Hunting the Dark

by Karen Mahoney

  Even though being a vampire was a whole new way of life for me, and not one that I welcomed at all, that didn’t mean I liked the idea of people like Helena Stark putting me under a microscope. Especially not if they concluded something as controversial as a vampirism virus – a disease that could, potentially, be cured. I didn’t want to think about it, not after everything I’d been through in the past year.

  Hope threatened to shatter me, right there and then. How often had I dreamed of the possibility? That one day I could go back to normal? I’d been talking to Holly about this just a couple days ago . . . she’d challenged me, asking if I’d take a magical reset – a return to my humanity. ‘Would you really want to be human again?’ she’d asked. ‘Ordinary? Mortal?’

  In an instant, I’d replied. I could hear myself saying it, even now.

  Stark was watching me with the kind of interest reserved for a particularly fascinating experiment. She was creeping me out, and right at the moment I hated her for even waving the possibility of a cure in front of me. I decided to poke a few holes in her theory, if only to give myself time to think.

  ‘Maybe it’s all just magic,’ I said. ‘Vampires are simply what remains of a mythological world. Magic would explain a lot.’

  ‘Science does not allow for the existence of magic.’

  ‘That’s kind of a narrow view, don’t you think? I’m pretty sure that not all scientists are so willing to disregard the possibilities.’

  She narrowed her eyes. ‘If magic exists, there would be nothing but chaos. That is unacceptable to the people behind this project.’

  In the pages of folklore that I’d read about vampirism in the past year or so, there was never any talk of it being a disease. Never any talk of a cure. Like . . . ever. Sure, there were stories – some of which originated in my home of New England, and especially Rhode Island and the surrounding area – about how people used to protect themselves from vampire attacks, but nothing that talked explicitly about reversing the transformation.

  You couldn’t de-monster yourself; it was impossible.

  Dr Stark appeared to be on a roll. ‘The supernatural – or, more correctly in the case of vampires, the preternatural – doesn’t even exist. It’s a veneer of lies painted over the face of history: legend and lore and bedtime stories designed to scare the early settlers. The colonists needed something to explain the things they couldn’t understand, when medical knowledge was rudimentary.’

  I nodded, caught up in her theory despite myself. ‘Things like consumption.’

  ‘Indeed.’ She folded her hands across the tablet computer on her lap. ‘The truth is, you’ve been altered on a genetic level – a cellular level – by a virus. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t undo it. At least, that is what we are trying to achieve here.’

  ‘I . . . I don’t know,’ I said honestly. ‘I really don’t. This is the first I’ve heard of any of this.’

  The doctor blinked. ‘Why are you surprised by that? That’s the point of conspiracy theories.’

  I looked away, trying to process what she was saying. Her passion on the subject led me to question why she was so single-minded. Had she encountered a vampire as a child? Did she know someone who’d been Turned?

  ‘You have a medical condition, Marie,’ Stark continued. ‘One that we believe can be reversed. Given time – something that you have plenty of.’

  ‘How?’ I tried to look like I meant business, despite my current position. ‘What exactly is this cure that has you all so worked up?’

  ‘I think you already know.’

  I frowned. ‘Um . . . no. I really don’t.’

  ‘Subject Ten’s blood,’ she replied, sounding disappointed that I hadn’t figured it out for myself.

  ‘What?’ My brain spun its wheels as I tried to follow this unexpected revelation.

  ‘We believe that the blood of a true dhampir can cure vampirism.’

  My brain caught up. ‘She really is a dhampir? My Maker says there’s no such thing.’

  The doctor raised a sardonic eyebrow. ‘Says the vampire.’

  ‘It’s just a legend,’ I repeated.

  Stark shook her head, almost pityingly. ‘And again, I say: just like vampires. Aren’t vampires supposed to be myths? You said it yourself: legends are created by humanity to explain away their fears. To make the hard truths of life more palatable. Even, perhaps, to convince children that they should be good little boys and girls, for fear that the big bad monsters will come for them in their sleep.’

