Hunting the Dark

by Karen Mahoney

  I am the bogeyman.

  Or at least, I’m supposed to be.

  I shivered and felt young and scared and so very alone.

  My growing fear was interrupted by the sound of voices. Two distinct tones, one male and one female. Whoever the voices belonged to were right outside the door to this room; a room that was feeling more and more like a prison cell.

  I dragged myself off the bed and forced myself to stand and face whoever these people were – then promptly fell on my butt.

  Great. My legs weren’t working. I sat on the cold floor, trying to gather my strength, wondering if I was going to die – for real – maybe from the earlier blood loss. I should be hungrier than I was, but maybe I was still in shock. Could vampires go into shock?

  One of the voices outside the room was raised, and I could hear a note of anger in it. Frowning, I shakily stood again, taking careful steps toward the door.

  There was nothing to hold onto there – no handle or locking mechanism of any kind that I could see. It was like something out of Star Trek. Only, without the hotness of Zachary Quinto. I banged on the door with the heel of my right hand, ignoring the pain that shot through my arm.

  Crap, I was so weak. I needed blood and I had no idea where I could get it from.

  The room swirled around me and black sparkles appeared in my vision. I leaned against the door and tried to open it before I passed out. I ran my fingers around the edges, looking for a gap – something to get hold of, but it was a pointless exercise and only wasted precious energy.

  The walls were also smooth, made of some kind of material I couldn’t immediately name, but then I made the mistake of touching it.

  ‘Ah!’ I yanked my hand back and looked more closely at the metallic coating that covered the walls. There were silver flecks when I moved my head so that the light hit at a certain angle.

  The room had silver walls. Silver. Walls. Or, at the very least, they were painted with something that possessed a high silver content. Who would do something like that? Why? I hated having a thousand questions when I couldn’t even ask one of them. Let alone find any answers. It was frustrating. And inconvenient.

  I resisted the visceral urge to pound my fists against the wall, knowing that all I’d achieve was silver burns – and possibly even permanent scars. Whoever had brought me here had done so for a reason or I’d be dead already. I had to hold on to that weird sort of hope – terrifying as it was – and wait it out. Wait them out. See what they wanted before I lost it and panicked.

  I swallowed, realizing how dry my throat was – and how my hunger suddenly spiked. Uh-oh. Delayed blood loss kicking in. I hadn’t fed in . . . two days? Perhaps more like three. Depending on what time it was now, it could be close to seventy-two hours, which ordinarily would be totally fine. I only needed blood once a week if I was careful, drank lots of coffee and kept myself calm. But I’d been seriously injured by that wound and I was stressed out, exhausted, and close to breaking point. Dad was in hospital; Theo had been shot; Subject Ten was still running around somewhere; everything that had happened with Jace . . . It was a wonder I wasn’t gnawing off my own arm to kill the hunger that was beginning to rear its head.

  I took a deep breath and sat back down on the edge of the bunk. Surely whoever was outside was watching me and could see that I was in a bad way. They’d be here any moment, right?

  Minutes ticked by. In my head, anyway. I could imagine the sands of time slipping through a glass, and my stomach growled. Were they going to starve me? Let me get so blood-hungry that I’d lose it? That’s what happened to vampires who didn’t feed – eventually. Theo told me it took a long time, maybe even weeks or months depending on the age of the vampire. But I was young. I wouldn’t last long without true sustenance.

  Just as panic began beating its black wings in my chest, the smooth, featureless door swished open. I still couldn’t figure out the mechanism, but that’s because I was too busy staring at the woman who had opened it. A tall woman with auburn hair, a no-nonsense expression on her face, and wearing a white lab coat. A very familiar woman.

  Dr Helena Stark smiled at me as she entered my room. My cell.

  ‘Hello, Marie,’ she said, like this was the most normal freaking thing in the world. ‘It’s good to finally meet you.’

  Chapter Seventeen

  Locked and Loaded

  Clearly, I was in some weird, twisted sort of nightmare. What the hell was Dr Stark doing here? What was I doing here? What was going on? How did she know my name?

