by Molly Harper
“Hands behind your back, if you please,” he said, holding the gun on me. He tossed me a pair of zip-tie cuffs that burned the moment they touched my skin.
“Put them on,” he said pleasantly. “No dawdling. I don’t want to have to threaten to shoot you in the head twice in one night.”
“I’m going to kill you,” I told him, hissing as the silver-laced plastic slipped over my wrists. “And it’s going to hurt.”
He smiled at me like a doting father. The expression made my stomach turn. “Oh, I don’t see why we have to get off on the wrong foot. You are my crowning achievement, Miss Keene. Imagine vampires not having to wait for three days to rise. Imagine simplifying the transaction of blood so they don’t have to give so much of themselves to make a childe. Imagine how grateful they will be. How they will reward me.” He jammed the gun into my back, forcing me to walk faster.
“So you did this because you want to make vampire friends?”
“No, I did this because I’m the only man who can.” Again with the gun jabbing. The gun jabbing was seriously getting on my nerves. “I was the only one with the vision to advance thousands of years of evolution.”
“How did you find me?” I asked as we reached the little gravel road near the cow pasture. “No one outside the Council is supposed to know where I am.”
“I helped him there.”
I turned and saw a woman in a poncho, her frizzy hair standing around her head like a halo.
I knew only one person who thought a poncho was an OK fashion statement.
Tina.
15
There will be times when you think you’ve hit rock bottom in terms of vampire parenting. Remember, it can always get worse.
—The Accidental Sire: How to Raise an Unplanned Vampire
“You’re supposed to be dead,” I told her.
“Well, I’m happy that you’re wrong,” Tina chirped. “It’s really good to see you, Meagan. I feel so lost when one of my birds is out of the nest.”
“Whose body was in your car?”
“Ophelia’s friend Clara. It’s so convenient, vampires crumbling into ash when they’re burned. It’s so messy that the authorities can’t tell whether they’re dealing with human remains or not. You splash a little blood around the scene of a wreck, and they don’t bother checking too close.”
She talked about it like she was giving me instructions on how to warm up a casserole. So Tina was batshit crazy, then. Good to know.
Tina opened the back door of the SUV they’d parked in the cow pasture. Dr. Fortescue jabbed me with the gun again. At this point, I was counting the jabs so I would know how many times to kick him in the face later. While Fortescue held the gun on me, Tina looped another plastic-silver cuff around a metal hook, securing me to the headrest of the front seat. I slid into the back seat, feeling the bulk of the KidPhone against my spine. Dr. Fortescue hadn’t thought to pat me down, thank goodness.
Maybe the KidPhone had some sort of emergency locator beacon?
“Yes, Ms. Messinger has become a very useful companion in my scientific endeavors. My special cocktail wouldn’t transform a vampire on its own. It has to be filtered through a sire’s bite, changing the newly made vampire from the moment of transformation but having no real effect on the sire. The magic of vampirism, it’s a mystery,” he said, with a manic gleam in his eyes. “I needed a vampire who would agree to be dosed, for a fee, and would have no moral quandaries about siring a child he had no intention of mentoring.
“That’s where Ms. Messinger came in, providing a list of Ms. Lambert’s associates. Given Ms. Lambert’s own moral flexibility, we were sure we could find someone among her acquaintances who would serve the purpose. We didn’t expect so many of them to be so mercenary, but each of them assisted our agenda in his or her own way. And then, of course, Ms. Messinger used her admin privileges on the university’s intranet to sort through your friends’ messages and locate you. Her support has expedited the process considerably.”
I cast a serious side-eye at Tina, who was climbing into the front seat. I should have known her earnestness was a cover for serious evil.
Fortescue shrugged out of his stolen tactical gear and tossed it onto the seat next to me. He’d been wearing a nice shirt and tie under all that Kevlar. I used my high-resolution night vision to scan the discarded jacket for anything I could use to free myself. Fortescue climbed into the driver’s seat and started the car. Tina played with the radio stations until she found contemporary adult and began humming along to a Nickelback song.
