel, she had a frown on her delicate features, her mouth set into a tight line.
“Last chance,” muttered Beth, “last chance or I’m taking what I want.”
The prisoner just lifted his chin and stared at her defiantly.
“Fine,” she ground out.
Beth didn’t move, but the prisoner jerked in his chair, shaking his head sharply,
“What… what are you doing?”
He let a short yelp, jerking again. A beat of silence and then he screamed piercingly, clutching at his head and writhing in his chair, his entire body spasming. Beth just leaned in a little closer, she had her eyes closed and a look of deep concentration on her face. The prisoner screamed again and Beth scowled,
“Shut up,” she muttered with an irritated flick of her hand. The screams abruptly cut off, and I sighed in relief, although quickly realised that the agonised writhing of the prisoner was even more disturbing with him completely silent. I hammered on the glass,
“Stop this!” I yelled, “Beth! Stop!”
She straightened up, turning towards the glass with a sneer, and the prisoner slumped onto the desk. Blood was running from his nose and ears, and tears flowed freely from his eyes. He still had his fists knotted into his hair and abruptly started moaning again, a choked, sobbing sound. Nathan, Ysabel and I ran around to the interrogation room door, which Beth unlocked and opened as we reached it.
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