Breed: Slayer

by Sandra Seymour

A red curtain of blood fills my eyes and I lose control, thrashing against the restraints and convulsing. I wonder, before my mind is lost in a paroxysm of agony, if this was what Quidel meant by provoking the madness. If so, it seems to be working.

  As the torture continues, Howard watches, tears in his eyes. I focus my attention on him between rounds, letting him know I’m okay, but his face shows the pressure seeing this is putting him under. When he tries to move to help me, the vampires hold him back. When he tries to leave, they block his path. When he looks away, one of them grabs him by the face and turns him back towards me, whispering something in his ear.

  After a few hours, Falk arrives and talks to Howard. Howard refuses to look at him, staring glumly out of the window, wishing he could be out there instead of in here. I’m with him on that.

  A vampire scientist burns through my skin with a thick acid and I scream; it feels like a thousand of Howard’s vampire mice are eating me alive. Then, before the wound heals, he injects something that burns my veins and sets my mind on fire.

  I force my eyes back into focus and scan the room wildly until my eyes find Howard’s.

  “No!”

  The next surge of pain takes me and I become incoherent. I am trying to tell Howard to be firm, and that I will be okay. They’re not doing any permanent damage, but the noises are coming out in a garbled mixture of gurgles and snorts.

  Suddenly the onslaught stops and the pain begins to recede.

  “ARE YOU SURE?” Falk’s supercilious tone fills in the blanks for me. I start to swear.

  “I said stop. I will do it,” Howard’s voice is hoarse and raw. The enmity between them now is tangible, but Falk has all the power. Everything about Howard, from the down-turned set of his mouth and hanging head to his drooping shoulders and slumping stance, speaks of defeat.

  “Very well,” Falk manages to make it sound like he is doing Howard a favour. “Stop!” he instructs the room in general. “From now on you will take instruction from Professor Tornicasa. Do as he bids.”

  Falk, having achieved his goal, looks at Howard with pity, but when he turns to me before leaving, there is no emotion on his face. He looks at me for a moment, then his head tips to one side. His lips purse and his brow furrows as if he were trying to work out a puzzle, but then he wrinkles his nose, shrugs, and walks away.

  Howard moves to me and releases the iron cuff on my right arm, motioning for the other technicians to loosen the others. Two of them move in to unfasten my legs, but he is left to undo my left arm himself. He tries to help me up but I shrug him off angrily.

  “You shouldn’t have,” I sit up, pulling the sensors from my chest, arms, and temples.

  “I know, but I could not let them do that to you Maxi, I just couldn’t.”

  “Well I could,” I snarl the reply. My cheeks are hot and tears sting my eyes, threatening to betray me. “Better that than what comes next. They’ve made you betray everything you believe in, and because of me. And you can do it, can’t you? Quicker than the rest of them put together. Falk was right, they need your mind.”

  If he wonders how I overheard Falk’s conversation, he doesn’t show it. He turns and speaks with one of the soldiers, asking them to leave, and assuring them there will be no further trouble. I wouldn’t count on that, but I’m careful to keep the thought to myself. All but the original contingent of four file out of the lab.

  He moves to a cabinet and returns with another bag of clear liquid, which he attaches to the needle in my arm. I glare at him, unable to believe he is going to go through with this.

  “Relax, this will flush your system. It might make you a little woozy though, so you might want to lie down. It will also mean we won’t be able to make any progress tonight.”

  “They want to turn your cure into a weapon,” I hiss at him.

  “I know.”

  “They’re going to start some kind of human crusade.”

  Howard pauses from fiddling with the valve, and looks up at me. “Actually, that is not them. As far as I can gather, they are trying to prevent it.”

  That doesn’t make sense.

  “No. I’ve seen it. Look.”

  I glare into his eyes, and concentrate on the images from my visions and Dillon’s, until I see the reflection of them in his pupils. He shakes his head. Then I show him Father Patrick and the reporter.

  “Father Patrick must be some kind of Paladin, and the guy he killed worked with The Breed. If he’s not working with The Coven, who is he working with?”