  And what about Jace? Was he OK?

  I opened my mouth, wondering which of my many questions would pop out first, but Stark beat me to it.

  ‘I’m sure you have a lot of questions,’ she said, in that annoying, ultra-calm sort of voice that adults use when they’re lying to you.

  ‘I promise that we’ll be giving you all the information that you need,’ she continued. ‘But first I have to ask you a few questions. How you answer will decide where we go from here.’

  I narrowed my eyes. Why was I even bothering to listen to this crap? I could easily knock her aside and escape. OK . . . maybe not ‘easily’, considering the whole falling-down-on-the-floor thing, but I could at least give it my best shot.

  ‘I know what you’re thinking,’ the doctor said, her tone still super-calm. ‘You’re going to try escaping and you think it’ll be easy because I came in here alone, without any security guards. But trust me, Marie – you don’t want to try escaping. I know you don’t understand what’s happening right now, but I am your friend and you would do well to keep that in mind.’

  OK, so Dr Stark was crazy. Completely, and utterly, batshit nuts. That made sense, listening to her ramble on. For some reason I could get behind the idea of a mad scientist. No doubt I watched too much TV and read too many comic books, but . . . did people like her really exist?

  If nothing else, I was gaining an education.

  ‘Oh no, Marie,’ Dr Stark said. ‘I’m not insane. I assure you that I am actually quite rational.’

  My eyes flew all the way open. ‘Can you read my mind?’

  She laughed. ‘No, I’m entirely human, I assure you. You’re simply very easy to read. In fact, you are very . . . human.’ She glanced down at the tablet she was holding and made a few notes. ‘Most interesting.’

  Interesting? Ugh. But her use of that particular word gave me a super-strong flashback to the kiss I’d shared with a certain guy I was trying hard not to obsess over. Interesting. Sort of. I clenched my hands into fists.

  ‘Where’s Jace? Jason Murdoch. He was with me after I got hurt, and then I don’t remember what happened.’

  ‘Our operatives managed to restrain Mr Murdoch so that Subject Ten could collect you for us. She used Murdoch’s car, as the keys were on him and it was nearby.’ She shook her head, a fond sort of smile on her lips. ‘I have always admired Ten’s ability to make use of the resources around her.’

  Operatives? Ten? My head was spinning and I was feeling sick again. The ‘security guards’ backstage at Stark’s event really did work for her then. Also, it seemed that Ten had changed her mind about letting us go. Even though I didn’t know her – at all – I’d believed her when she said she wasn’t there to hurt me. Clearly, whatever the hell else she was, she was also a liar.

  ‘But what about Jace?’ I asked again. ‘What did you do to him? He—’

  She waved that question away. ‘I told you that I’ll be the one asking the questions. At least to begin with.’

  ‘I’m not answering any of your questions.’

  ‘You’ll change your mind, Marie, just like the others. They always do.’

  My stomach clenched. They?

  Dr Stark tucked the tablet under her arm and rested her hand on the door. ‘I hope you’ll be . . . comfortable during your stay with us.’

  ‘My stay?’ I forced out a manic, cynical laugh. ‘You make it sound like I’m on vacation.’

  Stark’s glasses r
eflected the light from the glaring white overheads. She didn’t say a word, just continued to watch me.

  Frustration built in me like a scream. I felt tightly wound, hard as a fist. I wanted to punch her. Bite her. Thankfully, I didn’t need to breathe past the twisted knot of anger in my chest; otherwise I’d be in trouble. Pressing my hands against the bed, I prepared to spring –

  But before I could make my move, a man entered the room. Just by the way he walked I would have been able to tell he was a guard of some kind. A soldier.

  What the hell was this place?

  Soldier Boy was wearing what looked like army fatigues, but they were all black rather than regulation green. In fact, rather like the dudes that had come after us at Harvard. His black hair was shaved close to his skull, his eyes were cool blue against tanned skin. This guy was all business. There was a wicked-looking knife tucked into a sheath at his hip, and he held a futuristic looking pistol. I frowned at it, before figuring that it could be some sort of tranquilizer gun. Hey, I already told you how much TV I watch. I love action and sci-fi movies too.

