Nightshade

by Michelle Rowen

  “She is.”

  “You’re beautiful, too, Jillian.” His mouth curled a little at the side. Then he leaned closer and whispered something in my ear.

  I frowned. “What are you—”

  But before I could say anything else, I felt his mouth against my throat and the sharp sting as his fangs sank into my flesh.

  25

  “NO! MATTHIAS, DON’T!”

  I tried to stop him, tried to push him away, but it was too late. His bite had temporarily paralyzed me. My blood spilled into his mouth and he drank quickly and eagerly before he was yanked away from me by the guard. I felt the blood oozing down the side of my neck. He’d drank so greedily that the dark blood ran over his bottom lip and onto his chin.

  He touched his chin and then looked at the blood on his fingertips.

  “Just as I knew it would be,” he said, meeting my gaze. “Delicious.”

  Before I could say anything, shout anything, scream anything, he convulsed in pain. The fire erupted, quickly consuming him, and he vanished in a cloud of ash.

  My chest constricted. “Matthias!”

  But it was too late. He was gone. But—no. He—he took part in his brother’s ritual. The immortality ritual. Yet, my blood still worked. He was gone.

  The silver—had it been enough to counteract the ritual? His immortality?

  Dr. Gray swore and glared at me. “You killed him.”

  I was in shock. I couldn’t believe what had just happened and so quickly. He knew what could happen if he drank from me and he did it anyway. Why? So Dr. Gray wouldn’t have power over him? He didn’t want her to use him for her dhampyr experiments. I couldn’t say I blamed him, but why did he have to die? There had to be another answer. He could have stopped her. He could have killed her. I knew he could have.

  But he didn’t.

  He said he’d lived for four hundred years, but now he was gone. And it was because of my blood.

  “I only did what you wanted me to,” I choked out. “Matthias is dead because of your precious fucking Nightshade.”

  She smacked me hard across the left side of my face, making my ears ring and pain burst through my face, but then she slowly appeared to regain control over herself.

  “Matthias was meant to die,” she said, then nodded toward Noah. “Much like that one is. I knew it, but I tried to fight it after everything was already in place. And it all turned out the way it was supposed to. Do you see that it’s all fate?”

  My eyes burned with tears. “All I see is a woman who’s made some really bad choices in her life.”

  Her gaze flicked back to me. “No. I’m a warrior in this fight. And so are you.”

  “A warrior.”

  “Yes. Like Amazons.” She slid her fingers over my bleeding throat while I stood there frozen, still in shock. She smiled as she painted her nose and forehead with my unnaturally dark blood like a tribal chief. “It’s interesting how humans can’t smell what vampires can in your blood. It’s got to do with special preternatural pheromones.”

  Seeing this woman speaking so calmly, yet painting herself with my blood like an Amazon warrior, sickened me.

  “What do you think I should name the baby?” she asked, looking over the edge of the crib.

  Matthias’s daughter’s eyes opened up. They were gray, a couple shades darker than her father’s. Then her face screwed up and she began to cry.

  There was a horrible sound then, a heavy metallic ripping noise, followed by a scream—a man’s scream.

  It was a split second before the alarm began to sound.

  “Carson!” Dr. Gray exclaimed and worry crossed her gaze. “What the hell is he doing out there?”

  She grabbed hold of the sleeve of my dress and directed me to the door past Noah’s still body. I noticed the first guard whom Declan had knocked unconscious was nowhere to be seen—he’d likely come to and run away. I didn’t really blame him. As soon as I stepped fully outside the room, I saw the problem and my breath caught in my chest.

  Carson lay in the hallway thirty feet away, his throat slashed. He held his hands around it as blood gushed out. The guard who’d injected Declan with the new permanent serum lay nearby in a pool of blood. Declan was now awake and standing over his father with a knife in his hand.

  At the sight before me, I stopped breathing. My chest tightened.

  For a moment I thought he’d done it, that he’d knifed his father and the guard, but there was no blood on the blade. There was a long cut on Declan’s forearm, which dripped blood to the ground. He looked over at me and our eyes met.

