"Not willingly. He tried hard not to. But when you threaten to cut off a man's dick, it tends to loosen his tongue." He looks at his own sharp claws, flexing them. "I had to make a few shallow cuts before he'd believe my threat was genuine. But don't worry, he's still intact. He'll heal soon enough, with your help."
It takes me a minute to process the meaning of the last phrase. "You're going to let me see him?"
"Only because he'll die without blood. Clarice volunteered her own, but he refuses to drink from anyone but you, and I don't have time to fight him over it. I need both of you alive, and reasonably healthy. I'll even let you walk in, free and unbound, if you promise not to try to set him free or run off yourself."
"Where would I run? You have those creepy-crawlies to track me down if I try to get away. And I wouldn't last long topside without Atlan."
He smiles. "At last, some rational thinking on your part."
"I do occasionally bow to logic," I tell him wryly, my mouth twitching in something that's way too close to a smile.
He notices, and leans in, eagerness lighting his eyes. The perpetual tweak of his mouth broadens, until he's fully smiling at me, a little stiffly, as if he's unused to the expression. His teeth are white and straight and much too human-looking to fit with the rest of his appearance. Something in the smile reminds me of Harry, and of friendship. But I can't be friends with this monster. He kidnapped us, paralyzed us, threatened to mutilate Atlan, and is considering me for breeding.
"Tell me who you are," I whisper. "What happened to you? How did you become this—thing?"
His smile vanishes, like a candle gutted or a shade sweeping across a sunny window. "I prefer the term 'chimera.' And nothing happened to me. I chose to become this, as part of my own research. I designed the formula to my own very precise specifications, and with Dr. Corbin's help, I remade myself."
"Into a chimera."
"Yes. Pit viper and snow leopard DNA for heat detection and night vision, deer and axolotl DNA for healing and regrowth. The dragonfly wings for obvious reasons, and the scorpion tail for its offensive properties, but also for the creature's other admirable traits. Did you know that scorpions are highly resistant to radioactivity? They can stay under water for up to forty-eight hours, and they can survive for an entire year without food. And they fluoresce under UV light. Amazing, don't you think?"
"Yes, but I still don't see how it's possible to take on the traits of those creatures, to fuse them to your body—"
"They're not fused," he says patiently, as if he is explaining to a very small child. He interlaces his hands, a gesture far too normal for a handsome horned demon with wings of black-veined glass and a dark jointed tail, tinged with red. "I used a serum that altered my very DNA, merged it with that of the other creatures."
"Like the cancer serum did with the vampires, and then the zombies."
"Exactly. Clarice Corbin and I managed to get our hands on the original formulas and test samples from the research team that created the first generation of vampires. It was an incredible breakthrough, really—the key to unlocking fundamental change at the genetic level—splicing the genomes of different species together. Amazing." His whole face glows. "I wish I could have been there when it first happened. But Clarice and I have created our own miracles."
I snort. "Those horrible little monsters?"
"Yes, but they weren't our first experiments. You see, for purposes of interspecies gene splicing, we wanted to find a way to accelerate the process—to make the changes occur over a matter of minutes instead of a matter of weeks."
"Like the zombies. They change in just a few—" The words die on my lips as I see the shift in his expression—a subtle awareness, a shade of guilt. A spike of horror shoots through me, and I push myself up on my elbows. "Wait. Oh my god. Wait a damn second—did you and your team—were you responsible for—No." I shake my head. "That's not possible."
"The zombies, in a sense, are my children," he says softly. "Of my making. My responsibility. Although to be fair, another scientist in our group was responsible for the viral component, the part that got out of control. I didn't know he had tweaked the formula before sending it out for testing. We had a number of test sites in various parts of the country, and they all began their scheduled experiments on the same day. Within twenty-four hours the spread of the virus was beyond our control. It was exponential. Unimaginable. I would even call it miraculous."
I can't speak. I can only stare at him, each breath grating through my raw throat.
