Fangtastic

by Lucienne Diver

  What really happened was that I landed hard, hands closing on pain, fighting the need to release the biting blades. My knees banged against the wood; my feet scrabbled against the barrier as I fought to pull them up under me. I didn’t look too fangtastic flailing around on that wall, blowing in the breeze like the cape I wouldn’t have on my super suit. Finally, one foot caught long enough for me to push myself up until I crouched on the wall, crushing wire. I could release the barbs I’d been holding onto, but they continued to do their job, tearing chunks out of my palms, bringing blood and flesh with them as I mercilessly pulled back. I was going to leave behind enough DNA to tag me if my point of entry was discovered. Unless … I didn’t know how it worked for vamps, being technically dead. Would my blood spoil as soon as it was out of my body, decompose as if I had really died at death? Did blood go bad, or did it keep like fine wine and Twinkies? Eww, two things that never should have occurred to me in the same sentence. Anyway, I was hoping for instant spoilage, like the dust to dust of Buffy-verse vamps.

  I licked the blood off my own hands, squicked out even as I did it but there was no point wasting blood or leaving a trail for someone to follow. As the wounds started to close, hurting like a thousand paper cuts, I gathered myself and jumped to the ground.

  “What do you think?” a voice came out of nowhere, approaching. There were no trees to duck behind. Nothing but the metal sheeting up against the wooden walls, and not enough space between them for me. I faded back into the shadows. “Think it’s another of those turkey vultures?”

  “Wish they’d just let us electrify the wiring and be done with it. Barbeque one bird and the rest will stay away, I guarantee you that.”

  “Can’t … liability,” his friend snorted. “What if some kid tried to climb in, looking for a place to party?”

  They were just inches away from me now. The Pyro, as I decided to call the fry boy who wanted to burn the birds, unhooked a flashlight the size of a telescope from his belt and shone it at the razor wire where I’d just been. I wondered what he was compensating for with a light that size, but I decided I really didn’t want to know.

  “Well, we got somethin’,” he said. “Blood. And I think some tissue as well. No feathers.”

  “Fur?”

  The flashlight beam moved left and right.

  “Nope.” Pyro’s voice was suddenly hard-edged, and I knew they’d just figured out this was no routine run or false alarm.

  “I’ll call it in.”

  Well, darn. I’d have to take down Pyro and his pal. Faster than the security dude could unclip his walkie-talkie, I flew out of the shadows, aiming a roundhouse kick at his chest. Something crunched—the walkie-talkie, I hoped, and not a rib—and he went down like a sacked quarterback.

  “Holy shit!” Pyro shouted, swinging his flashlight my way like a police baton. It was certainly big enough. I kicked it out of his hand, dropped, whirled, and took his feet out from under him. He fell to the ground but landed on his back, legs up in the air, scissoring to catch me in the knee. I started to buckle and he caught me again, this time with a heel to the other shin. I dropped and rolled for the light I’d kicked out of his hand and came up swinging. The thing was as heavy as a metal pipe. Between that and my super-vamp strength, I was going to have to be careful not to cave in his skull.

  It turned out not to be a problem. The flashlight was grabbed out of my hand by the first guy, who’d recovered from my boot to his chest. Crap!

  He brought the flashlight crashing down on me instead. Oh, I saw the light—a comic book KAPOW flash exploded my vision into a night’s sky full of stars and little else—but I knew where he’d been a second ago, and I was fast enough to take advantage. I launched myself at him, shoulder aimed just above the belt buckle, at the soft part of his stomach. He oophed and crumpled over me, at which point I used his momentum to toss him on top of Pyro, who was scrambling to his aid.