  “Stay where you are,” he said loudly so he could be heard over the alarm. “Don’t come any closer.”

  The door to the other dhampyr’s room had been torn from its hinges and the dhampyr slowly emerged from the holding cell.

  “Damn it. I told him to kill it. It’s been done dozens of times before,” Dr. Gray whispered. “Carson prefers to euthanize the dhampyrs. Prefers to end their lives humanely. But this—” she swore under her breath. “That stupid, stupid man.”

  Her orders to kill the dhampyr had led to this. Carson had tried to humanely end its life, but that only gave it a chance to attack. To slash and gore. To kill.

  Declan lunged at it, but the dhampyr effortlessly knocked him out of the way. Declan hit the wall hard and slid to the ground. He didn’t move for a moment, a tear now on his shirt showing an alarming welling of blood that made me shriek and clamp my hand over my mouth. The dhampyr approached him, dripping blood from its talons. Declan’s blood. Carson’s blood.

  It was going to kill him.

  “Declan! No!” I yelled.

  The dhampyr’s head whipped toward me and it sniffed at the air. It smelled me. That was enough to draw its attention and it approached slowly down the length of the hallway. My first impulse was to run, but Dr. Gray dug her fingernails into my arm.

  “Don’t move,” she instructed. “Stay very, very still.”

  Dr. Gray’s personal guard ran at the dhampyr, still gripping the taser that had worked to stop Matthias from killing Dr. Gray, but the dhampyr easily slashed his throat with its talons. The guard fell. The silver walls down here seemed to be no defense against it. I hated to think about how strong it would be outside of here.

  My gaze shot to Noah, now laying between us and the monster. His blood pooled on the smooth tiled floor. He was still alive, though. His chest moved, and he made a weak attempt to scramble back from the dhampyr as it approached. Its black eyes moved from me as Noah’s movement caught its attention.

  “Bllooooddd,” it rasped.

  “Noah,” I whispered. “No.”

  I couldn’t let the dhampyr tear him apart. He was so helpless just lying there. He couldn’t defend himself.

  “No!” I yelled louder. “Over here, you freak! Look at me! My blood’s way better!”

  “What the hell are you doing?” Dr. Gray snarled.

  Good question. In order to save Declan and Noah, both bleeding and vulnerable, I’d forced the dhampyr to change its course and come directly for me.

  I guess I’d chosen to die after all. Funny, it was what I’d been trying desperately to avoid since all this began.

  Funnier still that it felt like exactly the right decision.

  The dhampyr would bite me, drink my blood, kill me—and I’d kill it.

  So be it.

  Matthias’s baby would live, Declan would live, and, well, I hoped like hell that Noah would also live despite the bullet in his chest.

  This was fate. All of it. Everything that had happened had led me here.

  I had been asked to kill the vampire king. I’d done it, although not in the way I’d ever intended.

  And now I was going to kill a dhampyr who wanted to kill the people I’d grown to care about.

  I didn’t need a weapon. I was a weapon. Whether I liked it or not.

  Still, as the monster drew closer, I couldn’t help but feel the resolve begin to leave me like water
draining out of a leaky boat.

  Dr. Gray clutched my arm. “Stupid,” she hissed. “You’re ruining everything, do you know that?”

  Yeah. I kind of figured that. But screwing up her plans to use me as her own personal assassin really wasn’t that much of a victory for me at the moment.

  The dhampyr was close now, studying me carefully. Its tongue slid out of its mouth and it licked its white lips. It reached out a clawed hand toward me. I braced myself. Declan shakily began to rise to his feet again. He stood at the far end of the long hallway as he spotted the dhampyr in front of me. I couldn’t read his expression but he held the knife tightly.

  Please stay back, I begged silently. I don’t want you to die, too.

  Then a horrible thought occurred to me. What if the dhampyr killed me, but my blood didn’t kill it? The Nightshade killed vampires, but a dhampyr was only half-vampire. Then it would continue on, unstoppable, and hurt everyone else.

