by Leia Stone
Jared was uncharacteristically somber, standing near the board which detailed the last few hours of my life. “Can we trust something like this to mercenaries who can be bought off?”
I shook my head. “We trust no one, but it’s the best plan we have right now. And that’s also why I want us to be the ones to get the cure into the bottles and transport them to the blood banks. We can at least keep an eye on some aspects of the plan. Hopefully Sanctum can just be used to make it that much easier.”
“What’s your gut saying, Charlie?” This was from Oliver, the more intuitive and gentle of the enforcers. “You spent time with them. Heard them speak of a truce directly. Do you believe they are double-crossing us?”
I worried at my lip for a moment, wondering if my next words might be the downfall of us all. “I believe they’re legit. We have a common goal, and they have a multitude of very large reasons to want the same thing as us. Of course we’ll also be wiping out their largest predator from the food chain, so I think they’re going to be a problem for us in the future, but right now I think they’re honestly going to help us.”
Ryder finally crossed to me and I could tell he’d held out as long as he could. I was hauled up off the couch, Kyle’s arm falling as I found myself in Ryder’s lap. His warmth enveloped me, and on instinct I relaxed into him, our bodies fusing together in something that was both sexual and comforting.
His chest lifted beneath me as his low voice filled the room. “Charlie has good instincts on this, so for now we trust her. It’s time for us to get back to Alaska, pick up some vampires for testing, and get this cure ready to roll. This is the last time I want to worry about any one of you. It’s time to end it.”
Here’s hoping Becca was ready for us to deliver her an early Christmas present. Trussed up vampire was the perfect gift under the tree, right?
Chapter 7
“Uh, guys, I really don’t need this many test subjects.”
Becca stood out the front of her hidey-hole cabin. She looked thin and tired; her eyes had dark circles that would have been driving my BAFF insane. There was two things Jayden detested, and that was unkempt eyebrows and uneven skin tone. Poor Becca had probably lost her mind listening to him fuss over her for the past few days.
Sam’s eyes were locked on the ragged ashpire as he untethered the five vampires he had strapped to the roof of his snowmobile. As I jumped out of the buggy I’d shared with Ryder, I stretched my legs and back. We’d been traveling for at least a billion hours. Flights out of Cali, then a private plane, then vampire hunting – which I was annoyingly excluded from – and then finally the huge ass trip to this tiny speck of civilization.
Sam had not been kidding when he said his bugout place was isolated. We’d driven for a long time in our snowmobiles. Would have been quite the sight with five vampires strapped to the roof, but luckily there was nobody out here to see us.
“Better to have too many than too little,” Ryder said to her.
It was nearing midnight and the sauce that Jared and Sam had concocted to make the vamps groggy would be wearing off soon. Turns out AT20 could be home brewed. It involved blood wine, sinus decongestant, and some other weird shit I didn’t recognize. My hand went to my neck where the Sanctum had darted me and I shivered, thinking of that drugged feeling.
After helping the boys load the creepy vamps into the basement of the charming 1920s hunting cabin, I collapsed onto the couch.
“I could sleep for a week,” I moaned to Jayden.
All of the boys were downstairs securing the vamps with bolts and chains. Becca was in her makeshift lab making tiny final corrections to her formula.
Jayden was grinning and giving me this crazy look.
I groaned. “What? I’m too tired for your games.”
Jayden leaned forward, positively bubbling with excitement. “Becca and Sam hooked up one dark snowy night two years ago.”
I sat up quickly, almost cracking him in the face. “Shut up!” I whisper screamed. “You got that out of her?”
Jayden nodded. “Best sex of her life. Only sex really, and then she wakes up and realizes it was all a mistake.”
My mouth dropped open. I was totally in love with Ryder, but damn, I didn’t think sleeping with Sam would be a mistake. Boy had it going on.
“What? She’s loony.”
Jayden nodded, picking at his cuticles. “She realized he was her very best friend in the whole world and didn’t want to ruin that.”