  ‘But it’s impossible!’ I burst out.

  Dhampirs were fairy tales; even vampires had myths and legends. I had to believe that, otherwise I might be tempted by this woman’s words – what she might be able to offer me. But at what cost? I thought bleakly.

  Stark watched me with that open curiosity. ‘What makes you so sure that I’m wrong?’

  ‘Vampires can’t procreate. At all. Therefore, dhampirs can’t exist.’

  ‘What if there was another way for a dhampir to be . . . born?’

  ‘Like Blade, you mean?’ I knew my obsession with comic book anti-heroes would serve me well, one day. Also: Wesley Snipes is hot.

  ‘Hardly.’ She flipped her handheld computer over so that I could see. ‘Why do you think she is here?’

  I stared at the screen. Subject Ten sat on the floor of what looked like a glass cage. It reminded me of being a child at the zoo, tapping on the glass to make the snakes hiss and getting into trouble with Dad. Stark had caged a young girl, like an animal. Ten’s knees were drawn up to her chest and her arms were wrapped around them. She looked more vulnerable than I’d ever seen her.

  ‘You do realize how crazy all this sounds, don’t you?’ I asked, trying not to show how rattled I was. ‘What you’re proposing is totally unethical. It has to be!’

  ‘You dare preach to me of ethics? You, just a predator who acts on base instinct. A killer who drinks the blood of humans in order to go on living yourself?’ She didn’t seem so friendly now. Clearly, I’d hit a nerve. I was good at that.

  ‘I don’t hurt anyone,’ I protested, stung. ‘And I certainly haven’t killed anyone.’

  ‘Yet.’

  ‘Ever,’ I said, going on the offensive again. ‘And what you’re talking about: the blood of a dhampir being able to cure vampirism? I think that’s impossible.’

  Dr Stark tucked the device away again. ‘You’re a vampire, Marie. Surely you, of all people, should understand that “impossible” has changed its meaning.’

  She still sounded irritated and I loved that I was getting to her. I should probably keep that up. People made mistakes when they got mad.

  ‘Drinking blood was what got me into this mess in the first place,’ I said. ‘Not that I had a choice in the matter – it was either that or death at the time. And I was pretty much unconscious.’ I was getting off the point. Rallying, I finished my argument with a flourish. ‘Now you think that doing virtually the same thing to me as my Maker did when he Turned me will just make all of this go away?’

  ‘It’s all about checks and balances,’ she replied. ‘You lost your human life when you were transformed. Therefore, a life has to replace yours when we bring you back. That’s where we were going wrong for too long.’

  ‘What are you saying?’ I felt my cheeks grow cold and for a horrible moment I felt like I might pass out, even though I was mostly lying down.

  ‘The weapon is the cure,’ she said.

  ‘What?’ Something in her tone made me shiver. It was the same thing on that email Ten had given me.

  Dr Stark straightened her glasses. ‘It is the name of a theory I am working on.’

  ‘What does it even mean?’

  ‘The dhampir must die in order for you to live.’

  ‘You’re twisted,’ I said, not bothering to keep my opinions to myself. ‘This is all wrong and you need to stop.’

  ‘Don’t you want to be cured? What if you really could regain your humanity?’<
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  Of course I wanted that, and Stark knew it already. Whatever the hell she was, she was certainly no fool. But if what she was proposing really were possible – and I seriously doubted it – I would never allow it to happen if the price was the life of another. No matter how much I complained about my current existence, there were undeniable advantages to being stronger and faster than anyone else. A certain fearlessness had been growing in me over the past year: the inner me. Moth. Perhaps I’d miss her if she went away, after all. Despite the trouble she could get me into.

  But . . . I’d miss the sun more, when I could no longer go out in it at all. Not to mention how gross the whole blood-drinking deal was. Who wants to live forever?

  ‘I do want to be human again,’ I said. ‘But I’ll stay the way I am if it means that someone else has to die in order to give me back my humanity.’

  I liked the sound of it as I said it, but I can’t say I wasn’t tempted. Wouldn’t you be? If you were in my position, I mean.