  No, this had to work. It had to. My sacrifice couldn’t be in vain. Please.

  “Stop,” Dr. Gray said firmly to the curious dhampyr when it had drawn close enough that I could feel its hot breath on my skin. “Bad boy. You will go back where you belong now and behave yourself.”

  Was she cocky enough to think she could reason with this thing? She was crazier than I thought she was.

  “Bloooddd,” the dhampyr said in a broken, screechy voice.

  “Yes,” Dr. Gray said. “Blood. Jillian’s blood smells good to you, doesn’t it? But you can’t have any.”

  The dhampyr’s gaze now moved to Dr. Gray as if mesmerized by the sound of her voice. “Monnniccaaa.”

  Her eyes widened a fraction. “Yes. You know my name. How ... wonderful.”

  It reached its pale, thin, taloned hand up to touch her face.

  She looked triumphant for a moment before fear flickered in her eyes.

  “Monnniccaaa,” the dhampyr said drawing even closer so its tongue could flick out to slip over her cheek. “Blloooddd.”

  I suddenly realized what was happening. My blood—it was on her face. She’d painted it there herself to look like a warrior. There was more of my blood on her skin than there was on mine.

  “Jillian,” she said sharply. “Get its attention away from me. Do it now.”

  No, actually, I didn’t think I would. I backed away from her, as slowly and quietly as I could, moving toward Noah.

  “Jillian,” she snapped. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m leaving you to your research. After all, it’s more important than the life of any one woman, isn’t it?”

  “Wait,” Dr Gray said to the dhampyr now lapping at the blood on her face like a gruesome puppy. “No! Get away from me now or I’ll—”

  It was the last thing she said. The dhampyr closed its mouth filled with razor-sharp teeth over her throat and I heard a horrible crunching and tearing sound. I staggered farther backward, horrified, finally dropping to the floor and shielding Noah’s prone form from the carnage.

  The dhampyr was so busy feeding on Dr. Gray that it didn’t notice Declan’s stealthy approach. He was able to slice his knife into its back, deep enough to pierce its heart. It screamed before it collapsed heavily on top of Dr. Gray’s body.

  I ran into the crib room to check on Matthias’s daughter, but she was fine. Still crying, her little gray eyes welled with tears. I carefully picked her up and cradled her against my chest before emerging back into the hallway.

  Declan walked over to Carson’s body, looking silently down at his adoptive father’s glazed-over eyes. I went to his side.

  “Declan ...” I could barely breathe. “I’m so sorry.”

  He turned to look at me with a flat, emotionless expression. “Thank you.”

  “Are you feeling—”

  “I’m feeling fine,” he said.

  I wanted to touch him, comfort him, but he moved out of arm’s reach.

  “I need to deal with this,” he said, flicking a glance at what was left of Dr. Gray. “I didn’t get a chance to ask her why she never told me the truth. That she was my mother and that she lied about my father.”

  It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him—tell him his real father was Kristoff. But I bit the words back. This wasn’t the time for a revelation like that. Too much had happened. I didn’t want to cause him any more pain.

  “I’m sorry,” was all I said instead.

  His flat gaze moved to Noah. “He needs help.”

  “Declan—” I moved the baby in my arms so I could reach for him again, but didn’t manage to make contact.

  “I’m glad you weren’t killed,” he said. Then he was gone, walking briskly and methodically down the hall. My heart broke into a thousand pieces to see that he was just as emotionless as the first moment we’d met.

  I hugged the baby against me until she stopped crying and then I stayed with Noah until someone arrived a few minutes later with a stretcher for him and several body bags for Dr. Gray, Carson, and the guards.

  It was my blood on her face that had made Dr. Gray so appetizing to the dhampyr that had torn out her throat. She’d smeared the target on herself.

  She’d wanted me to be death personified. She just didn’t know I’d be her death.

  Seemed fitting, actually.

  “I FEEL LIKE SHIT.” NOAH GROANED, PROPPED UP IN A hospital bed in a neighboring building eight hours later as I walked in his room.

  “You look like shit,” I confirmed.