  My head starts to swim with the effects of Howard’s cleansing flush, and I lean back into the chair, tucking my knees up into my chest.

  “I do not know, Maxi, but I do not like this,” Howard sits down, looking at his hands, then looks back at me. “Some of those early images are already happening. Skirmishes between slayers and vampires like the one we saw are errupting all over the world, and they are attracting attention. The humans are reporting themas hate crimes, gang warfare, that kind of thing. Both sides are being portrayed as drug smugglers, pirates, rebel insurgents, but there are rumblings already about religious intolerance being a factor.”

  We stare at each other in silence for a while. Eventually I ask him, “What do we do?”

  He just sighs and shakes his head, “I don’t know Maxi. I just do not know.”

  AROUND THREE IN the morning Howard calls an end to the experiments for the night, and I am led out of the lab in the opposite direction from the destroyed stone cell, hugging the flapping remains of my t-shirt to my chest. My escorts stop outside the caged cell Libby was in before. There’s no sign of her. My eyes narrow and I turn to a vampire guard.

  “Where is she?”

  If he feels any reluctance at telling me, he quickly hides it. “Moved to Howard’s quarters.”

  I step into the cage and they move off. On the bed is a tray with a half-eaten sandwich and an untouched apple. The sight of them reminds me how hungry I am, and I devour the apple in greedy bites. The flesh is sour and dry, but I swallow it without taking time to chew. It will give me stomach cramps later, but that’s the least of my worries. With the apple down to a slim core, and the hunger pangs in my stomach showing no signs of abating, I wolf the last of the sandwich too - hard dried cheese on stale bread. The food leaves me with a raging thirst, but there’s nothing to drink in the cell, and no running water.

  I’m about to settle down and send my spirit out when Tilda appears at the bars of the cell.

  “If you’ve come to torment my mother, she’s not here,” I say, making no effort to hide my animosity.

  “I know, Maxine,” she looks at me, her head on one side, as if she has never seen me before. As if I am not the slayer I am, and could not rip the bars right out of the floor and wrap them round her neck if I chose to. “I fear for her.”

  “Really? I find that hard to believe, since you do everything in your power to drive her insane.”

  Tilda frowns. Distaste pauses on her brow for a moment before giving way to an insincere smile, “Now really, is that any way to speak to your grandmother?”

  “You are not, and never will, be my grandmother.”

  “Tornicasa. You bear my name, as does your father, my child. Do you know what it means?”

  “Yes. It means returned from the dead. It’s a name given to a male child born after the death of an older brother. It doesn’t mean we’re related, just that you’re the one who infected my father with a nasty disease. He passed a genetic mutation of it on to me. Thanks for that.”

  “And you believe he will find a cure and you will all live happily ever after?” She says it in that patronizing tone adults use with very young children.

  Those bars are so thin. And she is only a vampire, not even trueblood. Strigoi. Undead. Ghost. Bloodsucking leech.

  “No. I believe he will find a cure so we can all live out our natural days and be free of this madness and violence,” I say, matter of fact. Then I mimic her talk-to-a-baby voice. “But I
don’t expect you to understand Tilda, don’t worry.”

  It doesn’t have the desired effect. Shame.

  “He was not always like that you know,” her eyes go out of focus and her face softens. “He was committed to the cause for many years, before the witch captivated him.”

  “Why does everyone keep calling Libby a witch?” I ask, frustration getting the better of me. “And what cause?”

  “Strengthening the Moroi Romanesti, the vampire nation, of course, and curing the rasa madness. Protecting us from those, like you, who would make all of us extinct. It was his research that started all this. He was quite the innovator, your father. He introduced us to some interesting scientific methods. Methods he would have us abandon now of course, in favour of studying mice. As if mice can tell us where it hurts and how,” she sneers, then catches herself; smiles again, the same hollow expression devoid of warmth I am becoming accustomed to.

  “And because that is what she is. Didn’t you know? You must have seen her powers? The foresight? You share them, too. They come down the female line, from the Strigele witches, though I suspect you don’t know how to harness them yet.”

  I think she’s rambling, but some of what she says makes sense. I remember Dillon telling me his powers came from his mother. Howard certainly doesn’t have the gift of foresight, either, and the visions must have come from somewhere.

