Cliff's Descent

by Dianne Duvall

Joe’s crunching slowed.

  “Do you want me to give you something to take the edge off?”

  More silence. Then… “Yeah. I think… I think maybe you should.”

  And there was just something about the women that touched the vampires so deeply that Melanie and Linda were always able to reach them even when the vamps were at their most unstable, their most violent. When Vince had been in the grips of his last psychotic break, he had attacked pretty much everyone within reach except Melanie and Linda.

  Cliff sank down on his sofa. He hoped like hell the same would be true when he started to have psychotic breaks. Because he would rather die than harm those he cared about.

  Linda stayed with Joe until the sedative she administered banished the voices and eradicated for a time the paranoia that plagued him. Then she returned to the infirmary to continue her research, leaving the pralines behind for Joe to enjoy.

  Sublevel 5 quieted.

  In her office across the hall, Melanie suddenly gasped. “I see why Seth calls ahead to warn Sarah.”

  “Sorry it took so long,” Bastien said.

  Richart must have teleported him in. Damn, Cliff envied him that gift.

  “Did something happen?”

  Richart answered. “There were other vamps at the rendezvous site.”

  “Pissing on my property,” Bastien grumbled.

  Cliff frowned, angry on Bastien’s behalf. The Immortal Guardians might have demolished Bastien’s farmhouse and the tunnels beneath it, but it was still his place. He hoped Bastien kicked their asses.

  “I didn’t know ’em,” a new voice blurted. “They just happened to be there, checking out Bastien’s legendary lair.” That must be Stuart, the new vampire.

  “Ah,” Melanie said. “I assume you kicked their asses?”

  “The madness had progressed too far in all of them,” Bastien told her. “They were beyond our help, so we destroyed them.”

  A smile entered her voice. “And enjoyed it a little too much, I’m guessing.”

  “Just with the pisser.”

  Cliff grinned.

  “Dude,” Stuart said, fascination entering his voice, “you’re dating a human? Y’all can do that?”

  Melanie must have made some kind of affectionate gesture.

  The quiet that followed made Cliff shake his head in amusement. Bastien still couldn’t believe Melanie cared for him and constantly worried about the possible repercussions fraternizing with him might have for her here at the network.

  “Yes, we’re dating.” Melanie sounded as though she was trying not to laugh. “And the jury is still out on whether or not it’s acceptable because Bastien has a bit of a checkered past.”

  Cliff had to laugh at that. Checkered past was a hell of an understatement.

  “I didn’t formally introduce myself the other night,” she continued. “I’m Dr. Melanie Lipton. It’s nice to meet you, Stuart.”

  “Yes, ma’am. I’m sorry I cut you.”

  “Don’t worry about it.” Cliff knew she didn’t mind the skirmish that had resulted in Stuart wounding her because it had led to her first kiss with Bastien. “Welcome to the network.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I head the viral research we’re doing here and frequently work with the other vampires. There are two currently in residence—Cliff and Joe.”

  “Welcome, Stuart,” Cliff said. He didn’t raise his voice. Vampire hearing was so acute Stuart would have no difficulty hearing him despite the thick walls that separated them. “I’m Cliff. It’ll be nice to have another vampire to hang around with.” Although he hated to admit it, having a vamp around who wasn’t yet battling the madness would help him when his own fight began.

  “You’re one of the vampires?” Stuart asked hesitantly.

  “Yes. I know you’re probably scared…”

  “Is Cliff talking to him?” Melanie murmured.

  “Yes,” Bastien said softly.

  “I sure as hell was.” Cliff had been terrified he had just handed himself over to people who intended—as Vince had accused—to use him like a lab rat. Particularly after he met Dr. Whetsman. That asshole had refused to work with the vampires unless they were restrained. “But you can relax. Dr. Lipton is great. So are Dr. Machen and some of the others we work with.” Hopefully he wouldn’t meet Whetsman for a while because the man was still a prick. “And you don’t have to constantly be on your guard here, worrying about humans discovering what you are or vampires attacking you or wondering if you’ll find a safe place to rest during the day. You made the right decision.”

