by Zoe Winters
“Don’t worry, we weakened him so he can’t harm you,” one of the technicians said. Then both of them followed Kristen out of the cell, leaving Sydney alone with her beaten bloody dinner.
The man groaned again from the ground. “Syd?”
The bastard knew her? How could he know her?
“Jacob! Oh my God!” Sydney said. She approached him tentatively.
“Syd, I’m sorry. I’m so so sorry.”
At first her face held sympathy and worry, perhaps curiosity over how this man she knew had come to be this way, but that initial instinct was replaced quickly with revulsion and a side of Sydney Noah hadn’t yet seen.
“Oh, I bet you’re sorry, now. Now that your own plots and schemes have come back to bite you. You betrayed me! You sold me to them for a piece of paper with an address on it. What was the problem? Parents not home?”
“T-there was nothing there. It was a factory. They just wanted you, and they thought they’d take me as unpaid labor. They never knew anything about my family. Or if they did, they never planned to tell me.”
Noah watched as she paced in her cell and circled Jacob a few times, looking for the first time like the predator she was supposed to be if she hadn’t been born with only human strength.
“So I’m right. If you’d found them and had a happy reunion you wouldn’t have thought about me ever again.”
“Syd, that’s not true. You know it’s not. I like you. I told you I’ve always liked you.”
“I hate to think about what you’d do to somebody you didn’t like. You piece of shit.” She kicked him in the thigh, barely budging him, but being already injured, he still winced.
Jacob struggled to sit and pulled off his ripped and blood-covered shirt. And there it was, the slightest shift in Sydney’s scent, in her reaction to him. Noah knew without any doubt that they had been lovers. They had history.
Noah looked away. If he kept looking at the human, he’d shift and lose his shit. Jacob had two very big marks against him. He’d betrayed Sydney and brought her to this place, and he’d slept with her. The first thing made Noah so livid he had to take long, deep breaths to stay calm.
Don’t react. Don’t react. Don’t react. They’ll know if you react.
The second thing merely annoyed him. But it annoyed him pretty strongly. Of course, it was irrational to be upset about anything Sydney had done with someone else before him. Noah didn’t even know the circumstances of their encounters. Had he expected her to remain some pure virgin for him? That would be insane. Of course he didn’t expect that, especially not when he hadn’t even been there for her.
He’d just never thought he’d have to look at the bastard or bastards she’d been with.
And it wasn’t as if Sydney knew he was still alive. She probably had no idea who she was to him. Even without Jacob, Noah might have his work cut out for him trying to convince her that she could be happy with the jerk who’d yelled at her in the exercise yard. There was some big trust-building ahead of them. Jacob was the least of his problems.
“Syd you need to feed,” Jacob said moving closer to her.
Her lip curled in disgust. “From you? Are you kidding me? As if I would ever want to put my fangs inside of you again. Especially after you electrocuted me with that black box thing!”
He’d electrocuted her? Noah was starting to suspect he was being baited here. There was just too much for him to react to. He’d reacted too emotionally the first time he’d seen her. Maybe they suspected it was something more than the hate he was trying to play off now. Was he being too paranoid? Maybe, but was there any level of paranoid that was too paranoid given his current living conditions and the stakes involved in getting him and Sydney safely to tomorrow night when he might be strong enough to protect her?
The cheery robotic voice filled Sydney’s cell. “We’re going to have to insist that you feed. You need to keep your strength up.”
“This place is creepy as hell,” Jacob said.
“Yeah, thanks for that. I don’t even have anyone to talk to here. You see that guy over there?” She pointed at Noah and he let his eyes glow and fangs come out because it seemed to go with the “look how much I hate this girl” vibe he was trying to throw out.
Jacob turned and looked at him, then scrambled back closer to her. Yeah, you better run you little shit.
“That psycho already threatened me in the yard and basically told me I can’t talk to anybody here or they might kill me. So not only am I a prisoner again, now, I don’t even have any friends or people who love me!”
