Honorable Rogue

by Linda J. Parisi

  The car sped up as Tori considered. “The night I was attacked. Maybe Casperian was there?”

  Sam shook her head. “Then Hunter would’ve known.”

  “Maybe he did and didn’t want to say. After all, he hasn’t been happy about any of this.”

  Sam shrugged. She turned in her seat. “Perhaps.”

  Tori continued thinking. “You know, we did have a shouting match in my townhouse parking lot too. Casperian might not know Hunter cares for me, but he certainly knows Hunter was trying to protect me.”

  Sam nodded without answering. Finally, she asked, “Will you be able to help him?”

  Instead of answering Sam right away, she looked over at Jonas. “You just became my number one med tech.”

  He nodded. “Glad to be of service.”

  Sam turned toward her again. “You sound worried,” she told Tori, her gaze still filled with a mixture of serenity and fear. “Don’t be.”

  How? “You’re all a medical nightmare,” Tori confessed. She understood human biology, not vampire biology. Half the time she guessed. The other half, clueless.

  Sam laughed softly. “I have to admit I’ve never been called a medical nightmare before.” She pulled up in front of the gates. “Whatever happens, Hunter came to terms with his fate a long time ago.”

  Determination filled Tori. Just because she didn’t understand didn’t mean she didn’t know how to investigate or figure things out. She hadn’t lost her brains. Yet. “Well, I haven’t.”

  “Good because I have faith in you,” Sam replied.

  “Faith?” she asked as the gates opened. “That’s just totally awesome,” she added, snark filling the words. Stop, she told herself, trying to rein in her emotions. “You know I’ll do everything in my power to fix Hunter. But Vanessa was right, I’m Hunter’s weakest link. She saw that. So has Casperian.”

  Sam shook her head. “You’re also his greatest strength.”

  Damn it! “Not if I can’t heal him.”

  “Trust yourself, Tori. Trust yourself.”

  She didn’t answer. A group of soldiers from the compound took Hunter out of the car almost before the vehicle came to a full stop. They had him on a medical bed and up the steps by the time she got out of the car.

  Stacy ran out to meet her. “What happened?”

  “Casperian.” Stacy caught her gaze, confused. “Long story.” Tori pulled the dart out of her pocket. “I need to know what’s on this dart, Stace. You’re the forensic chemist. Go for it.”

  Stacy’s fingers closed gently around the dart in her hand. “Will do.”

  They both turned to go into the house, when Chaz ran up to them, his face filled with dread. “They’re giving him blood.”

  “What?”

  A flood of anger filled her veins. “I tried to stop them,” he continued. “So did Mercy.”

  Tori flew toward the elevator. She ran inside, feet barely touching floor, pacing the small space, then jumping out before the doors even opened fully. She ran into the lab, skidding to a halt next to the hospital bed. “No! Stop!”

  A vampire she’d never met looked up. His brows drew together as if to ask what was an insignificant human doing telling him what to do? “He needs blood.”

  “NO!”

  “Blood helps us heal,” the vampire insisted with the tone of an impatient parent.

  “You don’t understand. We don’t know what he’s been given. I believe it’s Nirvana, and we don’t know exactly what that is or how it works. You have to stop.”

  The vampire ignored her and checked the IV line.

  Sam marched in, gaze blazing. “Hold!”

  She stormed up to Hunter and ripped the IV out of his arm, where it dripped on the floor. A whole lot of gazes followed those drops. Sam lifted her chin and raised a brow. Tori couldn’t hear what she was telling them, but she hoped they’d listen to reason.

  “But we’ve always given blood to the sick and wounded,” the vampire who’d been giving Hunter the blood protested.

  Sam answered so she could hear. “Do you challenge my word?”

  The vampire thought about it. She had to give him credit for that. But Tori also didn’t want to be responsible for vampire fighting vampire. “Can we please take this down a notch? We all want what’s best for Hunter.”

  “Do we?” the vampire shot back.

  “Look. I don’t have time right now to argue. And I don’t have time to go into detail. You’re all under attack by a vampire named Casperian. This vampire is Hunter’s sworn enemy. He wants to kill me because he’s afraid I can help you.”

