“Yes, the life force. That thing that connects us all.”
“And dhampir,” I asked, glancing at Thane. “How are they different?”
He shrugged. “Perhaps not quite as strong, or fast. They can feed on blood or on normal food. But if they feed on blood, they’re stronger.”
What Thane had said. I swallowed hard and looked once more at Thane. How often had he fed on blood? When was the last time he had sunk his teeth into some innocent human? He was looking out the windows as if our conversation didn’t have anything to do with him.
“For both the blood has to be fresh, living. Once the person dies, the blood begins to die. But the biggest difference is that dhampir, in my opinion, have a soul.”
I shook my head, confused. I’d remembered reading about souls a time or two, but hadn’t truly understood. This was something Thane hadn’t mentioned. “What is it?”
“A soul, which you and I have, is something that is almost inexplicable.” He stood, pacing the room. “It’s what gives us a conscience. It’s what makes us love another, feel pain and empathy for another.”
I wondered, briefly if my grandfather had one. After all, he was perfectly content to let us die in those compounds. I scooped up another spoonful, eating the stew as fast as I could before it went cold. “And vampires don’t have that?”
“How could they?” He glanced at Thane. “Dhampir do. Perhaps not as much as humans, but it is there.”
“How fortunate for us,” Thane said blandly. “Do you or do you not know how to kill them?”
Apparently he’d had enough of talking about souls and whether or not he had one. I found the talk fascinating, and wanted to learn more. I itched to go to that shelf and pick up a book. Instead, I took my last bite, wishing for more stew, and set the bowl on the table.
“You’re welcome to read them,” Grandfather said, noticing my attention. “I had to recopy some because they were in such bad shape, but I wrote them exactly as they were.”
I didn’t need to be told twice. Thrilled like I hadn’t been in weeks, I stood and went to the shelf. “Where did you get the supplies to copy?”
“Same as you: stolen merchandise from the beautiful ones.”
So he either did go to the mainland upon occasion, or someone brought him supplies. I pulled a book from the shelf and read the spine. Osteology. When I flipped open the book, there were skeletons and a variety of bones pictured on the pages. My eyes went wide. So much to learn. Thane thought I knew a lot. I didn’t know anything.
“Who brings you the supplies?” Thane asked.
I heard the wariness in his voice and slowly replaced the book. Something was bothering Thane.
“Friends,” Grandfather said. “I’ve been known to go to the mainland but not for long and not far.”
“Unfortunately we can’t all live on an island,” I said, with a tad bit of bitterness. “Besides, I’m sure the beautiful ones would find a way onto the island if the food source disappeared.” Frowning, I turned toward Thane. “Why don’t they come here?”
“Because,” Grandfather interrupted. “If there is one thing they’re afraid of more than anything its death.”
Aren’t we all?
“There are only two ways a beautiful one can die within an instant. One, cutting off their head. Two, drowning. There’s no coming back from drowning. Fire,” he shrugged. “It’s a slow death. Too slow. They can heal themselves and make it out of the flames. But water, usually not in time.”
“Good to know.”
“Alright.” Grandfather stood, drawing our attention to him. “Come with me.”
He didn’t wait but headed toward a back room. His excitement had me warily glancing at Thane. When he started to follow my grandfather, I shoved the book back onto the shelf and went after them.
“Careful,” Thane whispered as I fell into step beside him.
“He’s my grandfather.”
He didn’t respond.
And I realized how stupid I sounded. Yeah, he was my grandfather, but in this world that didn’t mean anything. I moved into the room, Thane at my back. My grandfather was sliding his hand around the wooden plank wall, mumbling under his breath. Crazy indeed.
“Here it is.” Suddenly the wall opened to reveal a hidden room. I gasped, surprised, when I shouldn’t have been. Nothing this crazy old man did should have shocked me.
“Well, come on,” Grandfather muttered, shuffling into the room.