Evil.
“You will not inject me with drugs, conk me over the head, or otherwise cause me to lose consciousness,” I told Dr. Fortescue.
“Of course not,” he said, smiling at me. “Why would I hurt my prize specimen?”
Why couldn’t I be targeted by scientists who were less crazy? And now that my adrenaline was starting to fade and I was still, I felt the burning against my wrists much more acutely.
“What is this crap?” I hissed as the car lurched forward.
“A special polymer I developed. It’s laced with silver filaments. Terribly expensive to make but, as you can see, very effective. Just one of the many developments I’ve been trying to share with the Council. But they refuse to recognize the contributions I could make. The foolish gatekeepers refuse to put me into contact with the right representatives. They’ll see. They’re all going to see. I’m finally going to get the recognition I deserve.”
Did that mean he wasn’t aware that I was the gatekeeper who kept him out of contact with Jane? Was that a good thing or a bad thing? Should I hold on to that piece of information, just in case I needed to push him over the edge and make him put me out of my misery later?
I leaned my head against my arms. This whole situation sucked beyond the telling of it. Every bump and jolt from the road brought me into contact with the cuffs. It was agony, boiling up my arms, prickling up my neck. But I didn’t want him to know exactly how sensitive I was to silver.
I bit down on my lips and didn’t let any noise escape, even as the burns spread up to my shoulders. What if it burned through my wrists? What if I lost my hands? I tried to think of something else, anything to distract me from the pain lancing up my arms. Thinking about losing my hands probably wasn’t the best idea, then. OK. I could go to my happy place. Unfortunately, my happy place had turned into a water tower, watching a silly movie with Ben. Ben. I loved Ben.
Was he OK? Were Gabriel and Georgie safe? Dick and Jane? What if Dr. Fortescue had lured them into some sort of trap at the motel? What if that was why she didn’t pick up her phone? If I died, would I be with my parents, or did vampires get a ticket straight to hell?
No. Ben was fine, I told myself. He would be fine. He had people who loved him, who would get him through losing me. Jane, Gabriel, all of their little family. They were all OK. My thoughts turned to each of their faces, of the last time we were all together, how we laughed. I would miss them all so much.
The car slowed to a stop, and I popped up my head. I’d been concentrating on Ben so hard that I really hadn’t felt the pain in my arms. A break that was now over, because there was the pain again.
Ow.
Dr. Fortescue parked in front of a huge abandoned warehouse. Because where else would a supervillain in the backwoods establish his headquarters? Tina opened my door and cut my cuffs loose from the headrest. I slid out of the car, careful to keep my jacket tucked over the phone in my jeans.
While the lights were working, the warehouse was cold and empty and smelled like a basement. The windows just below the roofline had been spray-painted over. Scientific equipment occupied the one clean corner of the building. Chemistry setups bubbled, and machinery hummed. It felt . . . forced, like something a kid might expect a scientist’s lair to look like. Was Fortescue putting on a show for me? To impress me?
“I need to prepare,” Dr. Fortescue told Tina as he slid into a pristine lab coat. He handed her his gun. “The auction begins in two hours. Shoot her if you have to but nowhere vital and nowhere near the face. It’s better to leave her pretty.”
He nodded to her and strode to the back of the warehouse to a door marked “Office.” Why did I get the feeling that he was really going in there to rock out to Dr. Feelgood to pump himself up?
I twisted my wrists until I could fit my hands through the slats in the chair. I could feel the outline of the phone through my jeans. And it was not budging.
“Auction?” I asked Tina. “Is he going to sell me?”
“No, of course not,” Tina assured me. “He wants proof that he can produce the kind of results he’s promising. You are that proof. He needs more funding, Meagan, to do his work. And if the Council isn’t going to give it to him, he has to find it somewhere.”