“Ughhh.” Those two were the worst. One of them afraid of ruining the friendship and the other one afraid to have any liabilities to be used against him.
Whatever. Totally not my business. I could stay out of it … maybe. Okay, probably not.
Becca came out of her lab then and I threw myself backward on the couch.
“Hey, what are you guys—”
“Nothing!” I blurted, and Jayden snort laughed. Becca looked confused. Shit, I was such a bad liar.
She let out a few uncomfortable chuckles. “Okay, well, if you’re doing nothing, do you want to help me prepare the samples? I need an assistant or two.”
I jumped up. “Yep. Sure.”
I really wished Jayden hadn’t told me about the hot sex. Now I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Taking a few deep breaths, I made a concerted effort to put it to the back of my mind.
“So…” Becca said as we entered her makeshift lab. “I have three candidates for the cure that I’m ninety percent sure will work, and two that are fifty-fifty.”
I could see a bunch of beakers and empty syringes lying around. “Okay, tell us what we should do.”
She nodded, and over the next hour Jayden and I helped her label the cures one-five and put them into the syringes. Only at the last minute did she add some type of stabilizing compound I didn’t understand.
After we were done she stared at the five syringes and chewed a fingernail. The liquid inside was clear and it amazed me that with one bag of my blood she was able to extract the cure and turn it into this vaccine of sorts.
“Okay,” she said.
“Okay,” Jayden and I echoed.
I realized then how much pressure we had put on her. Here we were making this entire plan for curing the vampires and setting up the network and spreading the word and she hadn’t even figured out the cure yet.
She grabbed the labeled syringes and slipped them into her pocket, and as we turned to leave she picked up a tiny handheld camcorder with tripod and handed it to Jayden.
Crossing through the hallway, we made our way down a dim and narrow set of stairs and into the dark, creepy, freezing basement. The walls were cement and the fluorescent lighting cast eerie shadows on the tied-up vampires before us.
The vampires were chained to various things. Two were on the steel drain pipe, two on the water heater, and the other one chained to a large stabilizing column.
“They’re all yours, Becks,” Sam told her, and my heart pinched at the endearing tone in his voice. She pulled out the syringes and motioned to Jayden to turn on the camera. He set it up and began filming her.
“I’m Dr. Rebecca Leander and this is trial one of the vampire cure,” she told the camera.
Whoa, it didn’t hit me until now how monumental it was that we were curing an entire race.
Becca walked to the first vampire, a scraggly male who was moaning softly. “Subject one will receive cure number one.”
She pulled out the syringe with a one on it and inserted it into the man’s vein at the elbow. His eyes flew open and his mouth widened as he bared his fangs at her. Before anyone could act, Sam was there blindingly fast, ripping Becca out of harm’s way.
The two shared an intense look for a moment, and finally Sam spoke: “How about I inject them?”
Becca gave a slight smile and nodded. Sam proceeded to inject the other vampires with the other cures.
Before we had tied them up, Becca had taken blood from each on
e of the subjects and written their subject number on their arm in black permanent marker. She was meticulous in documenting everything that was happening, every step of the way.
Now she stared at all of the subjects, lost deep in thought.
“What now?” I asked eagerly.
“Now we wait.”
Jared, Sam, and Markus stayed downstairs while the rest of us went upstairs to wait it out. Becca headed back to her lab to test the subjects’ blood for God knows what, and I was staring at the lines of worry crossing Ryder’s face. Sleep was going to take me soon; I hadn’t had a good night’s sleep since we left on the trip to California, and here, safe in this cabin on this old comfy couch, I felt my eyelids drooping. But I was worried about my boyfriend.
“What is it?” I asked him softly.
He seemed to consider my words before turning to me. “The enforcers that the vampires killed back in the Hive… I recruited every single one of them. I brought them to their deaths.”
By mutual agreement, none of us spoke of those who’d been killed. We couldn’t deal with that and with everything else that was happening. But it was never far from my thoughts. Clearly Ryder’s either.