  “Libby is suffering Maxine, because her powers come from female ancestors who carried a magical heritage. They worked with the church to destroy the Strigoi children of the Moroi. Their powers helped the human slayers seek out and trap us. But she abandoned her heritage when she ran off with Howard. So, she has never honed or harnessed her skills. Being in this proximity to so many of us, without having learned that control, that’s what’s driving her crazy. Not me. It will drive you mad too eventually, if you do not exercise some control.”

  When I don’t answer, Tilda leaves and I fume for a while, sure she is lying. Some of what she said makes sense, but she has also filled me with more questions.

  LIBBY HAS HAD premonitions that have kept us alive. If she really is a witch, with the power of premonition and the ability to track vampires, though, why didn’t she tell me? Why didn’t she help me develop my powers, instead of leaving that to The Breed?

  What about Father Patrick? If Libby’s ancestors worked with the Catholic church to destroy the vampires, has he been watching over her, and me, all these years? In which case, why would he have killed the reporter working with The Breed, who should have been on the same side as him?

  Then of course there’s her references to Howard’s, how did she put it, “interesting scientific methods,”? Did Howard instigate the human experimentation? Just how much responsibility for the vampire’s genocidal plans does Howard bear? Is he really trying to find a cure for vampirism, or for this madness everyone keeps going on about? Is that why the trueblood vampires protect their undead offspring, and persecute half-breeds?

  A little while later, a vampire guard appears with a cello and bow, saying Tilda sent them. She has also sent a change of clothing, but if she thinks I’m wearing a dress like that, she has another think coming. When I tell the guard as much, he smirks and hands me a pair of my own jeans and a fresh t-shirt slung over his arm beneath the dress.

  I feel a stab of anger and resentment at Tilda for trying to manipulate me. Part of me wants to refuse the gift, and sulk, but I accept, wishing she had thought to send food as well.

  When the guard leaves, I shrug the t-shirt on over my head, and pull the old one off beneath it. I don’t want to change my jeans in this cell, open as it is, but the ones I’m in are filthy, so I sit gingerly on the dingy mattress and bump them under my backside, quickly whipping them off and thrusting my legs into the new pair. I stand and turn my back to the bars to pull them up and fasten them, thankful that t-shirt Tilda sent me is a long, baggy one. I don’t think anyone is watching, but I’ve had enough humiliation for one night.

  The cello is larger than the standard size. It must be at least three centuries old. I expect the strings to be brittle, but as I settle down to tune it up, I’m glad to notice they look new, and the sound they produce is rich and mellow.

  I move from warming up into the sawing motion of a marching tune, and in time drift into the melody of an old Irish hymn, Be Thou My Vision. My troubled thoughts are becoming calmed, my mind clearing of all but the music.

  A high, breathy flute accompaniment chimes in, startling me. I open my eyes and the sound fades. I close them and it returns. I settle into a trance state, enjoying the flow. When the piece ends, I stay in trance, and hear Dillon’s voice.

  ‘HOW ARE YOU holding up Max?’ he sounds genuinely concerned.

  ‘Well, I guess. That is, considering Howard is up to his neck in genocidal research he needs my blood for, and Libby is a runaway demon-hunting nun. Other than that, everything’s just peachy. You?’

  ‘Oh, you know. I’m spending half my time trying to prevent a megalomaniacal god-wannabe from bringing on Armageddon, and the other half fending off accusations of treachery from his cannibalistic followers, also, trying to reach you in between, of course.’

  ‘Of course. How’s that working out for ya?’ I do my best Doctor Phil impression, which is poor, even in my head.

  ‘Swell,’ Dillon sounds about as convincing as I do.

  ‘So, what did you want me for?’

  ‘Everything. You know, recce the opposition. Figure out how we’re going to get out of this mess. Alive, preferably.’

  ‘Ah, that,’ I smile, remembering his comment about being killed not being widely considered a viable choice, ‘anyone would think you want to live forever. Since I’ve been here the vampires have been so vile I’ve pretty much managed to forget there’s a much worse threat looming.’