  Stark snorted an uncharacteristically unladylike laugh. ‘So, given the choice, you couldn’t possibly take a potential cure because you have such a well-developed sense of right and wrong? How interesting.’

  ‘There’s no way I’m sacrificing someone else’s life just so mine doesn’t suck so badly.’

  ‘Because it would be wrong?’

  I frowned, wondering what was going on. ‘Exactly.’

  Stark watched me very closely. ‘You’re a Catholic, aren’t you?’

  ‘Um . . . yeah.’ I didn’t like where she was going with this. ‘It’s not a big deal. That’s just how I was brought up.’

  ‘Traditional Irish family,’ she said, as though we were just chatting over coffee. ‘It makes sense that you’d have a strong moral sense of right and wrong.’

  I nodded, still waiting for the punchline.

  She narrowed her eyes. ‘You realize, I presume, that you no longer have a soul? Now that you’re a vampire.’

  And there it was. If she’d stabbed me through the heart, she couldn’t have hurt me any worse. I wondered if she knew that. From the look on her face, I figured . . . yes. I wanted to know if what she’d said was true, or whether she was just being cruel. Testing me in some twisted way.

  I kept my mouth tightly shut. I wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of doing whatever she seemed to expect of me. Perhaps she thought I’d freak out, try to break my chains, or at the very least break down in tears. Although I wanted to do all of those things – and a lot more besides – I kept it all buried in the same dark place that I reserved for my worst nightmares.

  ‘Well,’ Dr Stark said, making a quick note on her tablet, ‘this would make an excellent topic to return to. But we seem to have lost track of what we were talking about: Subject Ten, I believe, and the question of our trial cure for vampirism.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, glad to be moving away from the question of my soul. ‘You were telling me about how you planned to kill your protégé in order to test a theory.’

  ‘Subject Ten was raised in this institution. She is well aware of the risks she faces.’

  ‘Did she sign up for it then?’ I curled my lip, covering my surprise about the part where Ten was raised at the Facility. ‘You can’t even give her a proper name. Does dehumanizing her help ease your conscience?’

  Dr Stark stood up and began to pace the room. ‘You’re talking about a girl who would kill you as soon as look at you. Why should you care?’

  But she hadn’t killed me, had she? Perhaps Stark had it wrong. There was plenty of humanity in Subject Ten. Maybe I could even help her to find it.

  ‘Honestly, I don’t think she was even trying to hurt me,’ I said. ‘Let alone kill me. She just wanted me out of her way.’ I tried to sit up, forgetting about my chains and almost throttling myself. ‘Can’t you take these off?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  I let out a dramatic sigh. ‘Fine. Can you at least answer some more of my questions? I have so many.’

  Stark opened her hands in what she probably thought was a magnanimous gesture. ‘Try me.’

  ‘Was Ten acting alone, with everything she’s done in the past week?’

  ‘Yes,’ the woman said, her expression displeased. ‘She took it upon herself to leave the Facility without authorization. We tracked her down eventually, of course, and it was easy to . . . persuade her that she had made a mistake. That’s why she helped us to bring you and the Murdoch boy in.’

  Reading between the lines, it was becoming clear that Subject Ten had escaped and gone on a bit of a rampage. Then Stark and the Nemesis Project had caught up to her and gotten her back under control.

  ‘This is getting off-track,’ she said, waving her hand with a sudden burst of impatience. ‘I simply want you to understand how important you are to our work here. We’ve been waiting for you a long time, Marie.’

  I shivered. ‘What do you mean? For me, specifically?’

  ‘No, of course not. Just that we’ve wanted a young, successfully Turned vampire that we could . . . work with.’

  Experiment on, you mean, I thought.

  ‘We tried to create our own, but none of the subjects survived.’

  Oh. My. God. I could hardly believe what I was hearing, but maybe I shouldn’t be surprised. I’d heard all kinds of horrifying things since being here, and this really couldn’t be any worse. And it hadn’t escaped me that she referred to her ‘created vampires’ as subjects. Had there been nine of them before the current model?