  ‘They’re ready for her, Dr Stark,’ he said. ‘What do you want me to do?’

  Who was ready for me? That didn’t sound good. And it was interesting that the guard deferred to a biologist. I tucked away any piece of information I could get; who knew when it might come in useful? I needed to figure out the hierarchy of this place, maybe start to get a handle on what was going on here.

  Trying my best to look helpless, I lowered my gaze. Honestly, it wasn’t difficult to fake at that particular moment. I felt like a piece of paper – a very thin, cheap and mostly transparent piece of paper. Any minute now I was going to float away because I was just so scared and so confused and so tired. I couldn’t help wondering: Is this what blood starvation feels like? Shouldn’t blood deprivation come with increased bloodlust? I felt vaguely hungry, but it was more like an itch that needed scratching – not the blazing hot need I figured it should be by now.

  Had they drugged me?

  Stark’s voice shook me out of my spaced-out state: ‘You would do well to cooperate with us, Marie.’

  ‘With you or with him?’ I asked, lifting my chin in the guard’s direction.

  ‘With all of us. You won’t be leaving for a long time – and we have the security to ensure that – so you might as well make things as easy on yourself as possible.’

  I felt very scared now, but I held onto my attitude like a shield. It was the only thing keeping me sane. ‘You sound like a cheap TV movie villain, you know that? What do you expect me to do against you? Against all of you? I’m just a girl.’

  She smiled the most unamused smile I’d ever seen. ‘Let’s not play games with one another. We know what you are, Marie.’

  ‘Extraordinarily pissed off?’

  She stared at me, waiting to see if I had any further wiseass comments to make. There were a ton more where that one came from, but I decided to keep my mouth shut for a while. Save my strength. Be a good little Moth, and see if Dr Stark might actually tell me something useful.

  ‘We know you’re a vampire,’ she said. ‘In fact, we know all about you and the rest of your little vampire Family.’

  I gulped. This time I didn’t speak because . . . I couldn’t.

  Stark glanced at her toy soldier and then back at me. ‘You’ll tell us whatever we want to know, sooner or later.’

  ‘Oh, really?’ I glared at her, glad that I’d managed to speak past my fear. ‘I thought you already knew everything about us.’

  ‘There is always more to learn.’ She tapped a couple of times on the screen of her tablet, almost idly. ‘Knowledge is the most powerful commodity in this world. As I said, I know all kinds of fascinating things that you could, perhaps, help me to verify.’

  ‘You’re bluffing,’ I said. ‘I don’t think you know half as much as you say you do. That’s why you brought me here – to torture me into telling you stuff.’

  ‘Well, let’s see now,’ Stark said, watching me like I was a Christmas gift that she couldn’t wait to unwrap. ‘I know that you were turned into a vampire by a man born as Theodore Fitzgerald. A man who left his native Ireland during the Potato Famine, arriving here in Boston’s North End in about 1847.’ She glanced at her notes. ‘I don’t have the exact date yet, but we’re working on it.’

  I sat frozen, waiting for the horror show to continue.

  ‘So, what we have here, Marie, is a man who is still alive today. A man who must be close on two hundred years old. In fact, I would think it fair to surmise that he is no longer a man at all, not in the traditionally human sense.’ She looked at me over the top of her glasses. ‘How am I doing so far?’

  ‘Pretty well,’ I croaked.

  Stark tapped her fingers on that stupid tablet. ‘Excellent. Then we understand each other.’

  ‘Did you get all that from Quinn?’

  ‘Ah, yes. Philip Quinn. A terrible shame, what happened to him.’ She looked at me, eyes gleaming sharply. ‘But a stroke of luck that his house burned down in a freak fire. Saved us the trouble of covering anything up.’