"We gathered our research and sheltered here," Reuel continues. "This place was created in case the government discovered our work and tried to stop us. It served us well enough for survival purposes, and we were able to keep working on genetic modification, with the new purpose of finding a solution to the problem we caused."
"So that much was true," I breathed. "You have been working on a cure."
He winces. "Not a cure exactly. That's not possible. But I do believe we may have a way to render the zombies inert, or passive. You saw how my little hunters responded to me, yes? Moving aside when I walked through them, taking a different corridor from ours? They did so because I told them to." He taps his temple.
"You told them to. Like, telepathically?"
"In a way. Their brain waves are synced to mine, so I can send them impulses and directives whenever I need to. That's my plan with the zombies. If we can wipe out their imperative to slaughter and consume, if we can send them into a receptive, almost vegetative state, then we can re-imprint their brains with a new pattern. We can re-wire them to receive commands." He speaks faster, his words tumbling over each other. "We've already had some good results with test subjects—some partial erasure of the primal feeding instinct. Atlan tells me you've had an encounter with one of those test subjects already, one of several that we released back into the Hordelands."
The female zombie out in the fields, the one who mimicked me. That's why she acted so different from the others—her brain had been tampered with, partially rewired.
"She copied my movements," I say slowly. "It was weird."
"Yes! Yes! And this is another reason why I need you." He reaches over the back of the chair, grasping my hand in his. His fingers end in slick black talons, sharp, with a slight curve to them. I choke back the bile rising in my throat and resist the urge to pull away. "I'm only able to control the little hunters because of a complex procedure—they had to be wiped using a machine Clarice and I designed, and then re-imprinted with my brain-wave signature using the same tech. You imprinted on that female zombie without any scientific interference—no tech or serum. Just you. I have to figure out how you did it."
Gingerly I wriggle my fingers out of his hand. "You're not going to dissect me or cut open my brain or something, are you?"
"No, no. We would only do that as a last resort. We have many other tests we can try first, other methods of solving this. And before we proceeded to any such drastic measures as brain surgery, we would try a reproductive experiment."
And here we go with the creepy breeding thing again. I try to focus on that, because it's somehow slightly less horrifying than the idea of someone drilling into my skull and flaying my brain. "A reproductive experiment? What does that mean?"
His lids lower, those yellow eyes heating with a frightening blend of scientific enthusiasm and male lust. "I don't need to give you a sex ed class, do I? I'm talking about mating with you."
The phrase jars me, and I scoot as far away from him as I can get without falling off the cot.
"Relax." He laughs. "I'm not going to do it right now. I realize the idea may be shocking, but I'm confident you'll see the scientific advantage of such an experiment. It's possible that any progeny of ours would have my strength and some of my physical modifications, plus your survival instinct and your ability to imprint on the passive zombies. It's worth pursuing. And you wouldn't be my only mate. I'm planning to assemble a group of women to breed with, to see what the r
esults might look like. Each woman must have something special—intellect, strength, beauty, or all three. That's why I need the female vampire, too. Male vampires are sterile, but the females are sometimes still fertile. If this one has live eggs, I can impregnate her as well." His grin is pure manic delight. "Imagine the hybrid child of a chimera and a vampire!"
"I don't want to imagine it." I'm trembling, overloaded with the revelations of his origin and the horror of his future plans.
A twinge of irritation passes over his face. "I thought you had vision. You do want a future for humanity, don't you?"
"Of course, but—" But you're totally insane. You've turned yourself into a monster and you want to make baby monsters. Of course I can't say that aloud to him, because someone who is legitimately walking the edge between sanity and madness must be handled with care. "It's going to take me a little time to process everything you've said. You've given me a lot to think about."
He nods, his annoyance fading. "I forget that normal humans take some time to catch up. I'm so used to working with geniuses like Clarice and Gwan and the others."
He's so condescending, yet he doesn't seem to being doing it maliciously. It's as if he doesn't even fathom that I might take offense. He's simply stating the facts, as he sees them. I am cognitively inferior to him, and therefore I must be given "time to catch up."
