Wolf Games (The Vampire Games Book 4)

by Caroline Peckham

  I was soon taken away on silent wings, the promise of good dreams awaiting me. But, unluckily for me, I didn't find them...

  Jameson stood before me on the deck of the cruise ship. I was holding onto the railing, hanging above the roaring ocean below, the wind tugging me backwards. I wore the velvet green dress from the first V Games, the skirt flying around me in the violent wind.

  “Did you miss me?” Jameson's usual smirk was in place. He leant against the railing beside me, even though I was slipping. My feet kept dropping off the railing, and I clung on tighter, scrambling to get up.

  “Help me!” I demanded, reaching for him, but despite how close he seemed, I couldn't lay a hand on him.

  He gave me a bemused smile. “You alright there, Firefly?”

  “No, help me! Help us.” I touched my belly with one hand and he frowned, the cogs clearly turning as he took in what I meant. “It's yours,” I added, my voice choked.

  His usually warm eyes grew cold. “You can't get pregnant. You're dead.”

  His words were like a knife chopping my heart into little pieces.

  “But I did...”

  “Don't be an idiot, Firefly,” he said, shaking his head. “Get rid of it.”

  At that moment, I slipped. My hands reached, flailing, my dress flew around me, my hair blowing in ribbons across my eyes-

  I shot upright in bed, sweat pouring down my spine.

  Get rid of it.

  Get rid of it.

  Get rid of it.

  I clutched my stomach, curling my legs up to my chest, tucking my face into my knees. I tried to calm my pounding heart, but it wouldn't quit.

  “No, no, no,” I breathed.

  A weight pressed down on the mattress and I snapped upright, gasping at the sight of Silas sitting there. He was shirtless, his body riddled with imperfections, tiny little scars marring his flesh. But his forearms were clear, so were his neck, his hands. It was all too precise. Those scars couldn't have been there by accident. On closer inspection, there seemed to be some sort of order to them. Most were horizontal, running across him in little patterns as if to fit as many scars onto his bare skin as possible.

  “Are you alright?” he asked, reaching for my hand.

  I tugged it out of reach, nodding, but realised my face was wet with tears. Shame rolled through me. No one ever saw me cry. And he was the last person on earth I would have picked to witness it. I hurriedly wiped the moisture from my cheeks.

  “What happened to you?” I asked, gesturing to his skin, trying to get his attention off of me. Apart from the scars, his body was the kind of beautiful that belonged to Adonis. Golden and tight with rigid muscle.

  He ran a thumb down his tarnished chest, his gaze growing absent. “You tell me why you're crying and I'll tell you about these.”

  I chewed my lip. I couldn't tell him what I'd dreamed. It was too personal. So I settled on a lie. “I competed in the V Games. I dreamed I was back there...fighting for my life.”

  He sucked on his lower lip then said, “I fell through a window.”

  “You're lying,” I breathed.

  “So are you.” I dropped my eyes, my cheeks heating up at being caught out. “Fine,” I huffed. “I dreamed about telling the father of my child that I'm pregnant, then fell off your cruise ship after he told me to get rid of it.”

  “Ah.” Silas's eyes lit up like stardust. “That, I do believe.” His mouth pulled into that perfect grin of his. “Every day I have a biopsy taken, because it allows me to feed my clones new information in case I am unfortunate enough to have a fatal, ah, accident.”

  I gazed at him in shock, unable to quite process that news. “Clones?” I choked out.

  He grinned easily. “Sort of. They're Reapers. I have them shift into my form so I can use one of their bodies when I die.”

  I raised a hand to my mouth in horror. “So you're not you, you're some....Reaper?” Not that I knew what that was. But my guess was some type of Immortal. I reached out, brushing his arm, apologising to whoever this person had been before.

  “No...it's not like that. They're not Immortals in the same way you are,” he said. “Reapers aren't human in any way. They're parasites. They morph into people and kill the original host.”

  “I don't understand,” I said. “Why would they do that?”

  “They feast on memories, but they aren't satisfied until they get every part of you.” He lowered his voice. “I have a theory that they want your soul and unless you die, they can't have it.”

