In Her Blood

by Janice Jones

  “Here’s what I can do,” Alex purred. “I can make sure the Council finds out how much you actually make off this place. I’m sure they’d be very surprised to see the real numbers versus what you send them every quarter.”

  Creed gave her a full fanged smiled, “And now you’re calling me a cheat? I’ve killed trash like you for less! You think you’re better than me now, Alex? However you were able to kick it, underneath you’re still just like all the pathetic sheep that crawl in and out of here every weekend. You’re only one bite away from scratching at my door again, begging for your next ride!”

  It wasn’t easy to kick the affliction that was Mason Creed, but her hatred for him made it far less difficult. On Esmeralda and Morgan’s doorstep, Alex begged them to help her. With Roland Wolfe’s help, Alex died. To sever that bond, to separate her life force from his, she had to. Death was easy. To bring someone back from it; that was hard. That was a power only a select group of people had. A Shaman and a Wicca combined their powers and brought the only female hybrid in 600 years back from the dead. She couldn’t really remember very much, but she did remember how painful it was to come back from the darkness. Esmeralda had said that one day, she might remember what happened while she was dead, but Alex was in no hurry to find out.

  Alex put her finger in his glass and sucked the whiskey as she stared at Creed.

  “Ouch, that hurt Creed,” she giggled. “As for you killing me, get in line. You forget I know what really happened to your sire that night.”

  “That was self-defense,” he growled.

  “Most people just quit a shitty job working for a giant asshole,” Alex smiled at him. He growled again as his fangs retracted.

  “You don’t quit your maker,” he hissed. “And that’s what I went there to do, but he decided me dead would be better than just giving me my freedom.” He shrugged boyishly. “Okay, so I tried to blackmail him into it. He could have just cut me loose instead of trying to separate me from my head!”

  Alex dropped her gaze to his trembling hands. Creed and his maker had been very close back then. She showed him proof of just how connected Cyrus was. Money laundering, prostitution, drug trafficking—nothing was taboo for him. Creed had a way to break free and Alex thought she saw a way to walk away from that life forever.

  Cyrus had given her a key to his private quarters. For the elimination of his enemies, she was paid very well. But in order to get close enough to get to his secrets, she had become his lover, thus earning his trust and that key. He was her first vampire, not Mason Creed. When Creed found out, he went ballistic.

  “You turned me down time and time again,” he had yelled at her that night. “And you succumbed to him! Why?”

  Back then, she thought she had feelings for Creed. Maybe not love, but she did have a strong desire to please him. He’d taken her in after the hospital when none of her friends gave her a second thought. And he’d convinced her, begged her, to do this for him and they’d both reap the benefits.

  “I did it for you,” she whispered. “You told me to do whatever was necessary to get the information.” He shoved her against the wall. “I did it for you.”

  “Liar,” he barked in her face then snatched the briefcase from her hands. “You’re just like all the other pathetic sheep in this world! I thought you were different! I thought . . .”

  Creed marched into Cyrus’s office and demanded his freedom and enough money to start his own business. Cyrus laughed. Cyrus told them both he’d known their plan all along. Played along because it amused him and he’d beat Creed to her blood. That’s when Cyrus drew the gun and put one in Alex’s right shoulder and thigh. Then he drew the machete that sat on the stand on his desk. He’d bragged about the witch doctor he’d killed for that machete. They fought and Creed came up with the weapon held high. One hard swing and Cyrus’ body fell back and his head rolled next to Alex on the floor.

  As his body and head burned to cinder, Creed wept like a baby. To see him still affected by that memory almost made him seem human. Then she remembered all that Creed was capable of; the guilt and pain he made her feel in punishment for her sin against him. She straightened her posture then locked eyes with him.

  “When you sent me after that information, you promised me you’d take that to the Council. Do you know what I had to do to get that close to him,” she hissed at him. When he grinned at the glass in his hand, she remembered how much she hated him. She didn’t have to be able to read his mind to know what he was thinking. But every time she tried, a pain shot through her brain. That wasn’t supposed to happen.

  “Yeah,” he sighed with a quick sip from his glass. “You did it for me. I remember.”

  Alex grabbed the side of the small table to keep from breaking his nose. “I brought you enough proof to bury him with the Council. They would have just given you his holdings if you’d just done what you said you were going to do!”

  “You don’t know that! Humans . . . You think everything’s so fair! Like you, I did what I had to do to survive.”

  “You owe me,” she hissed as she sat back again. “I’m here to collect.”

  Creed slammed his glass down and it shattered. “Alright!”

  “Good boy,” she winked. “You have exactly two weeks, then the Council starts asking questions you don’t wanna answer.”

  Alex balled up the paper and stuffed it inside her glass. Then she lit a match and dropped it on top. The small flame lit up Creed’s face. She pushed the glass to the center of table and left him as it burned.

  _______________

  Just being back in this place, being that close to him made her want to pour gasoline over her head and light a match. Outside, the desert air cleared her mind.

  Sebastian jumped off the hood of the car and met her halfway. “Well?”

  “Something’s changed,” she said in a low voice. “We’re in trouble.”