I moved hesitantly forward and peeked inside. It was small, but cluttered with shelves, bottles, skeletons and other things I didn’t recognize or understand. Two tables and shelves with a variety of jars filled the wall farthest from us. “What is this place?”
“My lab.”
Lab. I searched my mind, trying to define the word but the only thing that came to mind was Frankenstein, and that made me more than nervous. It was a place where he worked, studied, obviously. Thane moved into the room even more cautiously than I did. Either he was showing his emotions more often, or I was actually coming to understand the dhampir.
I went to the shelves and picked up a jar. What seemed to be an eyeball floated in some sort of liquid. Swallowing down the bile in my throat, I quickly replaced the jar and turned toward my grandfather. “You’re a scientist?”
“Doctor. Or I was a doctor, at one time, for the chosen ones.”
He’d been a doctor? He’d seen those compounds, had known why they were there. When he’d escaped, had he bothered to try and help anyone else, or had he immediately hidden away, thinking only of himself?
A skeleton in the far corner caught my attention. A full-sized body. “What is that?”
“A skeleton,” he said gruffly.
“A human?” I asked, feeling slightly ill. How the hell had he gotten a skeleton?
“No,” Thane replied. “A beautiful one.”
A beautiful one. A monster. Yet, now a mere pile of bones. I moved slowly toward the object and stared hard at it. I had to remind myself that it was dead, it couldn’t hurt me. The huge gaping holes for eyes, the laughing mouth of teeth, all harmless. “How is it different from ours?”
“It’s not. Not really.” He moved toward it. “That’s the odd thing. These ridges, they’re where the muscle attaches to bone. They’re bigger than in most human skeletons, but that’s it as far as I can tell.”
“What does it mean?” I asked. I really wanted to know where he had gotten it, but didn’t dare ask for fear of his response.
He lifted the arm, making it wave. “It means that it’s not the skeletal structure giving them their strength.”
“What is?”
“Their blood, their genes, the brain… I’m not sure.”
I glanced at Thane to see how he was taking this all, but he was leaning nonchalantly against the door frame, arms crossed, face passive. I took in a deep breath and faced my grandfather. “You were a doctor. Is that how you escaped? Or did someone help you? Like Thane?”
“On my own.” He moved toward a shelf and pulled down a bunch of books. “When I had my chance, I took it. This was before we had help. Before your Thane.” He paused near his jars of specimens, his back to us. I didn’t miss the way his hands trembled as they rested on a shelf. “I was making sure humans were healthy, only to know that it didn’t matter. They would be murdered anyway. It was slowly driving me insane.”
I wasn’t quite sure if he was sane even now, but I was glad to know he had a conscience. I thought about our doctor back at the compound and how odd he seemed, how anxious and timid. I wanted to hate him, but couldn’t for I knew that one day they would have no use for him.
Thane strolled toward the shelves, and picked up a jar that looked deceptively like part of a brain. “They’ve decided to use blood suckers now as doctors. No more humans.”
“Yes, I heard.”
Heard from who? It was new to me. I wondered what had happened to our doctor, but pushed the thought aside. We had more important things to worr
y about, and as much as the room fascinated me, I wondered if Grandfather had brought us here for a purpose other than showing off his collection.
Thane replaced the jar. “They use the chosen ones less and less these days. They don’t trust them.”
“Imagine that,” I whispered.
Thane looked at my grandfather. “You said you have something?”
“Yes!” He struggled to his knees and gripped the corner of a floorboard. I shifted, uneasy. But surprisingly, the slat lifted and he pulled out a black case of some sort that had been hidden.
With a grin, he stood. “The ground keeps it cool and the floorboards hide the case.”
“What is it?” I asked.
“You’ll see. So impatient.” He settled the case on top of the table. Thane still stood by the shelves, but I moved closer, unable to resist. “This, is the answer to our problems.”
He flipped open the lid. The case was filled with bottles and bottles of clear liquid. At least fifty, maybe more. Water? Vaccines? What was he getting at?