  I shuddered, withdrawing from him then Silas laughed, but I didn't get the joke.

  My eyes trailed over him. “So this body...it isn't you?”

  “It is me. I own a host of parasitic Reapers in their true forms which – trust me – you don't want to ever see. Because they are ugly as sin. I simply have a team of scientists extract their nature genetically, and voila, I have myself an empty soul-sucker who can morph into whomever I want. Namely, me. All I have to do is feed them some of my skin and they embody me wholly. I have to give them a piece of myself every day to keep them up to date. Memories, et cetera, you see?”

  “I don't know that I do see...” My hand was still on his arm and I quickly extracted it.

  He frowned, his brows tugging neatly together. “I don't want you to get the wrong idea about me, Firefly. I'm not just some clone. My consciousness is always transferred into the new host, my soul, whatever you want to call it.”

  I shook my head again, feeling way out of my depth. “Your soul?” I echoed quietly.

  Silas stood, gesturing for me to follow. “Come, I'll show you, then you'll understand.”

  I hesitated before getting to my feet, knowing I wasn't going to be sleeping again any time soon. Silas pulled on a shirt and led me toward the door.

  “Er- Silas? Were you planning on sleeping in here with me?” I asked, suddenly horrified about the idea of having woken up beside him.

  “That was the idea.” He pointed to the sofa where the bundle of shirts and jackets had now been tidied away. In their place was a blanket and a pillow.

  “Oh, right,” I muttered, following him out the door, relieved.

  “I don't have to, if it makes you uncomfortable.”

  The thing I was fast learning about Silas? He was so damn accommodating that I kept forgetting he was the psychotic scientist who'd kidnapped me and locked me up on a cruise ship.

  I mumbled a vague non-committal answer, unsure of my feelings on the matter. He didn't scare me, but I also didn't want him getting any ideas that we were friends. Because earlier on that day, he'd had the full intention of killing Kodiak. Keeping that in mind, I took a measured step away from him as he led me along the low-lit corridor.

  We exited onto a deck and moonlight spilled over us. The wind was cool and felt good against my heated skin. A little too late, I remembered I was only wearing Silas's shirt with my underwear beneath it. I clutched the rising edges so the wind didn't force me to flash him.

  He glanced down at my bare legs and I cleared my throat overly loudly until he dragged his eyes back up. A fire blazed in them. The dangerous type.

  “Enjoying the view?” I challenged.

  He smirked then continued walking. We took a passage back inside, taking an elevator to the lower decks. Silas checked his hair in the mirror – more than once. But something didn't add up about his vanity...

  “If you're so worried about how you look, why don't you drink V blood instead of letting your body scar like that?”

  Silas fiddled with a piece of hair that wasn't lying flat, his gold-speckled eyes straying to me briefly in the mirror. He didn't seem remotely bothered by my question or the fact I'd called him vain. “I used to drink Vampire blood,” he revealed. “But one time we were running low, and I let my nurse stitch me up.” He stopped fiddling with his hair, his eyes burrowing into mine. “Do you really want to know the rest?” The elevator jerked to a halt and I realised we'd reached the bottom deck. I could smell
the damp and hear the drip of pipes. A chill crept down my spine as Silas stepped closer.

  “Yes,” I breathed, unable to help myself.

  “I've always been a candid man, Firefly. But something about you is making me want to say things I've never told anyone...” He eyed me a moment longer, his gaze trailing from my face to my throat. “It causes me to wonder whether you have an element of Siren in you.” His gaze sharpened, almost accusatory.

  I realised I was clutching the railing behind me, my knuckles cramping from how hard I was holding on. “I'm whatever you made me into,” I breathed and there was venom in my tone.

  “Hm.” he stepped back and I was released from the intensity of those obsidian eyes. “Seven minutes,” he said and I raised a brow. “It takes seven minutes to stitch my skin up after a biopsy. It's excruciating without morphine, but there is something very...cathartic about it.” His eyes were shadowed and for a moment I could see through his veil of beauty, to the desperate man beneath it all. “I have very little free time for myself. My work is my life, it is all-consuming. Almost to the point of madness. The first time I endured it, those seven minutes reminded me that I'm human. There's no reminder of that, quite like pain. Hence, why I continue to do it.”

