by J. R. Ward
It was like having beer goggles without the beer, she supposed, some chemistry in her transforming him into so much more than he appeared.
Breathing in deep, she tried to catch his scent--and then felt like a stalker.
Well, because she was a stalker.
After his picture was taken, he turned to the crowd, his eyes sweeping over the assembled, no reaction showing on his face. Dimly, she was aware of the doggen who'd checked them all in packing up her things and departing--along with the tray-wielding servers who were probably going back for reloads.
But like she cared about any of that?
Look at me, she thought toward the male. Look at me. . . .
And then he did.
His eyes moved past her--but then doubled back, locking on. As a blast of electricity went through Paradise's whole body, she--
All at once, the gymnasium went pitch-black.
Pitch.
Frickin'.
Black.
*
Back at the Havers's underground clinic, if it hadn't been for the glass wall Marissa was leaning against, she would have fallen down.
Especially as she watched her brother pull the white sheet up and over the frozen features of the female.
Dearest Virgin Scribe, she had been unprepared for the silence of death . . . how, when Havers had called time, everyone and everything just stopped, the alarms silenced, the effort extinguished, the life over. She had also been unready for the withdrawing of the equipment that had tried to keep the female with them all: One by one, the tubes in her chest, her arms, and her stomach had been pulled free, and then the cardiac monitoring hookups and pads had been removed. The last thing stripped down had been the compression sleeves on her thin calves.
Marissa had had to blink fast at the gentle hands of the nurses. They were as careful with her in death as they had been in life.
As the staff filed out, she wanted to thank the females in their white dresses and discreetly squeaky shoes. Clasp their hands. Hug them.
Instead, she stayed where she was, paralyzed by a sense that the death that had occurred was not hers to witness. Family should be here, she thought with dread. God, where was she going to find the family?
"I'm so sorry," Havers said.
Marissa was about to ask him why he was apologizing to her--when she realized he was addressing his patient: her brother was bent over the bed, one of his hands resting on the motionless shoulder beneath the sheet, his brows drawn tightly beneath his tortoiseshell glasses.
When he straightened and stepped back, he popped up those glasses and seemed to wipe his eyes--although when he finally turned to her, he was fully composed.
"I shall ensure that her remains are attended to appropriately."
"Which means what."
"She will be cremated with a proper ritual."
Marissa nodded once. "I want her ashes."
As Havers nodded in turn, and arrangements were made for pickup the following evening, Marissa was very aware that she was running out of time. If she didn't get away from her brother, this room, that body, the clinic . . . she was going to break down in front of him.
And that was simply not an option.
"If you will excuse me," she cut in. "I have some business to take care of back at Safe Place."
"But of course."
Marissa glanced at the female, noting absently that the sheet was staining red in a couple of places, no doubt from the removal of the tubes.
"Marissa, I . . ."
"What?" she said in a tired voice.
In the tense quiet that followed, she thought about all the time she'd spent being mad at him, hating him--but at the moment, she couldn't muster up any of those emotions. She just stood in front of her kin, waiting in a position of neither strength nor weakness.
The door opened and the curtain was pulled back. A nurse, one who had not been involved in the death, put her head in. "Doctor, we are prepped in four."
Havers nodded. "Thank you." When the nurse ducked back out, he said, "Will you excuse me? I have to--"
"Take care of your patients. By all means. It's what you do best, and you are very good at it."
Marissa left the room, and after a split second of which-way, remembered to go left. It was easier to regain her composure out in the open and keep her mask in place as she walked back down to the reception area--and all eyes were on her as she departed, as if word had spread among the staff. Strange that she recognized no faces--it made her realize anew just how many had been killed in the raids, how long it had been since she had been around her brother's work.
How the two of them, in spite of blood ties, were essentially strangers.
Taking the elevator back up to the surface, she emerged in the cell-like pre-building and punched her way out into the forest.
Unlike the evening before, tonight the moon shone brightly, illuminating the forest . . . and the absolutely no road in. It dawned on her then that there truly were a multiple of entrances to the subterranean complex, some for deliveries, others for patients who were able to dematerialize, and then that one for ambulances.
All of it so logically set up, undoubtedly due to her brother's input and influence.
Why hadn't Wrath told her that he was helping Havers with all this?
Then again, it wasn't really her business, was it.
Had Butch known? she wondered.
I am so sorry.
As Marissa heard her brother's voice in her head, her anger came back tenfold, to the point that she had to rub a heartburn sensation away from her sternum.
"Water under the bridge," she told herself. "Time to go back to work."
And yet she couldn't seem to leave. In fact, the idea of heading to Safe Place made her want to bolt in the opposite direction: She couldn't tell the staff there about what had happened just now. The female's death was like a negation of everything they tried to do under that roof: intercept, protect, educate, empower.
Nope. She couldn't face going there right away.
The problem was . . . she had no idea where to go.
