Vampire Undone

by Shannon Curtis

  Morton hesitated, then put the folder down next to her on the bed as he gave her his full attention. “Why yes, as a matter of fact,” he said silkily.

  She mentally calculated the time frame. “Great-grandson? Great-great-grandson?”

  He shook his head. “No, I’m the real deal,” he told her, and smiled. She flinched when his incisors lengthened.

  “You’re a vampire?” she whispered, aghast.

  He nodded. “I know, quite ironic, isn’t it? Nasty accident at the lab. I spent so much time researching how to kill a vampire, now I spend my time researching how to preserve one. You know, we’re not nearly as invulnerable as people think.”

  He frowned at her as he picked up the folder and placed it in the tray at the end of the bed. “How do you know of me?”

  “Uh, we have a mutual friend,” she muttered. “Grace Perkins.”

  “Ah, Grace. She was my first. You always remember your first, don’t you?” he admitted, touching his tongue to his fang. He grimaced. “Admittedly, I was quite rough with her. I’ve since learned a little finesse.”

  His watch beeped, distracting him. “Well, time to check on our test subject.”

  A dark suspicion bloomed in her mind. Vivianne was a vampire, bitten by a lycan. Based on Morton’s past history, had he forced a werewolf bite on a vampire? Maybe there was someone out there willing to be Morton’s lab rat. She wasn’t one of them.

  “Are they a volunteer?” she asked.

  Morton turned in surprise at the door. “What?”

  “Your test subject. Did they volunteer?”

  He gave her a patient look. “We like to replicate scenarios. In usual circumstances so many factors need to be considered—adrenaline, cortisol, heart rate and so on. We try to make it as realistic as possible.” He smiled. “Now, you need your rest. I’ll check in later.”

  She remembered the teen back at Mount Solitude, his injuries... “What about the werewolf?” she asked.

  Morton smiled. “Oh, we’ll keep him a little longer. He’s a fine specimen for further experiments.”

  The door closed and Natalie lay there for a moment. The room was silent except for the beeping of the machines monitoring her. She trembled. The room was cool, but it was the loneliness that ate at her, that settled into her bones like an arthritic ache. A tear rolled down her cheek. She’d thought Lucien loved her. He’d told her he loved her. Was it delirium that had spurred those words? He’d let her go so easily.

  To help his sister.

  She glanced around the sterile room. He’d given her up for this. Had their whole time together been a sham? One long con to manipulate her into this very spot? Another tear tracked down her cheek. Hours ago she’d been so happy, she’d felt...loved. Cherished. Protected. For the first time in decades, she’d had a real friend. Someone she’d confided in, someone she’d shared intimate secrets with, she’d shared her body with, and to whom she’d given her heart.

  She stared at the ceiling, trying to pull back the tears. As a kid, she’d been lonely. She was that sick kid who’d had to stay in bed while the other kids had played in the street. Then she’d met a dark angel in a hospital ward and suddenly wasn’t so lonely anymore. After her parents died, she’d been lonely again. She knew she was different...what had Morton called her? A deviant. Her lip curled. She’d felt so alone, and that dark angel had returned and had cracked her reserve, pierced the shield she’d hidden behind.

  A soft sob escaped her lips and she clamped her mouth shut. Losing Lucien, or the ideal of Lucien, was as bad, if not worse, than when she’d lost her family.

  She was so sick of being vulnerable to vamps, of being hurt by them, by Lucien. She’d trusted him, damn it. And now she was part of some sick blood harvest for the very breed that had once killed her. She was sick of being a victim, of being betrayed. She was sick of being a deviant.

  Most of all, she was sick of being underestimated.

  She palmed the pen she’d slipped out of the medical folder and slid it between the straps of her restraint.

  * * *

  Lucien stormed into his father’s home office.

  Vincent stopped talking to Enzo and frowned at the interruption.

  “Where is she?” he said through gritted teeth.

  His father waved a hand. “She’s fine. She’s resting.” Lucien darted over to Enzo and grasped his neck, twisting until he heard the snap. The vampire hit the floor before his father could blink. His father gave him an exasperated look.