  “You shouldn't need reminding.” I shook my head. “Is your work really that important?”

  He sighed in answer, pressing a button to release the lift doors. “Come.” He took my elbow and I let him guide me into a low-lit corridor. Pipes lined the walls and the ceiling, all arrowing toward an impenetrable darkness at the end of the room.

  Silas guided me toward it and my heart crept up a notch. My skin prickled from his touch, but I didn't shake him off. I wanted to see this secret. Even if it was making me nervous.

  The darkness swallowed us and even my heightened senses couldn't pick up an ounce of light.

  “Ah, here,” Silas said, releasing me.

  My arm instinctively flailed, searching for him.

  “Silas?” I called, the hairs on the back of my neck standing to attention.

  A little blue light sprang to life before me and I relaxed.

  “Should've brought a torch,” Silas said apologetically. His hand was plastered to a scanner, shining as it accepted his print. A door hissed as it opened and white lights illuminated the room before us.

  Silas held out a hand to me and I stepped forward, bypassing it.

  Three tanks stood upright before me, their outer shells black and metallic, round windows on the front giving a view to the bodies inside. All three were identical to Silas. They were unconscious, but the familiar sucking and hissing sound of ventilators reached my ears. Their chests all rose and fell in unison.

  I moved toward them, fascinated and terrified at once. My skin tingled all over as the reality of this sunk in. Clones. Living, breathing clones.

  I pressed my hand to the glass of the middle tank. Its bare chest was as scarred as Silas's. I turned to him, my legs suddenly unsteady. “So these are...Reapers?”

  He nodded, looking wary of my reaction.

  “What happened to your original body?” I asked.

  Silas folded his arms, leaning against one of the tanks. My eyes kept flitting between him and the exact copy beside him. “It's safe. In another institute. Using clones halts the aging process. Plus...I can make slight alterations to each new body as I see fit.” He lifted a hand to one of his ears. “It becomes rather addictive after a while.”

  My mouth grew dry as I nodded, unsure what to say. To me, this was absolute madness.

  “Do you want to see how it works?” His voice was barely a whisper. There was a dangerous excitement to his tone. He revelled in this. His work. This was where he came to life. And I could see the desire in him, the hunger.

  He moved past the tanks to a series of high-tech computers and tapped several keys on one of the screens. A moment later, a huge window lit up behind the processors, revealing a room beyond it. He gestured for me to move closer and I strode to his side, anxiety darting through me.

  He guided me past the computers to the window. The light in the room flickered. Shadows danced in the far corners. I squinted, trying to work out what I was looking for.

  Then a voice filled the room, crackly as it was fed through a speaker on one of the computers.

  “Taste,” it breathed and every hair on my body stood to attention. It sounded like death itself, the lasting imprint of the voice creeping across my skin.

  I gripped Silas's arm, digging my nails in. “Where is it?” I wanted to see it, almost as much I wanted to run out of that room and never look back.

  Silas pointed at the darkest corner. I narrowed my eyes, my heart beating a frantic rhythm in my ears.

  Get out of here.

  When I spotted the creature, I almost jerked backwards. Silas tugged me closer and I didn't lurch away, needing the reassurance.

  A black robe melded with the shadows around it, but its face grew clearer the longer I looked. It was almost nothing but bone, a skull with no eyes and hollow cheeks, but a veil of skin clung to its body like thinly sliced meat. A rattling, clicking sound fed through the microphone and I realised its teeth were tapping together.

  “Silas...” I murmured. I'd never seen something so horrible. Every bone in my body told me to run.

  “Taste.” The voice seemed to resonate from within it; its mouth didn't move, not beyond the persistent snapping of its teeth.

  My mouth was dry, too dry.

  “This one was recently captured. It hasn't been altered yet. They're not so frightening after. We can remodel them as we like. But the first few days, we must keep them this way, while I start the feeding process.”

