“Let us begin,” the man finished and sat back down.
Every person at the table picked up their spoons and began to eat the stew in bowls before them.
“Try and eat,” Brendan said in my left ear. “You will be hungry. You haven’t eaten in—”
“And neither have you, Bren.” The man on my right commented, his Scottish accent just as broad but somewhat gentler.
“More food for you, then, Dante,” Brendan said.
“In this household, laddie, are you mad?”
“This is Carter’s charming younger brother,” Brendan said before tucking into his stew.
“It’s nice to meet you, Heather,” Dante said.
I glanced at him and met a set of warm, caramel eyes, complemented by thick, shoulder-length, chestnut hair that framed an oval face. Familiarity ate at me.
“Yeah, you, too,” I said before turning back to my stew.
I didn’t want to risk eye contact with anyone; from my small amount of knowledge about Werewolves, I knew they didn’t like other predators in their territory, even if I was here under invitation of their Alpha. My fighting skills made me more of a pain than an average human, but I doubted my usefulness with a sword irritated them. I knew they sensed I wasn’t entirely human. Perhaps Brendan had told them about my condition, harmless compared to an average Infected, or even a Vampire, but I didn’t know whether to believe that anymore. According to Lance, I fell under a completely new species category, and although such information would no doubt break the ice, it might also be a bit that would break my neck.
Look a dominant Werewolf in the eye and he, or she, would take the look as a challenge to their dominance. I had no idea where I fell on the list—and there would be a list—but now wasn’t the time to find out. Women weren’t generally seen as a threat, unless the woman was a mated Werewolf, but even then, she would technically be hopping onto her mate’s ranking. Weres considered mates as one person. A threat against either meant a threat against them both.
All I knew about the game was, if you had to look them in the eye, then make the glance short, fast, and sweet. Looking away meant a person knew her, or his, own position and meant no disrespect. Or, they were terrified. Weres could always smell the difference, though.
Brendan nudged my arm. I looked at him as he studied me for a moment before dipping his head, indicating my bowl.
I picked up my spoon and scooped into the thick meaty stew. My stomach revolted momentarily, then the scent flooded my senses. My mouth watered instantly. I blew on the stew lightly, then placed the spoon in my mouth. My body awakened, and my stomach rumbled. I felt my cheeks grow warm.
Brendan chuckled and placed some buttered crusty bread on my side plate.
“I told you, you would be hungry.” He placed his elbows on the table and leant closer to me. “I might as well give you a quick introduction since everyone knows who you are already.”
He nodded toward the broad guy on Dante’s right. “You may have already guessed, but that is Carter. Our Alpha. His son—the one sporting the hedgehog hairstyle—Owen, is on his right, followed by Carter’s daughter and talented cook, Eve, and her husband, Scott.”
I glanced at the individuals sitting around the table; my gaze wandered from one to the next as Brendan continued.
“The redhead is Solomon, followed by his Italian wife, Dabria. Then we have Graham, the Pack doctor, and Richard, who is a fireman. Thomas is a delivery pilot. Then the blond guy next to him is John—”
“My son.” Dante cut in.
I smiled and nodded.
“The dark-haired female to John’s right is May, his wife. Then the Gucci-clad male is Philippe—” he said the name with distaste, “—followed by Alcander, who also lives in London. Lastly, the three youngest of the Pack: Flynn, and then we finish with the sibling duo, Chris and Kat.”
“We also have Clare,” Dante said. “I’m afraid she is away at the moment, working on a dance project in Bristol.”
Yeah, in one ear and out the other. How is he expecting me to remember everyone? Do I really need to?
I simply nodded before turning my attention back to my stew.
“I call this meeting to order.” I looked up to see Carter pat his mouth with a tartan napkin.
Carter didn’t look that much older than Dante, and apart from his face being oval, they didn’t really look alike. Carter had darker eyes and hair, plus his nose was broader, and he had slimmer lips. I glanced at Owen; his hazel eyes met mine and a smile emerged across his plump lips. He had a strong, square jaw, and sharp cheekbones. His mud-brown hair did sprout off his head in medium spikes, giving the impression of a hedgehog. I restrained a laugh when he winked at me before turning his attention back to Carter. He honestly looked more like a model from a men’s fragrance advert than a Werewolf.
“An attack on one of us is an attack on all of us.” Carter placed his napkin on the table and looked at the people before him.
“We are one.” They all replied in unison.
“Things happen that we can’t always control. We all felt Brendan’s pain as if it were our own.”
“We are one,” they all replied again.
“The people responsible have been dealt with.”
“Justice,” they said.
“The business I wish to speak of today is something that involves all of us. This facility is on my land. It is in our territory.”
“Our territory.”
Man, this is...well, weird.
“I knew nothing about this facility, which doesn’t make me very happy, considering the nature of its use. These Leeches conducted experiments on their own kind, as well as on Brendan and Heather. From what Brendan told me, they tried to mix his blood with their own species.”
The tension in the room kicked in, and I tried not to shift in my seat.
“Brendan, could you please tell us anything you can remember?”
Brendan placed his spoon on the table. He sat back in his chair, his hands flat on the table at either side of his bowl.