  “How do I know you’re not an immortal just saying that to get me to drop my guard?” Stuart asked, his tone vacillating between suspicion and hope.

  “Well, for one thing, immortals are powerful enough that they don’t need to coax you into letting down your guard,” Cliff responded candidly. “They can overpower you and do whatever it is you think they might do with very little effort. For another, I was one of Bastien’s followers. I surrendered the night of the final battle with the immortals at his lair and have been living here ever since. But you’ll learn all of this and more eventually.”

  “What about the other one? Where is he?”

  Cliff wasn’t sure how to answer that.

  “Where’s Joe?” Bastien asked.

  “I think he’s resting,” Melanie answered slowly. Apparently she wasn’t sure how much to say either.

  “I’m here,” Joe said, his voice low and emotionless now that the sedative had kicked in. “The virus is fucking with my head today. Listen to Cliff. He isn’t as far gone as I am. I think… I think I’m not seeing things clearly right now. Cliff is.”

  Silence fell.

  “Can you help us?” Stuart asked, his tone subdued.

  “I hope so, Stuart,” Melanie said. “That’s why I’m glad you’re here. The more I learn and the more insight you and other vampires can provide me with, the closer we’ll get to finding a method of preventing the madness.”

  “What can I do?”

  Relief suffused Cliff.

  “For now?” Melanie asked. “If you aren’t averse to it, I’d like to take a small sample of your blood, then we can get you settled in your new apartment.”

  “It’s… it’s really an apartment? It’s not a cell?”

  Cliff answered swiftly, afraid the query might start Joe ranting again. “This isn’t a prison, Stuart. We live well here. We each have our own apartment with whatever furnishings and electronic gadgets we want, though our phone and internet activity is monitored for safety’s sake.”

  “So… I get my own place?”

  “Yes,” Melanie said, the smile returning to her voice. “We want you to be comfortable and, more important, happy here.”

  “I’ve never had my own apartment before,” Stuart said with a note of awe. “Or my own room. I always had to share… with my brothers or with a dorm mate. Man, I had some sucky dorm mates.”

  After living in close proximity with nearly a hundred vampires in various stages of insanity, Cliff could relate.

  Melanie laughed. “Well, let’s hurry and do your blood work so you can get settled.”

  Bastien and Richart left to continue their night’s hunt. A moment later, Cliff heard beeps as someone typed the security code into the electronic keypad outside his apartment. A clunk sounded; then the door swung inward.

  Melanie smiled as she pushed the door open. “Hi, Cliff.”

  He rose and circled the sofa to join her. A lanky guy who looked like he couldn’t be more than twenty years old stood behind her. When he peered into Cliff’s apartment, his eyes widened and his jaw dropped.

  Cliff smiled. Most of the furniture was brand-new. An impromptu (or not so impromptu) sparring session he and Bastien had engaged in when Bastien tested the stimulant Melanie had developed to counter the tranquilizer mercenaries used on Immortal Guardians had reduced most of his old stuff to
splinters. Everything he and Melanie had ordered to replace it was top of the line. Very posh, as Bastien would say.

  When he reached them, Cliff offered his hand. “Hi, Stuart. I’m Cliff.”

  “Hey,” Stuart murmured distractedly as he shook it. Then he pointed behind Cliff, his finger wagging back and forth. “This is your place?”

  “Yeah.”

  The younger vamp seemed stunned. “It’s like something out of a movie.”

  Cliff laughed. “Like I said, we live well here.”

  When Stuart stopped gawking at the apartment, he looked at Melanie and Cliff as if he couldn’t quite believe it all.

  Melanie winked up at him. “Want me to pinch you so you know you’re not dreaming?”

  That managed to spark a smile. “Maybe.”

  She grinned. “I thought you might feel more comfortable in the lab if Cliff came with us. Let’s get that done, then I’ll show you your place.”

  Cliff accompanied them and kept up a running conversation with Stuart when his unease returned in the infirmary. He seemed like a good guy. Once Melanie led Stuart to the apartment that would officially be his, all his nervousness evaporated. He didn’t even seem to care that he couldn’t leave the apartment without Melanie or one of the others unlocking his door. He was too jazzed about having his own place… and a roomy one at that.

