“You used your own daughter to store chemicals?” Sinna said. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
“I had no choice,” Klaus replied, enunciating every syllable. “It fos our only hope. The compound is harmless to humans und can be sustained in a live host indefinitely. But the moment it touches air, it begins to degrade. So you see, you cannot simply draw blood und transport it anywhere in the world. It must be processed immediately, or it becomes useless.”
Aiden did not like where this was going. “Where’s your daughter now?”
Klaus adjusted his glasses. “When we all evacuated the base, the convoy hit on a convert horde und we got scattered. Most of the convoy went north to Montana, but that avenue closed very quickly. The rest of us were forced to turn west. The horde followed und split a few vehicles out to leave formation. The last I saw of my family, they were diverted south. My daughter is miles away now, somewhere in Gilroy, Califoania.”
“And you want us to go get her for you.”
“Pre-cisely.” Klaus smiled wide. “You will do this, ya?”
“No.”
Klaus frowned. “Why not?”
“Why don’t you go get her yourself? You’ve got the men, and the fire power.”
His face turned ruddy. “You do not sink I tried? There are hundreds, thousands, of converts between here und there. Sixteen of de twenty men I sent never came back. We may be well ahmed, but we are still human. Only a Wolfen can make it sru dat gauntlet alive.”
Aiden shrugged. “Not my problem.”
Klaus sighed and smoothed his shirt in an effort to compose himself. “This is a new world, my friend. Your choice is limited. You can do this for me und I let you go—with the females—or you say to me no again, und your female bleeds.”
A dozen weapons instantly snapped up, safety off. Aiden’s and Bryce’s chains were yanked taut, and one enterprising fellow tried to force Aiden to his knees. Yeah, like that would happen.
As they struggled, two gunmen grabbed Sinna and pulled her away from Bryce before he could get mad. They didn’t use firearms, just knives pressed to her skin where they’d shoved her down, ready to bleed her like a satanic offering.
“She is first generashon, like you. Her blood is more potent than all de rest of my females combined. If we are careful…”
At his prompt, one of the blades nicked along her throat, and blood dripped onto the dry ground, pooling before it was absorbed.
“…we can keep her alive for a very long time to keep us safe.”
Bryce hunched as if in pain. Only a matter of time now.
“Don’t you dare,” Sinna snapped, and Aiden wasn’t sure which one of them she was talking to, but it brought Bryce’s head up.
Aiden took a deep breath for calm. “Fine. Let her go.”
“No!”
Klaus chuckled. “I think not. A man in my position needs collateral.”
“It’s not gonna be her.”
Sinna struggled. “Stop it!”
“Ya, this is a good plan. Bring my daughter back to me, und we will trade.”
Bryce snarled.
Aiden wasn’t too far from spazzing out either, but one of them needed a level head. Right now, that meant him. So he pushed it all down, kept his gaze on Klaus, and calmly said, “See this guy here?” He nodded at Bryce. “He’s the reason humanity took a sharp dive in the digits not that long ago. You don’t want him here when he’s like this, and he won’t go anywhere without her.”
“We will see.” Klaus gestured for his men to lift Sinna up. They were about to separate them; the quickest possible way to snap Bryce’s chain.
“Yeah, you will,” Aiden said quickly. “And it will be your last sight on this Earth. Trust me. I’ve seen it happen.”
Bryce was so far gone his every breath rumbled on a growl. He was staring hard at the men who held Sinna, straining against his binds with a slow, steady pressure of determination.
“Come on, Klaus, you know how this works. You brought us into this world, remember? You know exactly what we’re capable of.”
One of the men holding Sinna pushed the tip of his knife into the side of her neck, a millimeter from puncturing her jugular. Sinna gasped and froze, eyes squeezed shut as she tried hard to keep very still.
Aiden shoulder-checked Bryce, the only thing he could do to break his brother’s mindless focus, and even that was like slapping a lion’s ass with a fly swatter. “Keep cutting on her, and you can kiss your pulse goodbye.”
