"It's pure evolution. Biology."
Wow, he's worse than I thought. Okay, different tactic. "Is there anyone you really like? Man or woman? Anyone you love?"
He looks deep into my eyes, hesitating over the question. "I have colleagues and helpers, not friends. I will say that Clarice Corbin has a brilliant mind, and she is very—receptive. She's a habit of mine, I suppose. I've been trying to impregnate her. We've had no success so far. But you—if your pheromones are anything to go by, your body is crying to be filled, to be bred." His taloned hand leaves my throat, scraping over my collarbones, leaving threads of pain on its way to my breasts. "Your body is calling to mine."
Oh god.
My mind races for possibilities, alternatives. I don't want to be a mother, and definitely not mother to a chimera-baby, but if it buys me some time— "What about artificial insemination? I might agree to that." Nope. Not happening.
He shifts astride me, and I'm suddenly aware of the hard, monstrous erection burning hot against my lower stomach. "I'd rather do it myself."
"That's not going to happen."
"It could happen." His eyes darken.
"It won't. You're not that kind of evil." Am I trying to convince him or reassure myself? Strengthening my tone, looking him straight in the eyes, I say firmly, "Let me up, Reuel."
For a few heartbeats, I fear that he won't. But then he shifts backward, dragging that tempting hardness along the seam between my legs as he moves away. Desire prickles through me, but it's a purely superficial, physical reaction—nothing emotional, not the whole-body, heart-and-soul power that pulls me to Atlan.
If I didn't know better, I could be fooled into thinking I wanted Reuel. But I've tasted true love, and I can't settle for anything less.
When I stand, I'm still uncomfortably close to the chimera. He curves the scorpion tail around his shoulder, moving it nearer to my neck. I cringe away from that terrible swollen pod and its curved stinger. He could prick me with it and remove all my power to resist. I would be at his mercy.
"Reuel," I say warningly.
"It's hard to shake off the imposed crust of civilization, to return to the brutality of instinct," he says, with that crooked smile of his. "But sometimes brutality is crucial to the accomplishment of important goals."
With my eyes on his tail, I sense the attack a split second before it comes—just enough time to throw myself backward and avoid the incoming stinger. He swears at having missed and lunges for me, but I scramble up and dart around the edge of the cage, keeping it between me and him. The zombie paces warily around the inside of the bars, a disturbing echo of my movements even though I'm not consciously controlling him.
Reuel laughs, the sound harsh with disuse. He stands on the opposite side of the cage, the wings flickering behind him, looking magnificent and menacing with those branching antlers and the bulging curves of muscle over his arms and chest. Below his carved abs, his pants are dramatically tented. His eyes have darkened nearly to scarlet, and his forked tongue lashes between grinning jaws.
He looks like a demon. A very horny demon.
"Don't make me chase you, Finley," he says.
"I think you want to chase me," I say. "You act all cerebral and scientific, cold and in control—but there's a beast bursting out of you, Reuel. Your experiment, what you've done to yourself—it has gone further than you ever expected, hasn't it? It's changed you."
"I was weaker before," he retorts. "Quieter. I lacked confidence. But I've changed all that. I have remade myself exactly as I want to be. Who else can claim such a feat?"
"Why do you talk like that?" I ask, just to keep him off his game. "You sound like somebody from a book. You do realize people don't say things like 'Who else can claim such a feat' in real human life."
His brow creases. "I'm well-spoken. What of it?"
"Drop the elegant turns of phrase, all the world-saving humanitarian plans you claim to have." I inch along the back side of the cage as he moves along the front, the two of us locked in a terrible dance. "Forget all of that, and tell me what you want, right now. Can you actually say it?"
He stands on the opposite side of the cage, gripping the bars with both hands, his black talons clicking together; and he lets out a half-repressed roar of frustration.
I'm not sure why I'm urging him toward this precipice of clarity. Maybe I have a sick affinity for seeing monster boys at their worst. I have a sudden flash of Atlan, bloody and gore-streaked, standing atop a mound of zombies he tore apart with his teeth for my sake. That was the first time I told him I loved him.
Yeah, I'm sick.