"Come on. Let's go visit your vampire." He unlocks the cuff locking me to the bed and turns away, heading for the door.
I slide off the bed, testing my ankle. It's sore, but better. I can walk almost normally on it, if I'm careful.
It's bold of Reuel to turn his back on me. Bold, and stupid, because I could jump him and rip off one of those gauzy wings, or snap off an antler and stab him with it, maybe.
But if I do that, Reuel might not let me see Atlan. He might allow Atlan to die, just out of spite, or keep me bound when we're walking the corridors. Better to play along, and not resist my chimera captor just yet. I need a better idea of the scope of this bunker, which is obviously much larger than we were led to believe. I need to know how many humans are here, working for Reuel. And I have a million other questions.
Meekly I follow him out into the hall, eyeing the crumpled shapes of the wings pinned between his shoulder blades. Well, they're not crumpled, exactly—more like folded, accordion-like—and they look a lot less fragile than I at first thought. I kind of want to touch them, to run my fingers through the folds and along the edges, trace the veins and press the translucent panels between them. I'd love to see them in action, outspread and whirring at top speed. Can they really lift him off the ground? It must be a spectacular sight.
I need to get on his good side, worm my way into his confidence, so I can learn all that I need to know—everything that Captain Markham will want to know once we finally make it back to Deathcastle. This is bigger than a potential cure. This is the source of everything, of the entire zombie outbreak. I don't dare to hope that Reuel's sketchy outline of a plan will work, because his team has messed up so horrendously before. I mean, they caused the damn apocalypse. And he doesn't even seem to care, not on a deep, meaningful emotional level. If I'd been responsible for a screw-up that massive, I think I'd be suicidal from the guilt. Maybe he was, and he's past that now. Or maybe he's a true sociopath, incapable of really caring how his actions affect others—incapable of empathy. Someone like that is almost more terrifying than a zombie, because they are capable of more complex evil.
I'll never know the state of his mind and emotions unless I can get him to let me in.
I'm not sure where to start, so I blurt out the first inane getting-to-know-you question that comes to mind."So, where are you from?"
And then I cringe, because it sounds incredibly dumb and irrelevant.
Reuel's antlered head swivels, and he eyes me over his shoulder. "Does that matter to you?"
"No—maybe? I—"
He smirks at my embarrassment. "I grew up in various labs, as my parents moved from country to country, wherever they could find funding for their experimental research. I played in the corners of those labs or in break rooms under the partial supervision of unpaid interns, until I was old enough to start learning and assisting—around age six, I think."
"Did you go to school?"
"I had access to the best minds in the scientific community. My parents tried putting me in school, but I did not acclimate well. I have a very low tolerance for idiocy."
"I can tell." My wry comment draws a low chuckle from him.
"You may not be a genius, but you're no idiot, Finley. At least, not so far. I'm withholding my final judgment until I see what your future decisions will be."
"So kind of you." The words final judgment don't sound encouraging at all.
Reuel pauses at a metal door secured with a bio-lock and presses his thumb to it. "Here you are. No one else is inside, and there are no cameras. But if you try to set him free, I will know it, and there will be consequences. Painful ones."
His eyes are unwavering, a silent promise of punishment if I dare to disobey. "Okay then," I mutter.
"I am trusting you to keep your word. Perhaps I shouldn't. You are a woman, after all."
"Misogynistic much?"
"No. Just realistic. Drawing conclusions from observable facts. Making predictions based on the evidence I've been given throughout twenty-eight years of life."
I'm not sure whether to be angry at his gender-based prejudice or impressed at how much he's accomplished in a life that's not many years longer than mine. Instead of trying to sort out those two emotions, I settle on a new one—gratitude.
"Thank you for letting me see Atlan," I tell him, and I push through the heavy door into the room beyond.
7
Finley
Atlan looks up, a soft smile breaking over his face. "Hey Trouble."