The guard looked to Klaus, who nodded for him to stand down. Crisis averted. For about five more seconds.
“I’m offering you a deal,” Aiden said.
“I’m listening.”
“I’ll stay—”
“No!” Sinna cried. “We do not separate!”
“I will stay,” Aiden repeated, glaring her down. “You’ll give my companions our supplies and weapons back, and they’ll go get your daughter. When they return, we’ll trade. The girl for me and the rest of the Wolfen here.” There were more than just the chained females living in the compound. Aiden could scent them. Just like old times, they were caged animals kept for the humans’ protection and entertainment. He couldn’t blame Bryce for wanting to go apeshit in this place. But if he did, none of them would make it. Aiden couldn’t let that happen.
“What are you doing?” Sinna demanded.
That same question burned in Bryce’s eyes when he turned to Aiden. Bryce wanted this, wanted to tear into something so badly, his whole body shook with the effort to hold still. He wouldn’t hesitate to unleash that pent up wrath a second time without a single care for consequences, because somehow his little brother had taken it into his head that’s all he was good for. It was Aiden’s fault; he’d never been able to convince him otherwise. But if Bryce did this, even if Aiden and Sinna survived, it would break him. For good this time.
Not on my watch. He forced a smile, hoping it looked less pathetic than it felt. “My turn now, brother. I’ve got this.”
14: Desiree
I think of life as a wheel. Sometimes you get all the way to the top, and things are good. Then you take one step too many, and fall headlong into the dirt. You get buried in the muck so deep, you feel like there’s no way out, and the longer you’re there, the more of yourself you lose. Purpose is the first to go. Dignity follows close behind.
I’ve been down here for a while now. Nothing but dirt and shit everywhere I look. I wear it. I breathe it. I choke it down, until the foul taste doesn’t bother me anymore. And I can’t say a word. At the moment, I’m not even a person in my own right. I’m not Desiree, I’m the letter D.
But the wheel’s still turning, and it’s not over yet. I keep my mouth shut and watch, bracing for the inevitable. It won’t be long, either. I can already see the juggernaut taking shape. What’s come up is about to go back down, and this time it’ll take all of Haven with it.
I can hardly wait.
~
A piercing shout outside made Desiree shove to her feet in alarm. Sharp pain cut through her right thigh, and she bit her lip, hobbling quickly toward the door to see what had happened. I’ll regret that later, she thought, rubbing the sting away. Oh yes, she’d regret it—big time.
Dare and Arik crossed big guns in front of her, and Desiree couldn’t stop in time, falling against the barrier. The guards knew to expect her lack of balance; they gave a little so she wouldn’t hurt herself, but then pushed out, making her stumble back a step and a half.
“Where do you think you’re going, Tripod?”
Tripod? The freckled redhead, Dare, had never been the sharpest tool in the shed, but you’d think he’d at least be able to count to two.
A couple of weeks back, the guards had been assigned to shadow her. For her own protection, Klaus had said. Sometimes Desiree thought he really did consider her to be the village idiot. She was watched ‘round the clock, inside a well-guarded fortress populated by over three hundred people at last count. You d
idn’t do that to protect someone; you did it to control them.
“I just want to see outside.”
“None doing.” Arik shook his head. “You just shuffle on back to your cushy little chair and wait for the boss.”
Desiree gritted her teeth. “I’m not going out there. I just want to look.” She pushed against the crossed guns. “That’s still allowed, isn’t it?”
Dare shoved her back again. With her weight on her bad leg, the force moved everything out of alignment, and Desiree gasped, flailing her arms for balance. A tight pinch in her lower back made her wince. So going to regret this later.
Dare giggled. “This is fun.”
Taking a deep breath for patience, Desiree went toe to toe with him. “Remember the last time you picked on me? Huh? They couldn’t peel you away from the latrines for three days. You wanna be back there again? Because I have no problem with that.”