  “Really, Lucien? Don’t you think that’s a little overdramatic?”

  “Just be thankful I’ve only broken his neck and not killed him, after that little stunt you pulled at Rafferty’s. Oh, and by the way, you now have at least three colonies on their way over here to try to catch this miracle cure you’ve just broadcast to all and sundry. I’ve sent a call out for reinforcements. Now, where is she?”

  Vincent sighed. “Downstairs.”

  “Down—” Lucien clenched his teeth. “You put her in your lab?”

  His father’s lab conducted research on weapons, but he’d never been down there. Knowing his lover was down there, being treated like a patient—or worse, a test subject—infuriated him. How could his father treat her that way?

  His father frowned. “Where else do you expect me to house a medical miracle?”

  “Her name is Natalie and she’s a person.”

  “But her name was once Nina, was it not?” His father’s voice was quiet. Mild. Too mild.

  Lucien’s eyes narrowed. “You...know about her? About what happened to her?”

  “I know everything, Lucien. I know you used to visit her. Play games with her...” He shrugged. “Personally, I couldn’t see the appeal, but really, some of my friends had sons who were into drugs or those underground bloodfests. My son was playing board games with a kid. I wasn’t going to quibble. But then your mother died...”

  Lucien gazed up at the ceiling for a moment, trying to reach for that patience, that new-life-new-attitude philosophy he’d decided upon at the roost. Now he understood how his father could treat Natalie that way. When it came to his wife’s death, his father tended to lose sight of his scruples. “She wasn’t part of that,” he said quietly.

  Vincent smiled grimly. “Well, you were with her and not with your mother, saving her from that massacre.”

  Lucien’s lips tightened and he stepped closer to his father’s desk. “Let’s follow that line of logic, shall we?”

  His father opened his mouth, but Lucien shook his head. “No. This conversation is a long time coming. Let’s suppose I was in that ballroom. What do you think the outcome would have been? Really? With all the other able, capable, strong vampires in that room, what do you think I could have done that they didn’t?”

  “You could have saved her!” his father roared, his fist landing on the three-hundred-year-old desk with such force the wooden surface cracked. “You could have saved her.”

  “Really, Dad? Silver, everywhere. Salt. Fire. That’s pretty much the holy trinity for killing vamps. Fifty-three people died in that fire, because fifty-three people couldn’t find a way out. If I was there, it would have been fifty-four.” Lucien shook his head, sorrow pulling at his lips. “When I told Natalie that I was with her that night, do you know what she wanted to do? She wanted to come and talk to you, to apologize.”

  Vincent’s eyes flickered and he looked away for a moment. “You lie.”

  “No, Dad, I don’t. She lost her family, she lost her parents, and when she heard about your loss, the first thing she wanted to do was reach out to you, to offer some comfort—and that was after she learned you wanted her dead as soon as she outlived her usefulness.”

  Vincent shook his head. “She is the reason your mother is dead.”

  Lucien threw up
his hands in frustrated exasperation. “You can’t have it both ways, Dad. You can’t punish me for Mom’s death and then punish Natalie for the same thing. What about you? Or Vivianne?”

  Vincent went still. “I beg your pardon?”

  “Well, by your definition, I wasn’t there, so I’m responsible. Natalie, who wasn’t there, is responsible. Vivianne wasn’t there. Is she responsible, too? What about you? You were away on a business trip. Are you responsible?” Lucien was stunned as the words popped out of his mouth. He’d never spoken to his father in such a manner before, but now that he’d said it, things started to make a little more sense.

  Vincent’s face grew mottled with rage. “Hold your tongue,” he bellowed as he swept around the desk. “How dare you?”

  “No, Dad. How dare you?” Lucien punctuated the word by pointing at his father’s chest then curling that finger into a fist. Maybe he’d gone a little too far. He hoped to God this new-life-new-attitude thing worked, otherwise he was in for a reprimand from his father. And they were vampires, so that could last several lifetimes.

