“Is this where you came to pick me up before?” I didn’t recognize anything, but I was in a fog the last time I left here.
“Yes.”
We followed the sedan down a quiet road. A parking lot emerged through the trees, leading directly to a building that looked like a bunker with no windows.
The sedan pulled into a parking spot. Mom took the one beside it.
I turned to my mom. “Will you wait for me?”
I’d seen Mom grab the Nora Roberts novel she was reading. That was a good sign.
“I don’t know. I need to ask how long orientation lasts.”
Agent Crist stepped out of the passenger seat of the sedan. Agent Melcher joined her, and they waited for my mom and me to step out. The agents were dressed in their matching gray suits and wool military coats that fell above their knees.
“Good morning, Mrs. Sky. Good morning, Aurora,” Agent Melcher said. “No need to come inside, Mrs. Sky. I’ll call you when Aurora is finished.”
“When will that be?”
“It could take a few days.”
“A few days!” my mom and I said at the same time.
Melcher grinned. “That all depends on Aurora.”
I turned to my mother with pleading eyes. She hesitated.
“My daughter needs more time.”
Relief washed through me. I wanted to throw my arms around my mom in that moment and kiss her cheeks. Only the scowl on Agent Crist’s face stopped me.
“She just started her kickboxing and tae kwon do lessons. Couldn’t you let her finish senior year first?” Mom asked hopefully.
Crist’s eyebrows lowered as her upper lip rose. “The time for negotiations is over, Mrs. Sky. I thought you understood the terms.”
Mom looked from me to Agent Crist and frowned. “I just don’t see why Aurora has to get started so soon.”
Melcher took a step forward. “Don’t worry about a thing, Mrs. Sky. We’ll call you the moment Aurora is finished. The sooner we start, the sooner she can go home.”
Mom frowned then turned and gave me a quick hug. “You’ll be fine, sweetie, and as soon as you’re done I’ll be here to pick you up.”
The moment Mom released me she hurried back to the car and pulled away. The pit in my stomach expanded as her car disappeared from sight.
Melcher smiled at me as though I were a child. “Let’s go, Aurora. You’ll feel better once you understand what’s expected of you.”
If Melcher was the doting dad, then Agent Crist was the wicked stepmother who couldn’t stand to see Melcher’s attention directed away from her. I could feel the burn of her frown even on my back.
I followed them through a sliding door into the lobby of the building. A young woman in camouflage pants and a matching jacket sat at a front desk. She nodded at Agents Melcher and Crist with the same detached look as the man at the gate.
“This is our base of operation,” Melcher said. “On the right we have our own private hospital and surgeons, which you’ve already seen. It’s small, but it’s the state’s best. On the left are our administrative offices, where we’ll go first. Then in back, we have our training facilities and several holding cells.”
What? Were they going to lock me up if I didn’t do as I was told?
I followed the agents down a glaring hallway. There were no pictures on the walls. We reached a set of double doors, and Crist swiped a keycard to open them. There was another reception desk manned by yet another drone. The soldier looked at the agents briefly, never sparing me a glance.
Melcher led me into an office with two desks and shut the door.
There were no photographs on either desk; no pictures on the walls; no décor of any kind unless you counted the wooden cross nailed to the wall. It formed a triangle with Crist and Melcher when they sat down.
“Have a seat,” Melcher said.
I selected the chair in front of him. It was either that or fry under Crist’s direct glare.
Melcher rested his elbows on his desk and leaned forward.
“Let’s get right down to it. Our unit is rather peculiar. We specialize in the identification and elimination of demonic forces.” Melcher paused to smile. “Don’t worry, we won’t ask you to do both. We have undercover informants specially trained to weed out these unholy threats.”
At the moment, the only threat I sensed was that of Agents Melcher and Crist.
“You have been recruited for a very special role in the fight against terror, Aurora.”
Maybe if I stared at Melcher hard enough he’d come right out and say what he meant.
“What is a VH recruit?” I asked, remembering what the guy at the front gate had said.
“Vampire Hunter,” Crist said.
I started laughing so hard I had to grip the arms of my chair to keep from falling to the floor. The agents won points for creativity, I’d give them that. Great way to break the ice. Now we could move onto the real reason I was there.
As my giggles subsided, I noticed Melcher and Crist weren’t laughing.
“You heard right,” Melcher said. “You’ve been recruited by your government to eliminate the reanimated dead.”
“Vampires,” Crist clarified in a harsh voice.
I looked from agent to agent. “Is this some kind of joke?”
Melcher frowned. “The demonic plague is no joke.”
Since when did the military start allowing fanatics to run their own special units? Now that I was trapped on base, playing along seemed like the best idea until Mom picked me up and got me the hell out of that madhouse once and for all.
“And how exactly do I eliminate vampires?” I asked.
“That’s the beauty of it,” Melcher said. “Your body is now a weapon—your blood. As I mentioned briefly before, a team of government scientists recently discovered a combination of organisms that, when mixed with AB negative blood cells, are lethal when consumed by the undead. From there, they found a way to safely inject these organisms into hosts, such as yourself. When your blood cells are transferred from you to the infected, it sends them into a state of temporary paralysis.”