Dare gulped, but covered his unease with a careless smirk. “You won’t do shit.”
“Try me.”
Arik rolled his eyes. “For fuck’s sake, let her look.”
“The boss said—”
“The boss has bigger things to worry about right now.”
Dare flipped Arik off, but let Desiree through. She opened the door a couple of inches to see outside.
The commons had been cleared out, but Desiree knew most of Haven’s residents were doing the exact same thing she was right now: peeking out through doors and windows, noses pressed to glass, hands clutching a weapon just in case. Klaus had opted for a show of force. He’d basically pulled all of their defenders off of the walls, no doubt hoping to fool the Wolfen into thinking there were hundreds more around, but the truth was all of their remaining fire power was currently aimed at three creatures who had no business being there in the first place.
Klaus was using the female to force the males to his bidding. It was an old, cruel trick, but it worked every time. Words were exchanged, and he smiled. The big boss got what he wanted—again.
“Looks like the game is on,” Arik said above her. “Might wanna step back, Gimpy. They don’t look housebroken.”
Desiree glared at him, but didn’t rise to his bait. Unlike Dare, Arik actually had a few spare brain cells to rub together. “I’ll take that under advisement,” she replied, and ducked back to the door jamb to check on progress.
Shit!
Klaus was coming this way.
Desiree slammed the door and hurried back to her seat, enduring Dare’s taunting chants of “Go, go, go!” as her right thigh and lower back weathered the worst of the pain. She breathed through it, like she always did. No sense in crying over something that couldn’t be fixed. You adapted, or you died. There was no room for weakness anymore.
She’d just made it to her seat when Klaus strolled in, chin high, hands clasped at his back.
“So what’s the story?” Arik asked, knowing as well as Desiree that Klaus required a rapt audience, which she rarely was.
Klaus waggled his eyebrows. “We will have a retrieval team.”
So the old bastard might finally get his precious baby back. Had Klaus told his new best friends the whole story of why he needed a retrieval team in the first place? Odds were, not. Full disclosure wasn’t exactly Klaus’ style. Megalomaniacal sociopathy and brute force? That was more his speed.
“The blond volunteered to stay behind as collateral. The others will fetch Helena.”
Alarm spiked through Desiree, and she looked into the microscope to hide her expression. A male Wolfen? Here?
“Still no names, huh?”
“No,” Klaus answered, clearly put out by it. “But I can take an educated guess. What do you think, Dee?”
I think you’re crazy, and it’s going to get us all killed. “They look to be in their late twenties, which makes them first generation fabricants,” she answered, but didn’t look up. “All three share the classic Wolfen markings: height, breadth, symmetry, and musculature. Beyond that, the dark male’s bone structure is similar to the blond, which could mean a closer genetic link than most others.”
“Brothers,” Klaus confirmed.
That brought her head up. Desiree frowned. Wolfen did not have familial structures. Not the first-gens, at least. They’d all been bioengineered individually, and though they shared certain genetic markers, great care had been taken to avoid the possibility of future inbreeding. Unless… “You don’t mean…?”
“Wait outside,” Klaus ordered the guards. His tone made her very uneasy. When they’d left, Klaus stalked closer to Desiree, staring at her in that way she hated, like he could see into her mind and didn’t find anything worth getting out of bed over. He had trained her mind, so he thought he owned it. “You have read all my notes from Chernobyl, decades worth of research und results. There fos only one time in all of our records when one human base cell fos used twice concurrently. Confirm.”
Desiree’s frown deepened as she mentally leafed through the surfeit of scientific facts. “But that would make them—”
“Alfa Seven und Beta Twelf.”
She gaped. “And you’re still going to keep one of them here?” Was he serious? Those two were the MacGyvers of their litter! A whole staff of orderlies had had trouble keeping an eye on them in a fully functional den when they’d been preteens!
