by Ava Benton
“No disturbance,” I assured her. “I’m sorry to have kept you waiting—that is, unless you have bad news for us.”
“This is good news,” she assured us with a smile. “I’ve dug deep into my contacts, but I’ve found a solution. I spoke with an old friend of mine earlier today. He runs a special research arm of a government-based facility outside Washington, D.C. There’s another, more remote facility on the border of Maryland and Virginia where research takes place which is… let’s say slightly more confidential.”
“Secret.”
Her smile widened as she dipped her head in acknowledgment. “Yes. Secret. Would you rather it not be?”
“No. I would rather not mince words,” I replied with a wink.
“Fair enough.” She lowered the file and removed her glasses, leaving them hanging from a chain around her neck. “Whichever one of you goes for testing will stay in the compound. It’s state-of-the-art, comfortable, and your needs will be seen to for as long as you’re there.”
“Is this, like, a hotel for shifters and freaks?” Miles chuckled self-deprecatingly, and we all joined in.
So did Mary. “You shouldn’t talk about yourself that way, even when you’re joking around. To answer your question, I honestly don’t know. I don’t think so, at least. And whoever goes will be kept separate from any other subjects. I’ve made that clear.”
“We can trust this friend of yours to be discreet?” Pierce asked.
“Absolutely. I made it clear that this is a top-secret project, never to be spoken of, never to be documented. The purpose of this project is to create the formula which all of you will take as an inoculation before you go to Scotland.”
“How long will it take?” I asked.
“That’s not for me to say. I’m no scientist. But I made it clear that time is of the essence—even so, I’ll feel much better knowing the solution is a solid one, wouldn’t you?”
“Of course, of course,” I told myself to stop being so impatient. I sounded like a spoiled child. But the dragon roared in approval, paced and snarled, wanted to get going right away. If we could’ve shifted and flown all the way across the Atlantic Ocean, we would’ve left already.
“I suppose the only question we have left is, which one of you will go?”
“I will,” I replied without looking at any of the others.
“You’re sure about this?” Miles asked, eyeing me. “I mean, you know what this could mean?”
“What could it mean?”
“None of us has lived outside this cave for a millennium,” he replied tersely. “Have you considered that?”
“I can’t imagine I’ll get it into my head to visit a nightclub, if that’s what you’re worried about,” I shot back with a grin.
Mary cleared her throat. “As much as I hate to poke my head into these family discussions, rest assured the accommodations will be comfortable, discreet, and well-guarded. It will be much like your life now, only in a different location. There’s no need to leave until it’s time to leave for good.”
“See? It won’t make a bit of difference.” I turned to the screen. “When can we get started?”
“Work starts Monday. I’ll send you the location and what you’ll need to bring along.”
“I’ll be there.”
Smoke shook his head mournfully as he ended the call, then rubbed the bridge of his nose again, as he always did when something was eating at him.
“What is it?” I asked, ready for a fight. Would they ever get tired of fighting me every step of the way on this?
Only he wasn’t looking for a fight. “It won’t be the same, only five of us here at once.” His eyes were troubled when he looked up from his chair. “I’ll worry for you.”
“I think we all will,” Pierce agreed. “This is unlike anything we’ve ever done before. It’s always been the six of us. I don’t know if I’ll know how to get through the day without seeing your ugly mug.”
“You’re too sweet,” I snickered.
4
Cash
“You’re sure you’re ready for this?” Miles asked as we pulled through the security gate in the fence which bordered the vast compound. We had looked it up online in the hopes of scoping out the surroundings, only the address didn’t register as a documented area. Not a surprise. If secret government testing took place here, they’d hardly advertise it on Google.
“I’m more than ready,” I assured him. “I’ve been ready to take some sort of action on this ever since the heartbeats faded.”
“I guess we did get distracted, didn’t we?”
“Some of us did,” I muttered, looking out the window so he wouldn’t see the scowl on my face.
“We all did, and stop acting like you weren’t as distracted as the rest. It was no joke, letting those girls into our lives.”
“That’s the truth. Yet we did it anyway, didn’t we? Was there ever a choice?”
He sighed. “We’ll never see eye-to-eye on it, I guess.”
“I guess.”
“If there are mates out there for those two, there’s a chance our mates exist as well.”
“Mating is the last thing on my mind at the moment,” I replied as the compound loomed up before us. “I’m a bit more concerned with this right now.”
He nodded. “Understood. Though I don’t think there’s ever been a time when mating wasn’t on my mind.”
“There’s mating, and there’s mating,” I chuckled.
It was good, it broke the tension. It meant our last moments together for no telling how long weren’t sour.
“I guess I’ll drop you off here.” He swung up in front of the south entrance, just like Mary had instructed.
We’d figured it would be best to have someone drive me instead of driving myself and leaving the car untended in the lot. It would never leave the lot until I did, which might raise questions among people who worked there. Even though I had the feeling people working in a facility such as this learned to not ask questions, there was no telling. It was better to be careful.
I pulled my suitcase from the back seat and turned to him. “Thank you for indulging me on this. You and all the others. Tell them I said so, would you?”
