by Gray Holborn
“I don’t really know, I just have a feeling.” His hand dropped to mine, our skin touching in a wave of heat so strong that I only then realized I must have been freezing. A rush of chill swept down my spine and I clung to his hand like I needed his touch in order to breathe.
“This place is odd,” I said. “Something doesn’t feel right.”
We stood in silence for a long second, the whirlwind of the room, filled with strange visions and shadows, moving around us like we were in an odd snow globe.
“I think you’re right. I hadn’t noticed that before. Somehow it seemed...normal or familiar.”
I closed my eyes, trying to ground myself. Where had I been before I was here? What was I doing?
“Reza,” I mumbled. I had been fighting with Reza.
“Reza? Do you see her somewhere?” Wade’s eyes studied me with a ferocious intensity, like his gaze was magnetized to mine.
I shook my head, frowning. “No, I was just sparring with her in the gym.” I paused, thinking harder now, trying to trace my time. “And then I was with Greta and Ro in the infirmary.” My fingers gripped Wade’s with a sudden desperation. “Oh.”
“Oh?” he echoed, worry lacing his tone like he was mirroring mine.
“I’m dreaming.” It came back in a rush, all at once: that Wade was injured, still in a coma. He wasn’t here with me, not really. “After I healed, I walked to your room. You’ve been asleep since your team’s last mission. You were attacked. I must have drifted off to sleep, you the last thing on my mind.”
The warmth of his fingers was vibrant now, filled with the grounding reality of my body on the other side of this dream—where our hands really touched.
“Attacked? That makes sense, I suppose,” though he said it like he didn’t really believe it. “If this is your dream, does that mean I’m not real? That this is all just in your head?”
Something about the way he said it created a small fissure in my chest, and I wished for a long moment that it wasn’t true. That I would wake up and Wade’s smiling face would greet me. That his attack hadn’t happened.
My silence was answer enough, so he just nodded, strong determination squaring his jaw. “I see. Well, all the same, real me will be happy to know I’ve made a feature in your dreams at least.”
Several, if I was being honest with myself.
He looked down at me, his eyes teasing. “And since this isn’t real, I think that means it’s okay if I do this.”
“Do wh—”
His lips crashed against mine, warm and soft and firm. We held onto each other like a knot, desperately trying not to come undone.
My breath pulsed heavily, and Wade pulled back, his eyes studying me with renewed curiosity.
“Bentley.”
The voice wasn’t Wade’s, but it wasn’t unfamiliar either.
“Bentley, wake up.”
Wade pressed a kiss to my forehead. “You should go. Thank you, Max. Even if I’m just in your head, I’m grateful that I was able to do that just this once.”
“Bentley!”
My breath pulled out of me in a rush and I went crashing to the floor, my fingers letting go of Wade’s on the way down.
“You have a habit of having intense dreams in this wing,” Atlas said, his tall figure towering over me, shielding me slightly from the fluorescent lighting of the ceiling.
The dream came back to me in a rush and when I looked up at Wade, my heart fell to my stomach. Just as he was before, he was completely still, eyes shut and still in a coma.
“He’s still not up?” I asked.
Atlas cocked a brow, like that was the most obtuse question he’d heard, but then his expression softened. “No. Still not up.”
A long, awkward pause fell between us, both of us likely lost in our own anxieties about Wade.
“And they still don’t know when he’ll wake up?”
Atlas shook his head, his throat bobbing slightly like he was trying to find words or the courage to say them, but couldn’t.
He pulled up another chair, the blue cushion cracked and worn with use, before sitting on the other side of Wade.
I wasn’t sure how long we sat like that, it could have been seconds or hours, but eventually, I found myself studying Atlas with just as much focus as I studied Wade’s peaceful face. The similarities were subtle, but in this moment, they were there. In the strong edges of Atlas’s jaw, the shape of his eyes. When Atlas was like this—vulnerable and concerned, rather than apathetic or angry—it was easier to imagine them as brothers. I hadn’t seen it before, but I saw it now.
His dark eyes met mine, and I could see the shadings of gold that were sometimes visible in certain lighting. As if the observation of his vulnerability was enough to shatter it, he stood straighter, his face freezing back into that impenetrable shield of his.
“You shouldn’t be down here.” There was a rawness to his voice, almost an anger. It felt for a moment, like he was mad at me for witnessing him unraveled, however briefly.
“I was already down here,” I said, not sure if he’d heard about the fight earlier. “Your girlfriend broke my nose. I thought I might as well stop by and visit Wade before going back to the cabin.” I cleared my throat and stared back, unwilling to break our eye contact first.
His nostrils flared and I watched as his jaw muscles tensed while he worked out whatever it was he was going to respond with. Instead, he fished around in his pocket before tossing a key at me. “That’s mine. I’ll want it back. Go back to the cabin now.”
The key was on a single circular ring, but there were no keychains or personal trinkets. For a moment, I wondered if everything in Atlas’s life was like this—cold, impersonal, transient.
I opened my mouth to argue, but when I met his eyes again, there was a fire there, like one more moment stuck in here with me would make him explode with anger.
Rather than wait to find out, I nodded once before pocketing the key and standing. I leaned down, pressing a soft kiss on Wade’s cheek and giving his hand one gentle squeeze.