  Cliff shook his head with a smile as he sank down on the sofa in his own apartment afterward. It looked like Stuart was going to be a nice addition to sublevel 5.

  He heard Melanie call Bastien on the phone and tuned out whatever they said in case their talk turned amorous. Some things he just really didn’t need to hear.

  “Hey, Joe,” he called as he picked up the PlayStation controller. “You up for some gaming?” He felt a little guilty that he hadn’t checked on his friend since Stuart’s arrival.

  The pause that followed lasted so long Cliff wondered if perhaps Linda had given Joe a strong enough dose of the tranquilizer to knock him out.

  “Sure,” Joe responded finally, sounding exhausted. “Okay.”

  Sobering, Cliff grabbed the remote and turned on the big-screen television that graced his wall. He’d asked Melanie to test the tranquilizer on him when she’d developed it. He’d been curious to see if it would calm the anxiety that sometimes gripped him and, at the same time, concerned about testing anything on Joe while he was unstable.

  While it had definitely eased the anxiety, he hadn’t liked the sluggish way it left him feeling.

  “What do you want to play?” he asked Joe.

  “How about—”

  A thunderous boom drowned out whatever Joe said. The floor shook so violently the sofa shifted underneath Cliff. Chunks of Sheetrock dropped from the ceiling, exposing the titanium it concealed. Dust and smaller pieces floated down like snow.

  “What the hell?”

  Another boom followed, seeming to rock the whole building. Framed artwork leaped off Cliff’s walls as he clung to the sofa cushions. Books fell off shelves. Shit tumbled out of his kitchen cabinets and littered the countertops and floor. Then the room plunged into darkness.

  Seconds later, dimmer reserve lighting he hadn’t even realized his room possessed flickered on as an alarm began to blare.

  Wonk! Wonk! Wonk!

  “Code red! Code red!” Chris Reordon shouted over the hallway intercom.

  Oh shit. Cliff had been around long enough to witness the drills the network periodically ran. And this one—a code red—meant the network was under attack.

  Chapter Two

  “Hey!”

  Emma jumped, then scowled at the woman who’d poked her head in the doorway. “Don’t do that! You scared the crap out of me.”

  Grinning unrepentantly, Cynthia strolled inside and sank down in the comfy chair on the other side of Emma’s desk. “Kinda jumpy tonight, aren’t you?”

  “Not until you shattered the quiet with your near shout.”

  She laughed. “My mom has complained all my life that I was born lacking an indoor voice.”

  Emma smiled as she leaned back in her chair, content to take a break. “You leaving early?” Both women worked the night shift at network headquarters, and dawn wasn’t far away.

  “Thinkin’ about it. But that’s not why I’m here.” Eyes brightening, she leaned forward. “Did you hear the news?”

  “What news?”

  “Sebastien Newcombe brought in a new vampire.”

  Emma’s eyebrows rose. “Really?”

  “Yes. A buttload of guards went down to sublevel 5 earlier to beef up security.”

  “Todd told you that?”

  “No. I had to take some paperwork up to Mr. Reordon’s office and rode back down on the elevator with some of them.” She shook her head. “Damn, they look good when they’re all decked out for war.”

  Emma had to agree. Both the network guards and the Immortal Guardians garbed themselves in all black. And there was just something about it—as well as the confidence and general badassness with which they conducted themselves—that made even the least attractive of them freaking hot.

  Which was likely what had first attracted Cynthia to Todd.

  Emma narrowed her eyes playfully. “You didn’t start dating Todd because he works on sublevel 5 and can give you all the juicy gossip, did you?”

  “No.” Her friend laughed. “Welllllll, maybe in the beginning. I was just so damn curious.”

  They all had been. No other network headquarters had housed vampires who presumably wished to work with the Immortal Guardians instead of against them.

  Hell, as far as she knew, no network headquarters had ever housed vampires who didn’t wish to work with the Immortal Guardians. This was new territory.