Crist looked me in the eyes. “By transferred, he means when one of them bites you.”
Right, ’cause that’s what vampires were all about. Biting people. It definitely concerned me that people like Melcher and Crist had access to automatic weapons.
No wonder Melcher was always smiling. He had a lot of funny ideas in his head. It made me smile, too.
“So are we talking storybook vampires with fangs and claws, only come out in the night, hold the garlic, please?” I asked with a smirk.
“Not exactly,” Melcher answered, missing my sarcasm. “They have every appearance of being human, but they’re not. They’re infected by disease and they feed on healthy humans.”
“Ohhhh,” I said, thinking I finally got it. “You mean sick people who have escaped quarantine. You’ve made me immune so I can hunt them down and bring them back in?”
Crist huffed. “No, he means vampires!”
Melcher continued speaking as though there’d been no interruption. “What you need to understand about the undead is that their disease is what keeps them in their reanimated state. Disease is the trigger. Rabies, plague, porphyria—we can trace plague vampires all the way back to outbreaks in sixteenth century Italy.”
“Are you saying that people who caught the plague never died?”
Sounded more like zombies than vampires to me.
Melcher sucked in a breath and released it quickly. “No, thank goodness. Only individuals with type AB negative blood are at risk.”
I shot up in my chair. “I’m type AB negative! And you injected me with a virus.”
Shit, oh shit, oh shit, oh shit. Why hadn’t I been able to see myself clearly in the mirror since the accident? And why was everything so loud? I swear I’d developed a heightened sense of hearing. But I felt cold, chilled. Vampires loved the cold. I hated the cold. I was panicking. That’s all.
This was all just a hazing.
I took a calming breath, determined to play along and not get laughed at when Melcher admitted it was all a ruse and they’d been observing my reactions from the very start.
“So now I’m a vampire?”
I should have earned points for asking with a straight face.
“We have an antidote to prevent that from happening,” Melcher said. “That’s what your monthly injection is for.”
A smile tugged at my lips. “And you’re saying that if I don’t take the antidote every month I’ll turn into a vampire?”
Melcher frowned for the first time. “If you stop taking the antidote, you’ll die and there will be no heaven to welcome you on the other side.”
I matched his frown. Maybe it was just me, but I didn’t like people telling me I was going to hell.
“Are there any side effects to having ‘vampire blood’?” I asked, thinking about the distortion in the mirror. At least I had a reflection, even if it wasn’t clear. That was a good sign, right?
Melcher looked me up and down. “You might notice some sensitivity at first, but your injections will eventually take care of any…discomforts you may experience. Do you have any specific concerns?”
I pressed my lips together, not in the mood to share with Mr. Self-Righteous.
Instead I asked, “Do you really expect me to believe this?”
Melcher looked at Crist. She nodded, and they stood in unison. I turned my head to follow their movements to the door.
“We understand your denial,” Melcher said. “In fact, every new operative goes through it. That’s why we’ve found it best to follow up this introduction with a live demonstration. Follow me.”
Right then, getting out of that room sounded good.
I followed the agents out the double doors and back down the way we’d come.
We entered the lobby and turned down another hall leading to the back of the complex, away from freedom. I wondered if the woman at the front desk would come to my aid if I called out for help.
Melcher placed a hand on my back as though sensing my hesitation and pushed me gently forward. I walked faster just to get his hand off me.
When we reached the end of the hall, Crist led us through a set of swinging double doors into a second, shorter hallway. Midway down the hall, she used her key card to unlock a metal door. She held it open, and I followed Melcher into a small, stark room. A long metal table faced a two-way mirror overlooking a brightly lit room.
I peered through the glass, expecting to see whatever creature or thing the agents wanted to show me, but the room was empty except for a metal table in the center.
Maybe they meant to stick me in there and interrogate me.
Crist stood against the door, propping it open. I followed Melcher back into the hall where he stopped in front of room number two and swiped his keycard. A metallic click unlocked the door. Melcher held it open.
He sounded way too serious when he next spoke. “You are about to meet your first vampire, Aurora. I’ll warn you, he’s no Edward Cullen. I wish there was a way to make this easier on you, but the first experience is always traumatic. To see how your blood infects the creature you will need to let him feed on you. Let me stress that it will come as a shock, but there’s nothing to fear. Your blood will protect you.”
I didn’t realize my feet were making a run for it until Crist grabbed me by the arm. “This way, Aurora.”
She released my arm long enough to shove me forward.
I spun around in time to see the door close, trapping me inside. It was the same brightly lit room I’d seen through the window. When I looked at the glass, the other room was gone, replaced by a featureless reflection.
6
Initiation
There was an electronic crackle, and a voice filled the room. “Welcome to initiation, Aurora. This test will last as long as you want”
I wanted out of this insane asylum. I rushed to the door and tried yanking down the silver handle, but it didn’t budge.
I turned and my eyes raced over every square inch of the enclosed room. There was a metal table in the very center. I walked up to it and looked down at the weapons laid on top: a handgun, crossbow, hunting knife, ax, and wooden stake.
The intercom crackled back to life.
