This one was live—one of the half-sireds from the human unit. Collins had pointed him out as one of the assfaces he thought needed their own unit. I spared two extra rounds for him, considering the sacrifice worth it until three moving targets on rails sped across the room toward me.
I jumped out of the way and riddled the plastic vamps with paint, but my pride fell flat as I realized there was still a second floor to raid, and I was down to a dozen rounds at best. Less than ten, after taking out another wolf target behind the stairwell.
Blair met me at the mouth of the stairs. “Quit being wasteful. You only have eight shots left,” she grumbled as she whipped her red braid over her shoulder. I was mortified that she’d been counting my shots as well as her own, and also mildly alarmed. Eight shots? Really?
I followed Blair upstairs, letting her take out the first two targets. We still hadn’t caught a glimpse of our royal mark. I had a bad feeling we would both be out of ammo before that happened.
When we reached the second level, we were swallowed by darkness. I clicked on the tactical light attached to the pic rails of my rifle. Blair did the same, and then she pointed two fingers to her left before heading off in the other direction.
The noisy racket of moving rails made the place sound like a carnival, but a youthful giggle quickly turned it into a house of horrors. I thought of Scarlett, and my skin crawled. A deep, bellowing Count Dracula laugh sent a chill up my spine, but then I quickly dismissed the extra noises as a recording of some sort. I needed to focus.
Blair’s rifle fired from somewhere on the opposite side of the room. My blood vision flickered, and I made out a wooden box in the corner, likely housing a target. I inched closer, and sure enough, the thing flew open. A plastic Elvis bobbed forward as if he’d been spring-loaded. The hunk of burning love had seen better days. Paint splattered him head-to-toe. I had the foresight to be conservative and put a single round between his eyes.
The next target threw me off guard, hurling through the open doorway of a hidden room. Cain Davis, the half-sired from House Hanson, tackled me to the ground and tried to wrench my rifle out of my hands.
My blood vision flared, turning his pale eyes and even paler hair bright red. He looked like an angel of death, come to finish me off. I screamed in his face and managed to wedge a knee between him and the stock of my firearm. When that failed to offer enough leverage, I slammed my forehead into his chin.
He grunted and rocked back, reaching to touch his busted lip. The distraction opened a wider gap, so I planted a boot on his stomach and kicked hard, twisting the rifle away from him at the same time. I fired five rounds into his chest, leaving him in a graceless heap near Elvis.
I didn’t care if it was a part of the exercise, the skirmish had shaken me. And now I was down to one round, with no royal vamp in sight. I stood and bolted for the stairwell, wondering why I couldn’t hear Blair any longer.
I found her on the main level.
“Did you find him?” she asked, still scouring the room.
I frowned and shook my head.
“Fucking perfect.” She sighed and pushed past me, heading back toward the stairs. “I’ve already double-checked your area down here. Might as well cross-examine upstairs, too.” I’d had about enough of her patronizing trash talk.
“Watch out for your albino pet. He’s quite the handful,” I said, mirroring her snide face. “Maybe you should give him a little sip while you’re up there, you know, before he goes full-on ghost.”
Blair’s fangs popped out, and she hissed at me. So melodramatic. “Cain is not mine.”
The blood vision had worn off, so I had the pleasure of watching her pupils dilate until they ate away the green of her irises, and she looked like the wretched animal I knew her to be on the inside.
She slinked toward me, stalking like a jungle cat, forgetting the stairs and our mission. The end of her rifle lifted at the same time mine did. The difference was that mine was trained on the target trying to slip out the front door behind her.
Blair blinked, probably realizing my aim wasn’t that bad, and twisted to look over her shoulder. “Don’t!” she shouted, reaching for my rifle as I squeezed the trigger. “That’s the royal!”
The target ducked and rolled out through the doorway just as my last round hit the backside of the metal door. It left a heavy indentation, almost going all the way through. No paint in sight.
Blair’s eyes were still dilated when she turned around and emptied the rest of her marker rounds into my chest.
* * * * *
“Where the hell did you get a live round, Skye?” Sorano yelled in my face.
“I didn’t know it was in the magazine, ma’am,” I answered truthfully.
Blair snorted. She stood to my right, several yards away. It had taken Sorano and Kai both to pull her off of me. The front of my fatigues were covered in purple paint, and I could feel the bruise forming over my breastbone. Another one ached around my eye socket, and a third lit up my jaw.
“Who’s had access to your office?” Kai asked Sorano. The sergeant opened her mouth to answer, but Blair huffed out an affronted sigh.
“You don’t actually believe her?” She looked ready to claw my eyes out. “She could have killed that human. She could have killed me.” Her eyes widened and her fangs elongated again as if she had no control over them.
“Hanson!” Sergeant Sorano barked. “One more word, and you’ll be staying behind with her tonight.”
I winced at the results I’d been dreading ever since we were hauled from the building. The other four cadets had already headed for the barrack harem to celebrate. And of course, Blair wouldn’t be forced to stay on base. Her sire was making a special trip. I don’t know why I’d even bothered to hope that the sergeant might cut me some slack.