Chapter Six
In the darkness that was as dense as that of a grave, Paradise could hear only her heart thundering behind her ribs. Squinting, she tried to get her eyes to adjust, but there was no light source anywhere--no glow from around the doors, no red Exit signs, no emergency lights. The void was utterly terrifying and seemed to defy the laws of gravity, the sense that she had maybe floated off the floor even as her weight remained on her feet confusing her, nauseating her.
No more classical music, either.
But things were far from silent. As she forced her ears to reprioritize away from the castanets in her chest, she could hear the muttering, the breathing, the cursing. A few must have been moving a little, the rustling of clothes, the shuffling of feet, like background chatter to the more prominent vocal noises.
They can't hurt us, she told herself. There was no way the Brotherhood was actually going to hurt any of them: Yes, she had signed a consent and waiver form on the back of the application--not that she had read the fine print with much interest--but in any event, murder was murder.
You couldn't sign away your right to remain breathing.
This was just the Brotherhood making their grand entrance. Any moment now. Yup, they were going to emerge spotlit from some door, silhouetted like superheroes against a rolling white fog, their awesome weaponry hanging from their larger-than-life bodies.
Uh-huh.
Any minute now . . .
As the darkness continued, her fear spiked again, and it was hard not to give in to it and run. But where would she go? She had some vague sense of where the doors were, where the bar was, where the sign-in table had stood. She also thought she remembered where that male, Craeg, was--no, wait, he had moved. He was moving.
For some reason, she could sense him among all the others, as if he were a kind of beacon--
A breeze brushed against her body, making her j
ump. But it was just cool air. Cool, fresh air.
Well, that ruled out an electrical short if the HVAC systems were still working.
Okay, this was ridiculous.
And clearly, she wasn't the only one getting frustrated. Other people were cursing more, moving more, stomping their feet.
"Brace yourself."
Paradise shouted into the darkness, but then settled as she recognized Craeg's voice, scent, presence. "What?" she whispered.
"Get ready. This is going to be the first test--they've opened the way out, the question is how they're going to drive us toward it."
She wanted to seem as smart as he was, as calm as he was. "Why don't we just go back over to the doors we came through?"
"Not a good idea."
Right on cue, there was a coordinated shuffling in the direction of the way they'd all entered, as if a group had coalesced, agreed on a strategy, and was putting a plan in action.
And that was when she heard the first screams of the night.
High-pitched, and obviously of pain and not alarm, the horrible sounds were accompanied by a buzzing she didn't understand.
Blindly--literally--she threw out a hand and grabbed onto Craeg's . . . except no, the flat, hard expanse was his stomach, not his arm. "Oh, God, I'm sorry. I--"
"They electrified the doors," he said without acknowledging her gaffe or apology. "We can't assume anything is safe in here. Did you drink what they served? Did you eat any of that stuff on the plates?"
"Ah . . . no, no, I--"
From over on the left, the unmistakable sound of someone dry-heaving cut into the chaos. And two seconds after that, like a bird answering the call of its species, someone else started to vomit.
"They can't make people sick," she blurted. "Wait, this is . . . this is school! They can't--"
"This is survival," the male said grimly. "Don't fool yourself. Trust no one, especially not if they're a so-called teacher. And do not expect to make it through this--not because you're a woman, but because the Brothers are going to set the bar so high, only one in ten of us has a shot at still being on our feet at the end of this night. If that."
"You can't be serious."
"Listen," he said. "Do you hear that?"
"The throwing up?" Her stomach rolled in sympathy. "It's hard to miss."
Hard to smell, too.
"No, the ticking."
"What are you . . ." And then she heard it, too . . . in the background, like the auditory equivalent of someone moving behind a curtain, there was a steady clicking sound. "What is that?"
"We don't have a lot of time left. The intervals between the beeping are getting shorter and shorter. Good luck."
"Where are you going?" Don't leave me, she wanted to say. "Where are--"
"I'm going to track the fresh air. That's where everyone is going to be headed. Don't touch any of the exercise equipment, either. Like I said, good luck to you."
"Wait!" But he was already gone, a ghost that disappeared into the blackness.
Abruptly, Paradise became downright terrified, her body shaking uncontrollably, her hands and feet going numb, a cold sweat breaking out over every square inch of her skin.
Father was right, she thought. I can't do this. What was I thinking--
And that was when all hell broke loose.
From up above and all around, explosions erupted as if the gymnasium had been wired to detonate, the sounds so loud her ears registered them as pain, not noise, the flashes of light so bright she went from one version of blind to another.
Screaming into the maelstrom, she put her hands up to the sides of her head and crouched to the ground, ducking for cover.
Ahead of her, she saw people on the floor, some who were in a defensive curl like she was, others who were vomiting, still more by those doors who writhed and curled their arms in tight as if the pain were too great for them to stand.
There was only one person who was up and moving.
Craeg.
In the intermittent flashes, she tracked his movement to the far, far corner. Sure enough, there appeared to be an opening, a door that offered nothing save more blackness--but that had to be better than getting blown up.