Everything else disappears, fading to the back of my mind, and all I see is him. The tugging ache in my heart relaxes as I fly forward and wrap my arms around him.
His hands are bound at his back, and around his neck is a noose, cinched so tight it's pressing into his skin. The noose is one end of a taut rope knotted to a hook in the ceiling. He's shirtless, his pants hanging undone, his black hair tumbling over his forehead in charming disarray. The scruff along his jaw is more pronounced than usual, too. I press my cheek to his chest, inhaling his familiar scent. He stiffens, and a faint shudder surges through him.
I lift my face to his, just in time to see his lips pulling back and his fangs lengthening. "I'm sorry," he gasps. "I can't stop the reaction."
"It's okay. Here." I hold my wrist to his mouth, angling my arm and bracing it so he can slide his fangs into my vein. His lips seal over my flesh as he sucks, drawing blood upward through the tiny tubes in his fangs, straight into his bloodstream. His dark lashes drift shut, and a groan of helpless satisfaction, of sated desire, reverberates through him. I know it's blood-related, but it's such a sensual sound I can't help getting a little turned on. The tingling warmth between my legs turns to slickness as Atlan finishes drinking and licks the wound he made, caressing it with his wet tongue.
"Trouble," he whispers. "You have to get me out of these cuffs, so I can protect you."
After briefly inspecting his bonds, I glance around the room; but even if Reuel hadn't expressly forbidden any escape attempt, there's nothing in here to help Atlan anyway. The cell he's in is entirely bare, except for one metal chair. No knives, nothing to cut the zipties or unlock the cuffs. "I can't. Reuel told me I must not untie you."
A flicker of anger crosses his face. "And you'd obey him?"
"Only because I think he wouldn't hesitate to mutilate one or both of us if we don't." My eyes flick downward to the open zipper of his pants.
Atlan flinches, pain in his eyes. "He told you about that?"
"That he threatened to cut off your dick if you didn't give him information about me? Yeah."
"I'm sorry." He hangs his head, shoulders drooping. "I
was a coward. He meant it, Finley, and I couldn't risk—I couldn't—"
"Stop." I lay my fingers over his mouth. "I understand, and I don't blame you. If he'd threatened to cut off a comparable part of me, I would have given in, too. It's just backstory, after all. Not very useful to him. It's not like he asked you to kill me."
His brilliant blue eyes flash up to mine. "I'd lose every limb and my own life before I'd do that."
"I know." Tenderly I press my hands to his cheeks and kiss him. His lips taste faintly coppery from my blood, but there's a sweetness, too, deliciously addictive, and I kiss him languidly, luxuriously, over and over, pressing myself against him. He's bare-chested, and since the creepy critters acid-spat on my shirt, I'm just wearing my bra. The glide of his smooth skin against mine is satisfying and tantalizing at the same time.
When I break away for a breath, his pupils are dilated and his breath jagged. "I want to touch you, Finley," he whispers.
I reach around behind him and wriggle my fingers into his hands, stroking the center of his palms. He groans, deep and agonized. "Stop torturing me."
"Stop torturing you? I haven't even started."
I slide my hands along his waist, from the back to the front, and then I pause. I have a wicked impulse I want to indulge, but a practical consideration might need to be dealt with first. "Have they let you pee or anything?"
"Yes, once. I had to do it surrounded by those hideous red-toothed monsters so I didn't try to escape. What are those things, anyway?"
"Reuel calls them his 'little hunters.'"
Again Atlan looks upset by my use of the chimera's name. "I don't like you being on a first name basis with that thing. Do you know why he wants you? He wants to—" He closes his eyes and shakes his head.
"To mate with me. Yeah. Apparently my scent isn't just irresistible to you. I'm a damn monster lure."
"Don't joke about it," he snaps. "This is real. You're in serious danger."
"You think I don't know that?" I retort.
Captured by the Chimera Zombie-Master Page 4