Vampire Master: Vampire Queen Series: Club Atlantis

by Joey W. Hill

  Part of the blood was drained into a cup. The woman who brought it watched her closely, the blue eyes behind the rat mask moving in a stilted, horror-movie kind of way.

  There were hands on her, cutting away her bloody shirt, the leggings, leaving her just in her underwear and the bandages. She writhed, but she was ignored, and the bindings wouldn’t let her resist them. The bed could be cranked to an upright position. Once they did that, the woman put the cup to her lips while Paul held up a phone, filming.

  During the third marking, she’d learned the taste of Wolf’s blood was appealing to her, obviously an effect of being marked. Now she craved it, hatefully proving what Hollow said, that it was something her body could use to heal her. As she drank, her fervor for it increased. It was as if her body knew what it needed, and latched onto it like mother’s milk. She would have gulped it, if the woman hadn’t given it to her in measured draughts.

  She started to feel better. Not cartwheel great, but the pain died back, enough t0 have her determined to finish every drop so she could recuperate and be a help to Wolf, face whatever was coming their way.

  “Look at that,” the woman said in a marveling tone. “The wound. It’s knitting before our eyes.”

  “The Master or Mistress’s blood can heal the servant from almost anything,” Hollow said. “Her blood can help restore his strength as well, even right after he’s given her blood for the same. Some of the timing depends on the age of the vampire, but Wolf is a remarkably strong made vampire for his age.”

  “What the hell is this, Hollow?” Wolf said in that same hard voice. “Are you going to tell me, or is it need-to-know?”

  Hollow shrugged. “You won’t leave a lab again, until your usefulness is over, and they stake you to end it. But the answer why is straightforward enough. To figure out how to overwhelm and eradicate the vampire race.”

  At Wolf’s stunned look, he shook his head.

  “I served my country most my adult human life, Wolf. Same as you. Vampires are a threat to humans.”

  He swept a flat gaze over the scientists enthralled with Ella’s healing. Ella wanted to scream at them to get away from her, particularly when one of them shifted so she couldn’t see Wolf’s face. She could feel his fury, though. She was the vessel catching the overflow of his lethal rage, helping him contain it. She welcomed it, because the heat kept her fear from overcoming her.

  Hollow continued. His voice rarely rose or fell, an odd monotone cadence. “The vampire hunters that are out there, they’re romantic and emotional, like comic book heroes. Even Gideon Green, considered the smartest of them all. It was about vengeance, about protecting people. They would be far more effective if they thought like the villains. It’s about the end game, the big picture. Villains don’t pick off one person at a time. They look for the weapon of mass destruction. One of them did that some years back. Introduced the Delilah virus. Hell of a chemist, until the Council figured it out and sent their assassin after him. Took him out, destroyed all his work. And then the Council’s scientist figured out a cure.”

  He tapped his temple. “I’m not a chemist, but a strategic thinker. Put Saturnia and me in a room and we can come up with the way to bring down every government, the largest corporate entities. But the answer was so simple. To end vampire kind, reveal their existence to humans in a way that can’t be denied. Humans won’t suffer anything to survive they think has any power over them. And the worst insult of all, vampires are immortal. You all have the golden egg all humans want. To live forever.”

  The scientist in Ella’s field of vision had shifted. She could see Wolf studying Hollow, his stern mouth a flat line. “So these people here,” her Master said. “You found someone in government to sanction this.”

  “Of course. But not in government. Not directly. You look for the right kind of humans, with the right kind of government connections. The ones who might be called paranoid or off, because they won’t dismiss any threat out of hand, no matter how outlandish it sounds. They will evaluate anything for risk, whether it be a baby in its stroller, or someone’s claim that vampires exist.

  “You find that kind of group, one that runs a private company that supports the needs of our military, and suddenly you have tremendous resources to support your goal. There are only about five thousand vampires. If humans know enough about their weaknesses to exterminate them, in the quickest and most efficient ways…mission accomplished.”