  “What does that mean,” Sebastian frowned.

  “I couldn’t read his thoughts, at all, that’s what that means.”

  “Nothing?”

  Alex shook her head. “I couldn’t even get a buzz, Sebastian. His mind was different, stronger than before. Like a pure blood.”

  Sebastian stopped in his tracks, “That’s impossible! He’s turned right?”

  “He’s only about seventy or eighty years old,” she continued. “I don’t understand.”

  “How do you know it’s not just you? I mean it has been awhile and you’re still aging,” Sebastian replied. “Maybe you’re just out of practice.”

  She was out of practice. She heard his thoughts as clear as her own right now. What surprised her was he didn’t think she was crazy. He thought there had to be a way to test the theory. There had to be a way to be sure it wasn’t her, but Creed that changed somehow. They’d figure out what problems that would cause later.

  _______________

  “Where are they now?”

  Jason paced back and forth, clenching his jaw.

  “Headed west,” the man he had put on them, replied.

  “What happened at the club?” Jason huffed. “How long did she stay there?”

  “Not long,” he answered. “She didn’t look too happy when she came out, then she and the young one headed west. I won’t lose them.”

  “Thank you,” he mumbled.

  “My pleasure, sire.”

  Jason tossed the phone on the desk and scratched at his head. Too many things were out of his control, and he included her in that. He didn’t like being out of control, not in his own city! He’d given Creed some space on this, but now he was starting to regret that decision.

  Alex Stone knew much more about them than she should have for a human. Even with her past, she couldn’t be privy to the kind of things Creed was hooked into, could she? He sat down and decided to not play nice guy anymore.

  Ch
apter 28

  Slanted shadows fell across his desk as the sun rose. He’d waited practically all night. He’d done a lot of that lately. Waited for his funding, waited for medical supplies and drugs, waited for his patients to get better. But drugs and supplies are always late. The funding, never enough, and his patients never seem to get better. Even with help from donors like Alex Stone, he still struggled to keep the outreach program alive most months.

  Dr. Thomas Gilchrest tried to keep the faith though. Maybe one day his clinic would be empty and he’d have to take up golf to kill time between outpatients. Unfortunately, it’s never been that easy. Sometimes coming home was the hardest part of ending a war.

  His third cup of coffee was cold, ice cold. He thought maybe he should try to sleep as he pushed away from the desk, dropped down in the center of the room in a plank and did push- ups. With every push he tried to forget the job he’d agreed to do. The job that involved a doctor/patient relationship that shouldn’t be broken. But were they really doctor and patient? Technically, Dr. Gilchrest still worked for Strategic, even if Alex didn’t know that. And she hadn’t actually been his patient anyway. After the hospital, he was ordered to ‘accidentally’ run into her in London. His cover, a medical conference on PTSD. He brought up the subject of his outreach program casually and she seemed genuinely interested in helping. The plan worked. It was Alex who offered to subsidize the program if his funding came up short. In return, he listened and offered advice. It seemed simple enough.

  At first, it was mostly about the stresses of a successful business. Alex had gone from invisible to the spotlight in less time than she had imagined. It had become harder for her to find time for herself or her interests. She never really said what those interests were, but Dr. Gilchrest guessed it was important to her to continue doing whatever it was she was doing. She did speak about her best friend a lot. Dr. Gilchrest got the impression that this woman was very important to her—like family. They’d started the business together, but most of the capital had come from Alex. Ivy brought the clients and design ideas. Alex said Ivy could talk anybody into anything and without her, that business would have died a long time ago. Dr. Gilchrest found that hard to believe. Alex seemed to have a certain quality he couldn’t quite put his finger on, but you wanted to be around her for some reason. He stood and stretched long. The kinks in his tired back fought him, but gave in as he bent over and touched his toes.

  The one thing she never talked about was her past. As much as he tried to gently guide her down that path, she never took the bait. His assignment was to find out how much she remembered, but in order to do that, he’d have to get her to admit it ever happened in the first place. Then one day over beers in some dive downtown, she asked him a very odd question.

  “Do you believe in evil?” That question sounded so juvenile. He could barely see her hooded eyes locked on the glass in her hand. They sat in a dim corner booth as she slumped down in her seat like his teenage son.

  “Sure,” he answered, “Why do you ask?”

  She just shrugged and emptied her glass. “Want another?”

  “Sure, why not.”

  The look on her face was unreadable. She was so still he couldn’t even tell if she was breathing. Then she straightened up and grinned.

  “Do you believe some people are born bad? Created like that, I mean?”

  “I believe acts of violence are learned behavior,” Dr. Gilchrest replied. “Usually, people that do violent things have witnessed or experienced some sort of violence themselves, abuse of some kind.”

  “But what if they hadn’t?” Alex whispered, as she leaned on the table. “What if their purpose in life is to destroy? Feed on . . .” she stopped suddenly when the waitress appeared with more beer.

  “I don’t think I understand the question,” he said.

  “Never mind,” she flushed. “I was just . . . nothing. Finish your beer.”

