“Human law—well.” She made a comical face. “I guess it’s just considered regular law up top.”
“Nice.”
She made a different face at my lie. “The only people who think law sounds nice are the weirdos who want to pursue it as badly as I do.”
I spit in the sink and rinsed my mouth. “Okay, you got me. I was bored to tears in every law class I’ve ever had to take—and I was a police officer.”
“Really?” She scooted to the edge of the bed and clapped her hands. “Jackpot! Boy, do I have some questions for you.”
“Can they wait until tomorrow?” I asked, giving her an apologetic smile. “I’ve been on the road for two days.”
“Oh, yeah, totally.” She straightened as I sat down on the bed beside her.
The arm she offered had looked smooth and unmarred at a distance, but up close, I noticed the odd texture of her skin. Light pink puncture scars riddled her flesh, so pale that in the right lighting, they could have easily gone unnoticed.
“They have the fancy ointments here,” Natalie answered before I could ask. “The scar tissue heals up soft, too. So you shouldn’t feel any wonky resistance when you bite down.”
I’d dealt with my fair share of suicide victims as a cop, and more than one of them had been into self-harm leading up to their deaths. The scars on Natalie’s arm put a bad taste in my mouth—figuratively speaking. They reminded me of the wrist-to-elbow, raised column of lines I’d witnessed on the arm of a boy who had hung himself in his aunt’s garage. They also reminded me that a similar stack of scars was making its way up Collin’s arm.
“Don’t you worry about how this…looks?” I frowned at Natalie. She shrugged.
“I’m going to get a tattoo cover-up when I leave here. It will probably hurt more than all the bites put together.”
“Who hands out the fancy ointment?” I asked next. Collins would be needing that soon if he wanted to keep Lazlo from freaking out.
“Marco. Stuffy dude in the suit,” she added. “He’s the harem supervisor—we all call him Mr. Blueblood. If you ask him, he’ll prattle on and on about his royal fourth cousin, thrice-removed. Marco’s the only half-sired among us.”
I shook my head, trying to make sense of the new information, filtering out the fluff and committing the vital to memory. Mr. Blueblood, harem supervisor, fancy scar ointment.
“So…should we give this a whirl, you and I?” Natalie held up her arm again.
I pressed my tongue to the roof of my mouth, tucking it out of the way before extending my fangs. The conversation with Mandy and Collins in the car came back to me, and I hesitated, wondering if I should talk to them about this first. It seemed so…silly. They’d acted as if we were all high school sweethearts, and they were vexed that I’d ditched them for someone who let me get to second base.
“Any time now.” Natalie gave me a sweet smile. Her gentle encouragement anchored my common sense.
Collins and Mandy couldn’t donate blood during training. This was my only option, and I needed to get over my first sip jitters now. Unless I wanted the entire harem to laugh me out of here.
I bit down without warning, drawing a soft gasp from Natalie. Remorse slugged me, but I waited until I’d finished drinking from her before offering up an apology.
“I’ll do better next time,” I said, wiping my chin with the back of my hand.
Natalie blushed. “It’s all good. I’ve totally had worse.” She grabbed another wet wipe and dabbed at the two new marks on her wrist.
“Really, I know how to be gentle. I was just…nervous.”
She smirked at me and reached for a tube of ointment on her night table. “For not sexing me up, you sure talk like you just did.”
I grimaced, and my shoulders slouched forward. “I’m terrible at this.”
“You’re not,” she assured me, nudging my shoulder with hers. “Come on. Let’s go meet the others before another vamp gets to them first.”
* * * * *
The three donors Natalie had recommended seemed nice enough. Sampson, the guy with the scruffy goatee, seemed to equally love and hate her, much like an annoying little sister. Ned and Cara were harder to read, but they accepted my acquisition of them without balking. After Natalie had introduced everyone and we’d all established that this arrangement would work for the three months I would be there, I headed off to the crypt like Kai had instructed.
