Hunting the Dark

by Karen Mahoney

  ‘Since when have you known me to do what you tell me?’

  ‘You have a point,’ he said, ‘but I’m still mad at you.’

  I shrugged. ‘Get in line.’

  Just as those words left my mouth, the grate we were standing on dropped out from beneath our feet and we fell down into nothingness.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Boom

  We finally tumbled to the ground, landing together in a tangled heap on a raised slab of concrete. Luckily, I’d managed to break Jace’s fall, otherwise he’d have more than a cracked rib to worry about. I had also managed to keep hold of the little silver device I’d grabbed from Jace.

  He rolled off me, immediately alert despite everything he’d been through.

  ‘Marie’ – Dr Stark’s voice boomed from a hidden sound system – ‘so glad you could join us.’

  ‘What am I?’ Jace muttered. ‘Invisible?’

  I snorted. ‘Just be glad she’s ignoring you. Maybe it means you’ll get out of here in one piece.’

  ‘Or maybe it just means that I’m disposable.’

  I didn’t want to think about that too hard, because he was probably right – and I didn’t know how I could protect Jace from everyone who worked at the Facility. It seemed that escape really was impossible. As usual, the odds were stacked heavily against us.

  I knew just how right I was as soon as the chamber we’d fallen into was lit up by yellow spotlights set high above us.

  Jace and I were on what I could only describe as a crude stage, and just below us – surrounding us – were at least two dozen men and women. There was a fairly even mixture of soldiers and scientists, which might give us more of a chance, but I wasn’t exactly holding my breath. (Metaphorically speaking, you understand.) Whichever way you looked at the situation, we were outnumbered. The bright lights hurt my sensitive eyes, and I had to squint in order to locate Helena Stark.

  As she walked through the crowd of onlookers, the black and white uniforms parted before her and I could see that she wasn’t alone.

  The leader of the Nemesis Project had Subject Ten at her side, but the young dhampir didn’t exactly look happy to be out of her glass-walled cell.

  ‘Get Murdoch down from there,’ Stark snapped, pointing at two of the black-clad guards closest to our stone dais.

  I bared my fangs, ready for a fight.

  Dr Stark turned her sharp gaze on me. ‘If you move, I’ll have every soldier here open fire on the pair of you. Perhaps you will survive, Marie, but we both know that Jason Murdoch won’t.’

  I froze, turning terrified eyes on Jace.

  He tried to smile. ‘Don’t worry. It’ll be OK.’

  We both knew that wasn’t true, but I appreciated his effort to reassure me.

  ‘Amazing that the boy has survived this far,’ Stark said. ‘I was certain that you would have killed him when you fed.’

  I snarled at her. ‘I keep telling you, Doctor Stark, you think you know everything there is to know about me – but, really, you don’t know anything about the kind of person I am.’

  ‘And I keep telling you, Marie, that you are no longer a person.’ She waited a dramatic beat before continuing. ‘But, despite your own lack of faith in my research, perhaps you could be once more.’

  I kept my mouth shut. I didn’t want her to dangle that possibility in front of me. Not again.

  Once Jace was standing to one side of the weird ‘stage’, Dr Stark rubbed her hands together as though we were all gathered for one of her lectures. Her momentary flash of temper was already forgotten.

  ‘Good,’ she said. ‘Now we can proceed with the next stage of Project Nemesis.’

  Subject Ten turned to gaze at the scientist who had been a surrogate mother to her. I also couldn’t help noticing that three hard-faced guards had their crossbows trained steadily on the blond girl. There was no doubt that we were both prisoners here. We could only wait and see how this nightmare would play out – find out what Stark and the Facility had planned for the two of us.

  I had a sneaking suspicion that I knew what was coming, but the stubborn optimist in me was determined to live in denial for just a few moments longer.

  Dr Stark put her arm around Ten’s shoulder, a caring gesture that was so far removed from this circus that I almost laughed. ‘Join the vampire up on the dais,’ she told her protégé. ‘As the only true dhampir in existence, you will attempt to destroy her – as is your destiny.’