“But the Council did give it to him, in a way, didn’t they?” I asked her, trying not to move my arms too much as I nudged the phone up to the waistline of my jeans. “The money you embezzled, you handed it over to him, right?”
“I was his first investor,” she said, preening. “They say behind every great man is a woman with a plan. And I am that woman, Meagan. Everything Allan has he has because of me. Everything you are you are because of me.”
I lifted a brow. Was she monologuing now? Were henchmen allowed to do that? I should have watched more James Bond movies to prepare for this situation.
Wait, she was still talking.
“I’m the one who hired some nimrods willing to play Ultimate Frisbee on a college campus with a forty-five-pound weight every night for two weeks until you came out of the building. And paid another to stand by, ready to turn you.”
“That does sound like something Ophelia’s friends would do,” I admitted. “But why me? What did I do to you?”
“We needed someone without a family, no connections, someone without loved ones to cause problems if the turning process went wrong.”
Well, that hurt more than I would have expected it to.
I felt the bottom edge of the phone sliding out of my jeans. Now I just had to get it into my hand without making any noise.
“Of course, we didn’t expect the Council to swoop in and claim the prize. Jane Jameson-Nightengale is a little more committed to being a ‘responsible’ Council rep than I expected.”
“So why are you here now? Cashing in on your investment?”
Tina pouted, throwing a petulant look toward the office. “Allan’s gone rogue. He’s lost focus. Instead of creating more supervamps like yourself, he kept trying to tweak the formula for his drug/gene therapy, like a dog worrying a bone. He buried himself in his work, wouldn’t talk to me or return my calls. I mean, I funded that man’s research, the process to turn you, and he just ghosted me? I had to do whatever it took to get his attention back. I set fire to his lab, all of his files, his backup drives. I even cleared his cloud, thinking that if he lost his research, all of the test carriers I’d gleaned from Ophelia’s list, he’d have to return my calls. And I was right! I was, after all, the only one who could lead him to you, and then, when he found out that you’d made another supervamp, well, he just couldn’t get enough of me.”
She sighed. “Allan’s a misunderstood genius. He’s going to change the world. And if I help him, he’s going to name the drug after me. And then, when the drug/gene therapy is perfect, we’re going to be turned, and we’ll be together forever.”
Was there a level beyond batshit crazy? Because Tina just leveled up.
I flicked my hand, popping the phone loose from my jeans. It fell against the inside of my shirt, which kept it from clattering onto the metal chair.
“So you did all this—derailed my life, got Ben killed, crushed my freaking rib cage—for some guy?” I asked. “I don’t like to judge, but wow. That reeks of desperate.”
“No,” she scoffed. “I mean, it wasn’t just him, it was his research. Do you know what it’s like to want to be a vampire so badly and not be able to find a willing sire?”
“No, no, I don’t.” I shook my head, hoping it disguised the movement of dropping my KidPhone into my hand. I stroked my thumb over the one button, the Jane button. And then I searched for send. I could only hope that Jane could hear Tina’s blather. Or at least locate me with that triangulating thing they used on CSI.
“I wanted to be turned so badly it wasn’t fair. I’d spent my whole life studying vampires, trying to help humans understand what they were really like, the miraculous creatures you are. I wanted that for myself, to be special, eternal, beautiful. And I kept trying to find one who would turn me, but they all said I was ‘too eager,’ ‘too needy.’ Even the bottom-feeders refused.”
“That is . . . super-depressing, Tina,” I said, trying not to add an obvious amount of emphasis on her name. “If I’d known, back at the dorm, how badly you wanted to be turned, I could have maybe talked to Ophelia, helped her see how important this was to you. Really, Tina, maybe I could talk to Jane now for you. You know me. You don’t want to do this to one of your ducklings. You don’t have to help Dr. Fortescue.”
Please, Jane, please be listening. Please pick up on these brick-sized clues I’m dropping for you. I will never complain about the KidPhone again.