  “Help us how?” the vampire with the attitude shot back.

  “I believe,” Sam began, “Casperian is using some kind of drug to create rogue vampires.”

  The ensuing silence deafened.

  “Hunter thought so too,” Tori added.

  Charles stepped up to agree. “I would be here if I thought otherwise. My duty is to destroy rogues. So far we’ve tracked two more vampires we believe are going rogue as we speak.”

  “Hunter killed the one who tried to attack me. Now why would a rogue attack me? I mean, c’mon. What am I?” she asked, the sarcasm in her tone building. “Just a human, no?”

  Sam flashed Tori a quick look.

  “Instead, your leader brought me here when he could have simply left me to die. Because I’m special. Because I have a skill you all need. I’m a doctor. A pathologist. I save lives.” She paused, drawing in a deep breath. “I’m trying to save all of yours. So is Stacy.”

  Tori wasn’t privy to the rest of the conversation. As it ended, Chaz walked up to her, compassion in his gaze. “They may be stubborn, but they’re not stupid. Give them a chance.”

  Sam focused on the group. Obviously one last message. Then they all bowed and melted away, except the one with the attitude. He stormed off.

  “That was fun,” Sam groused.

  “I’m not sure I like your definition,” Tori muttered in agreement.

  Mercy stayed. She looked embarrassed. No, not quite. And Tori learned another vampire lesson. Although vampires wanted a society, deep inside they were loners and felt little or no responsibility for other’s actions. Another piece to the Hunter puzzle.

  Still, Mercy tried to apologize. And Tori wondered. Could they change?

  “You must forgive them,” Mercy began. “They’re kind of set in their beliefs. Comes from being starved and hunted over the centuries.”

  “I know,” she sighed, torn from being hurt and hurting for them.

  Sam reached out. “I’m sorry.”

  “Not your fault,” Tori replied.

  Hunter moaned, and all thought fled as she rushed to his side. His eyes popped open. He clutched his midsection. “I don’t feel very well.”

  “Crazy fool. The dart was meant for me. What were you thinking?” she admonished.

  His head lolled. He swallowed hard and tried to smile. “Reflex.”

  There was the Hunter she needed to see. She bent down and caught a whiff of the same smell she’d nearly gagged on from the rogue Mercy had eventually destroyed. Her heart sank, and her stomach hollowed. But she pasted a smile on her face. “Right.”

  “Never wanted…you involved.”

  She lifted up and ran a gentle finger down his cheek. His mouth quirked. “Stuff happens.”

  He moaned again, and Tori reared back, fear flooding her insides. “I need to get to work.”

  “If I didn’t know better,” Stacy added, bringing over a large white bucket, “I’d say he wants to throw up.”

  “Can that be?” Sam stared, aghast.

  Tori thought for a long moment. “Yeah. It can.” Sam motioned for her to go on. “Think about it. You’re not alive. At least not as I understand it. But you’re still a carbon-based organism. And this means you still have to follow the laws of nature.”

  Stacy nodded. “Makes sense.”

  “All right. Instead of trying to figure out what you are or you aren�
��t, let’s trying stepping outside the box a moment. Let’s think of you as a different form of life.”

  Confused, Sam replied, “All right. But to what end?”

  With an exasperated frown Tori answered, “Because I don’t want to think of Hunter or you as, well, a car. But I’m going to have to.”

  Bewildered, Sam exclaimed, “A car?”

  Beside her, Stacy murmured, “Of course.”

  “Yeah. I know. It sounds weird. But just consider this. How does a car run? It uses fuel, which it combusts with air which gives off energy to make the wheels turn. Think of the body. It uses fuel, which it combusts with air which gives off energy to make the limbs move. Are you getting the picture now?”

  “I think so,” Sam replied slowly.

  Stacy bounced with excitement. “I’ll be damned. Why didn’t I think of that?”

  Tori shot her a quick grin. “Because you were too close to the problem. So was I.”

  Sam still looked bewildered, so Tori explained. “The only thing I’ve seen so far making you different from being human is you’ve bypassed the intake of fuel. By drinking oxygen-rich blood, you don’t need to eat. It’s superfluous. You don’t need a liver or kidneys or a functioning stomach, although how you process dead cells is beyond me.”