That I’d almost shot the royal mark with a live round was terrible, no doubt about it. But that hadn’t been my fault. And no one had even mentioned the dozen marker rounds Blair had unloaded on me. Were they blind? Was killing your partner really preferable to killing a villain—a villain who we’d likely have orders to kill if they weren’t so fancy and privileged?
Blair swallowed her rage and inhaled in a deep, calming breath. She stared placidly at the sergeant, her gaze going vacant and still as death. I don’t know what yogi taught her that zen shit, but I wanted to meet them and know where they’d been all my life. The ability to shut off emotions as if they were on tap sounded handy as hell.
Sorano didn’t find the trick quite so impressive. “You’re dismissed, Hanson. Head back to the barrack.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Blair answered evenly. She left without sparing me another glance, not even a sideways one as she walked past me. I waited until she was a good distance away before pleading my case.
“I swear, I didn’t know there was a live round in there. It was laid out on the table for me. When would I have found time to empty the entire magazine, load a live round, and then reload the thing? It could have just as easily been picked up by Blair.”
Sorano threw her hand up, silencing me. “Either way, cadet, you came in last for the first scenario, and then bombed the third one. Report to Alice as soon as you rise tonight.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said, biting back any future protest. That would only result in more grunt work being piled on top of the miserable evening I’d be spending by myself.
I wanted to know who had put a live round inside that magazine. Had the practice ammunition been loaded before being delivered with the filing cabinets? Or had someone tampered with it in Sorano’s office? I tried to remember who had set the ammunition out for us in between scenarios, but I drew a blank.
I didn’t even know if that magazine had been intended for me or for someone else. Was it a fluke? A random jerk move by some disgruntled employee between here and the factory? I wanted to know. But I’d been dismissed. The mystery wasn’t mine to solve.
I sulked back to the barrack, dragging my feet even more w
hen I remembered that my last harem visit before sunrise was with Ned.
Chapter Thirteen
I didn’t linger in the crypt on Saturday night. As the others dressed in their civilian clothes, grinning like cats who knew they’d soon be eating canary, I yanked on my fatigue pants and tank top. Then I stuffed my feet down in my boots, not bothering with the laces until I was outside the barrack.
Mandy and Collins greeted me. The tracking watches they’d been issued were missing, leaving faint indentations along their wrists. They were wearing outfits they’d packed, too. Collins fussed with a button on his blue dress shirt, while Mandy knotted and unknotted the corner of her favorite Metallica tee shirt. They were having a hard time getting reacquainted with clothing other than the stiff, black fatigues we’d been wearing for six weeks straight.
“We passed the course.” The strain in Collins’ sympathetic smile made me want to puke. Mandy elbowed him in the ribs.
“But we can stay and offer a hand in the library, if you want,” she said. Collins glared at her, but he nodded grimly.
“No, it’s fine. You guys earned a night off.” I sighed. “Besides, I could use the extra time for my research.”
“How’s that going, by the way?” Collins asked.
I thought of the lifeblood discovery and swallowed. “It’s been…informative.”
Mandy glanced over her shoulder to where the other wolf and human cadets were congregating around Kai’s golf cart and two more. The meaty vamp professor looked more like the version that I’d first met at Nigel’s party, wearing a satiny, blue suit. He intended to have a night off as well, I guessed.
Sergeant Carmichael sat in the driver’s seat of one of the carts beside his, her foot propped up on the dash. I was a little shocked at her civilian clothes—jeans and a flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up to her elbows. She spotted me through the living wall that Mandy and Collins had erected in their effort to hide me.
“Don’t you have somewhere to be, Skye?” Carmichael shouted.
“Yes, ma’am.” I nodded to my harem. “Be safe and have fun.” Then I stalked off toward the library across base.
The cave pool was quiet and so was the obstacle course. The overhead lights through the inactive sections of the base had been dimmed, likely to conserve electricity. The artificial twilight seemed to amplify the echo of my boots against the concrete paths cutting through the bat cave. I quickened my pace, but refrained from breaking into a jog.
I met Alice on the first level of the library. Even though the snooty vamp wasn’t my favorite person ever, I was somewhat disappointed to find her preparing to leave. Even as the base librarian, she’d worn the same fatigues as the rest of the non-harem staff. Tonight, she was in a ruffled, blue cocktail dress. It matched Kai’s suit, and I wondered if the two of them had color-coordinated for some party they planned to attend together.
“The harem will remain on base, so you may take your regularly scheduled meal breaks. You know how the new filing system works, so I expect to see some quality progress when I return. Through the Ns, at the very least.” It was the most she’d ever said to me at one time.
I blinked at her in surprise a moment before hastily answering. “Yes, ma’am.”
She nodded once and then left, clicking off the majority of the downstairs lights and leaving a fresh silence to settle around me. The shadowy quiet was less ominous inside the library, though it stirred the questions scratching at the back of my mind.
The labyrinthine stacks between these walls had become my sanctuary. Over the past few weeks, I’d looked forward to searching through them nearly as much as I looked forward to my harem visits. These tomes spilled the secrets I was sure a proper sire would have revealed to me over time. The nostalgia of the undead authors when they spoke of their makers left an aching hole in my heart. I’d been thrust into this world, this culture, against my will. And yet, I was pining for the milestones I’d never cross, the nurturing I’d never experience.