“Why couldn’t you tell them yourself, before we left?”
I grinned. “Yes. That would go over well. We’re all so good at expressing our emotions, aren’t we?”
He laughed. “You’re right. Okay. I’ll do your dirty work for you and express your thanks to the rest of the family.”
“You’re a helluva brother,” I grinned.
We shook hands, and he waited as I walked in through the glass doors, to the security desk just inside.
The engine roared as my brother pulled away. I hadn’t realized until right now that I would miss my family, the way Pierce had joked about missing me.
Except, they had the advantage: they had each other. I’d be on my own. I had never felt so alone in all my life.
The guard showed me the way to the lab which would be my home. I’d be a living lab experiment, and I had walked into the arrangement of my own free will. Better yet, I had been the catalyst for arranging it.
Sometimes I wondered if I didn’t need a hobby. Back home, hours away, this had seemed like a good idea. The only thing to do.
Walking down a bright, white hall lined with doors behind which people did who knew what was another story. I didn’t feel nearly as confident all on my own.
Grow up, I ordered myself as I walked into the room designated as mine. I found myself standing in a laboratory, full of machines I’d never know how to use.
Maybe if given another thousand years in which to learn about them, I thought with a grim smile.
There was a deeply eerie quality to my surroundings, brought on by loneliness. Equipment and a closed laptop sitting on a table along with a rack full of test tubes. What I recognized as a microscope—that much I knew. A waist-high refrigerator. And plenty I was sure I would never touch.
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Was I supposed to sleep in this cold, clinical space? I remembered Mary telling me about a fingerprint sensor, how only I would be able to get into the room assigned to me after programming my unique fingerprint into the system.
I went to the only other door aside from the one I’d entered in and pressed my thumb against the pad beside it. If there were cameras in the room and anyone was watching me, they probably thought I was the world’s biggest ass.
But the door slid open, and beyond it was a bedroom I supposed was mine.
It looked comfortable, too. The bed was large, soft, covered in pillows and a thick blanket. A flat-screen TV covered much of the wall at the foot of the bed. There was a bathroom to the right, serviceable if not quite as large as the one I’d used for so long. None of it looked half as clinical as the lab, and I was grateful for that. Whoever had arranged my accommodations was thoughtful of my needs. A good sign.
I unpacked, placing jeans and tees in the small chest of drawers beneath the TV and stacking a handful of books on top.
My toiletries went in the bathroom. There were even thick, new towels stacked in a narrow linen closet.
But that was it. I had nothing but a TV to keep me company until the next day.
I settled in to find something to pass the time and hoped Monday morning came faster than normal.
5
Carissa
I couldn’t believe what I was doing. For the first time in six years, I didn’t follow the route which had become deeply enough ingrained that I could drive it without thinking twice. It felt uncomfortable, a little squirmy. Was I making the right decision?
I didn’t have a choice. That reminder soured any hope for excitement about a new job, a new task. A much larger salary. I swallowed back the tinge of bitterness still in my mouth and told myself to suck it up. Just like I had been all weekend.
At least I didn’t have to pretend to be happy, like I had done for Tommy’s sake. We’d gone shopping, pitched pennies, eaten ice cream until I was sure I’d explode. I had taken him to the movies for an excuse to sit in relative peace for an hour and a half and lose myself in thought. That was Saturday evening.
Mary had called in the morning.
A shifter. I was testing a shifter. She didn’t say who he was or what he shifted into, only that he had a problem. Iron prevented him from taking his other form. It was like testing the biggest rat I’d ever worked on, or so I told myself. Take his blood, analyze it, locate the element which clashed with iron and create an antidote which suppressed it.
No big deal.
“This is unlike anything I’ve ever done,” I’d told her. “I mean, are you sure you have the right person?”
I could hear her gentle chuckle in my head as I drove to my new lab. “I’m sure. You’re a star, Harrison tells me. You have a sharp, analytical mind. You’re a bulldog when it comes to finding solutions to seemingly unsolvable problems. You’re not afraid to think outside the box—whether that has to do with your natural intelligence or your youth isn’t for me to say, but you’re who we need.”
I was a star; how come Harrison never told me?
One thing Mary was clear on was complete secrecy. Nobody could know. I didn’t need to ask why. Shifters weren’t exactly mainstream. They were part of our world, yes, and much more widely accepted than they were when I was a kid. But It wasn’t all sunshine and roses for them.
I had agreed to stay silent. It wasn’t as though I had anybody in my life to talk with—a few girlfriends, sure, but they had sort of faded into the background once Tommy came along. I couldn’t blame them for moving on without me. We suddenly had much less in common—overnight.
“You’ll still be able to pick me up today, Aunt Cari?” His poor little face had looked so worried.
I had turned in my seat. “Of course, honey. You’ll stay in aftercare, just like always. I’ll be here at five.” Mary and I got clear on that right away. I couldn’t afford to spend endless nights at the lab. I had responsibilities at home. She had seemed open to this, though I had the feeling it didn’t please her much to give in. For once, I was calling the shots on something. It felt pretty good.