Tina waved the gun carelessly as she threw up her arms. “I don’t want to be a regular vampire anymore. I want to be special, like you. And Allan’s research will make it so much easier for people like me to be turned. No exchange of blood, no commitment, just a quick bite, and twenty-four hours later, you pop up better than ever.”
It hit me that after spending her pathetic life studying vampires, Tina didn’t understand them at all. She still saw them as some sort of supernatural nocturnal unicorns. She didn’t realize how much help newly risen vampires really needed. She didn’t realize how social some vampires were. She’d twisted what she’d learned about us into her own narrative, suited to her weird little fantasies about dark, mysterious creatures of the night.
When I got out of this, I was going to write a very sternly worded letter to my college about its screening process for people who work with student housing.
“Did Dr. Hudson have anything to do with this?” I asked.
Tina frowned. “Who?”
“The chief science officer for the Council office.”
“The pushy little vampire in the plaid shirt?”
I nodded. “Kind of derpy?”
“Yes, we had to do something about him. He kept getting in our way,” she said, wrinkling her nose in distaste. “Every time we would approach you, we’d find him hiding out near Jane’s house, keeping those vampire security guards all stirred up, trying to get to you two. Allan took care of him, left him in a little pile of ash in some B and B in Cooter Holler.”
I tried to feel bad about Dr. Hudson dying, but honestly, the man had left me to die in a tobacco field. So . . .
“You’re not spilling all of our secrets, are you, Tina?” Dr. Fortescue asked, shooting his cuffs as he walked out of the office. His chubby cheeks were red and flushed, his dark eyes were bright and gleeful, and his dark hair had been smoothed back. So either he’d been in there drinking, or he had been in there rocking out to old-school Mötley Crüe. I didn’t smell any whiskey, so I was betting on hair metal.
“Just a little girl talk,” Tina chirped. “I’ve missed my little chats with Meggie. She’s the same sweet girl she was when she lived in the dorm.”
“Dr. Fortescue,” I said loudly, hoping that Jane was listening. “Or should I call you Allan? I never had
you in classes at UK, so I’m not sure what to call you.”
“Dr. Fortescue is fine. I didn’t spend years getting two PhDs to be called Allan by an undergrad.”
“Fine.” I nodded.
Prick.
“You are such a beautiful specimen,” he breathed, leaning close, tracing his fingers over the curve of my cheek. I twisted my arm, putting stress on the plastic cuff even as it burned my skin. “The future of vampirism, wrapped in a perfect package. I had no idea how lovely you would be when Tina suggested you.”
He was a prick and a close talker. Ew.
“I wanted a male, of course, so we might test aggression levels. But I see now what a missed opportunity that would be. My only regret is that I lost the chance to observe you in your first weeks. But we’ll make up for lost time together.”
I squirmed away from his touch, because it felt like my spine was about to crawl out of my throat. The pain of the silver burns somehow gave me the anger I needed to twist my arm further. I felt the plastic cuff give just the tiniest bit, a tear in the oh-so-special polymer that would help rip it open. Clearly, Dr. Fortescue had not accounted for hybrid-vampire superstrength when he created his devil cuffs.
To cover the noise, I growled, “Take your hands off me, or I will bite them off.”
He grinned at me, those scary Chiclet teeth even brighter in the cheesy fluorescent light. “Well, you’re going to have to bite me eventually. You’re going to turn me.” He glanced at Tina. “My companion has a notion to wait until I perfect the process. But I just can’t wait! And there’s something rather poetic about being turned by my first creation. Symmetry, Miss Keene. I enjoy symmetry.”
“I won’t do it.”
“I won’t give you a choice.”
He shoved his arm toward my mouth. I tucked my lips over my teeth. He pinched my nose shut. I yanked my arm as I struggled. The plastic gave way just a bit more. I didn’t need to breathe, so it wasn’t as if he could smother me.
“Imagine the contributions I could make to your kind if I had unlimited time,” he insisted. He took the gun from Tina. “Why are you being so selfish?”