I reigned in my eagerness and made my way upstairs to the records. If I worked quickly, I might have a fair amount of time leftover to read more about the vampire-werewolf alliance formed in the sixteen hundreds. I wondered if any of Mandy’s studies were covering it. What pomp and circumstance had she missed out on through her own violent and unexpected introduction to this strange underworld?
My mind sharpened to a fine focus as I shuffled stacks of files into the new cabinets. The old cabinets had been emptied before being moved to some other building on base, and the mountain of boxed files crowded in the center of the room. I moved them like a busy ant, to and fro, until I’d broken a light sweat.
I stayed at it for four hours. When I finally paused to count the empty boxes I’d cleared, I decided to allow myself a small reading break before my visit to the harem. I’d already reached the first of the Ls, so it was looking hopeful that I’d have my work done in plenty of time.
I snuck downstairs and peeked around one of the stacks that boxed in Alice’s desk. It was empty. Coast cleared, I made for the corner containing the older, more fragile texts. Alice watched me carefully on the days I migrated to this section of the library.
The history book on American supernatural conflicts through the centuries was kept in a silver box screwed to the top of a low shelf. A sheet of museum glass revealed the treasure within. Two holes, large enough for a pair of hands to slip through, were carved into the bottom silver panel. I slipped on a pair of long, cotton gloves and held my breath as I reached inside to open the tome.
The werewolves had a longer history in America than the vampires. There was mention of other shapeshifters, too, but I focused on the wolfy bits, hoping to find some scrap of information that might prove useful to Mandy or the dynamic of our relationship.
I read for an hour, about uneasy truces and peculiar gift exchanges. Some of the packs seceded from the initial alliance and moved to more isolated areas where they could live away from the vampires, but some formed precarious relations with the vamps, going so far as to offer harem donors to certain households as a means of securing trust and partnership. At least there was no mention of them turning or offering up wolves as unwilling sex slaves, so there was that, I guessed.
When I’d exhausted my interest in supernatural-interspecies affairs, another silver-boxed book caught my attention. This one was untitled, and at the far end of the prestigious lineup. The last time I’d taken interest in the row of captive writings, Alice’s agitation had seemed to elevate the further I’d moved toward this one, but without her scowling gaze to warn me off, I could read in peace.
The book was old, but it had been well-cared for, and though it lacked a title, there was an intricate design tooled into the cover. The crowned skull with fangs was unnerving, even framed by lilies and apple tree boughs. It leered up at me from the dark, oily leather, daring me to have a look inside. Something tugged at my conscious as I opened the cover.
The pages within, while yellow with age, were coated with a clear substance that preserved their integrity. They felt stiff between my gloved fingers and hissed softly as I turned them. After bypassing a few blank pages, I found a family tree. The names were written in frilly calligraphy, and the haunting, dark imagery that bordered the page was drawn in black, red, and silver ink. The attention to detail was incredible. Glossy apples peeked through a canopy of leaves suspended over the list of name, and red blood oozed between the tree bark running down either side of the page where it dripped onto a pile of fanged skulls.
The royal family of House Lilith was not as vast as I imagined it to be, though it stretched back serval centuries. Vampires were immortal, and their household names were only carried on through blood scions. Once I shed my human ignorance, it was obvious why their small families grew so slowly.
There were over seven billion humans on this planet. I’d fed on four of them this week alone. But every human turned was one more mouth to feed, one more vampling to educate and tame. And one less
vein to tap. There was a balance that had to be maintained. I imagined that was why contracts like Roman’s were such a common practice within Blood Vice.
At the top of the family tree was the name Lilith. At first, I disregarded it, deciding it was merely there to announce the family name. But when I looked closer, I noted an additional line of fine print under the branch the artful letters rested atop.
Her Majesty the Queen of House Lilith, Mother of Eternal Blood. Laid to her forever rest, June 1st, 1785.
Like with everything new I learned lately, I was left with more questions than answers. What the hell was a forever rest? Was that some fancy way of saying she’d died?
The next branch contained three names: Adam, Gabriella, and Lili. They were familiar. I’d noticed them peppered throughout some of the older texts. Like Lilith, the fine print under Adam’s name read that he’d been laid to his forever rest on the same date. He was also labeled as a prince and the date of his “first rising” in the late fourteen hundreds was included. The black ink of Gabriella’s name was traced with a thick line of red. Her second line of information solved half the riddle of Lilith and Adam.
Her Highness the Princess of House Lilith, first risen December 3rd, 1506. Slain in battle, September 5th, 1781.
So maybe a forever rest wasn’t death? My mind regurgitated what it could of my high school history lessons. That would have been during the American Revolution. Had vampires fought for or against the British? Or had they played Switzerland and remained in the shadows?
I was suddenly wishing Kai’s law class included more history. Like I needed something else to study. I mentally added the questions to my running list of things to research in my scarce free time and moved on. There were still a lot of pages to go, so maybe I was just getting ahead of myself.
Blood in the Water (Blood Vice Book 3) Page 11