“Once the subject has fed on your blood you will need to choose a weapon and finish him off.”
“What? No! I’m not killing anyone. Melcher? Let me out of here.”
“Now!” I screamed.
“Good luck, Aurora.”
I expected something horrible to occur after he signed off, but nothing happened.
I circled the table and kept glancing at the door. Trapped inside a windowless room with weapons that made my skin crawl. Fantastic. There wasn’t even a clock to track the minutes dragging by. If they planned on keeping me locked up for so long they could’ve at least put a chair inside.
I folded my arms over my chest and looked at the two-way mirror.
“What’s the matter with Dracula? Can’t find his cape?” I chuckled, but it sounded nervous.
I walked over to the far corner of the room and leaned my back against the wall.
There was a hollow knock at the door across the room. It pounded three times in succession, producing an eerie, drawn-out echo.
I wanted to crack a joke, but something didn’t feel right. My heart pounded its way up to my throat and I’d barely swallowed when the door flew open. A middle-aged man in flannel was thrown in. The door slammed shut behind him. He nearly fell on the floor, but caught himself. Long greasy hair covered his face as he bent forward. When he righted himself, I saw that his cheeks were sunken, lips bared over yellow teeth. He snarled and spit leaked out the corners of his mouth.
I stood up straight.
The motion caught his eye. He wheezed when he saw me. His eyes were bloodshot. His clothes looked like they hadn’t been washed in months.
This was no vampire. This was a lunatic.
He crossed the room, passing the weapons laid out on the table. At least he showed no interest in those.
I sprang to life, skirting the wall as I hustled to the exit on the opposite side.
“Let me out of here!” I pounded on the door. “Let me out!” I screamed so hard my new lungs felt ready to rupture.
The lunatic came snarling toward me. That’s what he was, not a vampire, but a deranged madman who’d been locked in the room with me by psychopaths. I was part of some kind of experiment. Maybe this was a test to see how I handled stress. Maybe they wanted me as an altogether different type of operative. They wanted to desensitize me by subjecting me to unimaginable horrors.
Well, I didn’t care if I passed. I just wanted out—and not just out of that room.
I kicked the door and walked over to the two-way mirror, glaring so hard my temples throbbed. “Enjoying the show?”
I turned and began circling the room, always keeping the table between me and the madman. He kept coming at me slowly, like a zombie in a horror film. At least he’d shown no sudden bursts of locomotion.
We moved clockwise around the room. The space was so small it made me dizzy, but still I moved, matching the maniac’s speed to keep him as far from me as possible.
My neck soon ached from constantly craning it over my shoulder to keep track of the lunatic’s location. I suppose I had my physical therapist to thank for being able to walk for miles on end. Unfortunately, my pursuant showed no signs of fatigue, either.
Round and round we went until my stomach began turning and my vision blurred.
It took a while for the first feelings of exhaustion to creep inside my consciousness. A snarling, slobbering loony will keep a girl on her toes. But hours began to feel like days, and finally, I collapsed when rounding a corner. I hit an elbow as I landed, sending a tingle up my arm. My pursuer came toward me at the same creepy pace. His eyes opened wider and murky irises burned inside.
I scrambled back to
my feet and stumbled forward. I glared into the two-way mirror.
“Why are you doing this to me?” I screamed.
I rushed to the table and picked up the revolver. Before this moment I’d never even held a gun. I pointed it at the madman. His stared back with vacant eyes, sunk inside a twisted face. “Stay where you are!”
He looked at me, not the gun, snarled, and kept coming.
I retreated and began sobbing when I re-entered the circle.
Make it end. Whatever it takes.
I turned suddenly and aimed the gun at the man’s leg with a shaky hand. The last time I felt terror this all-consuming was right before that SUV took me out. My heart seized inside my chest as I pulled back the trigger.
Nothing happened.
“Shit!” I screamed.
I dropped the gun. It clattered over the floor as I sprinted away and resumed my place circling directly across from the man.
Tears leaked down the corners of my eyes. It could have been the middle of the night for all I knew. I could suddenly understand how people went crazy. Maybe that’s what the agents were really up to—some sick experiment to make a loon out of me.
I glanced over my shoulder. The last of my energy was beginning to drain. I willed my feet to keep moving, but at some point they stopped and I stood rooted in place. The maniac’s rasp was much too loud. It sounded like hissing. It was disgusting. The fear in my heart had lessened due to extreme fatigue, but as the foul being closed in on me, terror renewed itself like a jolt of electricity to the brain.
I intended to shove him onto the floor. He didn’t look sure-footed enough to handle much force. Bracing myself, I slammed both palms against his chest, but instead of falling, the madman grabbed my arm in a bruising crush and pulled me toward him with a deafening snarl.
At that point, my heart stopped beating. I opened my mouth, but was unable to inhale or exhale.
A cold, sweaty hand gripped my face so hard it felt like my jaw would break.
I would have liked to know that in the last instant I struggled. That I fought for my life. But I didn’t. I was paralyzed. I even suspected my own heart—at least the one I was given—might kill me before the madman did.
Aurora Sky: Vampire Hunter Page 4