by Mina Carter
The patients were definitely unusual.
She hated hospitals and medical bays. Hell, she even stayed away from first aid kits. She hated anything that had to do with the scientific or medical professions. Far from being the sources of comfort and help they were for the human population, they had caused her nothing but pain and misery. Oh, yes…
That would be because she wasn’t human.
Not anymore.
“The usual,” she answered, short and clipped, as she reached the last bed, the only one with a trolley next to it, and sat down. She didn’t want to be here. In fact, she’d have happily crawled over broken glass if it meant she could get out of here quicker.
“Short, sweet and always to the point. That’s what I like about you, Major.”
Garry Stevens, her med tech, smiled and turned to the trolley at his side. It was covered with a green drape, but Antonia didn’t need to see to know what was on it. Her enhanced sense of smell picked up the astringent scent of the antiseptic wipes in their packaging and the cloying sweetness of the already prepared shot. Underneath it, she could detect a lingering hint of the cleaner they’d used on the floor and, to the left, dead blood from the yellow syringe bin.
Bile rose in a hot wave as her body tried to expel the little she’d eaten that morning. “Yeah, I’m just that freaking likable.”
She closed her eyes and swallowed. Everything inside her rejected the smell. It smelled wrong…it would hurt, make her ill. Grimly, she forced the wayward thoughts down and locked them away. The medication wouldn’t make her sick—that was the disease talking. The medication made her better, took away the terrible cravings that gnawed at her gut and stole her self-control.
Holding onto that thought, she shifted until she lay on the bed.
Garry looked her over, his human-blue eyes assessing the tension in her slender frame. He’d been her tech as long as she’d been coming here, since the incident that made her the way she was, so he knew her of old.
“Do you need the restraints? Just to hold onto? After all this time, I don’t think I need to fasten them. Do you?”
His voice soft and concerned, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a penlight. With swift, efficient movements he checked her pupil dilation. She winced and tried not to pull away from the light. It felt like the guy was stabbing a hot poker right through her pupils. Bright light, bright light, her instincts screamed, urging her to run for the nearest and deepest shadows. Her lips quirked at her own inner dialogue. Yeah, feed her after midnight and there would be trouble.
“You’re a bit fixed, reactions are slow. Have you been feeding properly?”
Toni ignored the question as she felt across the bed. Her fingertips contacted the nylon webbing and padding of the restraints. She grabbed hold, testing their strength. They slid but held, just. The bed underneath, designed for patients like Toni, barely moved. There was just the tiniest squeak as one wheel rolled against its brake.
“Major…have you been feeding on schedule? You know how important that is,” Garry chided as he took her wrist and started to time her pulse. “Your pulse rate is up as well.”
She wrinkled her nose. She hated feeding. The stuff they gave them to eat was cold and unappetizing. Dead, and it smelled that way, turning her stomach no matter how hungry she was.
“I try.”
He sighed as he pushed her sleeve up her arm and swabbed down her skin with a wipe. She didn’t look as he picked up the needle. She hated this part. Her heart picked up its pace. If she weren’t careful it might hit ten beats a minute.
She hissed as the needle punctured her skin and slid into the vein. Her entire arm throbbed as he depressed the plunger and the sickly-pink liquid inside pushed into her bloodstream.
His blue eyes watched her, sharp as a hawk. The look of concern he’d worn earlier had disappeared, replaced by focused interest. Toni lay back on the bed as the medication invaded her system. No matter how friendly and flirtatious Garry seemed, she had to remember he was a scientist through and through, and she wasn’t human. She was a subject.
Classification: Blood-infected human.
Translation: Vampire.
“Hey, what the fuck do you think you’re up to? You can’t bring that through here. This is a live treatment area!”
Garry’s voice, sharp with panic and anger, cut through the post-med fuzz in Antonia’s head like a buzzsaw. They had her on the highest concentration now, and it took a toll on her system. For half an hour after her shots, she was out of it, playing with the fairies.
It was worth it if the damn stuff took the edge off the terrible hunger that ate at her day and night. The sort of hunger that had her looking at Garry’s neck and seeing an all-you-can-drink buffet.
She fought her way back through the pink fuzz and ignored the purple elephants dancing at the edge of her vision. Some fucktard had thought it would be funny to play a Disney DVD during one of her shots, and now pink elephants plagued her as soon as the stuff was pushed into her veins. If he wasn’t already dead, she’d rip his damn throat out. Sliding her tongue along an elongated canine, she smirked. She sure had the right dental equipment.
“I’m serious. You cannot bring that through here. Not with Bloods around…”
The stench reached Antonia, its fetid fingers reaching out and winding around her, pressing against her skin and leaving an oily residue. She sat bolt upright, a growl in the back of her throat as the smell bypassed any higher mental functioning and triggered her baser instincts.
Unfortunately, they weren’t her human ones.
“It’s okay, Major. Calm down.”
Garry placed a gentle hand on her arm. She wasn’t sitting on the bed anymore, but crouched on top of it, her legs bunched under her and her fangs bared as she prepared to leap. How had that happened?
