by J. C. Diem
After dawn, Luc and I snuck off to the far side of the cargo hold for some alone time. Neither of us was particularly in the mood for sex, we just wanted to be close while we still could. One thing led to another and we ended up naked anyway. I muffled my moans by biting my own hand. Sluggish blood flowed and I indelicately spat out the horrid tasting ooze. Luc found that to be hilarious and subsided into a laughing fit. He lost concentration and had to stop while I was in mid orgasm.
Rolling him over so I was on top, I rode him hard and fast and his laughter disappeared. Our gazes locked as we realized this might be the last time that we would ever be intimate together. Whatever the Americans had planned, we all shared the feeling that it wouldn’t end well for us. The general opinion was that our lives would never be the same again.
Luc’s hands rose to cup my breasts then he sat up and enclosed one with his cool mouth. My head went back and my fingernails sank into his shoulders as he gripped my hips and forced me to ride him harder and faster. Orange light blazed to life as I gave a strangled moan and reached my peak. For once, I didn’t break any of his bones. Resting his forehead on my shoulder, we remained locked together until the cold seeped into my flesh and I began to shiver.
Now that I had finished making so much noise, it became clear that we weren’t the only ones taking the chance to be alone while we still could. Sounds of pleasure rang out from the darkness as we returned to the container that we had turned into a fort. Shortly after we sat down, Kokoro and Gregor appeared. They were arm in arm and looked decidedly cosy. The seer gave Gregor a coy smile when he lifted her hand to his mouth and planted a kiss on it.
Luc nudged me and I closed my mouth. If Geordie had been awake, he would have made a snide remark that would have ruined the pair’s mood instantly. Taking a seat across from me, Gregor smiled widely. “Nice morning,” he commented as if we were sitting out in the open and taking in the breeze rather than cowering deep in the bowels of the ship.
“Nice for some,” one of the Europeans who were still awake muttered jealously. Unsurprisingly, Igor reached over and gave the vamp a smack. Rubbing his head ruefully, the offending European curled onto his side and promptly died for the day.
Resting would probably be a good idea so Luc and I lay down next to Geordie. I trusted Igor to watch over us and to wake me if necessary. Closing my eyes, I drifted off to sleep almost immediately.
Opening my eyes, I blinked in confusion and turned in a full circle. Wherever I was, it was somewhere I had never been before, either awake or asleep. The walls, floor and ceiling were made of a dull silver metal. I was in a hallway that stretched out in two directions. Regular intersections with smaller hallways branching off to both sides gave me the impression that the place was huge. It vaguely reminded me of the underground lab where my friends had been imprisoned.
Undecided for a moment, I chose a direction and started walking. Stopping at the first intersection, I glanced both ways to see the slightly smaller hallways had more intersections. This place must be gigantic, I thought uneasily and wondered where I had managed to dream myself this time. The air was warm enough but it smelled bad and reminded me of rotten eggs.
Finally reaching the end of the main hallway, I looked left and right and saw more hallways. Choosing a path at random, I picked up the pace until I was jogging. Hearing voices ahead, I closed in on them and slowed when I spotted a door. The glass wasn’t quite see through and I had a fuzzy view of the inside of the room.
Examining the door, I looked for a way to open it but there were no handles and it didn’t open automatically when I approached it. Leaning in close to the window, I peered at a gathering of people on the far side of a gigantic room. Their voices were muffled and strangely guttural.
Squinting hard, all I could make out was that there were eight of them and they seemed to be having a heated discussion. “Where the hell am I?” I murmured and their conversation broke off. Heads whipped around to stare at the door and I stumbled back in surprise. Tripping over my feet, I sat down hard and bit my tongue when I landed.
“Son of a bitch!” Sitting up, I clapped a hand over my mouth so my pained shout came out slightly muffled. My tongue continued to throb for a second before it healed. I swallowed the blood that had welled up instead of spitting it out. There was very little space to lie on inside the container let alone to spit on.