“They sedated me every day except the last day at the facility. I wouldn’t be able to tell you what they did to me while I was under the effects of the monkshood, only that once I woke up, I felt as though a tractor had chewed me up.”
Heat radiated from his skin through my polo neck.
“I woke up to find the two main operators of the facility openly discussing the effects that my blood had on the Infecteds that they either fed or injected.”
“Heather?” Carter said softly.
I looked up at him.
“Would you mind explaining what an Infected is? Not everyone here is aware of the terminology.”
Great. I nodded and looked up for the first time to see the entire Pack’s attention fixed on me, their faces blank and unreadable.
“Three stages to becoming a Vampire.” I coughed lightly to clear my dry throat. “Stage one: When a human is bitten, the Vampyrric virus spreads in the system and begins to mutate. Stage two: The Vampire has to feed the Infected its own blood. The venom contained in their blood is what kills the human. Stage three: After a few days in a cold dark place, you have a new Vampire. Now, to become an Infected, well, it really only means that stage one will have taken place. A simple bite is all that is needed to create an Infected, and therefore, start the process.”
“So these Infecteds are still part human?” A foreign accent caressed the males tone.
I looked across at the dark-eyed man—Alcander?—and nodded.
“They experiment on their own kind?” asked the dark-haired Cockney female—May?
“They have been,” I said. “Usually, if an Infected hasn’t been baptized with a Vampire’s blood straightaway, a Vampire offers them the change or kills them. Infecteds are, in a lot of ways, more dangerous than Vampires because they have no control over the urges and impulses that the mutation causes within them. And they don’t have any of the Vampire’s weakness. They are more of a liability.”
“Protect their own,” Carter added.
“Protect the Pack,” they all replied.
“Thank you, Heather.” Carter nodded and looked back at Brendan. “Why do you think they want to mix the blood?”
“I believe they wanted to see if it would be possible for a person to—” he took a deep breath, “—carry both the Were-gene and the Vampyrric virus.”
My gut twisted, and my entire body tensed. How had I not seen that when Lance clearly indicated his intentions?
If you wanted to be the ultimate race, you would need to be indestructible. My own words echoed in my mind.
“All in good time,” Lance had said with a devilish smile.
Shit. How could I have been so stupid? How could I have not seen the obvious? Why else would he have wanted Brendan? No. Not Brendan; any Werewolf. With a species that he had openly admitted he had been trying to get his hands on for a while. I let them take samples from me! Why the fuck didn’t I fight harder? If I’d died, they still would have taken samples, but at least I wouldn’t have co-operated—
“. . . create a Hybrid.” I caught the end of Brendan’s sentence.
“Heather?” Carter’s voice rolled over me.
I looked down at my balled-up fists on the table; a trickle of blood caught my eye as it slithered onto the dark tablecloth. I uncurled my fingers. My nails had broken the skin. As I stared at the small wounds, my head became light. My throat tickled.
“Injecting and feeding my blood to the Infecteds didn’t work.” Brendan pressed a napkin into my left hand. “This is why I think they wanted Heather to feed on me.”
I looked at him as I shoved my hands under the table and squeezed the napkin tightly between my palms to stop the bleeding.
“You’re stronger,” he said, looking at me. “I think they hoped you would be the successful subject.”
“Would you like to say something, Heather?” Carter asked gently.
Brendan kept his eyes on me.
What could I say? I hadn’t fought hard enough. I had let a bunch of Vampires experiment on me, and didn’t realize that they were trying to create something more dangerous, and more powerful. A hundred—maybe more—patients remained in that facility, to be experimented on and turned into a hundred...things that would have all the combined advantages of a Werewolf and a Vampire. And Lance had wanted me to be the first.
Would drinking a Werewolf’s blood have done the trick? I wasn’t sure. I didn’t know how a person became a Werewolf. From what I had read, the Were-gene passed from father to son, through blood and joint DNA. A human could be turned through a Werewolf attack, true, but the Werewolf’s blood had to mix with the human’s for the transaction to be successful.
I understood why Lance injected the blood, but the experiment hadn’t worked. One host clearly could not function with both the virus and the Were-gene. So why had Lance expected it to work on me? How would I be different?
“Living Vampire.” His words laughed in my mind, taunting me.
My DNA already contained the virus, merged with my genetic make-up. Mix the gene and I could possibly be strong enough to contain both.
My stomach flipped and my temples pounded.
“Heather?” Brendan’s voice invaded my thoughts.
“He wanted you to bite me,” I said. “He wanted you to bite me and pass the Were-gene to me.”
Brendan shook his head. “If Lance really wanted to do that, he just had to inject you with my blood.”
“What if he didn’t want to take the risk?” I asked, turning to face him. “What if he had already tried everything but all the experiments failed? So he hoped that sending a Werewolf into a room with someone guaranteed to attack him would provoke the Werewolf to fight and defend himself, even if he knew his attacker.”
“He starved you so you would attack me; that much I got.”
“But instead of wanting me t’feed off you, he wanted you t’fight me—”
“Blood must pass from the Werewolf to the human, lassie,” Dante said from behind me.