She slid him a sideways glance, but her gaze was pulled back to the other side of the room like a magnet. A medical orderly stood in the doorway, his expression a mixture of defiance and fear as he stared at her. She didn’t blame him. One of the oldest Bloods on camp, her abilities had been tested, recorded and proven in the field.
Her attention wasn’t on him, though. He was just window dressing. It was all on the gurney he pushed in front of him, complete with black standard-issue body bag. Her lip curled back from her teeth again.
To the human eye it looked like a dead body in a bag. Hell, to her enhanced sight it looked like a body in a bag. But sight wasn’t her primary sense. It had given way a long time ago to her sense of smell. And that was telling her the thing inside the bag wasn’t dead. Not by a long shot. Soon it would rise again, but it wouldn’t be alive.
“It’s dead,” the orderly argued. “The stuff didn’t take. It’s as dead as a doornail.”
Garry shook his head, his hand still on her arm. “You still can’t bring it through here. Nor any of the live areas.”
“Awww, come on, man. I’m only going to the incinerator. It’s cut through here or walk all the way around.”
“Walk all the way around.” Garry’s voice was hard and uncompromising. “They’ve got Lycans in the next ward. You really want to walk through there?”
The orderly paled, all of the blood leeching from his face. For a vampire, it was a fascinating sight, like the stuff had decided to play hide-and-seek. She shook her head to clear it. When she started to think blood was being coy, she definitely needed more to eat.
“No, I thought not. Now get that down to the incineration chamber. Sometimes they take a while, so if I were you, I’d want to get that thing safely roasted before it can start walking about.”
She watched as Garry shivered when the orderly yanked the gurney back through the door. The loose wheel squealed in protest and faded as he disappeared down the corridor at speed.
“I fucking hate those things.”
Antonia arched an eyebrow. “Orderlies?”
He shot her a look, as though he couldn’t work out if she was serious or joking. Finally
, he chuckled and ran a hand through his hair. She realized with surprise that he was shaking. The little incident really did have him on edge.
“They’re bad enough…but no. The re-animates.”
Slowly she sat down again, interested despite herself. She shouldn’t be. Shouldn’t even be talking to him. There was a rule about no interspecies fraternization on camp. The kind of rule that didn’t just get a smack on the wrist, it got people dead or locked up. In this place, locked up was as good as dead considering what people got locked up with.
Garry was nice, though. She liked him. Insomuch as it was possible to like someone who stabbed you on a regular basis.
“You work with Bloods. Vampires,” she pointed out. “We’re infinitely more dangerous than any of the RAs.”
“Yeah, I know. But you guys are different.” Flicking her a glance as if to check the likelihood she would freak out on him, he started to clean up his trolley. “With you, there’s human intelligence, reasoning. As long as you’re not in blood lust, we’re all good. Even…” His voice lowered as he concentrated on cleaning down the bare steel with anti-bac. Avoiding her gaze.
“Well. It wouldn’t be too bad if I did get infected in here. You’re kinda cool,” he admitted. “But to be like that. Just a mindless zombie. I can’t even look at them. Patterson’s a freak, he loves the zombies.”
She slid off the treatment couch with an economy of movement she knew the human staff found disturbing and looked at him levelly.
“Garry, I’ll give you one piece of advice because you’re the nearest thing I have to a friend. Get out while you can. This place isn’t career advancement. It’s not even career death. It really will kill you.”
Before Garry could answer, his cheeks a bright flaming banner of discomfort, the speaker overhead squawked into life.
“Major Fielding, please report to the Operations office. That’s Major Fielding to the Operations office. Thank you.”
No rest for the wicked. Inclining her head to Garry in an Old World gesture she’d acquired rather than been born with, she turned toward the door. She couldn’t wait to get out of the medical center, but she refused to run. She didn’t run. Not now. After all, the worst had already happened, so what was left to run from?
The door opened just before she got to it, and two chattering women stepped through. Human, camp admin staff. As soon as they saw her, the chatter died on their lips. The one in front looked nervously at the red patch on Antonia’s arm and paled.
“It’s okay, Sylvie,” her companion reassured, trying to peel the other woman off the wall. “It’s just a Blood. It won’t hurt you. Morning, Major, everything all right?”
“Perfectly, thank you. You two have a good morning,” she answered politely. She scolded herself to behave, but she couldn’t resist temptation. She smiled as she passed the two, baring her fangs. While not as impressive at rest as when they were fully extended, they were still enough to make the first woman whimper in fear.
Antonia grinned as she pushed through the door and into the open air. Her grin quickly died as she squinted in the bright sunlight. Whipping out a pair of shades, she shoved them onto her face and wished for rain.
She used to love the sun, always out basking in it. These days she’d be happy with a permanent raincloud directly overhead. Her own personal sunscreen. Unlike the films, the sun didn’t turn her into crispy critter. She was still trying to work out if it was a blessing or a curse. It wasn’t as if she got a cool sword a la Blade for being a daywalker. Instead she’d gained an unquenchable thirst, fangs that would make a Twilight fan green with envy and a red patch on her uniform sleeve so anyone looking could see what manner of creature she was.
On the plus side, at least she didn’t sparkle. That would just add insult to injury.