  His father’s eyes flashed red and his incisors lengthened. “You little—”

  “Son. I’m your son, Dad. I’m your son, who lost his mom, and not a day goes by that I don’t mourn her, that I don’t miss her, that I don’t grieve for her, that I don’t wish I could take her place, and she could be here, arguing with you. I lost my mom, but that night I also lost my father and got a bitter, angry, vengeful stranger instead.”

  Vincent halted and his eyes dimmed a little. “She shouldn’t have died,” he rasped.

  Lucien could sense the shift in mood. He took a cautious step closer.

  “No, she shouldn’t have. None of those vampires should have died that night. But they did.” Lucien’s eyes began to itch a little and he rubbed his lips together as he finally realized what his father needed to hear. “I’m sorry, Dad. I’m sorry I wasn’t there for Mom.”

  Vincent’s shoulders sagged, his body seeming to collapse in on itself in desolation. “I loved her.”

  “I know,” Lucien said softly. “We all did.”

  Vincent lifted his gaze and for the first time Lucien saw beyond the cold, aloof mask to the sheer devastation of a man who’d lost the woman he loved. Vincent grabbed him and hauled him close, hugging him tightly to him.

  “I’m sorry, son,” he whispered against his neck.

  Lucien closed his eyes and hugged his father back. Hard. “Me, too.” After a moment he sighed and pulled back. “Now, let’s go get the lady I love, and wake up Vivianne.”

  His father shook his head stubbornly. “I can’t let you take her, she’s too valuable.”

  Well, there went that chick flick moment. “She’s not a commodity, Dad,” Lucien argued, frowning. He stepped back, astonished his father could still look at her like that after the moment they’d shared, the hurdle they’d both jumped. The truth they’d both faced.

  “You don’t understand, Lucien. She can help our breed,” his father stated, his chin going up.

  Lucien recognized that stubborn chin lift. “Let her do it of her own free will, Dad.”

  “This is something that can help us in our fight against the lycans,” Vincent said, shaking his fist. “Their one advantage is that a single bite is fatal to vampires, and we can eradicate that.”

  “Not like this, Dad.”

  “Yes, exactly like this. If her blood can really cure a lycan’s bite, we can produce an anti-venom, perhaps even a vaccination.”

  Lucien’s eyes rounded. “We don’t have the quantity for that, Dad. What are you going to do, hook Natalie up to a blood bag and just keep swapping them out?”

  His father’s chin lowered, just a little bit, as he glanced away, just briefly. “Well...”

  Lucien clapped his hand over his mouth, his eyes wide. “Oh, my God,” he said, the words muffled behind his palm. He lowered his hand. “I was being sarcastic. Have you—? Did you—?” Anger filled him at the realization of how far his father was prepared to sell his soul in his mission to exact vengeance against the breed who’d killed his wife. Lucien shook his head.

  “Mom would not want this,” he said forcefully.

  “Your mother’s dead,” Vincent barked.

  Lucien turned away, shaking his head. “I can’t even look at you right now.” He held up a hand to stop whatever ludicrous argument his father was about to come up with to justify this horror. If he wasn’t a damned one, he’d pray to some god for patience.

  He turned to face his father. “Do you want to know how we learned Natalie’s blood was the cure, Dad? Hmm?” He scratched his cheek. “I got bit.”

  Vincent frowned. “What?”

  “That’s right, Dad. I was bitten. By a werewolf. In the Red Desert. Do you want to know how I survived being bitten by a werewolf in the Red Desert—a werewolf, by the way, that shouldn’t bloody be there?” His hands dropped to his hips as he paced in front of his father.

  “Natalie hauled my butt out of the sun. Then she went looking for some pokey little weed in the sand, because that’s what we thought would work—only it didn’t.” He grimaced. “I went through it all. The fever, the hallucinations...” He gestured in the general direction of his head. “I was pretty messed up. I’m not sure, but I may have tried to attack Natalie. But she refused to leave me, Dad.” Lucien strode up to his father, angry at what he’d done to a woman who didn’t deserve that kind of treatment.