There was a black box on the wall beside this metal door, too. I panicked at first, realizing Kai hadn’t given me a keycard for access. But as I neared the device, a light flickered green, sensing my motion, and the door unlocked.
An overhead light clicked on, illuminating the room. I’d never seen so much concrete. It devoured everything—walls, floor, ceiling. It had even been used to frame out the few furnishings in the room. There were ten beds, five on either side, composed of thin, white mattresses laid on top of concrete platforms. They were coverless and narrow, their heads butting up against the walls and feet extending out to create a center aisle. No sheets or pillows either. Not that a vampire needed such things in the dead of their unnatural sleep.
Concrete shelves were sandwiched between the bunks. Beneath each one sat a small, digital safe box like those found in many hotels. The hinged doors of the safes were open, all except for one in a back corner of the room. I was guessing that bunk had been claimed by the feisty redhead. Which made my selection of a bunk near the door an easy one.
I dropped my duffle bag onto the mattress and sat down beside it, but my muscles refused to relax. The place made Natalie’s gothic lair seem downright cheerful. I breathed in the damp basement stench permeating the air. Three months. The grim thought launched a countdown in my mind.
Twelve weeks. I could do this.
I busied myself with unpacking my bag and tucking away anything I deemed valuable into the safe—my sidearm, cell phone, wallet. There was zero reception this far underground, and Roman’s notes stated that his most recent contacts had been given limited communication access anyway. And I was pretty sure the only firearms I’d need were the ones the base issued for me to train with. Everything else stayed in my bag that I set on top of the small shelf beside my bed.
My wristwatch buzzed, warning me that sunrise was an hour off. It would alert me again at a quarter till. I considered checking out the showers, but Kai had said to settle in a bunk. So I laid back on the uncomfortable mattress and mentally sorted through the new Spanish I’d learned on the second leg of the trip here.
It wasn’t long before the crypt door hissed open again. I was relieved to see a new face that didn’t belong to evil Red Biting Hood. But like the other small mercies of the night, my relief was premature. The newcomer, a woman with a severe bob of shiny black hair, hardly spared me half a glance before making her way to a bunk on the opposite wall and three down from mine.
I remembered Roman’s advice and bit my tongue, refraining from introducing myself. Don’t try to make friends.
A few minutes later, another recruit arrived—a tall, black man with a lean, gymnast build and sharp cheekbones. His eyes regarded me a moment longer than the woman’s had, but he only offered a cursory nod before taking the bunk across the way from mine.
The next time the door opened, I wasn’t so lucky.
“I hear some idiot got first pick and settled for all the garbage donors,” a hateful, masculine voice crooned.
My breath tightened in my lungs as a square-jawed man entered the crypt alongside the woman from House Hanson. Her cold eyes landed on me.
“Probably the same idiot who tried to claim a member of my personal harem.”
The man shook his head and ran a hand through his short, black hair. “We should have waited for spring. Wiping the floor with the competition just isn’t as much fun when they’re invalids.”
His eyes followed the woman’s line of sight and paused on me. The smug grin stretching his face widened as the two of them passed my bunk and retrea
ted to the back of the room. He took the bed opposite the woman from House Hanson had claimed, leaving three empty bunks between us. Their camaraderie made me wonder if the man was from the same house. Kai had said recruits, plural. But since I’d brought a human and a wolf with me, I hated to assume. And I definitely wasn’t about to ask.
I put my hands behind my head and stared up at the ceiling, willing the sun to hurry along. Tomorrow would be a new night. I just needed it to get here, that was all. I closed my eyes and began silently mouthing my Spanish lessons again.
“I don’t know, Mic,” I heard red whisper to her sidekick. “That bunk near the door looks extra soft. What do you think?”
“You know, Blair, I think you might be right.”
Mic and Blair. I filed the names away for future reference. Mic seemed like as much a piece of work as Blair, and I didn’t realize he was standing over me until I felt his foot kick the edge of my mattress. He’d moved so fast. It was a struggle not to flinch in surprise.
“Move your shit. I want this bunk.”