He just stood there, grinning, as if we should understand.
“What is it?” I finally asked.
He huffed out a breath of annoyance. “Our way of destroying the beautiful ones, of course.”
When we didn’t respond, too confused to speak, he sighed loudly, raking his hands through his white hair so it stood like a puff of a cloud atop his head. “If we can taint the human blood so that vampires can’t ingest it, yet it doesn’t make the humans sick…well, we might have a fighting chance.”
Taint human blood? That sounded dangerous. “How does it work?”
“Simple. We merely need to inject the liquid into the blood stream.” He pulled a bottle free with trembling fingers, that wide, demented grin back in place. “This,” he said, holding up the long needle, filled with liquid. “Will save us all.”
I slid Thane a glance, hoping he would respond. But he seemed just as surprised and unsure as I did. In other words, no help.
Grandfather looked at us expectantly. “So, who’s first?”
Chapter 14
Thane wouldn’t let Grandfather give me the injection. And considering I wasn’t quite sure if he was crazy or not, I didn’t argue. We would wait, he had insisted. I wasn’t sure what we were waiting for and I realized that there might come a time when I would be forced to take the serum, but I trusted his instincts, and more importantly, I trusted mine.
And although I hadn’t gotten the “miracle cure,” as grandfather called it, I felt safe there on that island, where my grandfather had lived in peace. Safe for days as Thane and I rested, waiting, while Grandfather went over his serum again and again, testing it on various wild animals, and even himself, to make sure it wouldn’t kill humans.
But I knew the safety was an illusion and Thane was right, in this world we should be very leery of any cure that seemed too good to be true. And so we would wait some more. And a part of me, that selfish part, didn’t mind waiting. I liked it here.
I waded out into the water up to my thighs, staring at the area where I knew the mainland was located. Out there, somewhere, but it was too cloudy to see. Was Will still alive? Did Kelly still live? Tony? Or had one of them led the others into a trap?
I brushed my hands over the surface of the water, watching the ripples move out toward the shore and wondered if those tiny waves might make it to the mainland. Kelly had never taught me to swim. Probably never would. Not her death, not even her possible betrayal could bring me to tears. I didn’t cry anymore. I couldn’t. My emotions had dried up and at times I wondered if I was still human. Even seeing the books in Grandfather’s house didn’t thrill me like they would have two months ago. Yes, I’d desperately wanted to read them, but merely to gain knowledge that might defeat the beautiful ones. Not for pleasure.
I sank into the water, letting the cool waves reach my shoulders. This, though, felt as close to bliss as I supposed I would ever feel again. I could admit that much. I didn’t even mind the salt water that occasionally splashed into my mouth, tasting bitter and tangy. The water cleaned my body, the smooth pebbles on the bottom massaged my feet and the cold numbed the aches and pains.
But my moment didn’t last long. I heard the snap of a branch and spun around to face the land. Thane stood on the shore, casually watching me. I found it somewhat amusing that he made noise to warn me whenever he approached, when he could have walked quietly by and I wouldn’t have noticed. Amusing and yes, somewhat endearing.
“Swimming or trying to escape?”
I flushed. “Swimming. Well, trying. I don’t really know how.”
He pulled his shirt over his head.
Startled, I stiffened. I wore my underwear and shirt but I still felt underdressed with him near. I’d never been this embarrassed around Will. What was it about Thane that made me feel like a bumbling fool? “What are you doing?”
“Same as you. Swimming.”
I spun around, giving my back to him as he reached for the waistband of his trousers. “I sort of wanted to be alone.”
“Being alone is dangerous.”
“We’re on an island.”
I could hear him move into the water, the gentle splash of the waves against his body. “Never let your guard down, Jane.”
I watched him from the corner of my eye as he dove into the water and swam out, a blur of a man underneath the surface, like one of the mere-folk I’d read about in a book. He stood some distance away and raked his wet hair back from his face. I tried not to stare, but he was truly stunning. Even the scars didn’t take away from his fine features, and for some reason the water made his eyes look even bluer.