  “You feed it?” I gasped, realising what he meant. My eyes dropped to his body in horror. “Silas, how can you?” I pushed him back and his eyes fell to mine. The shining excitement of a mad scientist blazed back at me, but it dissolved the moment he took in my expression. “Firefly-”

  I didn't let him finish that sentence, tugging away and marching back through the room. This was wrong. It was twisted. Screwed up. What kind of person would go to these lengths to live forever?

  Was it really worth feeding his body to that...thing? I'd have given anything to be human again and Silas was wasting his life on twisted experiments like these.

  My blood ran hot as I moved, and soon I was sprinting back to the elevator, darting inside it.

  Silas caught the doors a heartbeat before they closed, his shoulder ramming between them as he muscled his way inside.

  Before I could gather my thoughts, he'd slammed me against the mirror, caging me in with his arms. “Don't look at me like that.”

  “Silas,” I gasped, pressing him back. He didn't move, his eyes pinned on mine. My heart beat rapidly in fear.

  “You look at me like I'm crazy,” he snarled.

  “I think maybe you are!” I blurted, my breathing growing unstable.

  He shook his head. “I'm cheating death,” he snapped.

  “You're messing with nature! This isn't right. It's twisted. How can you let that thing become a part of you?” I grimaced, gazing down at his body. “Is this one of them?” I laid my palms against his biceps, searching for clues, trying to find the vile skeleton of the Reaper beneath.

  “I take the body they create. That's all. It's science, Firefly,” he insisted.

  My brows drew together as I took in his desperate expression. After a beat of silence, I asked, “Why do you care what I think?”

  His Adam's apple bobbed as he stepped back, releasing me. “You're important to me. I told you that.”

  “Because I might advance your science project, not because you give a damn about me,” I snarled.

  He remained silent as the lift rose, up, up, up. I felt the weight of that place evaporating from me. But I didn't know how I'd ever sleep tonight with the image of that Reaper branded into my skull.

  Silas walked me back to his room, opened the door, pushed me inside and s
lammed it between us. I heard his footsteps pounding away down the corridor and relief ebbed through me.

  I turned on a few lights in the room before getting into bed, wanting to banish as many shadows from the space as possible. The problem was, the shadows weren't in that room, they were in the crevices of my mind, and nothing I did could vanquish them.

  Jameson

  Nothing like an ice-cold bucket of water thrown over your face to wake you up.

  “Up. Now. Or I'll start cutting pieces off of you.”

  The delightful tone of a new friend graced my ears. I looked up, finding a guy gazing down at me with a sour expression. He was a few years older than me visually, had a moustache that was probably on the fashion police's most wanted list, and an impassive expression that told me he wasn't the joking type. So we were definitely going to get along.

  I stood up, stretching my aching spine as water soaked into my shirt and turned it see-through. I must have passed out again for while. But at least I didn't feel sick anymore.

  “Stand back,” he barked, raising a gun so it was level with my chest. Was that a Flintlock pistol? Surely not. It was just like the one I used to carry back when I was a pirate. To say it was dated, was the understatement of the century. I vaguely wondered what I'd done with my one all those years ago.

  “Did I win the wet t-shirt contest?” I tried to distract him in an effort to get my hands on that gun. I gestured down at my abs which were now visible through my shirt.

  ”Stand. Back,” he repeated sharply, his moustache twitching.

  I complied, my hands curling into fists as I waited for his next move.

  He strode into my cell as cocky as a cowboy, producing a set of cuffs from his hip. “Hands up.”

  “This is moving pretty fast, I usually like to discuss a safe word before we jump right into bondage.”

  My new friend stepped toward me. He was bang-on my height. Eye to eye. His expression told me he was not amused. Not even a little bit. “Shut your smart mouth, or I'll have it sewn shut for good.”

  The barrel of the Flintlock pressed into my chest. I swallowed my pride and held my wrists out for him to bind. The iron cuffs snapped shut around them. I tugged hard, but my strength was still depleted. The collar around my neck was making sure of that.