  Hollow nodded to the scientists, who were mostly ignoring his dialogue with Wolf as they entered data on their tablets and conferred with one another. Ella noticed none of them made eye contact with her, as if she weren’t something real, living, capable of pain or fear.

  “They will log their data to prove you are what I’ve told them you are. When they have enough, they’ll take it to their superiors. At that point we transport you to an official facility, where you’ll go through all the grueling tests we’re going to put you through at our temporary lab, because you’ll have to prove what you are to the next group of higher-ups. Then they’ll get the government on board to finance the extermination. They’ll likely keep it all on the down low, using private companies like this one to do the dirty work. But once they understand more about you, your weaknesses and strengths, hunting vampire kind to extinction will be possible within a relatively short timeframe.”

  A muscle flexed in Wolf’s jaw. “No. I’m not buying it.”

  Hollow looked puzzled. “It all makes logical sense. You led teams in battle. You understand tactics.”

  Wolf shook his head. “Not that. I’m not buying your reasons. We all sign up to serve. But in the end, it’s about the guy next to you. This is about Saturnia.”

  Hollow’s gaze darkened. He took a step toward Wolf, his voice going as sharp as a thin blade. “You won’t talk about her.”

  An emotion. Ella didn’t know if the leap in her own blood stream came from her or Wolf, but her Master latched onto that cue the way the best Doms did.

  “So that’s it.” Wolf nodded. “You’re too fucked up to have a normal relationship. But while you’re working for the CIA, you meet Saturnia, and you finally click with someone. But then she gets cancer, and is phased out. You’re about to lose the one person who could stand to have you around. You go to find her, only to realize, fuck, she’s no longer dying. She’s become something else entirely…something not human. And guess what? She likes you, wants you in the club, so she makes you her servant. Maybe you can bridge that last hurdle, finally discover what seems to come so easily, too easily, to others. Real emotions.”

  Whatever emotional reaction Saturnia’s name had triggered, its effect was gone. Now Hollow was processing the information, rather than getting more defensive. It was as if Wolf had presented him with an intriguing math problem to solve.

  Ella wondered if Hollow was like a cat, with fewer facial muscles so he looked impassive all the time. She’d thought Wolf was good at that, but now that she knew him better, she could discern the subtle tells of emotions beneath that steely eyed surface. She couldn’t with Hollow.

  During the time Hollow had been working at Atlantis, she’d found it interesting, fascinating, trying to determine what he was feeling or thinking. Now that lack of emotion in his eyes made her cold.

  “But that was the rub, wasn’t it?” Wolf persisted. “Saturnia didn’t help you break down that final wall. She can’t fix what’s broken in you. You’re incapable of real feeling, have always been incapable of it, so now you decided to get rid of all evidence of how supremely fucked up you are. Somewhere deep inside that fortress of logic is a little kid, lashing out.”

  As she’d said, Wolf was a good Dom. Too good. And he wasn’t done. He gave Hollow a considering look. “Because it runs even deeper than that. She made you her servant. She didn’t make you her equal. She didn’t offer you the vampire prize, did she? She knew that immortality would be a bad idea for something like you.”

  Hollow’s face had closed down, his shoul
ders stiffening. No… Ella could see it coming. She was sure Wolf could, too, and didn’t know if he’d pushed it deliberately, to figure something out that would be worth it to help them survive. Or maybe the bloodlust and rage still so obviously close to the surface had played a part too, the “come on, asshole, do your worst” gauntlet thrown down.

  “Cuff him to the bars,” Hollow said.

  When they reached their destination, she was hooded and gagged again. The cot in the truck transitioned into a gurney, so they wheeled her out. She cried and begged to stay, begged them to stop doing what they were doing. Her last glimpse of Wolf was the stuff of nightmares. Hollow had activated the cage’s electrical field as soon as they had Wolf cuffed to it with steel manacles. His body jerked like a puppet, his eyes rolled back in his head, a strangled cry frozen on his stretched lips, his arched throat.

  Hollow had sat down to work on his laptop only a few feet away. She expected he’d leave the electricity on for hours if he could. The only thing that would end Wolf’s torment was the obvious impatience of the scientists, wanting to get started on the other terrible things they wanted to do to him.