“Waste not, want not. An opportunity like this might not come again, ya? It should not be squandered. We still have two first-gen females in storage,” he said, as if cataloging their supplies of toilet paper. “We should make use of them while they are still viable. I want you to take a more proactive role in—”
Desiree closed her eyes and sucked in a sharp breath through her nose. “I will not—”
Klaus slammed his hands onto her table so hard glassware rattled and a candle fell over, sputtering out. “You will do what you are told!” he yelled, spraying her with spittle. Tiny veins lined the whites of his deep blue eyes as his volatile temper snapped. The pupils, though fogging over with cataracts, still had enough fire to make Desiree shrink back.
Hazardous material. Proceed with caution. “You may be able to sedate the females to make them compliant,” she said, trying to sound reasonable, “but how do you propose to make a fully grown Wolfen male perform against his will?”
“You assume he won’t be willing?”
If ever there was a sure bet. “I think he is Wolfen.” She shrugged. “That alone will make forcing the issue futile.”
Klaus nodded thoughtfully, which gave her hope.
“Moreover,” she continued, “Alpha and Beta were the genetic peak of the study, and marked as high-level protectors at age ten. You won’t subjugate instinct that powerful. He won’t be controlled.”
Klaus smiled, and Desiree’s hopes plummeted. She’d gone too far; she’d lost him.
No…that smile said she’d never had him to begin with. He was toying with her again, letting her ramble until she’d proved his point, without even knowing what it was.
She’d played right into his hand.
Klaus straightened, hands sliding off the edge of her desk. He went around the far side and opened the glass cabinet where only the most dangerous substances were stored. “Den I suppose we only have one option available to us.”
Desiree’s eyes widened. She started shaking her head in denial.
Far in the back on the third shelf sat two stoppered test tubes labeled ZX-127, each with twenty milliliters of murky red liquid inside. Klaus drew one out, watching her face to better savor her horror and disgust. He placed the test tube on the rack right in front of her and waited.
“No.” She forced the word out through teeth gritted so hard, her jaw began to cramp. If this was what he meant by “proactive role” he could forget it! No way!
“It fos not a question, my dear,” he replied softly. “When the time comes, you will do what is expected of you. You will do it efficiently, und wisout argument, und you will sank me for de opportunity to be a useful member o
f Haven’s community!”
“And if I die in the attempt, it will be an honorable end, right? You’ll give me a grand funeral with all deference paid, because it will have been a heroic death. A worthy sacrifice for the betterment of Haven, just as you always wanted for me.”
“If such a thing should happen, it will only prove that you were never strong enough to survive,” he said, as if it was all her fault. “I gave you every opportunity to be somesing.”
Your slave!
“I gave you the tools to change everysing it means to be you. But I can only open de door, my girl. You have to choose to walk sru it.” And you’d better make the right choice. Because if you don’t, you will be of no more use to me.
But Klaus didn’t need to remind her of that. The lesson, like all of the others he’d imparted over the years, had been seared into her memory—and her flesh—for all time. Desiree had one purpose in Haven, and one alone: to continue Klaus’ work and legacy.
“You will not disobey me in this.”
She flinched, and ducked her head. “I will not disobey,” she repeated, the words burning out of her.
“You will do what you are told. Say it, Desiree. You will do this, or you will wish I fed you to the converts.”
In an instant, Desiree was seven years old again, clutching Klaus’ neck as he stood atop the barricade with a horde of converts bearing down on them. He’d stood there, and deliberated. Not whether to toss her down there, but whether she’d be enough to distract the converts until the gunmen could reload. Desiree curled her nails into her sore leg and embraced the pain for what it was: a reminder she was still alive—despite him. “I will do it.”
Klaus tapped his fingers on her desk expectantly.
“I will do as I am told…Father.”
Satisfied he’d made his point, Klaus walked out of her lab without another word.
15: Desiree
With shaking hands, Desiree put the test tube back in its place. She couldn’t think while it was on her desk. Not that thinking would do her much good now. God, how she wished she could just walk out of here and disappear!
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