  My stomach clenched. ‘What?! I thought you wanted to cure me?’

  ‘Indeed I do,’ Stark replied. ‘As I have always believed, the weapon is the cure. You will fight each other, and if you survive . . . if you best Subject Ten . . . the dhampir’s lifeblood will serve to prove my hypothesis. You, Marie, will drink and live. Truly live. No longer a vampire, your humanity will be fully restored.’

  Stark’s tone was totally normal, and I wondered if she really had become unhinged. Couldn’t she see that, while she insisted on claiming science as her god, she was also making a choice to act with a complete and utter lack of ethics?

  I could barely speak over my rage. ‘You’re sick. Sick and evil and possibly the worst human being I have ever met.’ I glared at her, and at all of the gathered humans. ‘In fact, you’re not even human. You call us monsters? You’re the only monster around here, Doctor Stark.’

  Stark reached out a hand to me. ‘I never called you a monster, Marie.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘You’re just treating me like one.’

  ‘I’m sorry you feel that way. Very sorry.’ She didn’t sound sorry at all. ‘If you try to escape, the Murdoch boy will die, of course.’

  I met Jace’s eyes, wishing I could speak to him telepathically – ask him how the hell we were all going to get out of this. If Ten came up here and attacked, I’d be forced to defend myself. And if the other girl went all-out for blood, could I really bring myself to kill her? This was Jace’s sister. I’d never taken another person’s life, despite my transformation into something other-than-human. Theo had stopped me the only time I had been a serious danger to an innocent, just after I’d been Made and was blinded by pain and bloodlust.

  But this . . . I couldn’t do this.

  I would never be a part of this.

  Unfortunately, Subject Ten seemed only too happy to go along with Stark’s plan, because she’d leaped smoothly onto the raised concrete slab and was already closing in.

  ‘Wait!’ I turned my desperate gaze to the other girl, trying to appeal to the human half that I knew was in there. The Murdoch half.

  ‘We don’t have a choice,’ Ten said, circling slowly, looking for an opening.

  ‘There are always choices,’ I replied, wondering even as I said it if I believed that myself. What a hypocrite I was, when I’d lived the past year in Theo’s shadow. Afraid to be anything other than obedient. Oh, I argued with him all the time – but we both knew it was for show. We both knew that I would always, eventually, bow to his will.

  I circled in the opposite direction, trying to delay the inevitable. ‘Ten, listen to me,’ I said. ‘You don’t have to do this.’

  ‘I want to survive,’ she said. ‘I don’t know why, but I do.’

  ‘Then we have that in common.’ I danced backward as she lunged at me. ‘We have more in common than I think you realize.’

  She faltered, just for a second, but at least I’d gotten through to her. ‘Like what?’

  ‘Hope,’ I replied simply. ‘We both have that. You were even named “Hope” after you were born – by your father. A man who I honestly didn’t believe had a decent bone in his body.’

  Now I had her full attention. She was still as stone, her eyes narrowed and flashing with emotion. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Don’t listen to her!’ Dr Stark called from below, in a voice laced with cold anger. ‘End her, Ten, and I will give you the freedom you so desire.’

  ‘Hope!’ Jace suddenly burst out. ‘That’s your name
: Hope Murdoch. Show her, Moth! Show her what you—’ One of the guards clubbed Jace across the back of the head with his rifle, knocking him to the ground.

  Trying to ignore my worry for Jace, I pulled out the sheet of paper I’d taken from the guard station, thankful that it had remained firmly wedged inside the waistband of my leggings. I kept my other hand closed in a loose fist, hanging down by my side. ‘Here,’ I said. ‘This is a copy of your birth certificate. It proves what I’m saying. You have a family – a real family. Your father even gave you a name that proves you belong in the human world. Jace didn’t know anything about you until today. He didn’t abandon you!’

  Her eyes flew to her brother, uncertainty warring with anger on her pale face.

  I pressed my advantage. ‘You don’t have to do what Stark—’

  ‘Subject Ten!’ Dr Stark all but screeched. ‘End the vampire. Now!’