It was still daytime but the sun was due to fade shortly. Igor shot me a curious glance and one of the appointed guards peeked in through the open door. “Bad dream,” I muttered to them both and settled down between Luc and Geordie again. I had no intention of subsiding back into sleep, not after what I’d just witnessed.
Closing my eyes, I saw the faces of the creatures again. Their features had been distorted but their eyes had stood out clearly enough. Each and every pair had been bright red. The only other creature I’d ever seen with eyes like that was the First. Even his clones had had orange eyes rather than scarlet. I didn’t want to think of the implications that there might be more of the ancient vampires hidden somewhere on Earth.
A tiny part of me rebelled at my instinctive concern. So what if there are more of them around? Screw the humans, they can deal with the problem themselves. It was selfish and petty but I had to agree with my inner voice. Whatever disaster was destined to happen next, the humans would have to face it alone this time. Sanderson should have thought of this possibility before he’d stabbed me in the back then turned my friends into guineapigs. Of course, he could simply threaten to kill them if we didn’t help to take down the new menace. The peril hadn’t even arrived yet and we were already at a stalemate. I decided to keep this knowledge to myself for now. Like it or not, the humans would need us if these red-eyed beings showed up. It would give us some leverage to use against them if and when another attack came.
Waiting for the sun to disappear and for the long night to begin, I realized I was mentally drained. I was weary of having to go to the rescue all the time. Why couldn’t I just be left in peace? Why did I have to be in the thick of the battle all the time? Because I’m Mortis, I reminded myself before my subconscious could berate me for whining. It was my destiny to battle evil and to dole out death to my enemies.
Before I’d become one of the undead, I’d been just an average, ordinary person. Sure I hadn’t had any friends or family to leave behind and my life had been utterly boring and meaningless, but look at it now. I was a walking disaster that had been designed to kill most of my own kind. Rolling onto my side, I looked first at Luc and then at the rest of my friends. They aren’t your friends anymore, my subconscious told me. They’re your family. You have to keep them safe, no matter what happens. The weight of responsibility was easier to bear with the knowledge of how much these people meant to me, even the ones whose names I still didn’t know.
Chapter Thirty
After the ship shuddered to a halt back at the same port we’d left from six nights ago, we waited in tense silence. I wasn’t the only one expecting the soldiers to rain bullets down on us at any moment. Geordie jumped with every sound that echoed throughout the hold. He was pressed up against my side, shivering with fear.
“Are you aware that your eyes are glowing?” Gregor asked me. His sudden statement startled several people into turning to stare at me.
“Are they?” Now that he mentioned it, I could see the soft glow radiating out from my face.
Luc tilted my face so he could see my eyes. “What emotion are you feeling right now?”
“A mixture of worry and anger.” Worry was winning right now but that could change at any time.
“Hmm,” Gregor mused.
“What?” I asked him, wishing I could borrow Kokoro’s ability and sneak a peek inside his head. Rummaging through people’s thoughts must come in handy sometimes. From the sly smile she directed at me, I guessed Kokoro agreed with my thought.
“The imp blood is reacting to your emotions more strongly,” Gregor said. “It has already increase
d your hungers for blood and flesh. I wonder what other changes will occur?” For a couple of seconds I had the uncanny feeling that he would have liked to have studied me much like the scientists had studied him.
“She enjoys killing now,” Geordie said.
Luc raised a brow. “What makes you say that?”
The teen shrugged his thin shoulders. “You saw Nat in the African sewers. She really got into exploding the fledglings. Also, when she was telling us about slaughtering the courtiers, she was smiling the whole time.”
It was hard to deny it, especially when I found myself smiling again at the memory. “Don’t worry,” I reassured him, “I’m pretty sure I’m not going to turn into a mindless killing machine and turn on you all.”
“Pretty sure?” one of the female Japanese warriors muttered and disturbed looks were exchanged.