  Stacy laughed softly. “They only have the phagocytes they take in. I’ve been wondering that myself.”

  “All right, the analogy isn’t perfect,” she sighed. “But your brain still functions. Your heart still functions. Your lungs.”

  Sam caught her gaze. She was listening intently now.

  “You’re sensitive to pain, so your nervous system still functions. I think one of the keys to the process is your cells still function as if they were human.”

  “Process?” Sam asked, a bit insulted, by her tone, but mostly intrigued.

  Tori grinned. “I’m having trouble categorizing your state of—well, I can’t call you alive, but I can’t call you dead either. So perhaps undead is correct after all.”

  “Thanks,” she replied, a bit miffed.

  “I wasn’t trying to insult you. Just stating the facts as I see them.”

  Facts? Right now, Tori surmised, along with a deep hunger gnawing at his guts, Hunter wanted to get violently ill. “The process by which you stay ‘undead’ is the key. Hunter’s need to expel blood is because his body is rejecting it.”

  “Rejecting blood?” Sam cried. “Impossible,” she continued, appalled by Tori’s reasoning.

  “That would never happen. Ever.”

  Tori raised a single brow to hammer home her point. “You can’t deny logic, Sam. Something is happening to the blood he’s taken in, rendering it useless to his body—unable to carry oxygen. So his body is trying to get rid of it.” She nodded, her mind whirling but her logic crystal clear. “And you just proved my point.”

  “How?”

  “By protesting loud enough to tell me none of you would ever waste a drop.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Hunter awoke to the music of soft snores. Human snores. For a moment he was a child again, caught in that sweet resting place between waking and dreaming. He dared not move, for this would bring pain and the pain would bring back reality. So, he stayed still and concentrated on the beauty of the sound.

  Of course, reality intruded—but slowly. Hunter knew he was in pain when he shouldn’t have been, knew he’d been sleeping when he shouldn’t have been, and wasn’t quite sure how he’d ended up in this bed. A terrible hunger clutched at his insides. He acknowledged it, then dismissed it. He’d been hungry before.

  Searching his mind, Hunter knew something was wrong. He shouldn’t be in this kind of state. Vampires, with fresh blood and a vampiric sleep, were able to heal themselves. So being sick didn’t make sense.

  With effort, he went over the events of Tori’s abduction. Absolute terror filled his mind again once he remembered. Casperian. Losing his mind thinking Tori had been his prisoner and that she’d been in danger. God, even now the pictures in his mind made him shudder. Because Casperian would torture her with every demeaning act the bastard could think of before he decided to kill her.

  Hunter came to full awareness in stages. He was in the lab, and Tori was curled up rather uncomfortably in a chair beside his bed. And he was in this bed because…?

  Drugged. The pinprick in his arm. The fire ants under his skin. His whole body shook as they returned and marched up and down. He stared at his skin, watching it ripple. What was wrong with him?

  Pain clawed at his belly. Liquid fire streaked through his veins. Hunter clenched his fists, fighting the overwhelming urge to double over in abject misery.

  The room began to spin. He closed his eyes and swallowed hard to get it to stop.

  Hunter was a gladiator. He’d been knifed, speared, cut hundreds of times. As a vampire, he’d known pain thousands of times worse than any he’d experienced in his human life. The only times in his life when he’d been afraid had been when he’d faced the unknown, the way he did right now.

  The ants marched again and were eventually replaced by fire. The burn sizzled its way to his fingertips, and he stared at them. The sting disappeared, only to be replaced by tiny shards of ice. Fire and ice. Followed by another sear of pain, the likes of which he’d never felt before.

  Hunter doubled over. Something was terribly wrong. Saliva filled his mouth. Suddenly he heard Tori jump up. She pulled him over the edge of the bed. A bucket rested on the floor.

  He made it just in time.

  Blood, dark and acrid, surged out of his incisors. He watched it stain the white plastic in total amazement. He shuddered violently, the next explosion more forceful than the first. Sweat shimmered on his brow. The stench made his stomach turn over. A stench he knew well.