  I wrapped a hand around Ten’s arm and pulled her close to me, pressing my mouth to her ear. ‘Do you want out of here?’

  I felt her nod. She smelled of that strangely delicious combination I’d first picked up after finding Quinn’s body: vampire and Jace.

  ‘Do you believe that Stark will ever let you go?’

  Her whole body seemed to slump. She shook her head.

  ‘When I knock you down,’ I said, running my thumb over the smooth metal in my other hand, ‘stay down.’

  Her body tensed again, and I wondered if she would follow my instructions. There was no time to convince her that she could trust me. She either did or she didn’t. I swallowed past the dryness in my throat, figuring that I’d find out which it would be soon enough.

  I shoved her away, hard enough to send her off balance, and then delivered a quick punch to her sternum.

  She choked, hitting the floor as she struggled to breathe.

  I looked around wildly, first locating Dr Stark standing at the very front of the ‘audience’, her features a twisted portrait of fury . . . and then I registered the many weapons pointing in my direction.

  I found Jace, forcing out a sigh of relief. Our eyes locked, then from his position on the ground at the side of the dais, surrounded by what looked like a ridiculous number of guards, he winked at me.

  Boom, he mouthed.

  I hit the button on the cool device in my palm, then tossed it at the far wall as hard as I could.

  The explosion was every bit as impressive – and devastating – as Jace had suggested it would be. For a few glorious seconds I flew through the air, blown backward by the force of the blast . . .

  Then I landed, headfirst, and once again it was lights out.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Escape Clause

  Jace was digging through the wreckage from the other side as I came to, and I could only imagine he was doing that with his bare hands. There was a lot of cursing, and several loud hisses of pain, but he didn’t stop tossing rocks all over the place.

  ‘Moth!’ I could see a gap growing in the pile of rubble nearest to me. I wanted to move, to help him, but my legs wouldn’t work. I had blood in my mouth again, but this time it was my own.

  ‘Moth,’ he said again. ‘Are you guys OK?’

  ‘We’re OK!’ I called back. ‘Both of us.’

  And then Jace was there and he had his arms around me, and I was momentarily confused that he was so pleased to see me. Shouldn’t he go to his sister first? But he brushed my hair away from my face and looked me right in the eyes, checking that I really was as OK as I said I was.

  His troubled gaze moved to where his sister was slowly sitting up, brushing dust from her face with bloody hands. He’d only just found out about who she really was, and now he was expected to treat her like family. I could only imagine how he must be feeling. I saw his throat move as he swallowed, but he didn’t say anything.

  ‘Go to her,’ I said. ‘I’m fine.’

  He took a tentative step toward Ten – toward Hope, I reminded myself – but her expression froze. For a fleeting moment I thought she was afraid of him, but that couldn’t have been farther from the truth.

  Everything slowed down as I saw what Hope saw: a woman painfully pulling herself upright amid the debris-covered remains of the chamber. My eyes widened in fear, blinking away dust, but I told myself I could save him. I could save Jace, as I had done on more than one occasion. But the weird, slow motion special effect only seemed to make it harder to move – I might as well have been wading through invisible treacle as I watched a battered Helena Stark aim and fire the gun in her hand from her position on the ground. My vision was too blurry to track the bullet’s path, and I wasn’t fast enough to catch bullets anyway – no matter how cool that would have been.

  All I could do was watch as Jace went down. I didn’t even have time to scream.

  And then I realized that the reason he’d hit the ground wasn’t because he’d been shot. At least, I didn’t think he had. Hope was crouched above him, having dived an impossible distance – with her impossible speed – to save him from Dr Stark’s bullet.

  The scientist aimed a second time, this time at her former ‘pet’ dhampir, and I forced myself to break out of my trance. I moved and kicked Stark in the shoulder, knocking her aim off. Just enough.

  Hope Murdoch – the former Subject Ten – was suddenly by my side, and she grappled with Stark for the gun. I pulled myself to my feet, intending to help, to do something that might avert further destruction. But then there was a third shot.

  A final shot.