  The blood had rejuvenated her, so her strength was returning. Though full healing might take longer, if the aching tenderness beneath the skin was any indication, the wound in her stomach was almost completely closed. Any other time, she’d marvel at it. Now it didn’t matter.

  After what felt like a maze of hallways, she was in a room, where the hood was removed again. Her surroundings were not reassuring. The equipment and sterile environment suggested she was in some sort of lab, and the cage with a chair bolted in the center of it struck terror into the pit of her belly.

  Even worse, they hadn’t brought Wolf here, and at the moment, she couldn’t feel him. She should be able to hear him in her mind. Yet she didn’t. Which meant he’d found a way, even during that terrible, horrible agony, to keep that door shut between their minds, so she wasn’t being shredded by his torment.

  They cut the tape bindings off of her to do what they wanted to do next. The hands that held her were detached, those rat faces expressionless, except for the eyes. All of them wanted to touch the wound, prod it, check the healing. None of them asking to touch. She’d never thought about how terrifying it would feel, to realize she was at the mercy of those to whom her emotional state, her reactions to pain, were irrelevant, except for what information it gave them.

  When she survived this, she was donating as much as possible to whatever organizations opposed the use of animals in a lab, whether mouse or chimpanzee. Nothing living should be treated like this. Her belief in life, her innate spirituality, recoiled from all of it. Shut her down, made her hate them. Want to fight them, spit at them.

  Especially when they cut off the rest of her clothes, stripping her naked, and put her in a cage, too. She wanted to curl up, hide herself from them, but they took that chance away. They strapped her to the metal chair in the cage. The chair had no seat or back, the frame pressing uncomfortably into her shoulders and thighs. Her arms were bound behind her, her ankles spread and attached to the chair legs.

  She closed her eyes, tried to close it all out, center herself. Take herself to that meditative state where she could figure this out. If Wolf was keeping that door shut, it wasn’t just to cushion her from his pain. Stay alert, look for an opportunity. She needed to collect information. To listen.

  Her stomach jumped as Hollow entered the room. Had he turned it off? She doubted it, because she still couldn’t sense Wolf. Surely he’d speak in her head if he could. Focus, she told herself. Focus on the here and now.

  The other rat-faced scientists were busy with their equipment, except for a female standing next to Hollow.

  “I’ll start the first phase of her conditioning,” he said. She’ll be more forthcoming that way.”

  The woman nodded. “How long do you need?”

  “For the first phase, not too long. She’s not that resilient. Continue with your prep. I’ll let you know when you can start your first battery of questions with her.”

  The woman left him and Hollow turned to Ella. For the first time in some minutes, someone met her gaze, but she found no comfort in his dead eyes. She thought the others didn’t meet her eyes because if they did, some deep down part of them would recognize what they were doing, and it would give them a sense of unease. Hollow could look at her directly without any concerns about that. Just as Wolf had said.

  “What would you do to get me to turn off the electricity, Ella?” he asked. Conversational. He pressed a button on a panel and the wide screen on the wall flickered to life. It showed another room, a lab space similar to this one. Sound filled the room. The stress of the electricity didn’t allow Wolf to scream, but it forced sounds from his throat, an awful, strangled noise like a dying animal, deep in a dark forest, beyond reach of help.

  She knew what Hollow was doing, but awareness didn’t block her recoil from such purposeful cruelty.

  “Over the years, I kept one thing from each person I had to interrogate and break. A recording of their cries. It will provide a background to Wolf’s.”

  Hollow picked up a pair of headphones with the kind of cushioned earpieces that shut out all other sound. He came into her cage, fitted them over her throbbing skull. He strapped the device tightly across her forehead and around her neck so she couldn’t shake them loose. Then he removed her gag. It surprised her.

  At least until she deduced, with a sick feeling, that he was likely planning to add her screams to his sick collection.