Reuel makes a sudden dart around the cage, and I rush to compensate, to keep myself on the opposite side from him.
"What do you want, Reuel?" I repeat. "Tell me."
Again he roars, louder.
"Say it!"
"I want to fuck you!" he bellows, and with a buzzing of unfurled wings he half-flies, half-scrambles up the side of the cage and over its top to get to me.
But I'm already across the room, scrambling toward something I noticed earlier but haven't had a chance to grab—a machete. Probably stored in this room in case the zombies get out of hand.
My fingers close around the handle and I spin, just in time to see Reuel's inflamed face and the incoming barb of his tail.
I slash, and he screams.
The top two joints of his tail, including the poisonous bulb and stinger, fly halfway across the room.
I chopped his tail off.
I—
He slashes at me, raking talons across my left forearm, opening four bloody gashes. I shriek with the pain.
Outside, in the hallway, there's an echoing scream. Reuel ignores it and grips my right wrist painfully tight in his massive hand. My blood-pressure bracelet cracks and crunches under the pressure.
"Let go of the weapon," he orders.
"No!"
His other hand clasps my waist, sharp points of claws threatening to pierce through my bare skin. "I could break you," he grits out. "I could snap you in half."
"You won't."
His breath gusts hot over my lips. "I want you. It's not like with Clarice—a quick and necessary pleasure—this is different. I want something that's in you, deep, deep down. I want to reach in and touch your spirit, your—your soul? I don't believe in souls, but—I want to pull you apart and crawl inside you."
Okay. Horrific image, but I think I know what he means. That wanting, the insatiable longing for part of a person that you can't touch, the part that makes them beautiful and special; and the closest you can ever get is to be physically and emotionally tangled up together, knotted so tight that no one could pull you apart. It's what I feel for Atlan.
Apparently Reuel is beginning to feel it for me.
I can sense the force of his restrained power, how frail I am in his grip.
"If that's how you feel," I say cautiously, "screwing me without my permission isn't going to help. You know that, don't you?"
"You have to give yourself to me." He gives me a little shake. "Say 'yes.'"
"That's not how it works, and you know it." My voice breaks, pain and fear and a strange compulsion to break through to him, to crack his walls. Let me in, let me in. "You're better than this, Reuel—I know it. But before you can be better, you need to face what you've done to yourself. What you and your team have done to the world."
A violent shudder courses through him; I feel it rattling my own bones.
"I don't care," he gasps.
"You do. You do care. Unlock it, Reuel. Let it out. Feel it." Tears trail down my cheeks, one after another—I can't stop them, but I keep my eyes locked with his.
I witness the moment when the wall shatters, the dam bursting into fragments. He throws back his head and screams, agony and terror and the searing pain of desire. Then he's sobbing, huge wracking gasps that break and break from him until I'm scared he might shake apart. The tears flowing from his eyes are inhuman, steaming hot—I h
ave no idea how many years of cold, calloused layers are being sloughed away, but it's terrifying and amazing at the same time.
When he releases my wrist and bows over, collapsing against me, I drop the machete, put both arms around his neck, and hold him.
He's saying something—in between the sobs and snot and hissing tears. I can't quite make out the words.
"What?" I whisper in his ear. "What is it?"
"Who am I?" he groans. "Finley, who am I?"
Sliding one arm off his neck, I press my palm to his heart. "I don't know who you were before, but from this day on, you can be someone new."
His chest rattles with another sob. "People don't talk like that in real life."
I laugh shakily. "Only in movies." Slowly I shift away from him. "Reuel, I won't be your mate, or your harem wife, or whatever. But if you'll have me, I will be your friend."
12
Finley
A terrible crash against the door attracts my attention and Reuel's. I recall the scream I heard a few minutes earlier. Something's definitely going on outside, and I'll bet Chandra and Atlan are behind it.
Reuel straightens, composing his expression and moving toward the door. "What the hell is—"
The door smashes open at that moment and a cluster of figures stumble through the opening—Sergeant Perez hauling a bound and gagged Dr. Corbin, then Chandra, brandishing what looks like a metal table leg. Atlan enters last, his boots flailing in a kind of crazed dance as he kicks a few of the rabid little hunters back into the hallway.