My heart aching, I grabbed his hand. “Ryder, you can’t do that to yourself. It’s not your fault. Ash don’t have many choices in the Hive. It’s enforcer or some other dead end job, which could also get them killed by a vampire. That’s why we’re doing all this. To give ash a chance at a real life.”
He didn’t seem to buy my words but he did attempt to give me a reassuring smile. One which did not even come close to reaching his hardened eyes. “I need retribution for them. The thought that they were slaughtered like that …”
Shit. He was right, and there was nothing I could say to make this easier. I squeezed his hand and snuggled myself closer, trying to offer him comfort. Eventually, I lost the battle with my eyelids, and surrounded by Ryder’s warmth, I fell asleep. My dreams were filled with blood and loss.
I awoke to screams. Heart pounding in my chest, I was up and off the couch in seconds, completely disoriented and looking around to get my bearings. On the floor close by were Markus and Oliver curled in their sleeping bags, dead to the world.
The screams came again and I grabbed my gun, taking the stairs to the basement three at a time. When I turned the corner and the scene came into view, I cringed.
One of the vampires – number two – was thrashing and screaming, surrounded by a pool of bloody looking vomit. The other vampires were watching with calculated looks. Sam and Ryder had guns drawn, and Becca was frazzled trying to put something together with Jayden.
“It’s a reaction. His version of the cure was too potent and his immune system is going haywire, attacking itself.”
“What did you do to me, you bitch?” the vampire screamed, and his eyes were bloodshot; lines of broken capillaries filled the whites and even some of the silver. Sam took two paces forward and the butt of his gun came down on the back of the vampire’s neck. Lights out. One of the other vampires was watching with a look of unease. He was frowning and … was that fear in his eyes? I peered closer and I could see his eyes were less silver. Subject three was written on his arm.
“Becca, he’s healing,” I blurted out and pointed to number three. Becca looked up from her tray and with her laser-like focus started doing her science observation thing. The silver-black irises beneath her fake glasses were practically glowing. She handed Sam a syringe. “Give this to him,” and motioned to the guy he’d just knocked out.
Subject three backed up as Becca walked closer. “What’s going on?” he asked.
Becca smiled. “We’re going to cure you.”
His mouth popped open and I saw the shock register. “I heard rumors but…”
Becca shifted the camera around so that it focused on test subject three. “How do you feel?”
He rolled his neck. “Achy. Hot. Tired. Hungry…”
Becca and I shared a look. Holy shit, he said hungry not thirsty. I looked at Ryder, hoping to share the excitement, but all I saw was an emotionless face, dark circles under his eyes and nobody home. What was happening to him? I knew he was struggling with the death of his enforcers, but this was really taking a toll. Had he slept at all when I passed out on him? In fact, I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen Ryder even go to sleep. I always seemed to crash before him, and he was up before I got up too.
I was distracted for a moment as Becca crouched next to number three. “I’m going to take a blood sample, okay?” Her voice was low and calm. A few of the other vampires were pulling against their chains, fighting whatever was going on in their bodies, but he just nodded.
Jayden stepped up. “I’ll get blood bottles for the assholes and a sandwich and water for the nice one.”
Hilarious. Jayden had impeccable timing. Becca just dismissed his comment with a nod of her head, and he turned to run upstairs.
I slipped in beside Ryder. “You look tired. Get some rest. I’ll take over now.” We had at least three enforcers down here at all times with guns and a Taser. Electricity was a good way to take out a vampire for a short time. We also had some more of that homebrewed AT20. Worst case, we could always break their necks.
Wow, never thought I would say that.
Ryder just shrugged. “I’m fine. I can’t sleep.”
Dammit, I didn’t like that tone. We had been so busy trying to get to the Californian Hive and steal these vampires, I had neglected to see the signs that were wearing Ryder down. His entire enforcer team had been slaughtered and we didn’t even have a funeral for them. Their bodies were probably unceremoniously burned.