  “Thanks so much.”

  I smiled for the first time in recent memory. “I don’t think Carson wanted to kill you. If he had, he would have aimed for your head.”

  “You have a questionable bedside manner, you know that? I don’t suggest a career in nursing.”

  “You’re going to be okay.”

  “From your lips to God’s ears.”

  “Are you religious?”

  “No. I just like the saying.” He swallowed, his face pale. He fiddled nervously with his IV as the doctor left the room after checking Noah’s bandages. “Jill, listen to me ...”

  “What?”

  He grabbed my hand tightly in his. “It’s not safe here. Not for you.”

  My heart began to pound harder. “What do you mean? Dr. Gray’s dead and so is Carson.”

  “It doesn’t matter. You need to get out of here. Take my car. The keys are under the front seat. Just go and don’t look back.”

  “Why?” He was scaring me. I thought I’d already met my daily quota of fear, but I guess I was wrong.

  “Where’s the baby?” he asked.

  “In the nursery. A new one that’s been set up downstairs—monster free this time.”

  He nodded. “Carson tried to keep your involvement really quiet, so not everybody knows who you are. Most of the guards are under the impression you were Dr. Gray’s new research assistant for the dhamp babies. They’re under that impression because that’s what I told them.”

  “So what’s the problem?”

  “A couple people do know who you are and what you have in your veins. And a lot of them, like the two men who were observing the other day from the government, subscribe to the same crazy magazine that Dr. Gray did. They’ll want to use you as a weapon to kill certain vamps whether you like it or not. Like I said, I read the files. As soon as I’m able, I’m taking off, too, and I’m not coming back. I know way too fucking much about this place.”

  It was true. My situation hadn’t changed at all. I still had Nightshade-infused blood. Some people might find that a reason to keep me around against my will. “What about Declan?”

  Noah shook his head. “He’s on the new serum Carson had made for him. No more shots required. He was raised here, this is his life. He’ll keep taking orders like the well-trained dhampyr he is.”

  “But ... he’s different now. He has to be.” I heard the strain of desperation in my voice.

  “I’m not so sure about that.”

  Declan hadn’t said two words to me
after he’d left the bloodbath downstairs. I’d tried to find him, but he obviously didn’t want to be found. Not by me, anyway.

  I thought it all through. “I have to take the baby with me. I gave Matthias my promise she’d be safe.”

  Noah nodded. “Do it. Just go. You’re only wasting time now.”

  I gave him a shaky grin. “You’re all bossy with a bullet in your chest.”

  “Bullet’s out.” He grimaced in pain. “But the painful memory remains.”

  “But ... but wait. Dr. Gray told me I needed to get regular treatments with the fusing potion or I’d die.”

  “I’ll look into it. Try not to worry about that yet. Here’s my email address.” He pressed a small scrap of paper into my palm. “Get in touch when you can and don’t go back to San Diego where you might be recognized. Now get the hell out of here before it’s too late.”

  “Yes, sir.” I leaned forward and kissed his cheek. Then I went to get the baby from a pair of guards who believed the lie that I was Dr. Gray’s research assistant. I told them I wanted to take the baby outside for some fresh air. They let me.

  Swallowing back any second thoughts or doubts, I left.

  DR. GRAY SAID I’D LIKELY DIE WITH THE NIGHTSHADE inside of me. She said I’d need her help and regular doses of the fuser in order to stay alive. She’d said it to get me to behave and go along with her plan to turn me into a reluctant vampire slayer.

  Honestly, though? I didn’t think she’d been lying.

  But she was dead now and I couldn’t say I was sorry about that. She’d justified everything she’d done, every choice she’d made in the past thirty years, due to her allegiance to Kristoff. How many women had died in childbirth, terrified until their last breath by what was clawing its way out of them? And Dr. Gray had stood by and let it all happen.

  I cradled Matthias’s daughter in my arms, desperately wishing I had a baby carrier to safely put her in, as I quickly made my way to Noah’s Mustang. It was nearly noon, exactly four days after I’d first been injected with the Nightshade.