I nodded. “Maybe he started to doubt his blood theory. Maybe he failed so many times that he thought the Werewolf saliva controlled the change, like a lot of the books say.”
“Did you say that a Vampire has to bite the victim so the virus spreads?” Owen asked.
“Yes.” I looked over at him. “Then the Vampire must feed the victim its own blood.”
“So there is a Werewolf and an Infected in a room. Because you’re stronger than those average Infecteds, the Leech thinks you will survive. What if he put you in the room together as one big experiment?”
“What do you mean, Owen?” Brendan asked, looking over at him.
Owen leaned his elbows on the table. “What if the Leech hoped that you would fight, that Heather would feed on you and spread the virus, and somehow in your attempt to get her off you, you bit her, basically causing less damage than breaking her neck?”
“And somehow our blood mixes.” Brendan finished Owen’s thought. “They watched for the good bit of time I sat there, they never came in—”
“Why would they?” Dante asked. “They kept you weak, Heather starved, and they had no intention of letting you out of that room until you had infected each other.”
I looked into Brendan’s eyes; I could see his mind racing through everything. “It might have worked.”
If Lance had succeeded and we survived, well, we would have been the first Hybrids. After that, he just needed to repeat the process and he would have his monsters.
“Heather?” Brendan’s hand closed around my own.
I slipped my hand from his and turned round to look at Carter. “I apologize. I’m sorry that your Pack got brought into my mess. If I could mend this, I want you t’know I would. I am my own responsibility. Your responsibility is keeping your Pack safe, not some woman shoved upon you.”
“Although I appreciate that, Heather—” Carter sat back in his chair,“—by the looks of things, this Vampire had it in his mind for some time to catch one of our....” Carter stopped. His hands fisted on the table, his gaze hardening.
The tension in the room kicked into overdrive. My stomach lurched.
“You think there is a link to the attacks?” Dante asked.
“It would explain why they stopped so abruptly,” Brendan said.
My fingernails bit into my thighs as I struggled not to shift in my seat. The tension in the room made me want to jump up and run away.
“Attacks?” I asked Brendan softly.
“Two months ago, there were a few attacks on our Pack. We thought they were Rogue Werewolves.”
“Rogue?”
“Werewolves who fall to bloodlust,” Dante said, looking at me. “They were strange attacks, leaving the victims’ bodies messier than usual. The Rogues proved hard to track. We could never get their scent, which was most unusual.”
“After the last attack, we caught up to them, and the bastards tried to take two of us,” Brendan said. “But Rogues hadn’t made the attacks.”
I couldn’t help shifting in my seat. “Infecteds?”
“Possibly.”
“I knew it. I said it was Leeches.” Owen’s voice turned rough. “That there had been something wrong with them and—”
“After that, they just stopped.” Dante cut in. “So it would appear that what we originally suspected might be true.”
“Lance mentioned that he had been trying to get his hands on a Werewolf for quite some time,” I said, looking around the table. “He talked about bathing Infecteds in bleach, and something to do with sedation? I didn’t know what the hell he was on about, but he said something about bait, and letting his experiments do his dirty work?”
I froze as soft growls and grunts filled the room.
“They meant for the attacks to grab our attention so they could grab one of us,” Brendan said.
“Well, it sure as hell explains a few things,” Owen said through clenched teeth.
“Clearly, now, this matter is my concern, Heather. Especially since this facility is in my territory.” Carter’s attention finally turned back to me. “No matter what, I would have eventually been here with my Pack, talking about this problem.”
I nodded.
“So, if anything, you have helped us figure out a recent problem and drawn our attention to something we must deal with straight away,” Dante said.
A strangled noise sounded from across the table.
“Have you got something in your throat, Philippe? Better cough it up. I wouldn’t want you to choke on it,” Brendan said.
“I apologize, but it just sounded as though we were heading down the road of thanking this...femme for bringing trouble to our door. I mean, I am shocked that you actually endangered your own Pack for the sake of some half-breed, Brendan.”
The heat pouring off Brendan blasted me. His right fist balled on the table beside me. He kept his eyes on the well-dressed Frenchman across the table.
“Neither Heather nor I knew we would be kidnapped and dragged to a facility, and in case it slipped your memory, Phil, Carter requested I go to Heather and help her out. I did not place the Pack in danger. Neither did she.”
Philippe dropped his gaze to the centre of the table. Brendan relaxed beside me.
“Lance openly admitted that he wanted to create the ultimate species,” I said, breaking through the tension.
“Back to the old war, then, it would seem,” Dante said. “Which species will reign supreme?”
“Well, it looks like he found the right ingredients,” I said. “Thankfully, Brendan kept him from seeing that it would have worked.”
“By successfully mixing our two species, you get a creature whose senses would be off the chart, as would its speed and healing rate, and with both species’ capability to transform into a more dangerous predator, Lord knows what you would end up with,” Brendan said.
“A Hybrid, as you said. Two strong species mixed together to create something stronger.” Carter sighed. “And that would cause havoc if they couldn’t be controlled.”
Cranberry Blood Page 21