She took a couple of steps forward, and then realized that was bullshit. Run. She needed to run--there was nothing holding her back, and she didn't want to get hit with falling debris.
Don't touch the exercise equipment.
Considering what had happened when those people had tried to get out those metal doors? No shit.
It was a great relief to bolt forward, but she toggled back on her speed because her vision couldn't keep up; she had to wait for the flashes. It was the only way to be safe.
Talk about an ugly stride. Tripping, scrambling, slipping, she began to fight her way through stinging noise and light, the threat to her life, the terror that gripped her.
She had just entered the maze of athletic equipment when she came to the first person on the ground. It was a male and he was moaning and clutching his stomach. Her instinct was to try and help him, but she stopped herself.
This is about survival.
Something whizzed by her ear--a bullet? They were shooting at them?
Throwing herself down, she skidded across the slick floor on her stomach and then crab-walked through the overwhelming chaos.
She was fine until she came up to the next male who was down and writhing, his arms locked around his abdomen.
It was Peyton.
Keep going, she told herself. Get yourself to safety.
As another explosion went off, right by her head, she belly-flatted to the floor and yelled into the maelstrom, "Shit!"
*
As Craeg, son of Brahl the Younger, started across the gym, he was surprised that the idea of leaving that female behind bothered him as much as it did. He didn't know her; he didn't owe her--she was Paradise, the receptionist from the King's audience house, the one who had given him a printed application weeks ago.
Which he'd needed because he was too poor to have Internet access, much less a computer or a printer.
Back in that parlor, she had been . . . too stunning to look at. And then when he'd heard about her wanting to try out for this program? The only thing that had gone through his mind had been what humans could do to her if they caught her. Or lessers. Or the wrong kind of vampire male.
Someone as beautiful as her was not safe in this world.
Yet she seemed naive about the crucible they were all facing as trainees. The Brothers had engineered every part of this environment. Nothing had been left to chance, and nothing was going to work in favor of the candidates. Telling her what she should have already known had seemed like the only way he could help her at all--but he couldn't waste even a moment wondering what happened to her.
What he needed to focus on was the flashes.
Although on the surface they seemed random, in fact there was a subtle pattern to them, and as with the beeping before the light and noise show had started, the intervals were getting shorter and shorter--so they were running out of time again.
He had no idea what the second phase was going to be, but he knew he'd better be ready for it.
At least none of the were going to die.
In spite of the atmosphere of danger, he had the sense that the Brotherhood wasn't actually going to hurt any of them: The "explosions" were just a lot of sound and light; there was no debris, no structures falling, no smell of smoke. Likewise, whatever was making those people throw up couldn't be anything fatal. The folks down on the gym floor were not in their happy place, for sure--but among the flashes of illumination, he saw that some of the first who'd fallen were already getting to their feet.
This was a test, an elaborate, God-only-knew-how-long test--and at the rate things were going, the program's passage rate might be even lower than what he'd quoted Paradise.
Craeg paused and looked back for a split second. He couldn't seem to help it.
But there was
no telling where she was in the fray. Not enough sustained light, and too many bodies.
Just keep going, he told himself.
You've done it before, you're going to do it tonight.
Pressing on, he worked his way around the periphery of the exercise equipment. Really not a good idea to take cover behind or under any of it. From time to time, he'd see out of the corner of his eye some poor soul give that a shot--only to appear to be electrocuted, their bodies going all bad angles in the strobing light as they jerked back and twisted and fell.
He really hoped she'd listened to what he'd said.
Ducking his head and moving fast, he eventually came around to the open doorway in the far corner. The scent of fresh air was intoxicating, a respite that charged his body with additional power. But he couldn't see what was on the other side--and cursed himself that he hadn't followed through on the passing impulse to keep a flashlight on him.
Okay, fine, so even he hadn't expected things to get this frickin' intense.
"This is where we have to go."
At the sound of a low voice, he glanced behind himself--and was shocked to find a female standing next to him. It wasn't the lovely blonde, not even close. In fact, this one seemed to suggest that the term fairer sex was a serious misnomer: She was nearly as tall as he was, muscled under her athletic clothes, and the way she looked him in the eye, he knew immediately she was even smarter than she was strong.
"I'm Craeg," he said, putting out his palm.
"Novo."
Unsurprisingly, the shake was tight and short.
"This is next." She nodded at the void. "Why the hell didn't I bring a flashlight?"
"I was thinking the same--"
"This way!" someone hollered. "This is the way!"
In the strobe lighting, Craeg saw a group of three males gunning for the open doorway, led by a big muckling guy who wore an expression of anticipatory triumph that Craeg was pretty damn sure wasn't going to stay in place for long.
Craeg shook his head and stepped back. However he went in there, it wasn't going to be headlong and at a dead run. For all they knew--
One . . . two . . . three . . . the trio passed by him and the female, who also stepped aside.
Right away the door slammed shut with a loud clang. And then there were screams from the other side.
Craeg looked around. Maybe something else was going to open? Or was he not casting a wide enough net? It was possible that there was another answer--