Becca was done now and she met subject three’s gaze. “If you’re feeling better by tonight, we can untie you.”
He nodded.
“Untie me too,” one of the vampires said, his voice growly. “I like my blood warm.”
His gaze was making me uncomfortable, and he wasn’t even looking at me.
“That’s not happening,” Jayden said, coming into the room holding the tray of blood bottles and food. “You will drink this cold and bland, just like the rest of us.”
Becca looked at subject one, who had just spoken. “He can’t help it. His oxytocin was practically nonexistent.” That was her way of calling him an asshole. So damn polite. We really needed to do something about that.
Shuffling back so Jayden could get to the vampires, a waft of stale clothes from a zillion hours traveling hit me. Since it looked like they were okay down here for now, I needed to get changed. “I’m going to go shower,” I said to Ryder, and he just nodded.
My heart was clenching in my chest as I walked up the stairs. I couldn’t shake the awful feeling that this thing with Ryder was getting worse. He was pulling away from me and I had no idea how to stop him.
By the time full darkness had fallen, everyone was exhausted. Becca had been in her lab all day. Every three hours she was taking samples from subject three and reporting that his oxytocin was rising and the virus was virtually disappearing from his system.
Ryder was basically ignoring me. He went from outside perimeter watch, to a few hours’ nap time, and then back to vampire test subject watch. I couldn’t get a moment alone to pull him aside. Finally, just after dinner, Becca came charging out of the lab, grinning broadly.
“It’s the cure!” she said, waving some papers in the air.
I was playing cards with Markus. We both threw them down and stood.
“Number three?” I asked.
She nodded. “It was one of the ones I put fifty-fifty odds on. I expected that this cure wouldn’t bind properly to the white cell, or not long enough to enact a full body response. But it did! Subject three is permanently cured in less than twenty-four hours.”
Holy shit. I let her news sink in. We had a cure for the Anima Mortem virus.
“Can we mass produce this here?”
She seemed to consider. “I
’ll need some of my bigger machinery down at the main lab.”
Ryder’s voice came out of nowhere. “I’ll take her.”
I turned, frowning. “I can come too.”
Ryder waved it off. “I’ll take her and load up the snowmobile and we’ll be right back. Nightfall is the perfect cover.”
Markus shared a look with me but didn’t push it.
“Fine.” I shrugged, pissed off and worried. Mostly worried. Yeah, the snowmobiles were small, and if she was lugging big equipment up here, there wasn’t really room for me too, but I didn’t like this feeling that Ryder was deliberately avoiding me. Felt like we’d jumped back to those early days when he was messed up about his fiancée. Ryder internalized too much, and carried too much guilt. I needed to find time to talk with him properly, but it clearly wasn’t going to be now.
Becca gave Jayden some instructions. He had officially become her lab bitch – his words, not mine. Sam was still downstairs on vamp duty.
Ryder crossed the space and kissed me quickly on the cheek. “I love you, Charlie.”
He dashed off then before I could say anything. I took a step after him, but he was already in the snowmobile with Becca, and then they were gone. I stood outside in the cold as everyone else trudged back inside. Jayden was on his way to release number three.
As snowy winds whipped around me, I crossed my arms over my chest, as if I could halt all of the fear and worry from tearing out of my heart. I couldn’t stop thinking about Ryder’s last words. The way he’d said it … had my heart aching and my stomach tied up in knots. Initially I thought it was just because I hated that we would be so far apart, especially with the mental distance already between us. But as I stood there forever, the cold chilling me to the bone, I realized that the reason for the potent fear filling me was that his I love you had sounded a lot like goodbye.
Three hours after Becca left, she returned … alone. The second she walked in with a note in her shaking hand, I knew.
“I couldn’t stop him,” Becca said, and tears lined her eyes. “He loaded the equipment and then drove me to the safety of the thick trees and then he—”