Don’t be so sure about that.
“And I just found out I don’t age, so who knows what that means?”
“Come on, Syd. You’ll feel better when you’ve had some blood.”
When her fangs came out, Noah found himself torn between jealousy and hoping she’d lose control and drain the guy. Sydney glared pointedly at Noah, and he looked away. She didn’t like anybody watching her. Fine. He didn’t particularly want to watch her suck neck in front of him, anyway.
He tried not to imagine it was him she was drinking and not that stupid boy. The human was close to their age, but no man would throw someone vulnerable under the bus like he had Sydney. That was what a boy did.
Several minutes passed while Noah watched as inconspicuously as possible with his peripheral vision. He could hear her and smell her, and if nothing else, he would have known she’d finished when she pushed Jacob away with some effort. He fell with a dull thud on the thick, shatterproof glass.
The voice spoke again in Sydney’s cell. “Please finish your dinner.”
Sydney seemed horrified by the suggestion. Even after everything this man had done to her, she couldn’t bring herself to kill him. It would have been an easy choice for Noah. He would have killed the fucker in a heartbeat, but she wasn’t like that. Even from his childhood memories of her, she was too sensitive. She’d see it as cold-blooded murder.
Noah thought she would fight to defend herself from a threat. She might kill in self-defense or accidentally, but he couldn’t see her taking a life for revenge or just for the thrill of the kill.
“There are starving vampires in the world,” the robotic voice reasoned. “And here you are leaving food on your plate. I’m sorry, but we can’t allow that.”
The human was distressed, his weakening heartbeat speeding at the threat. He might just give out from fear. It would spare Sydney the task of finishing him.
Her face was a solid, stubborn wall. She wasn’t going to do it. Noah wanted to shake her. She didn’t yet understand that you didn’t say no here. To anything.
Lasers of UV light blasted from the corners of her cell. The smoke rose off her flesh and she let out a shriek that chilled his blood.
Don’t react. Don’t react. You can’t react. Keep it together. One more day, Noah.
He turned away, feigning boredom, because no matter how much he knew he couldn’t react if he wanted the opportunity to get her out of here, he knew he couldn’t remain stoic if he had to watch this. She just had to survive until tomorrow night.
Finish him, Noah pleaded in his mind, as if he could send her a mental message and have it take hold.
“Oh, no,” the robotic voice said, sounding not at all concerned. “It doesn’t look like you’re healing. You should finish your dinner.”
Noah sneaked a brief glance. It was true. She wasn’t healing. There were several round burn marks on her from the lasers. She barely had the strength to crawl to Jacob.
“No, Syd, don’t do it!” her prey said.
As if her refusal would actually spare the human’s life. Whatever he’d done to piss them off, they didn’t forgive easily and he wasn’t getting out of here alive whatever Sydney did or didn’t do. Finally, she took his arm and she drank until his heart stopped. Then she collapsed into sobbing fits over the body.
“Take him away!” she screamed. “Take him away!”
The door to Noah’s cell slid o
pen and the big plate of raw meat was shoved in. He glanced again at Sydney. If he ate the meat he’d fall asleep. What if they hurt her while he was out? What if they hurt her more while he was awake and he reacted and she lost her one chance to get out of here? He had to maintain the routine.
He shifted into his wolf form and ate.
The dream world came into focus sharper and more real than Noah’s waking world. The memories he couldn’t access in his waking hours came forth bright and crisp. He was about seven. It had been dark out for a while now, and Sydney was supposed to come over later. He couldn’t wait to see her.
But his dad and her dad were outside yelling at each other.
“Noah is strong,” Anthony said. “And he’s her friend. His blood might make her stronger. The human blood is barely keeping her going, and I can’t stand to see her cry when she accidentally kills one of them. She’s just a kid. She’s not like me.”
“Something we can all be grateful for,” Cole said.
“So, you’ll ask Noah?”