  My vision started to clear as they went down in a big puppy pile, tangling limbs when Guy Two tried to catch Guy One before they collided. It was precious, really. I grabbed the zip-tie cuffs off their belts before they could recover and got their hands under control. Then I removed their talkies and their belts, which held all kinds of goodies—pepper spray, weapon-sized Swiss Army knives, tasers, and stakes, all of which I kept for myself. I was now a one-woman arsenal. Oh yeah, these guys knew they weren’t just guarding any old facility. I guessed I was lucky they’d mistaken me for a turkey vulture. Offended, of course, but lucky. Otherwise they might have come with crossbows locked and loaded with wooden bolts. Or guns filled with holy water. Because nothing said horror like facing down a neon pink water pistol.

  Then I frisked them.

  “Hey, at least buy a guy dinner first,” Pyro protested.

  “A little to the right,” his friend quipped, when I had my paws in his pockets.

  “Okay, first off, ewww. And second … no, just ewww. And maybe hell no.” I drew back with keycards and keys. “Why don’t you use this time to think up some better lines? You may also consider how to update your résumés, because I’m pretty sure by tomorrow your positions will be available. Ta!”

  I rose and looked around for any further surprises. I had, like, maybe a little over an hour left before dawn. Enough time to get in, get a glimpse, and get home? I had to hope so. The keycards would help as long as they didn’t have any biometric sorts of scanners, like eyeball or fingerprint identification. I looked at the twits for a moment, trying to imagine cutting off fingers or popping out eyes to defeat the scanners, and just couldn’t. Sure, I’d beat them up in the heat of battle, but actually maiming them … permanently … Something rose in my throat, scalding hot, actually burning its way up like lava or venom or …

  I threw up in the bushes. It wasn’t about them. It was about Kelly Swinter, if that was her I’d left behind in the fire. And me. And how far I’d go. You didn’t fight a war without casualties, right? But if this was a war, whose side was I on?

  I wiped my mouth and straightened, seeing two sets of eyes on me in the night. Like they knew. I couldn’t do the eyes. I just couldn’t. But the finger … Could I?

  “Tell me now,” I said, looking over them. “What kind of security am I facing inside? Retinal scans?” I’d remembered the word for eyeball access. “Facial recognition? What?”

  They exchanged looks, and I knew they were silently

  trying to coordinate their stories. Whatever came out would be lies.

  “Nothin’ like that,” Pyro lied. “Keycards, video cameras, more guards like us.”

  I saw his partner roll onto his hands just slightly, as if out of sight would keep them out of mind, and I had my real answer.

  I grabbed up the flashlight that had already seen so much action and knocked them both out. I couldn’t have them calling for help once I’d gone, and it would be so much easier to do what I had to do if they weren’t awake to feel the pain or watch me. I chose Pyro, and tried to take just the pads of his fingers—thumb and index. His Bic-flicking fingers. I almost tossed my cookies again as I cut into him with his own Swiss Army knife. I tried to focus on my friends and the idea of one of them in a facility like this … Marcy or my spy-sister Cassandra; Trevor or Di or any of the others I’d gotten into this whole spy game, all unwittingly. Even Alistaire, psycho-psychic, who was soooo not my problem, didn’t deserve to do time as a lab rat. Still, I hated myself just a little. But I hated the thought of failure more.

  The portion of the facility farthest away from me was burnt out and boarded up. Rubble, a dumpster, and a cement truck sat silently down at that end. On my end the windows were still boarded, but there was no rubble. Not only did it seem untouched by fire, but access had been upgraded with a keycard reader and, sure enough, fingerprint scanner. At least my butchery wasn’t in vain.

  Totally grossed out as I did it, I pressed Pyro’s prints into the plate, swiped his card, and stepped aside as the door whooshed open, just in case any surprises awai
ted me. Artificially cool air came spilling out, but nothing else. No additional guards. I stepped inside and let the door close behind me. It looked like this used to be the emergency area of the clinic. The doors opened right onto a waiting room with natty chairs and a window in one wall where a receptionist would control any further access inside. Only there was no receptionist. There were two vacant chairs where Tweedle-Dumb and Tweedle-Dumber outside had probably sat watching the various security bells and whistles, but I had the lobby all to myself.