Suppressing a shudder at the very thought, she turned right and headed for the Operations office. Not a long walk from the medical center, but long enough. Especially at this time of day, when all of the camp staff were out and about for lunch. Not that it made much difference to Antonia. She never had to wait in line or walk around people. As soon as those in front of her registered the red patch on her arm, her very own scarlet letter, they parted like the sea in front of Moses.
Her lips quirked bitterly at her train of thought. She’d been brought up to believe in God. As a child she’d attended Sunday school. She could recite the Lord’s Prayer back to front and upside down. And where had He been when she needed him?
Nowhere to be fucking found, that’s where.
She’d tried to talk to the camp Padre after her accident. The guy’s eyes had about bugged out of his head when she’d walked in, and the conversation had gone downhill from there on out. It seemed that, as far as the Padre and his God were concerned, Antonia Fielding had died the day she’d become infected. According to them, the creature she had been transformed into was nothing more than an abomination, something to be destroyed rather than suffered to live.
The anger and hatred in his eyes had taken her aback. If she hadn’t held onto her self-control, the Padre could have found himself in the same boat faith-wise…up shit creek without a paddle.
Shaking herself out of her memories, she carried on walking. Her long, loose-limbed stride ate up the path between her and the Operations office. Around her, the low buildings of the camp hugged the ground in defense against the harsh desert conditions. That was another thing she couldn’t wrap her head around. The Project had housed Vampires, creatures known for their general intolerance to sunlight, out in the freaking desert. Talk about the last place people would expect to find them.
The skin between her shoulder blades prickled as she turned the next corner. Her destination lay up ahead on the left, but to her right stood a holding pen. She looked up, directly into a pair of amber eyes. Instinctively, her lip started to curl back as she recognized the man that stood behind the silver-laced steel for what he was.
Lycan. Wolf. Just as infected as her, but with a different strain of the virus. Not content with creating a new species of Nosferatu, the scientists had decided to play God again. The Lycanthropes were the result. A growl rose in the back of her throat, a sound of malevolence matched by the man in the cage. His eyes followed her as she walked up the path, resentment shining in their inhuman depths. Lycans were less stable than even the most whacked-out Blood, so they had to be caged. For their safety…no, that was bullshit. The Lycans were locked up for the safety of everyone else.
“Fucking Project lapdogs,” she hissed and pushed open the doors of the Operations office to find out who she had to kill this time.
Chapter Four
She couldn’t believe she was crying. Lillian didn’t cry. Ever. She was tougher than that. Tougher than the stereotypical little woman who fell apart at the first sign of danger… Or the mother who couldn’t cope after the death of her husband and hightailed it to her lover with teary demands to “make the nightmare go away”. And conveniently forgot the fact she’d left her baby daughter behind.
She was not that woman, nor anything like her.
Once in the corridor, away from the stench of death and the sight of all that black, wrong blood, she stepped away from Jack and swiped at her tears with the back of her hand. Despite the fact he’d just killed a man, there was something about him that made her feel safe. Safe with a murderer. Okay, now she knew she was losing it. Perhaps insanity ran in her family and they’d just never told her?
“I’m sorry. I’m not normally like this,” she apologized as she looked up and offered a small, teary smile. Her mouth already open to explain, she stopped.
He was gorgeous.
She’d known that. When they’d brought him in, her mind had told her that he was sex on a stick. But he’d been injured, a patient. Even though she was the hospital manager, she was bound by the patient-doctor thing, surely? The one that said “thou shalt not lust after the patients”.
Now though, without all the blood and the ragged uniform—even
in the hospital gown that did nothing for anyone—he was so good-looking it took her breath away. She shook her head slightly, waiting for the hidden cameras and some cheesy reality show host to burst out of the supply cabinet in the corridor next to them. He couldn’t be for real. Soldiers just didn’t look that good.
With warm amber eyes set above sharp cheekbones, his face was bisected by a strong, straight nose over sensually full lips. A severe buzz-cut merely highlighted his attractiveness, concentrating all attention on his face. He should be strutting his stuff on a catwalk, not getting down and dirty playing soldier.
Her eyes travelled downward, and the rest of him more than fulfilled the promise of his face. He was toned…hell no, he was ripped. Even his muscles had muscles. Tall and broad shouldered, he was built like a quarterback, and his life had obviously been one of violence. Old scars dotted his skin like a mad artist had gone to town with his body as the canvas.
“I know you’re not. You’re strong.”
His words drew her attention back to his face. His eyes were blue again. He smiled, which almost robbed her of reason, but she held onto the thought for grim death. No one’s eyes changed that fast. What the hell have they done to him?
“Your eyes… What the hell are you?”
The smile turned cold, his features freezing around it and locking it into place. In hindsight, perhaps a demand for information wasn’t the best way to deal with this, especially after what had gone on in the room behind them. Walker was slumped, dead, but somehow she knew Jack wouldn’t hurt her.
He moved toward her. Only three steps, but with those blue eyes intent upon her, it seemed more like a stalk. With every movement he made, her instincts screamed “predator”.
She held her ground, tilting her head to look at him as he neared. He stopped inches away from her, so close the heat of his body beat at her skin even through her clothing and his gown.