  “She stayed with me, and then she fed me her blood—and you have to understand, that was pretty major for her, considering she’d been murdered by a vampire. She gave me her blood.”

  He lifted his hands out. “And that saved me. She. Saved. Me. Just like she saved me when she was nine years old. She gave me her blood.” He held up two fingers to his father, his eyes narrowed. “Twice.

  “But not only that, she was prepared—and willing—to come back and save Vivianne, and you’ve locked her up in some research lab.” He shook his head in disgust. “Tell me how that honors Mom or Vivianne? Tell me where she is.”

  “We need her blood, Lucien.”

  Lucien’s hand fisted. He wanted to punch his father so damn hard right about now. He was so angry, but that anger was masking hurt, and he hurt so badly now. “Tell me, Dad. If it was Mom in that lab downstairs, would you leave her there? Because I can’t leave Natalie there.” He turned away then paused to look over his shoulder. “I expected better of you.”

  It was the same words his father had said to him the night his mother had passed away, and he saw the flinch, saw the anger in his father’s eyes. He turned and walked out on his father.

  Chapter 21

  Idiots, Natalie thought as she looped her silver chain twice around her neck. They’d left her with her jewelry. She slid her sneakers on. She’d found her clothes in the bottom drawer of the table beside the bed. The bastards had taken her knife, though.

  She glared down at the IV still attached to her arm. Once she took that out, an alarm would sound and Dr. Morton and maybe more would come running through that door. She steadied herself. She’d have to make a run for it.

  She eyed the blood bag in the cradle. She refused to be a reduced to a vaccination. She picked up the bag and detached the IV from her cannula. The alarm triggered on the machine. She smiled grimly, her movements efficient as she closed off the cannula and IV lines. After spending years in the health system, she could look after her own injections and IV in a pinch.

  Within seconds she was out the door, the alarm receding as she bolted down the hall.

  She could hear shouts at one end of the hall, could see shadow figures running toward the corner, so she abruptly changed direction. She ran along, but could hear them behind her, getting close to that corner. As soon as they rounded that bend, they’d see her.

  S
he skidded to a halt and burst through a door, wincing as she closed it behind her as quickly and as quietly as possible. She leaned against the door, panting, peering into the dim room.

  “Well, hello there,” a deep voice rumbled from the shadows in a corner. A shadow emerged, a tall, broad-shouldered man with dusty blond, close-cropped hair and sunglasses. He was dressed all in black. Black jeans and boots, black T-shirt, black leather jacket and gloves.

  She jerked at the lariat, the chain sliding from around her neck. She looped it twice around her palm, and slid the blood bag into the back of her jeans before raising her fist in a defensive stance.

  “Back the hell up,” she said in low voice.

  The man’s eyebrows rose over his sunglasses and he held his hands up, palms facing her, as he stopped walking. An alarm sounded, it’s strident peals echoing down the hall. He tilted his head.

  “For you, I presume?”

  She nodded. “Yes. I’m very dangerous, so I wouldn’t come any closer if I were you.” She swallowed. She was stronger than most, but this guy was...big.

  He nodded. “Oh, I can see. Positively lethal.” He smiled. “But I should warn you, silver doesn’t have any effect on me.”

  She frowned as she tried to back up closer to the door. She could hear the footsteps as staff ran along the hall outside. “You’re not a vampire? Or a werewolf?” She said the words quietly as she peered at him. He looked rough and just a little dangerous himself.

  His jaw dropped for a moment, then he pressed his lips together, clearly offended. “I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that,” he said. He gestured toward the door. “Relax, I’m not one of them.”

  “Yet, you’re here... Why?”

  “I have...” The man hesitated, as though searching for the right word. “I have a duty that I need to fulfill here.”

  “Who are you?” she asked, still poised to fight.

  “Oh, where are my manners? Dave Carter, witch extraordinaire, at your service,” he said, giving her a courtly bow. “And you are?”

  “Natalie Segova.”