  There was another keycard scanner beside the receptionist/security window, but I listened at the door before using it. No sounds escaped. Either the coast was clear or the place was soundproofed. I was going to have to find out sooner or later, and I was burning night. I swiped the card, opened the door, and slipped through, closing it behind me—only to be faced with a currently unmanned nurses’ station. A blinking red light went ignored. A hallway spun off from the station in both directions, all covered in bathroom-white tile and smelling of bleach so strong it singed my nose hairs. Not that I was using them for anything.

  This is too easy. The thought kept playing over and over again in my head. I mean, I was good, but these were the Feds. They were supposed to be better. I crept to the first door on the right and peeked inside the postage-flap-sized window, crisscrossed with metal reinforcements that resembled chicken wire. My breath caught. Inside, bound to a bed, was someone who looked more skeleton than man … his skin nearly collapsed in on his bones as if all the muscle supporting the flesh had melted away. His eyes were closed, but twitched as though he were dreaming … nightmares, most likely. An IV pole stood on one side of his bed, the unmistakable red of blood dripping down through the tubes into his sunken wrist. On the other side stood a cart, another red-filled tube extending to it from his other arm. At first I couldn’t understand why. Blood in, blood out. Pointless much?

  Then a horrible, horrible thought occurred to me.

  What if … could anyone really be so bloody-minded? What if, the voice inside my head pressed, relentless, the Feds were using this guy and maybe others as, like, super-serum generators? Was that even possible? I mean, I had an idea of what our vampire blood could do. On my last mission, I’d brought a guy back from a coma with only a few drops. Could they be using vamps as living miracle cures—milking them like dairy cows? On the one hand, I couldn’t quite blame them. Our blood could do a lot of good. But could any end justify this means—creating a living skeleton, if you could even call it living? Given their methods, how noble could their motives be? I somehow doubted our blood would be made available to the needy, like those at the top of transplant lists. More likely it would be reserved for the elite, the power brokers, or those who could pay to finance that power.

  For all I knew, it had other side effects too, beyond super healing. I hadn’t waited around long enough to see what lasting effect my blood might have had on my newfound friend Bram, aka coma boy. He might have developed fashion sense or super speed or the ability to blow acid snot-bubbles … Would the Feds come up with a way to create super-soldiers or spies who didn’t have our sunlight limitations? If so, what would become of us? Fodder to generate their serum?

  Maybe I was getting ahead of myself. I didn’t have any evidence that this vampire wasn’t some brain-dead specimen the Feds were merely taking advantage of … not that it sounded much better when I thought of it that way. I had to know more.

  I moved to the next door, but before I could see inside, an alarm went off. Something must have given me away! Blue lights started to strobe inside the halls, bouncing brightly off the gleaming white tile. The sound was enough to shatter eardrums, especially those as sensitive as mine. I clapped my hands over my ears and bolted back the way I’d come. But the sirens had drowned out the sounds of running feet—there were security guys and a security gal headed my way.

  I tried my keycard on the closest door, but got a red light. Denied. Capture was just a millisecond away. The hall I was in dead-ended a few doors down. I was trapped. I looked left and right for some miracle or inspiration and finally thought to look up.

  “Hold it right there!” a voice ordered. But there was no way in hell that was happening.

  The ceiling was made of those foamlike squares, also white, held in place by a lattice of metal slats. I could bust through it easily. The trick would be finding something up there to support my weight. But I didn’t have a choice. I bent at the knees and prepared to launch myself into the air. Security drew on me; it was now or never. I leapt. A bullet blew its way through my knee, shattering my sanity with the pain and whiting out my vision, but I was already airborne.

  I hit a pipe in the ceiling and instinctively grabbed on for all I was worth. One leg wouldn’t work, but I swung the other up over the pipe and used it to push me forward like an inchworm on speed. Even with my war wound I was supernaturally fast.