"Take care of them, Darius!" he shouts, and slams the door, bracing himself against it.
Then he looks at me.
I watch him take it all in—me, still in my bra and jeans, with Reuel's scratches at my waist and collarbones, and the four fresh gashes in my arm. The machete and the severed scorpion tail on the floor. Reuel, his face still inflamed from passion and tears.
Atlan smiles, his eyes crystal blue, and it's a beautiful, sweet smile, like spring sunshine.
"I'm going to kill you, Reuel," he says in the friendliest tone. "Any preference as to the method?"
"No, Atlan, you can't—he—" I pause, biting my lip.
He what?
He's on our side now? That's not exactly true. Might be, but I don't want to push Reuel too far, too fast. I'm no therapist, but I'm pretty sure a breakthrough like the one he just had is a delicate thing.
He decided not to rape me, so don't kill him? Nope, that's not going to cut it with Atlan.
"What, Finley?" Atlan's voice is hard, but his eyes are soft, a familiar blend of love and pain.
"Reuel is going to try," I say, laying my hand on the chimera's bulging arm. "He's going to try to feel what we're feeling, so we can sort through this mess together. Okay? So let's not fixate on killing people right now. We need to sit down, and talk."
"Talking." Atlan cocks his head with another brilliant smile. "I love talking. Let's do it. But first—Chandra, hold the door, please."
Chandra quirks an eyebrow and slides into his spot as he walks toward me. He ignores Reuel completely, and takes up my left forearm in his bandaged hand—bandaged? What happened to him?
"Trouble, Trouble," he says, lifting my arm to his mouth. "Have you been playing with monsters?" He licks one of the wounds, his tongue a slick caress, his saliva numbing the pain and halting the flow of blood.
"Making a friend," I tell him, my heart fluttering as his lashes lift and those blue eyes meet mine.
"As you do so well," he says, then licks another cut. I'm conscious of Reuel watching us, evaluating our interaction. In fact, everyone in the room seems to be watching us. My breath quickens.
Atlan sweeps his tongue over the last two wounds and lowers my arm, but he stays near me, the air between us heating and thickening with tension. His gaze drifts to my lips, and I lean toward him a little, almost unconsciously. But then I draw back, because seeing me and Atlan kiss might push Reuel over the edge into fury again.
"I have something to show you," I tell him, and I move toward the cage with the teen zombie. I raise both arms, and so does the zombie boy.
Chandra gasps, and Dr. Corbin nearly chokes on her gag in her eagerness, her eyes brightening.
Encouraged, I do jumping jacks, a short jig, a pirouette, and a little pointe technique, during which one of the zombie's toes breaks with an audible crack while he's imitating me. I gasp and cover my mouth. "Oh my gosh. Oops."
Reuel chuckles, and so does Chandra, and then we're all laughing hysterically. Even Dr. Corbin is giggling through her gag.
And that laughter, like Reuel's tears earlier, breaks apart some of the crystallized tension, leaving the air in the room more malleable. Leaving us all ready to talk.
Of all the things I've been through during this apocalypse, the next hour is perhaps the weirdest. It's mostly a tentative dialogue between Sergeant Perez and Reuel, with me as the mediator. First, I explain Reuel's plan for zombie control, as best I can. Apparently I screw it up pretty badly, because he keeps interrupting with corrections.
And then there's the tense matter of discussing the losses on both sides. Reuel tortured a few of the soldiers, and had his team rough up Sergeant Perez and inject Darius with a weird chimera serum. In return Darius slaughtered Dr. Gwan, and he has probably killed most of Reuel's pet monsters by now. It's news to me—bad news—but everyone seems to recognize that there has been harm on both sides, and that it sort of balances out. I can tell by the tightness in Sergeant Perez's face that she doesn't want to let Reuel off the hook for what he has done, and what he planned to do. But she's smart. She knows we need a truce here. Reuel has more techs and doctors in the bunker, and they've got our team's weapons. When they took us out of our sleeping rooms quietly, one at a time, it was mostly bloodless. But if Reuel's humans organize against our group, now that they are armed, it would be a bloodbath. Besides which, Reuel is a formidable living weapon, and even with Darius and Dr. Corbin under our control, I have no doubt the chimera could kill us all by himself if he wanted to, even without his scorpion tail—
As I think the words, I glance the stump of his tail, and nearly gasp in shock.