  I hesitated. Clearly, Stark did want to talk about all this. I suspected that she wanted me to somehow get on side with her; maybe she even needed me to understand. I couldn’t imagine why that was – not yet – but that’s what my gut was telling me.

  ‘Couldn’t you have just approached me and tried to sell the idea of a cure? If your intel on me was so good, surely you knew how unhappy I was about what happened.’

  Dr Stark stopped pacing. ‘And you’d know all about how good our intelligence was, wouldn’t you, Marie? You accessed our server shortly after Philip died.’

  There was no point in denying it. I shrugged.

  ‘We simply didn’t want to take risks. We had to have you.’ She pursed her lips, leaning against the door with her arms folded. Her posture had defiance written all over it. ‘Your presence here is invaluable to us, Marie. Even if we can’t cure you, then perhaps we can . . . civilize you. All of you.’

  Civilize us? Ugh. I choked out my next words. ‘All the vampires, you mean?’

  ‘Yes. That would be a compromise, at least. If we can’t end your kind for good – in a humane way – at least we can ensure that the threat you pose to our society is neutralized.’

  I screwed up my face in an effort to understand what this woman was saying. ‘You want to civilize vampires? How do you intend to do that? Whatever you have planned, it simply won’t work. Vampires aren’t civilized! Not beneath the surface, anyway. That’s the whole point. You can’t tame a wild animal – especially not one that’s had centuries to learn freedom in a world filled with prey.’

  ‘A neat summary,’ Stark replied. ‘But you’re forgetting that vampires once served a very important purpose. That’s what all predators do: they create a threat that forces the human race to survive long enough to become civilized. Now perhaps it is time to do the same for the vampires themselves.’ There was a knock at the door. ‘We’ll have to continue this later,’ she said. ‘It’s time for your medical exam.’

  She opened the door, gesturing for the waiting guards to come inside, and I almost cried with frustration. I wasn’t getting out of here any time soon (at least, not under my own power) and I still didn’t know where Project Nemesis was based so that I could call in the cavalry.

  I was in deeper trouble than I could possibly have imagined.

  Chapter Twenty

  Personal Lab Vamp

  Time for your medical exam.

  Stark’s chilling words echoed inside my head as I was marc
hed – still bound by the silver chains – through the labyrinth-like Facility by two heavily armed guards. The air smelled cold and dusty, with an undercurrent of bleach or detergent. The corridors were confusing as hell, but I made a valiant attempt to look for markers that might help me remember my way around. I would escape eventually, I told myself. I’d need to know where to run when I got out.

  Because I was going to get out – and soon. I had to. Theo would be so worried, and he needed me. Especially now that I knew the truth and could really help him.

  But everything looked the same, and the place was freaking huge. And empty. I was surprised not to see more people around, working on science-y things and planning world domination. Up and down the sleek corridors the silent soldiers led me, and I had to shuffle in my chains to keep up. I was half tempted to stop walking, see what they’d do, but they would no doubt just drag me along the ground.

  I focused on the details – anything that might help me later. There were identical steel doors placed in the walls at regular intervals, on either side of the first main corridor. Each door looked just like my own: plain, sturdy, most likely vampire-proof in some way, with a narrow rectangular window cut into the metal at eye level with a sliding cover. Just like in the movies, so that people on the outside could take a look inside before entering. I counted ten of these cells, each with a number above the door: 01, 02, 03, etc.

  Ten rooms – ten cells – all designed to hold vampires. This was getting more and more crazy. Surreal. If I wasn’t seeing it for myself, I wouldn’t have believed it.

  And then I heard a scream – a man’s scream – and I stopped walking, stumbling over my own feet as the restraints around my ankles tightened. The scream echoed, twisting along the corridor like the worst kind of music.

  Whoever it was making that awful noise, he sounded desperate and defiant all at the same time. A sharp sort of fear blossomed inside me, uninvited. Unwelcome. I pushed it down and forced myself to breathe.