His dad growled. “Never! I don’t care if you and I have worked together a few times over the years. Those kids have an unnatural attachment to one another, and I should have put a stop to it a long time ago. If you think I would let some vampire sink her dirty fangs into my kid…”
Noah jumped at the sound of flesh hitting flesh and then growled when he realized the vampire king had just hit his dad. Cole growled back, and another punch was landed. This time it was Anthony who let out the groan of pain.
“Don’t you bring that little freak near my son ever again, do you hear me?” Cole said. “In fact, why don’t you keep your vampires at the compound, and I’ll keep my wolves at the hive? You stay on that side of town. I’ll stay on this one.”
Noah gasped. How could his dad call Sydney a name like that? She was the nicest person he knew, and the only kid near his age that he didn’t have to try to impress. She didn’t care that he was the alpha’s son.
After the vampire king left, Noah moved out into the open. “Dad?”
Cole growled and spun around. “How much of that did you hear?”
He shrugged. How could he know how much he’d heard or when they’d started arguing? “Is Sydney sick? If she needs blood, she can have some of mine to get better.”
“Absolutely not. I’m sorry, but you can’t play with her anymore. We don’t make friends with vampires. I should have stopped it when it first started, but your mom is friends with Charlee, and it just seemed easier to let it go.”
Was mom not allowed to see Charlee now? He couldn’t imagine his dad had any power to stop a demon from going wherever she wanted.
Noah felt the glow come to his eyes. “That is bullshit! You can’t stop me from seeing her!”
Cole’s nostrils flared. “Where did you learn that word?”
There was a saying that little wolves had big ears, and the pack hadn’t been editing their vocabulary around him recently.
Noah shrugged again and mumbled, “You can’t stop me from seeing her.”
The alpha’s eyes narrowed. “I’m the alpha. I can make anybody stop seeing anybody.”
But even at seven, Noah knew that to some degree his dad was all talk. After all, he wouldn’t throw his own son out of the pack. Not over something like this. And especially not when he was still a pup, despite all his big talk.
He didn’t see Sydney again after that. He still thought about her and missed her. He wondered if she thought about him and missed him. As soon as he was old enough and strong enough, he would go find her. But that never happened because the following year he was kidnapped.
As he was taken away by the magic users, he thought, Bet you wish you’d just let me hang out with Sydney now, instead of getting too close to the pack kids.
If he’d been allowed to see her, he wouldn’t have been playing chicken with the boundaries because he wouldn’t have cared what the other pack kids thought. He wouldn’t have done something that might have encouraged Sydney to join in and put her in danger.
***
Sydney sat in her cell staring at the spot where Jacob had been. They hadn’t even properly cleaned the cube. She could still smell him in there. A few careless drops of blood remained as evidence of what she’d done the day before.
What they made you do.
Not long before, she’d been plotting to kill him. But it had been different. It had been an escape plan to save her life. But didn’t doing what they said save her life? When she’d killed him and then watched the guy in the cube beside her shift nonchalantly into his wolf form and eat like nothing had happened, she knew she was truly friendless in here.
She’d been given bagged blood this evening. It didn’t restore her energy but at least she wasn’t killing someone today. It was something. If they weren’t going to let her feed from a human without demanding she finish him, this was better.
Sydney studied the burn marks. Several ran up and down her arms. In the reflective glass she could see one on her cheek. Another had hit the side of her neck. A normal vampire would have healed instantly unless he’d been weakened and starved. Not Sydney. It hadn’t even started to heal a day later. These marks would scar.
She felt the tears start up again. The wolf stirred in the corner of his cell. He’d had his drugged meat a few hours ago, and the sleep was wearing off. He shifted back to his human form and turned away from her to put on the new clothes they’d brought him. Sydney got to go for a shower right after waking up. She assumed the wolf went in the mornings while she was dead for the day.