My blood vision cast a red vignette around his face as I opened my eyes to glare up at him. “Then you should have gotten here sooner.”
“Seriously. You need to move,” he said. A muscle in his neck twitched, and dimples formed on either side of mouth, though the smile didn’t reach his eyes. The other recruits in the room grew still, sensing the tension as it swelled.
“Seriously,” I echoed him. “That’s not going to happen.”
“You think we don’t know who you are?” he snapped. “Zajalvo’s orphaned vampling has no business training with seasoned scions like us.” He kicked the mattress again. “Move.”
“Vampling? You’re one to speak.” The final vampire recruit entered the crypt. She was a tiny woman, with a mop of springy curls and a duffle bag nearly as big as she was strapped across her back. She dropped it onto the bed beside mine and grabbed her hips with both hands. “Aren’t you that Novak puke who was nearly coffin-locked for offending one of the duke’s guests?”
“No. Who told you that?” Mic scoffed, but the strain in his jaw gave him away.
“Yeah, that was definitely you,” the woman said, squinting at him. “Luckily, my sire is the forgiving sort. Unless you want to consider him sending me here as retribution.”
He looked from the woman to me, as if deciding just how many enemies he wanted to be sharing a room with. Finally, he stepped away from my bed and sulked back to his own in the far corner.
“I’m Sonja,” the new vamp said, reaching out to shake my hand. “House Starling.” Before I got the crazy notion that we might become friends, she added. “Stay out of my way, and I’ll stay out of yours.” It was a better offer than I’d had so far.
“Deal.”
She nodded and settled on the opposite side of her bunk, giving me her back as she unlaced her boots and put her things away in the safe under her shelf.
My watch vibrated. Fifteen minutes.
No one else seemed to need the reminder. Soon, their backs lay as flat as mine against their mattresses. The familiar tug of dawn pulled at my eyelids, and just before they closed, the overhead light winked out.
“Sweet dreams, green fang,” Blair’s jerk sidekick whispered in the dark. “You’ll learn your place soon enough.”
The threat tightened my gut. I opened my mouth to shoot something hateful back at him, but day broke. Though I couldn’t see the light, I felt it suck my consciousness into that strange abyss where it awaited nightfall.
Maybe I’d have a better comeback by then. Telling a vampire to bite me just didn’t have the same effect as it did with human asshats.
Chapter Six
I’m dying. It was the only thought my brain could latch onto, and it pounded against my skull like a trapped animal, growing more frantic by the second. I’m dying, I’m dying, I’m dying.
I was conscious before the sun fully set Sunday night. I couldn’t move or see anything, but I felt the world crush in around me. I felt my body ache and muscles scream for release like a moth straining to break free of their cocoon. It was a desperate effort that I couldn’t remember ever taking hold of me this way before.
Hold on, Jenna. Roman’s voice echoed in my mind, and my eyes flashed open. A suffocating darkness greeted me, and my first breath of the night was strangled as I rasped in a mouthful of icy water. I gasped and gagged as the water ripped its way back up my throat.
My hands groped for something—anything—but I found only raw wood encasing me on all sides. I was in a box. No, a cheap coffin, I realized as my blood vision kicked in. A cheap, sinking coffin, from the water rising up around me.
Son of a bitch.
My brain fired up with the hopeless chanting again. I’m dying, I’m dying, I’m dying.
And again, Roman’s voice tried to soothe me. Hold on.
Hold on to what? I thought, irritation raking my insides, boiling my terror into outrage.
The water filled my ears, and I screamed. In the tiny box, the sound didn’t travel far, but I kept screaming, refusing to let up until my throat was raw and my ears rang.
I tried to pull my knees up to my chest, but there wasn’t enough room. I pressed my palms into the panel in front of my face, pushing for all I was worth. The wet wood creaked but refused to give, and the water flooded in faster.