The little bubble of confidence burst when I arrived at my destination—at least, it was the front gate which blocked trespassers, set in a long chain-link fence topped with spirals of barbed wire which glinted in the sun.
Reminded me of something from one of those Lock Up TV prison shows. Or was that Lockdown?
I gulped as the car came to a stop beside a guard booth. What was it about an official-looking place like that which made an innocent person feel like they had to think twice about everything they said and did? Maybe it was just my nerves. I flashed the burly guard what I hoped was an easy smile.
“Carissa Lomax,” I announced. He checked his computer, my ID, then waved me on. A buzzer sounded as the gate slowly swung open.
I breathed out; I had passed the first test.
It was a beautiful day, with a sky as blue as it could only be in autumn. I had never seen a summer sky as deep and perfectly blue. It made the stark white complex I was approaching look even brighter. Whoever designed it didn’t have beauty in mind, that was for sure. It was about as depressing as a prison. I wondered exactly what sort of work went on there that Mary sent me to do top-secret research.
One last look at myself in the mirror before getting out of the car and walking up to the south entrance. There were dozens of other cars parked near mine, and they were all new or fairly new. All in good shape. They paid well—my salary would double for as long as I worked on my shifter project.
Part of me wondered how long I could stretch out the work. I couldn’t help it. The money meant a nest egg, something I could fall back on in case I ever decided to stop biting my tongue and start speaking my mind around my coworkers. Or a college fund for Tommy.
Yet another guard was inside the entrance, seated between two sets of glass doors. He provided a badge printed with my name and a barcode, which I could use to get in and out of my lab and around the southern wing of the complex. The doors wouldn’t open unless I scanned it. I wondered if my subject would have a badge like that.
My instructions sent me down a long, low-ceilinged hallway. It was so quiet. Almost eerily quiet. I was used to hearing chatter, low but pleasant. I had never felt so completely alone. It was like walking through a scene in a horror movie, where I was the last girl alive. I had to chuckle at myself. Even so, my hand shook when I scanned the badge and opened the door to the lab.
What I saw took my breath away.
I felt like a kid walking into a toy store. A store empty except for me and the things inside. No other shoppers. Just me. Everything in front of me was mine to use—equipment I had only ever dreamed of. Everything was so clean, so bright. Unused? It looked brand new. Hell, it looked like somebody had polished everything up just for me. Or for my subject. Why was he so important?
A laptop was waiting for me, open and ready. I logged in with the credentials Mary had given me over the phone and found instructions. The procedures for analyzing the blood I drew, the equipment at my disposal which would allow me to analyze, as opposed to sending the blood out and waiting for the techs to get the results to me. I could work so much more efficiently this way. For the first time, I felt a flutter of excitement in my stomach.
“Excuse me?”
I almost hit the ceiling at the sound of a deep, male voice and swung around in a circle with one hand over my heart. “Jesus Christ!”
“Sorry!” An alarmingly tall, impossibly built man stood in one corner of the room with his hands up, palms out. “I thought you knew I’d be here.”
“I don’t even know who you are.” But it was all so obvious. The way he was built, the way they were all built. Tall and wide and muscled. The broad shoulders, bulging biceps, larger than I had ever seen on a human man who didn’t consider physical fitness his mission in life, like a professional wrestler, an Olympic weightlifter.
“You must be Cash,” I said when I got my head screwed on straight.
He narrowed his jade-green eyes. “You already know my name?”
I composed myself. It would be important to put myself in a position of authority straight away. If he knew the very sight of his piercing, penetrating eyes or the square jaw under that dark beard gave me goosebumps, it could make for an uncomfortable situation.
I was used to pushing my personal feelings aside for the sake of maintaining credibility. “Of course. Though I have to admit, I don’t know much else about you.”
Those eyes of his. They traveled over me, taking me in, sizing me up—normally, this would piss me off. I imagined Ryan doing the same thing and knew I’d want nothing more than to introduce his balls to my knee. But this shifter, Cash. He was different.
“You have the advantage over me,” he finally said, sliding big hands into jeans pockets. “You know my name. I don’t even know yours. The way Mary made it sound, some friend of hers would be testing me. And the friend is a guy.”
“Harrison,” I blurted out, then wished I hadn’t.
Nervous babbling. The less he knew, the better. What was I even allowed to tell him about the circumstances which brought us together?
“Maybe she wanted to surprise you,” I suggested.
He chuckled, then ran a hand over the back of his neck. “Yeah. That’s exactly something she’d do.”
I looked over his shoulder, where there was an almost invisible door in the wall. “I see. You’re on the other side of that door?”
“Oh, yes. My penthouse suite for the foreseeable future.” He stepped aside and revealed a panel on the wall. “I don’t need one of those badges to get in and out. Just my fingerprint.”
Sure enough, when he tapped his thumb to the sensor, the door slid open. I saw what the people in charge had clearly tried to turn into a bedroom—but it was still a room for test subjects. No matter how comfortable the bed looked or how big the TV on the wall, there was still the ugly, glaring light mounted on the ceiling and the same plain, bare walls. The same ugly, gray tile floor in between the throw rugs somebody thought would make the place a little homier.