Our awkward conversation broke off at the sound of a hatch opening at the top of the stairs. “Natalie!” Sanderson shouted down into what would have looked like total darkness to him. “You can start bringing your people up. Stay in single file, keep your hands in the air and make no sudden movements.”
“Kokoro, do you know what’s waiting for us up there?” I asked.
She peered blindly upwards. “They have arranged transportation. I do not know where our destination lies.”
“Probably somewhere in the North Pole,” Geordie said sourly. “We’ll have to live in igloos and eat polar bears.”
Ishida forgot himself enough to snigger before schooling his wrinkled face to impassivity again.
“We’d better do what the Colonel says,” Gregor advised. “I doubt he and his men will have much patience for us after we slaughtered their people in the underground laboratory.” His expression held a mixture of shame and self-loathing that he had allowed himself to regenerate into a mindless monster even for a short while.
“They got what they deserved,” I told him almost grimly. “They’ll think twice about experimenting on any of us again now.” Most heads nodded in agreement. No one else seemed to feel any remorse for murdering their captors. Gregor truly was the most humane of us if he felt pity for the scientists and soldiers we had mauled to death. Despite the squeamishness I’d felt at the end, if given the choice, I would do it all again to save my people.
I went first and Luc was right behind me. At the top of the stairs, I found the hatch standing open and dozens of armed soldiers waiting on the other side. Feeling like a condemned prisoner, I put my hands up and stepped out into the open. A ring of high powered flashlights did an effective job of blinding me for a few moments. Adjusting to the light, I wasn’t surprised to see that each soldier was armed with the prototypes that had been designed to blow us to pieces. A shiver went down my spine at the thought of what a single bullet would do to my friends.
A narrow corridor of soldiers kept us moving in single file across the deck and down a steep ramp. A small convoy of army vehicles was lined up at the bottom. The twin rows of soldiers led directly to a large armoured truck. Waiting until everyone else had climbed into the back of the vehicle, I entered last. The door was swung shut and then a padlock was added for good measure. It might make the soldiers feel safe but I doubted it could stop us from breaking out if we really wanted to. Tearing the door off its hinges would result in our immediate extermination so I pushed the thought aside.
Conversation was non-existent as the convoy rumbled to life. Expressions were grim, reflecting the opinion most shared, that we were heading to our deaths.
After a short journey, we lurched to a stop and the door was unlocked and thrown open. Again, flashlights were shone on us and we were surrounded by armed soldiers. Holding up a hand to block the light, I saw that we were back at the same airport we had landed at nearly a week ago.
An army jet that was large enough to hold hundreds of troopers had been flown in from the U.S. to pick us up. We were ushered in first and the soldiers crowded in after us. Sanderson had to be somewhere in the crowd but he was wisely hiding from me.
“Turn around,” one of the soldiers said to me tightly when he caught my glance. “We don’t want any of you creatures trying to hypnotize us.” I turned away and met Luc’s eyes. The humans were frightened of us to the point where they were just seeking an excuse to pull the trigger. Luc offered me a faint smile and I dredged one up in return. He linked his fingers through mine and Geordie did the same on my other side. Dread, my constant companion since we had been caught, flared up when I wondered what doom waited for us. Kokoro might not know where we were going but we all knew how it would end. Death and darkness had been our fate all along and we were finally on our way to meet it.
It was a long flight and the soldiers shifted restlessly. The undead bore the lack of activity far more stoically. We felt no need to move frequently to avoid deep vein thrombosis since we didn’t have any form of circulation anymore. That sparked a question that had been floating around in my head since I’d become one of the undead. I almost turned to ask Luc how the male vampires could have sex without live blood running through their veins. Surrounded by humans, now probably wasn’t the best time to ask. Also, I didn’t want to embarrass myself. The alien blood in our veins defied the natural order and it had to be the reason why the male vamps could get it up despite technically being corpses.