She couldn’t even bring herself to find him attractive anymore. Physically he was still as perfect as ever, but when he’d nearly made her cry in the exercise yard it had cured her of any fleeting crush. What was it with her and wolves? When she was a kid she used to spend every moment until she had to go to sleep with Noah.
Noah. Now the tears did fall. It wasn’t as if she thought about him all the time anymore, but lately, seeing the wolf in the next cube every day was too hard. It brought back too many memories. She hadn’t been allowed to play with him for a while before he disappeared. She didn’t know why her father and Noah’s dad had started their feud, but the result was that they couldn’t play together anymore.
She’d cried in her room for weeks after that, but it was nothing compared to the night she’d overheard that he’d gone missing. It wasn’t until that night that she’d known she’d never see him again. She’d refused to leave her room for a month after that.
The wolf in the cube next to hers glared at her, then stared expectantly at the door waiting for exercise time. He seemed extra amped up tonight. It had to be the moon. She feared she wouldn’t survive out there with the moon full and everyone shifting. There were only a couple of other vampires in this group, and they were unlikely to protect her from any threats out there. They’d probably been waiting for an excuse to join in on the killing.
“Number 5857B, Please prepare to exit your cell for daily exercise,” the happy robot voice said. Sydney knew some of the messages were pre-recorded, but sometimes when the voice spoke it still sounded robotic, but sentient. She wondered if it was artificial intelligence or if someone typed into the machine what it should say.
It wasn’t as if she exercised out there. She mainly just tried to stay out of everyone else’s way until it was time to come back inside. The glass door slid open.
“Please follow the glowing arrows to the exercise yard, and remember to play nice with your friends.”
She was pushed aside by several therians racing to get outside under the full moon, so she was the last out. She missed the frenzied shifting. By the time she reached the yard it was like a zoo. Cheetahs, panthers, wolves, bears. There wasn’t yard big enough for the insanity.
Sydney looked up. The moon was red. Aunt Greta once told her about the blood moon and how powerfully strong it was for therians. Great. Just what she didn’t need.
She tried to disappear next to a near
by wall as the shapeshifters ran and started fights and burned excess energy under the moon. A wolf leaped at her, but a second wolf body slammed him away from her and started to snarl and snap at him. The wolf that had come at her was bleeding now and slunk off to lick his wounds.
The smell of therian blood got to the other two vampires and they joined in the fray to try to get a taste of the blood being spilled left and right in the fighting. The blood was getting to Sydney, too, but she knew if she listened to that urge she wouldn’t come out of it alive. The other vampires could hold their own out there.
The robotic voice chirped happily over the loud speakers. “I think that’s enough excitement for today, please make your way back to the building.”
It was extremely short for an exercise period, and Sydney knew why. The blood moon had been more than they’d anticipated. There were more guards than last night, but it still wasn’t enough to contain it all.
As they moved back inside away from the influence of the moon, therians began shifting back to their human forms, and Sydney found herself surrounded by a bunch of naked people who still seemed way too keyed up to be in an enclosed space with. A hand latched onto her arm.
She turned to find a very naked 5856 looking at her with an intensity that unnerved her.
“We have to get out of here, Sydney.” He’d used her name. He’d remembered her name. Why had he just used her name? The other night he’d made it perfectly clear that she was an identifying number—a cog in the machine—and nothing more.
He dragged her down a secondary hallway, not the one with the arrows, another, darker hallway with more glass cubes. But this area wasn’t used; the lights were out. Sydney could barely see here, but she knew the wolf could see just fine in the dark. His eyes were glowing an eerie yellow.
All kinds of fucked-up thoughts went through her head. She tried to pull free, and then a guard appeared and helped her get out of his grasp, but the wolf let out a savage growl and snapped the guard’s neck. 5856 dragged Sydney down a couple more side hallways. One of them was dimly lit with flickering lights that hissed. They ran right into the lady in the lab coat who’d given Sydney her test results. The wolf grabbed her like he might kill her too, but then he let her go.