  At that moment, Dr. Gilchrest remembered overhearing something he thought was strange at the time. Sitting outside the Director’s office, the voices could just be heard through the closed door. He remembered hearing the words ‘feed’ and ‘capture’, but they didn’t make sense to him at all. The two men kept referring to ‘her’ which he could only assume was the new patient in the locked ward. The young woman had come back from a classified mission with nightmares and memory loss.

  It was rare to see a young woman in a Military Hospital psych ward in those days. The only time he actually saw her was in the mess hall or out in the yard for exercise. Outside of that, she was locked away on a private wing that was guarded by two Marine escorts at all times.

  Her doctor, Dr. Marcus Slaten, and his nurse were the only staff with access to that wing. Her case was never discussed at staff meetings and reviews, and she was never alone in the mess hall or the yard. No one could get within shouting distance of her, ever. He’d overheard that conversation that day by mistake. Now he wished he’d never met her.

  After the Director was released and or reassigned, Dr. Gilchrest found himself reassigned as well—back to Washington. He wasn’t sure if they were suspicious of him or, again, it was just dumb luck that he was on a plane to Washington a week after hearing her doctor and the Director.

  The gossip was she was a part of some ‘super soldier’ project that had gone wrong. The orderlies were always talking about it on breaks. He just laughed and told them to stop with the silly rumors.

  “Come on, doc,” one of them chuckled. “You gotta wonder why no one goes into that wing. Is she cleaning her own room and stuff? And you can’t even sit on the same side of the room as her at chow without one those guards getting twitchy. Makes you wonder.”

  “Yea,” another laughed. “Makes you wonder that she might go postal if you say hi to her! I hear she just got back from an assignment in the desert and freaked out! Be glad we don’t have to deal with that one.”

  He never really listened to the gossip that spread around the hospital back then. Orderlies talking about the weird patient in the private wing doing strange things in the middle of the night. He thought they were just trying to scare each other. But when he met with Strategic for the first time, he thought maybe they were right.

  “After the hospital, she disappeared,” Dr. Jonathan Carlisle announced at their first meeting. “We’d like you to try and find out what happened during that time.”

  His conference room at Area 51 was dimly lit and stuffy as Dr. Gilchrest remembered. Back then, a large black phone sat in the center of a rectangular conference table. The Secretary of Defense on speaker phone. No fancy projected image on a screen. No Skype.

  Dr. Gilchrest flipped through the report. Redacted lines of information made it hard to grasp what kind of assignment or what really happened. “Why don’t you know?”

  Dr. Carlisle eased back in the leather chair as he tapped the folder in front of him with his pen. The chilly stare reminded Dr. Gilchrest of some of his more disturbed patients back at the hospital. His mouth opened, but the man on the phone interrupted.

  “Thomas,” the Secretary stated. “We really need your help on this. You had some contact with her in the hospital. We just want your impression of her now, if you have time.”

  “Mr. Secretary,” Dr. Gilchrest cleared his throat. “I had one meeting with her before I was reassigned. She probably doesn’t even remember me.”

  Dr. Carlisle interrupted this time. “She’ll remember you. Trust me.”

  “Alright, but what do you want to me say? If I start asking questions, won’t she get suspicious? I would if someone from almost fifteen years ago just walks up to me out of the blue and starts asking about my mental stability.”

  “You’re right,” the Secretary continued. “We’ll arrange for you to run into her in London, next month. She’ll be there and we’ve booked you as a speaker at a conference on PTSD at the same hotel. She won’t put i
t together. You can run into her, buy her cup of coffee or something and let us know how that went. No strings, Tom. None at all.”

  He sighed as he looked around the empty house and remembered the past again. With his wife and youngest son visiting the oldest at Stanford, Dr. Gilchrest braved the weekend alone. So he waited patiently for that monthly phone call. He lay on the rug and stared at the dark chandelier, then blinked. In an odd sort of a way, if it hadn’t been for her, he wouldn’t have been able to send one son to Stanford and the other to the most prestigious prep school in Maryland. If not for her, he wouldn’t have been able to pay off his mortgage ten years early and take his wife on a cruise this year.

  But the price was to monitor someone he’d come to consider a friend. To report back on her progress had started to make him feel like the biggest asshole in the room.

  He straightened up when the phone rang. On his feet, he hesitated, took a big breath and picked up the mobile. “Hello?”

  “You’re an early riser, doctor,” the voice chuckled.

  “Not really,” he replied as he took a seat behind his desk again. “I haven’t been to bed yet.”

  “Well, then we should get started so that you can get some rest.”

  “Of course, Mr. Secretary,” he said. He sat back in the chair and closed his eyes. “There’s not much to report this month. I’ve only seen her once and that was only for a very brief moment or two. She was contacted by Cooper and went with Jason Stavros to Las Vegas.”

  He heard the Secretary of the Navy clear his throat. “We expected that. Has she told you anymore about the dreams?”

  “No, sir. Just that a friend was in trouble,” he answered, rubbing his eyes. Dr. Gilchrest could feel the pain behind his lids grow. His pulse had quickened and his palms were sweaty.

  “She didn’t mention what friend,” he exhaled.

  “No, sir,” Dr. Gilchrest replied.