I let out a defeated sob, but just a brief one before pinching my lips shut. Only a few inches of air remained in the box. My limbs were already freezing up, the icy water rendering my movements sluggish and weak. I pounded my fists and kicked my heels. Then I took a deep breath as the last of the air vanished.
“Hold on, Jenna!” Someone else was screaming at me now. This time, it wasn’t just in my head. Mandy’s frantic voice cut through the water, sounding muffled and far away.
I didn’t dare open my mouth to answer her. The water was already working its way in through my nose, trickling down the back of my throat. As soon as it reached my stomach, my body spasmed, and my muscles labored to force it back up. But opening my mouth to vomit up the watery bile just let more in, and I was soon repeating the horrific act with mounting violence and panic.
My skull knocked the inside of the coffin as it was pitched to one side, and I felt gravity pull at my feet until they pressed into the end of the box. I was being moved. The water buffered the clumsy journey, but only slightly, and my heaving seizure did little to help. The rough wood snagged on my clothes and left splinters in my hands and feet.
A final, jarring thunk sounded, and then there was air in the box again, reappearing an inch at a time, until the lid of the coffin was ripped free. Hands plunged into the water and yanked me upright.
Kai, Mandy, and Collins loomed over me. Their fingers dug into my arms and legs as they tried to help me up and out, but I stumbled, tipping it over instead. I spilled from the box rather than exiting, right onto the gritty floor. We were at the edge of the cave pool on the far end of the base.
Someone I didn’t recognized appeared with a towel and handed it off to Kai. He wrapped it around my shoulders and sighed.
“Let the pranks begin.”
“You call this a prank?” Collins bared his teeth at the dismissive remark, while Mandy squeezed my hand until my knuckles popped. The strap of her watch grazed my thigh where a splinter had taken hold, and I winced as I coughed and hacked up more water.
“This is bullshit.” Her words came out laced with a growl, and her eyes had taken on a golden hue. “Do you know who did this?”
“Mic,” I rasped, ready to claw my way through hell to find the bastard.
Kai grabbed my shoulders and pulled me around to face him. “Novak didn’t rise any sooner than you or I did, and he’s the only recruit here from his household. He didn’t even bring personal blood donors.”
That left only one alternative. My blood vision throbbed painfully, and my bones ached for revenge. I stared across the cave to where Blair lingered near the opposite end of the pool, watc
hing me with a satisfied smirk. Three men stood around her, one of them being the guy from the harem. The other two were human, also. I could tell from the wash of red painting their features.
They would burn for this. I didn’t care how affluent or above-the-law they thought they were. I would find a way to collect my pound of flesh.
“How did you find me?” I asked Kai, pulling the towel around my shoulders tighter. My hair dripped in my face, and a tremor reverberated through my chest. I couldn’t be sure if it was from the cold or the desperate wrath I was keeping caged in there.
“Roman,” Kai answered under his breath. I could feel his eyes measuring me, taking note of my condition as much as my tunnel vision and what it was focused on. “I guess your blood hasn’t quite made it out of his system. You got lucky.”
“And them? Are they lucky, too?” I asked through clenched teeth.
His hand squeezed my shoulder tighter. “Without hard evidence, accusations only lead to more trouble,” he said.
“If this were real boot camp, someone would be getting their ass kicked out of here for this,” Collins said, glaring up as the program sergeants approached. It was the wrong thing to say.
“You want real boot camp?” the white-haired sergeant over the human program spat at Collins. “Get in formation, or I’ll be kicking your ass out of here.”
Collins gritted his teeth, but I eased his hand off my arm. “I’ll be fine. Go.”
“You, too,” Sergeant Carmichael said to Mandy next. The girl was even more reluctant to leave me, but I waved her off as I had Collins.
The remaining sergeant had to be Faye Sorano. Her stony face held that perfect alert vacancy that Vanessa and Roman were so good at, but the similarities ended there. Her military cap fit snuggly, and the bit of hair I could see was dark and pixie short. She walked with purpose, chest lifted and hands folded behind her back.
Blood in the Water (Blood Vice Book 3) Page 5