  I’m not lying. I had forgotten about Sam. Dillon’s casual comment has brought back a flood of memories, and with them a ball of fear in my gut.

  ‘Thanks, Dillon.’

  ‘Sorry,’ he sounds sincerely regretful, ‘but we are running out of time. Sam is gathering his forces. His plans are in place and they’re not pretty, Max.’

  ‘Why should I trust you?’

  I haven’t forgotten Dillon’s propensity for side-switching. I don’t mean for Dillon to catch that thought, but he turns cold, obviously angry, and incredulous.

  ‘My side switching? Maxi, you shut me out. You could have gotten us both killed. You left me with no choice but to stay close to Sam and try to limit the damage. What were you thinking, anyway? We could have taken him down together, and avoided all this ...’

  ‘You betrayed me!’ I argue, angry that Dillon is trying to twist my memories. ‘You tricked me into the basement. You told Sam the trick worked. You were going to kill Libby!’

  Dillon laughs a harsh laugh, ‘That’s what you think?’

  ‘Yes. And you told Sam about Howard in the first place. How else could he have known?’

  ‘How else indeed?’ the sarcasm stings, flushing my face.

  My head fills with a series of images. I see the familiar faded cords and beige cardigan, as Howard talks with Doctor Chan, heads bowed. They are outside the hospital, in the same spot where Vinnie leant against an ambulance three nights ago. The Doctor hands Howard a package and a clipboard. Howard signs the piece of paper on it, and the two shake hands.

  Howard leaves, and as he sets off down the road at speed, a maroon saloon car follows him, its lights switched off even in the darkness.

  I see Howard entering the house, and the car pulling up across the road a few hundred yards away. My slow beating heart stops altogether when the vision pans in. I recognise the satin sheen of the jacket, and the pock-marked skin of the dead reporter.

  I curse Howard’s carelessness. Next, I curse myself as I see how we were undone when I returned home just a few minutes later, with the reporter still waiting and watching in the car.

  The next few images of the reporter seeing
me when he paid one of his visits to Sam, Sam handing over money, listening to the tale, and his furious reaction aren’t necessary, but Dillon shows me them anyway.

  ‘It wasn’t you?’ I feel sick to my stomach, and can’t believe I got things so wrong.

  ‘No,’ Dillon is pissed off with me, but those visions were of someone following the reporter even as he followed Howard, and I think I know who that was. I show him the vision of Father Patrick killing the reporter.

  ‘Do you know him?’

  ‘I’ve heard of him, yes,’ Dillon’s thoughts are guarded. I get the sense he is holding out on me. Surely, if he has Father Patrick’s memories, he must have met the guy? I think of Father Patrick’s visits to Libby, and Tilda’s revelation about Libby’s powers and the Strigele witches.

  ‘Of course,’ the edge of anger is still in Dillon’s thoughts, but he’s intrigued. I hadn’t meant to share that last image, and I let Dillon know it.

  ‘Deal with it,’ he is terse and I don’t like it. Irrationally, it makes me want to cry. He softens a little. ‘Sam is obsessed, Maxi. He believes you’re the key to breeding a new vampire race, and he will not rest with you in enemy hands.’

  I shudder at the thought, remembering Sam sashaying up to me, and the lecherous leer on his face. ‘I would rather die at the hands of these monsters.’

  ‘I told him as much.’

  ‘Bet that went down well.’

  ‘Like a vampire at a Christening. He said you either submit to him as his mate, or die,’ Dillon’s voice sounds strangled. I visualize his strained square jaw and the vein at the side of his temple throbbing. Then I see Sam, through Dillon’s eyes, and hear Sam say:

  “She is mine. Dillon. I will kill anything and anyone who gets between me and her.”

  I hear the threat in his tone, and see the warning in Sam’s eyes as they narrow. I sense I am missing something, but before I can put my finger on it, Dillon says ruefully, ‘and I didn’t mean for you to see that.’

  ‘Deal,’ I reply in a flippant tone, but I don’t have time to dwell on it as I fill Dillon in on Howard’s research, and why Sam’s plans for a master race are doomed.