  “And you know I used to have a thing for bad boys,” Cynthia went on.

  Emma shook her head. “Until Todd charmed your socks off?”

  “Yes.” She smiled. “He’s such a sweetheart.”

  He really was. And the two of them were adorable together. Emma envied them. “So what do you know about him?”

  “About Todd?”

  “No!” Emma said on a laugh. “The new vampire.”

  “Oh right. Well, Todd said he seems really young.”

  Emma sobered. “He’s a kid?” No one knew how the virus would affect a vampire who wasn’t fully grown when infected, if he or she would age or remain forever trapped in the body of a child.

  “No. Todd just thought he seemed… I don’t know… naive, I guess? Like he hadn’t seen or experienced much before his transformation. But he’s definitely college age. Chloe was charged with digging up everything she could on his background.”

  Emma sent her a wry smile. “While you peered over her shoulder?”

  Cynthia laughed. “Only until she told me to bugger off. Apparently his name is Stuart. He’s from a large family that rarely had enough money to keep their bellies full, poor guy, and was going to college on a scholarship when a vampire transformed him. I tried to pump Todd for more information, but he and the other guards are trying to stay out of sight while Dr. Lipton and Dr. Machen show Stuart around. He said the kid was really nervous. But Cliff is helping out, trying to ease Stuart’s fears and make him feel more comfortable.”

  That didn’t surprise Emma. Everything Todd had told Cynthia about Cliff indicated he was a good guy. She hoped like hell the network would be able to cure him or at least prevent him from losing his sanity. Cliff was the only vampire of the three Seth had initially brought in who hadn’t yet had a psychotic break.

  He was also the only brother in the mix. And incredibly good-looking. Cynthia had badgered Todd into snapping a pic of the vampires a few months after they’d arrived, then shown it to Emma. Cliff had been laughing at something Vincent, the Latino vampire, had said. As had Joe, the blond vamp. The three men had looked so happy and carefree. Now Vince was gone and Joe was struggling.

  Emma spent far t
oo much time thinking about that photo. And Cliff.

  What must it be like for him to watch his friends succumb to insanity and see firsthand what awaited him? Did he still harbor hope that the network could spare him that fate? Did he still smile and laugh as he had in that photo?

  If so, it said much about his character, his strength, and his courage.

  “Hello? Earth to Emma.”

  She blinked. “What?”

  “I said I’m going to try to get Todd to snap a pic of Stuart.”

  Emma rolled her eyes. “You’re going to cost that poor man his job one of these days if you aren’t careful.”

  “No I won’t. Who’s going to know?”

  “Everyone in this building who has preternaturally sharp hearing.”

  “Oh. Damn it! That’s right. I keep forgetting.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Do you think the vampires heard me?”

  “You know whispering won’t help, right? Even four stories below, they can still hear everything that happens up here.”

  She grimaced. “Sheesh. I hope they can’t hear everything. I love Todd’s spicy veggie soup, but he insists on putting both broccoli and cabbage in it.”

  Amusement filled Emma. “Kablammo.”

  “Exactly. You know your man truly loves you when he doesn’t complain about his cooking making you super farty.”

  Emma laughed.

  A thunderous boom pierced Emma’s ears and seemed to vibrate through her at the same time the floor and walls shook.

  Starting violently, she grabbed her desk and held on when her chair started to roll away from it. Her pen and pencil holder tumbled over the side and hit the floor. Dust and pieces of Sheetrock fell from the ceiling.

  Cynthia yelped and held on to the arms of her chair.

  Silence fell as they stared at each other with wide eyes.

  “What the hell was that?” Cynthia whispered.

  Emma’s heart slammed against her ribs. “I think it was an explosion.” Her mind raced, seeking a possible explanation. Had the new vampire smuggled in a bomb or something?

  “An explosion?” The light color Cynthia’s Latina heritage lent her leached away. “What—?”

  Another explosion rocked the building, this one so violent—or perhaps so close—that Emma’s chair rolled out from under her, landing her on her ass. Her computer crashed to the floor on the other side of the desk. Her lamp, too. Paper rained down amid more Sheetrock.