  I swallowed. ‘Why are you pretending that you care about what happened to Quinn? I know he was on your payroll, but you sent your pet vampire hunter to kill him.’

  ‘Actually, that isn’t the way it happened at all. But we can talk more later.’

  I wanted to talk about it now, because things were just getting interesting. Before I could ask more questions, however, Stark nodded at Soldier Boy and he immediately took a menacing step toward me. It seemed like we were done talking. He lowered his gun, and reached out his free hand to grab my upper arm.

  ‘I don’t have time for this crap,’ I said, grasping at straws. ‘You need to let me out of here. My father is sick; I have to get home.’

  To my family. To both of my families.

  I forced a huge breath, trying to prepare myself for action. Gathering what little strength I could. Dr Stark seemed interested in my breathing habits and bent her head to make another note. Something inside me growled and it wasn’t my stomach. I didn’t like this. I didn’t like it one bit. I hated that this awful woman had knowledge about me and my life that I had only ever shared with Caitlín. Being . . . observed like a lab monkey in a cage was sick. Twisted.

  I was getting out. Now.

  I moved, propelling myself off the bed at vamp-speed and shoving the guard to one side – into Dr Stark. Thank God for adrenaline. The door was wide open, with only a long stretch of white, well-lit corridor beyond it, and it wasn’t like I couldn’t handle one (armed) guard and a middle-aged, potentially insane scientist. I was exhausted but I wasn’t dead. Well, not quite.

  Stark staggered as she tried to grab the edge of the door to stop herself from going all the way down. Soldier Boy hesitated for a crucial second – just enough to give me a head start – as he disentangled his gun from the doctor’s lab coat.

  I bolted into the corridor and cringed as an alarm blared, shrill and piercing. There was the distant sound of shouts and feet pounding the floor. She hadn’t been kidding about security. Seriously, what the hell was this place?

  I skidded to a stop at the end of the corridor. Another blank door barred my way, but this one – Bonus! – didn’t have silver glitter embedded in it. I scrabbled for some kind of purchase around the frame, desperately searching for something to grab hold of so I could force it open. I looked over my shoulder as I heard footsteps running toward me.

  ‘Marie,’ Stark’s voice called. ‘Stop this, right now! We don’t want to have to punish you.’

  Punish me? I narrowed my eyes and focused on the anger – and growing hunger – keeping me on my feet. Nobody was punishing me. I wasn’t a child. Not any more.

  I drew back my fist and punched the door as hard as I could. No holding back. Full vamp-strength. OK, so I wasn’t quite at full strength, but I think I already mentioned that I was furious. And tired.

  And scared out of my freaki
ng mind.

  I hit it again and again, and then a third time, each blow causing a dent to appear in the door accompanied by the shriek of bending and tearing metal. Adding in a kick for good measure – cursing the fact that I wasn’t wearing shoes as I felt at least one of my toes break – I leaned all my weight against the door and pushed.

  The whole thing collapsed off its hinges just as Stark’s pet guard rounded the bend.

  I tripped as I tried to negotiate the flattened door, only managing to keep my feet by the skin of my teeth, then I started running again. I limped slightly because of the broken toe, but that couldn’t be helped. It didn’t hurt too badly yet and it would heal once I’d fed.

  Lights flashed and that nerve-shredding alarm continued its steady howl, keeping me disorientated. I reached a junction and didn’t have time to make a proper decision, just threw myself around the right-hand fork and bounced off the wall as I propelled myself as fast as I could possibly go.

  Until I slid to a halt in front of a group of four armed men and women packed into the corridor. There was no way past them. It was either through them, or all the way back. In my current condition, I didn’t exactly favor my odds either way.

  Spinning and running back in the direction I’d just come from, I tried to build up speed. If Dr Stark and Soldier Boy had reached the junction, I could maybe deal with the two of them. I blurred past the turn, barely registering their wide eyes and mouths – Stark was shouting something – but I kept going. I heard a shot from the guard’s weapon, but I was moving preternaturally fast. No way he could get a fix on me.