“Just when you think you have someone, or something figured out, is probably when they surprise you, turn on you.”
Was he speaking of the beautiful ones or himself?
“And do you trust my grandfather?” I asked.
He lifted his dark brows. “Are you asking because you don’t?”
I shrugged, wading a little left, further away from him. Looking at his beautiful face, his muscled chest, those brilliant blue eyes, made it hard to think. I knew what I was feeling…attraction. But how could that be? I didn’t like him, I didn’t trust him…did I? “I learned not to trust anyone.”
The amusement in his gaze seeped away and he looked out onto the water, pensive and moody in a way he rarely was. “There are people you can trust, you know. But when it comes down to it, you only have yourself.”
I frowned.
“I don’t find it depressing, although some might. It’s not as if people don’t care about each other. It’s that everyone has their own issues to deal with. It just means you should always rely upon your own instincts and trust yourself over others. The power is in your own hands.”
I didn’t feel powerful. Maybe that was my problem, I was having a hard time trusting myself. I wished I’d been stronger those first two weeks, I’d lost such precious time. And why hadn’t I sensed that someone in our group was a traitor? “You didn’t answer my question though. Can we trust him?”
“You can. He means you no harm.” He went under water and I could see him swim ahead. What did he mean by that response? He pushed through the surface about ten feet from me and brushed his hair from his face again. This was the closest I’d ever been to seeing Thane relaxed, at ease…dare I say enjoying himself?
“And you?” I asked, not letting him get away with his half answers. “Can you trust him?”
He turned toward me, grinning. A smile that made me catch my breath. A smile I’d never seen on him. In that moment he looked young, handsome, like any other man. “I believe he’s seriously thinking of keeping me here as a specimen to study.”
I gasped, horrified.
He laughed, truly amused. “Don’t worry. It won’t happen.”
“But you won’t hurt him, will you?”
He rolled his eyes skyward. “Glad you’re worried about my welfare.”
“I didn’t mea
n—”
“No. I won’t hurt him.” He held out his hand. “Now come here.”
A V formation of geese flew overhead, squawking and momentarily distracting me. “Why?”
“You need to learn to swim, right?”
Startled, I tore my gaze from the sky and focused on him. He wanted me to be close to him? A least when we’d slept in that cabin we’d been wearing clothes. Being that close and wearing practically nothing wouldn’t be proper. Just the thought sent an embarrassed flush to my face. “No. We don’t have time.”
He started toward me. “We have plenty of time.”
Before I could come to my senses and lunge for the shore, he grabbed my hand and pulled me close. So close I fell into his chest. Horrified, I shoved my free palm into his shoulder and pushed back. “Thane, no!”
“Jane,” he said wryly. “You trusted me enough to swim you across the ocean.”
“Trusted? Ha!” I frowned at him as he pulled me further away from shore, the water growing colder with each step. “I didn’t have a choice!”
He paused chest deep and tugged me toward him, the tips of my toes skimming the smooth pebbles below. “Trust me.”
I swallowed hard, my mouth suddenly dry. “You told me to trust no one.”
He grinned, a flash of white teeth, and that’s when I saw them…the canines. Sharp and pointed, just like the beautiful ones, and reminding me just in time that he was only half human. The unease that was slowly drifting away returned.
“Just those who can’t be trusted,” he said.
I shivered, tearing my gaze away from his mouth and focusing on his eyes. Thane was a blood drinker. A vampire. As much as I was attracted to him, I couldn’t forget what he truly was. Sensing my discomfort, Thane’s smile fell. Had I hurt his feelings? Was that truly possible?
“And I can trust you?” I whispered.
He pulled me further into the water, his hands warm on mine. “What do you want to know, Jane? I have nothing to hide.”
I frowned. This was getting much too personal. “We’re going too far.”
“Too far? You haven’t even asked me anything.”
The Chosen Ones Page 18