  Tori picked up a washcloth, wet it with cold water, and wiped his forehead. He gasped for breath as he fell back into the bed, his cheek resting against the cool fabric of a pillow, his gaze filling with helpless confusion.

  This had never happened before. Ever.

  She helped him shift his weight until he was sitting up against the back of the bed to keep himself upright. His lips were slightly parted, the only sign of his distress being the extension of his incisors and his chest heaving for air. But the smell. Sour and coppery. Old and dead. He watched her face fall. Tori knew that smell. He knew it too. It was the smell of dead blood. Rogue blood.

  “I’m here, Hunter. So is Sam.” She held a cup of cool water to his lips to rinse the taste out of his mouth. “You’ve been asleep for nearly two days and nights.”

  Why? he wondered, dismissing the passage of time. He deserved no quarter, no forgiveness. Certainly not any help or kindness. “I don’t feel too well.”

  Although she frowned, she also tried to shrug off his statement. “Hey, this is good news.”

  Really? His brain was swimming. The marching became relentless. “Ants.”

  “Ants?” she echoed. He could hear a thread of excitement in Tori’s voice. “Tell me more, Hunter. As much as you can.”

  “Fire. Crawling. Inside my veins.”

  “Where?” she demanded.

  “All over. But mostly in my arms, legs, and fingers.”

  “Do you feel pain?”

  Somewhere in the recesses of his disoriented mind, Hunter heard the question come from another voice—the voice of a priest, the same priest who tied him to a cross and left him to die with the dawning of the sun.

  A searing shaft of agony gutted his insides. He clutched his midsection. He knew that for his past actions he would have to pay, and he accepted his fate. “Yes.”

  “Good. This is a good beginning. Can you tell me anything else?”

  “My head. I feel dizzy.”

  “Keep going, Hunter,” she urged. “Keep going.”

  “I feel…drained. Weak.”

  A telling silence followed.

  “Hunter?”

  Again his body turned into this massive roll of li
quid. Kind of like a waterbed. He had no substance but didn’t think he was leaking anywhere. Yet.

  “Listen to me, Hunter. This is good. Very good. Thank you.”

  He closed his eyes. The sleep. The sleep cured. Maybe he just needed more. “That’s it,” she told him. “Go ahead. Relax.”

  Time became irrelevant. Then the fire turned to ice and the ice to ants. And cycled over and over again.

  He opened his eyes to the most incredible beauty, knowing he didn’t deserve a moment of gazing upon such treasure. But it was the concern on her face and the slither of fear for him which warmed his heart the most.

  He swallowed to try to wet his throat, then asked, “Why are you here?”

  “I’m not sure what you’re asking,” she replied.

  “Why do you stand by my side?”

  She looked thrown for a moment. “I told myself it was because I was a doctor and you were my patient.”

  “And now?”

  “And now I know I was lying to myself. I’m afraid I didn’t have much of a choice. I couldn’t help but listen. You were having a nightmare and talking in your sleep. Casperian hurt you so badly, and then you hurt him. Don’t you think it’s time to stop the feud?”

  Feud? What a mild way of putting the bitterness churning in his guts. “You didn’t answer my question.”

  “Actually, I did.” Hunter frowned, not understanding. “I care about you, Hunter. As flawed as you are, and as hard as you’ve had to become to survive. I care about you. As much as you’ve tried to push me away, hurt me so I hurt you, I keep coming back. Because underneath the name, underneath the leader, under all the centuries of pain and mistrust and abuse, there’s an untainted soul inside you, the soul of a man who was human once. There’s still the little boy huddled in his mother’s arms.”

  He flicked a sidelong glance at her in utter disbelief. “Nearly two thousand years,” she continued, shaking her head at him. “How long do you think you can go on before your past finally catches up with you?”

  He snorted softly. “It already has.”

  She shook her head. “Not even close. Because you missed the point again. You’ve never had the chance to live, and you never will. Look, I wouldn’t have stayed around, I wouldn’t be here now unless I saw more than what you think is inside you. Don’t you think it’s time to give yourself a chance?”