There it is, whole again, including the top joint and the bulbous tip with the curved stinger.
The part of Reuel's tail that I cut off has grown back. In less than an hour.
My eyes flick from the tail to Atlan, and he gives me the barest nod. He noticed it too. This incredible regenerative ability only makes me want a truce more badly, because how do you fight a creature that can regrow whatever you cut off?
"And now that we know where we all stand," said Sergeant Perez. "We need to discuss what we want."
Chandra took the gag off Dr. Corbin partway through our negotiations, and she has been scoffing and sniffing angrily the entire time. Now she slams her canteen of water down on a table nearby and grips Reuel's arm. Her legs are unsteady; I suspect that one of the vampires drank from her. Probably Chandra—I don't think Atlan would.
"This is an absurd waste of time," she says. "What we want, what we need, they won't give us. We need the girl's brain and her womb—" she points at me— "for the zombie project, and we need the vampire boy for our modification program. And the female vampire—she must join your harem, along with the Sergeant here and that blood-bag Angela. Each one of the females has something to contribute, yes, they do. No success without testing, no testing without test subjects. This is why they are here. To be tested. Stop indulging them, Reuel. What has gotten into you?"
Reuel looks over the top of her head at me. The meaning of his glance, the connection between us—it's palpable, raw and newly intimate; and I know and hate that Atlan can see it, too. Atlan will be jealous, won't understand that's it's just a friendship, that I'm only indulging Reuel, not enamored with him.
If there's one thing I fear in a man, it's irrational jealousy. When my ex-boyfriend Heath discovered my long-standing friendship with Coach Jackson at the elementary school wher
e I taught, he flipped out. He didn't care that the coach was happily married with kids, that our camaraderie was pleasantly platonic. Heath found me talking to Jackson after school one day, and Heath walked right up and punched him in the face.
We had been discussing plans for the school carnival.
Jackson didn't press charges, but we weren't as close after that. "You need to think about your relationship goals, Ms. Mars," he told me, in his sweet, slow way, and then he said nothing else on the subject. In retrospect, he was probably trying to tell me that my boyfriend was an asshole and I should dump him. Thankfully, Heath's transformation into a zombie effectively shut down the relationship I was too timid to end.
But is Atlan the same brand of jealous lover as Heath was?
When Charon was after me, he and Atlan brawled about it in the mess hall. I wasn't there, but Sarah gave me the full report later. And if Harry hadn't killed Charon for hurting me, Atlan probably would have done it himself.
So when Reuel gives me that private, knowing look, my nerves tighten and thrill with panic.
What will Atlan do?
Clarice Corbin follows Reuel's glance too. "What? You'd listen to her? You value her above what we're trying to do here, what we've been working toward for years?" Her voice rises, shrill and desperate. She steps in front of Reuel, gripping his face between her hands. "No, Reuel, no. This kind of foolishness and weakness is beneath you. You and me—we work together. I bring the passion, and you bring the—the pain." She falters as he wraps his fingers around her wrists, drawing them away from his face. "You!" Corbin glares at me. "What did you do to him? What did you do to my beautiful, brilliant angel? You piece of trash, you wretched, wretched whore!"
She thrashes, her hair wild and glasses askew, practically foaming at me. Reuel picks her up and with a nod to everyone else, he says, "We'll continue our conversation in this room, in eight hours. I swear that tonight you will not be harmed or disturbed. You may take food and rest wherever you can find it, but do not enter the locked rooms or the lower level, and do not try to leave."
He tosses Dr. Corbin over his shoulder and jerks the door open, pausing for a second to survey the crushed bodies of his creatures strewn along the hallway. I catch a glimpse of the Thing that was Darius, chewing on the carcass of a little hunter. Darius scoots aside for Reuel, cringing as the taller chimera sweeps past him.
Captured by the Chimera Zombie-Master Page 8