  Helena Stark jerked once and then fell backward, as though she had been hit hard in the chest. Blood bloomed like a flower on her dirt-covered lab coat.

  Hope screamed and threw the gun away, but it was too late.

  Stark was dead.

  I tried to feel something about her death – clearly an accident while the two of them fought for the gun, although I knew that Ten would blame herself – but I was numb. Cold all the way through to the bone, and I wondered if that was because the so-called vampire cure might have died with Dr Stark. Did I care about that?

  I wasn’t sure.

  Jace held his sister as she sobbed, his shoulders stiff, and I turned away. They deserved what little privacy I could give them.

  Everything was very far from OK, but we were alive (sort of, in my case) and all three of us were free of the Nemesis Project.

  I knelt on the floor and closed my eyes, trying to conjure up a picture of Theo in my mind, something I’d often done to comfort myself – especially in those first terrifying months after I’d been Turned. Maybe if I could hold onto him, somehow he would be able to find us. To find me.

  But his image kept breaking up, like smoke blown away on the wind.

  We ‘liberated’ a boat (a fast one) and, thankfully, Hope already knew how to operate it. We would have been totally screwed if not. It was how she’d escaped the last time. It turned out that the Facility was located on one of the islands in Boston Harbor, so we really weren’t a million miles away from home after all.

  Hope stood at the controls as we set out onto the wide open water. The dawn sunlight made her tangled hair look like a golden halo around her head. I breathed the sea air, letting it ground me even as we cut through choppy gray waves. She looked impossibly, heartbreakingly sad. It was probably the most emotion I’d seen on her face. There was something severely messed up to think that this depth of pain was caused by a woman like Helena Stark. By her death.

  ‘She wasn’t a good person,’ I said. I kept my tone decisive. Subject Ten had seemed better at dealing in shades of black and white. Even though we knew her as Hope now, I still tried to appeal to her logical side. ‘She used you.’

  The other girl looked away, and for a moment I wondered whether she’d heard me over the sound of the boat’s engine.

  She finally spoke. ‘Dr Stark told me I was like a daughter to her, but I know that’s a lie. I was nothing but a project – a flawed one at that.’

  ‘You’re not a project,’
I said. ‘You’re a person and you deserve better.’

  ‘As . . . do you.’ Her voice was low, hesitant, but I could hear the sincerity in her words. To think that, just days ago, we’d been fighting. Just hours ago, we’d faced off against one another for what could have been a final time.

  I shrugged, thinking about what she’d said. ‘Maybe.’

  Hope stared at her hands as they rested on the controls. We could both see Stark’s blood beneath her nails. I wondered if she was going to be OK. Finding out that her father had given her a name – a real one – might do something to help, but it seemed like a very small thing in the face of everything she’d been through.

  I said, ‘You did what you had to do. She was going to kill Jace. And you! She was never going to listen to reason. You know that, right?’

  ‘Dr Stark lost her husband in a vampire attack,’ she said, surprising me with the unsolicited information. ‘It was a long time ago, but that is what caused her to make the vampire virus her life’s work. She couldn’t save him, but she decided that perhaps she could save others.’

  Jace had joined us. ‘She didn’t sound like a woman who wanted to save people to me. She just sounded angry.’

  I nodded my agreement. ‘If that was her original motivation, well . . . I guess I feel more sorry for her. But she’d clearly become bitter. Twisted.’

  Jace circled his index finger around his temple.

  ‘Don’t do that,’ I snapped. I couldn’t bring myself to laugh, because there was always another side to things. Now that Stark was dead, I could see that. Maybe she really had gone off the deep end, but it wasn’t like she didn’t have her reasons.

  He suddenly looked angry. ‘That woman had me beaten, sliced, and dumped in a dungeon. And then, just to top everything, she held a gun to my head. I can’t say I’m sorry for what happened to her.’

  ‘I didn’t say you had to be sorry,’ I said. ‘Just . . . show a little respect.’

  ‘For Stark?’

  I frowned, nodding in his sister’s direction. ‘No, you moron.’