At last, the plane began to descend. “Where are we?” a European asked. He’d spoken far too quietly for the humans to overhear him.
Gregor had an answer ready as if he had been expecting the question. “Considering how long we were in the air and the direction we travelled in, I’d say we are somewhere on the east coast of the United States.”
I wracked my brain trying to figure out why they would take us there but came up blank. Whatever theory Gregor had come up with, it made his normally ruggedly handsome face glum and far older than usual. My dread increased even more and I started wondering if there was a fate that could actually be worse than death or captivity.
Dawn was closing in by the time we landed and taxied to a stop. The rumble of the engines began to echo and I guessed that we had moved inside a hangar. It was a sign that we wouldn’t be shoved out into the sun to fry but trust wasn’t an emotion I was capable of after Sanderson’s betrayal. I would always expect treachery from him and his people now. My benevolence towards humankind had been ruined after what they had put my friends through, possibly forever.
The cargo door of the plane slowly opened and the soldiers began backing out. They were careful to keep their weapons trained on us. Sanderson appeared and his men cleared a space for him. “We’ve prepared somewhere for your people to stay until our government has reached a decision about what we are going to do with you.” At a wave of his hand, thirty of his men stepped forward. One of them crooked his finger, beckoning for us to follow him. Left with little choice, we filed out of the plane and were quickly surrounded by the group.
Our temporary prison was an area at the back of a gigantic hangar. Privacy screens had been erected, creating twenty-nine small rooms with narrow cots for beds. For Geordie and Igor, it was a step up from the bare cells with a thin pallet on the ground they were used to. For me, it was barely adequate. I could only imagine how insulted Ishida would feel at being offered such poor accommodations.
“Remain in this area,” the same soldier instructed us. “If any of you step over this line,” he pointed at a red line that had recently been painted on the cement, “you will regret it.”
“But not for long,” one of his colleagues said slyly and hefted his gun meaningfully.
Turning on his heel as low chuckles sounded amongst the troops, the soldier marched off, leaving the other twenty-nine men behind to stand guard. We had each unwillingly been assigned a guardian angel. Only these angels would shoot us in the face rather than rescue us from harm.
“If any of you step over this line, you will regret it,” Geordie mimicked in a high pitched voice that was still low enough that the humans couldn’t hear
him.
I pinched my lips together to keep in the laugh that wanted to boil out. Luc hustled me through the confusing path of privacy screens and I clapped a hand over my mouth. When my laughing fit petered out, I wiped away an imaginary tear and collapsed onto the flimsy cot.
Luc’s solemn expression almost set me off again then a wave of despair hit me and I put my hands over my face. Pushing his way into the tiny space, Geordie dropped to his knees before me. “Do not cry, chérie. Everything will work out for us in the end.” He patted me on the thigh and Luc sank down on the cot beside me. The springs protested at our combined weight but it didn’t collapse. His arm came over my shoulder and he rested his forehead against mine.
When my emotions were under control again, I dropped my hands. The group had been busy while I’d been having my small breakdown. They’d rearranged the privacy screens so they blocked us from the view of the humans. A large open space replaced the tiny rooms. Most of the cots were now neatly lined up on both sides, reminding me of an army barracks.
Everyone was watching me apprehensively. I was supposed to be their leader, if I lost it, who would they be able to rely on? “I’m ok,” I said softly, knowing they could all hear me and the soldiers standing beyond the screens and the dreaded red line couldn’t. “I just had a bad moment there.”
“We trust you, Mortis,” Kokoro said and murmurs of agreement followed.
“If anyone can save us, it is you, Natalie.” Gregor was putting on a brave face but his despair was even deeper than mine. His theory that fate, destiny or whatever it was that decided who would live and who would die was correcting a mistake it had made millions of years ago wouldn’t leave my mind. We should never have been created and somehow, someway, that mistake was going to be rectified. I had a feeling that we would all discover what fate intended for us much sooner than we would have liked.