  He returned to his computer, began tapping the keys. Sound flooded in. Turning his attention to her, he watched her carefully as he started turning up the volume. Up and up and up, until her eardrums felt the pain. He stopped just one click short of bursting them, she was sure. And now her head was full of those cries.

  He picked up a black marker, wrote on a pad of paper the female scientist brought to him. Then he propped it up on the counter where Ella could see it. The neat block letters were too easy to read.

  We stop when I know you’re ready. Not a moment before. You are powerless here. Can you tell which voice is Wolf’s?

  Wailing, sobbing, shrieks. A cacophony of people begging for a mercy that never came, begging to die, screaming out what they knew, information that would get people they cared about killed, but they couldn’t stop themselves…it was all there. Maybe it was on a loop, but anguish was never repetitious. It hit all her senses, over and over. And through it all, Wolf. His wasn’t a recording. It was live. Those strangled noises got weaker and weaker, and then died away. When she couldn’t hear him anymore was when she was pleading for it to stop.

  It did. Her heart was hammering, yet her body was exhausted, everything exhausted. Hollow came and removed the earphones. Stroked her hair back from her sweaty, tear-stained face. Her mind was so chaotic, she could only be grateful for a gentle touch, even from an enemy. She’d bitten through her tongue and lip, and he wiped away the blood, the saliva, collected it all on his fingers. Her mouth was so dry.

  Then he reached down and put his fingers inside her, lubricated with her spit and blood. She hadn’t been expecting it. Nothing about Hollow suggested a sexual sadist, or that sex even remotely interested him.

  It didn’t now. He had a purpose. He was a vampire’s servant. He knew how to arouse a body, no matter how repelled the mind within it.

  No. please, no… As he dispassionately probed and thrust, played with her clit, she wanted to cry, but this was beyond tears. Her eyes sought Wolf on the screen, though she didn’t know if she could bear to see him writhing in pain. But he wasn’t. Hollow had finally turned off the electricity so that someone could remove Wolf’s cuffs, let him struggle back to the center of the cage before activating the bars again, keeping him contained but no longer actively shocked.

  He was staring at something before him. Hollow was letting Wolf see what he was doing to her, on a screen just like the one she had in here.


  Ella’s thighs trembled. She wanted to close them, but she couldn’t. She knew the body would respond to the right stimulus, no matter what. It still felt shameful, like she should be able to stop it. Her nipples had grown tauter, and Hollow was flicking them gently.

  No. Please don’t watch this, Wolf. Please.

  She didn’t think she could bear to hear her Master speak in her head when Hollow was doing this, but when he did, she found she was wrong. He gave her a lifeline to seize.

  I’m not looking at a single damn thing he’s doing, Ella. Because it doesn’t matter. It’s not you he’s touching. He’s touching a shell you’ve built around yourself. That shell will do anything he wants, because it’s plastic, a toy. You’re inside, hunkered down, safe, and thinking. Thinking just as hard as I am about how we get out of this. Right?

  He sounded strained, exhausted. But his thoughts were fierce, a warrior ready to fight to the last. And he turned his head away from the screen he was viewing. Instead, he gazed straight into the camera, so he was meeting her eyes.

  Is Saturnia part of this? It was the question she still couldn’t answer.

  I don’t think so. He and she…there’s not enough time to explain, but they never had that kind of relationship. Saturnia communicates mind-to-mind, but she doesn’t dig, or drift, or play around in there, except for a quiet room he keeps for her, a compartmentalized spot to escape her own demons. It has to do with their history together in the CIA, why they do it that way.

  But soon he’s going to remember that you and I are different. He’ll cut off our ability to look at one another. He’ll try to do things to separate our minds, so I’m going to say it now. Use that focused mind of yours. Every corner of it, including the part that contains that rage inside of you. Everything that helps you see the world in a way no one else does.

  Her body was building to a release point, her hips twitching. She cut herself off from it, like Wolf said. Focused just on him and made herself believe his words as she climaxed under Hollow’s touch, as her stomach heaved and she ended up throwing up on herself right afterward. Hollow jumped back quickly, another move that didn’t look calculated.