  More shots were fired … one grazed my ear and I cursed, hoping it hadn’t hit my piercing. I’d heal, but the lobe would come back whole and unpierceable. If the spy game cut down on my body beautification options, someone was going to die. Another bullet hit me in the thigh of the leg I was already dragging, but I didn’t let that stop me. I scrambled along my pipe until I couldn’t anymore, either physically or logistically. Too much else was in the way. But I’d outrun the gunshots for now, and I’d gone far enough to put a few rooms between me and the guards. I had to get down and figure out an escape route.

  I dropped my good leg down through one of the ceiling tiles and the rest of my body fell with it. I landed badly in a room with a crash cart and IV but no body, the outside windows boarded up like all the rest. In the hallway, I heard yelling, running, doors being flung back … a room-to-room search.

  Quick as thought, I grabbed the IV pole and swung it at the boarded-up window. It shattered, but the glass was held in by the thick boards on the outside. I swung again as the door opened behind me. The board exploded outward, and my shoulder exploded in pain at the same time, but I dove through the window and was off at hyper-human speed, ignoring my body’s need to crumple each time I came down on my bad leg. I could sense the pursuit behind me, but if security got off any other shots, they never struck home. I was up and over the fence, running for my life before they could get a bead on me.

  Truth be told, I don’t remember much of the mad dash to Hunter’s car. I was leaping the fence and the next thing I knew, I was bleeding all over his seats. Time and torment were playing tricks on me. I yelled at him to “Drive, drive, DRIVE!” He was already peeling out before I finished. I guessed my gunshot wounds had given away the urgency.

  “You need a hospital?” he asked.

  “Why? You’re a doctor.”

  “I’m a dentist.”

  “Whatever. Anyway, there’s no time. Just get me home.”

  I could feel the bullet in my thigh working itself out, hurting like hell as it did. I clamped down on a scream. Fresh blood would make the healing go a lot faster, but I didn’t drain and drive. I’d died once by car already; I wanted to mix it up. If I went down again, it was going to be in a blaze of glory.

  I dug furrows into Hunter’s leather seats with my nails, clenching against the pain, but by the time we’d reached my place and the sky had begun to pinken the faintest bit, the worst was over. I was as weak as a kitten, but healed enough that I’d probably survive. It was the least of my worries, though. I’d come up with that clever exit strategy of switching places with Mina, but I hadn’t really gotten as far as re-entry.

  “How far are you willing to go with this?” I asked Hunter.

  “What do you mean?” Hunter slid his attention from the road to me.

  “Are you willing to sacrifice your car—risk some body work, anyway? I need to get back into my apartment unseen. I need a distraction.”

  “A car accident?”

  “Yup. Your car, their rear end.”

  “But my insurance—”

  “I don’t think it’l
l come to that,” I answered, rolling my eyes. Big picture here, dude.

  He thought for a second, then I could actually see his shoulders square and his jaw tighten. “I’m in.”

  “Good. Let me out around the corner, give me a second to get into place, and then come flying around that corner like a bat outta hell.”

  He nodded.

  “And give me your cell phone. I need to let Mina know to be at the front door when she hears that crash.”

  That way, the door would only have to open once. I could dash in and she could slip out at the very moment of impact and no one would be the wiser.

  Except for Hunter and his smashed Subaru.

  12

  As usual, day knocked me out, and I slept the sleep of, well, the dead. No counting sheep, no dreams. Just here, then gone, then suddenly here again with the setting of the sun.

  I woke to the sound of my phone ringing—one of them, anyway. It was muffled, and if not for my vampire senses, I might not have heard it at all.

  Groaning, I got out of bed. All my limbs were back in working order, but it took my brain a little longer to come online. I had a moment of confusion when I couldn’t find the phone before I realized I’d stowed it away in a drawer the night before, when I’d slipped out. By the time I got to it, I’d missed the call, but seeing that it was Agent Stick-up-her-butt—er, Maya—I called back instantly.

  “Hey, I just missed—”

  “Where were you last night?” she cut in sharply.

  I blinked. “Well, hello to you too.”