“Until I dream again,” I muttered, ignoring Atlas’s scowl, before turning back to the door and leaving the room.
I would go back to the cabin—I couldn’t quite bring myself to call it home—eventually. First, I wanted to stop by and check on Ralph, since I was already down here.
The halls were quieter than usual as I made my way through the small maze. I took a wrong turn at some point though, and found myself at a dead-end. I blamed it on a combination of my recent injury and exhaustion. The dream with Wade had felt anything but restful.
When I reached a key entry, I waved Greta’s card, though I was fairly certain this wasn’t the way I usually came when visiting Ralph.
With a satisfying click, the door opened, a bright light revealing an impeccably clean room filled with white walls and various metal instruments. A quick glance told me that I was alone, so I stepped inside, suddenly desperate to understand what went on down here. Was this one of the rooms that Ralph had to undergo his tests in?
A long counter ran the length of the room, filled with all sorts of jars of liquid and unfriendly instruments. My fingers swept along the edge of one particularly angry-looking metal knife. I picked it up until a loud clank startled me enough that I dropped it to the ground—a soft, tinny reverberation echoed through the room.
When I spun around, I exhaled sharply. I wasn’t as alone as I’d thought.
Lying on the other end of the room was a woman strapped to a long metal bed. She was strapped at the wrists and ankles, with a particularly thick metal band wrapping around her forehead and waist to keep her in place.
She looked so small, and young. She couldn’t be older than eleven if I had to guess, judging by her height and her soft plump skin. Long blond hair was drooping across the side of the bed, the strands stringy like they hadn’t been brushed or cleaned in months.
“Help,” she said, her voice quiet and doll-like, as she tried desperately to
get a better look at me with her head restrained. She had eyes to match the voice: large and round, like a scared doe.
“Who are you?” I asked, my voice coming out in a croak. I needed to leave, I knew that I needed to leave. But for some reason, against my better judgment, I took a step closer to her and then another.
“Please, you have to help me.” A single tear slid from her eye, carving a curved line down her face and disappearing into her hair. “They’re going to kill me.”
“What are you?” I asked, changing my question just slightly.
Now that I was closer, she looked less like a child and more like a regular girl—nothing about her seemed terrifying or strong. Instead, she was broken and thin and trembling with fear. Whatever she was, she desperately believed that she was going to die. When I reached no more than a foot away, she visibly flinched away from me, closing her eyes like I might strike.
Her nostrils flared until her doll-eyes sprang back open, wider even than they were before.
“Blood.”
She pulled against her restraints, trying to reach me, to get me into her sights.
“Blood. It’s so strong.”
She bared her teeth, showing two long fangs and I jumped back, knocking into another table and sending various instruments clattering to the ground.
“Get the fuck out of here.” Atlas was framed in the doorway I’d just been standing in. “Now.”
Shit.
Chapter Eleven
Max
I realized instantly that whatever was going through Atlas’s thoughts when I was in Wade’s room was not anger.
This. Right now. This was anger. In fact, I’d never seen him angry until now.
His sharp, dark eyes radiated heat as he strode into the room, gripping my arm with a strength that would surely bruise me. Without another word of protest, we left the crying girl alone in the room and made our way out of the lab wing.
As we wove through the halls with a crisp precision, Atlas stayed silent. He pulled me along behind him, walking so quickly that between his speed and my height, my feet were practically gliding above the floors.
“I’m sorry,” I mumbled, for the first time legitimately afraid of Atlas. “I was trying to see Ralph, and I lost my focus and made a bad turn.”
Nothing.
“That girl. She was a vampire. And so young,” I tried again.
Nothing. Though I hadn’t asked a question, I doubt he would’ve acknowledged me if I had.
I knew that vampires were born, not made. But still, it had never dawned on me that there were children. What’s more, it had never dawned on me that The Guild would be experimenting on children. I’d never seen anything like it, such a perfect mixture of deadly power and innocence. Part of me had been so moved to help her, just a breath away from loosening her restraints. But then, the way that she looked at me, studying my neck with a ferocious, dangerous hunger—I had no doubt that if she was free, she would have tried to kill me.
With my free hand I gripped at my shirt, remembering belatedly that my clothes were still soaked in my blood. Had she been starved? Was that why she was so focused on me once she caught my scent?
I thought back to my discussion with Declan, when she’d come to my suite to watch films with me, Ro, and Izzy. She’d mentioned that the vampires in the labs were some of the most dangerous creatures housed in The Guild. That they only kept the most powerful, the most important to study and learn from.
But a child. Was she really as dangerous as most vampires? Could she have out-fought me the way the vampire at the club had?
Yes. Remembering the determination, the combination of fear and hunger and desperation in her eyes. There was a rabid determination in her, so different from the equally terrifying vampire across from Ralph’s prison. Where he seemed all cold edges and feral power, even with his teasing, sing-song challenges, she was unrestrained energy, waiting to combust.
“Hello Atlas,” a girl with wild red hair greeted as we made our way through the ground level of the mansion. She was beautiful, and closer to his age than to mine, so I assumed she must either belong to a team or else work on campus somewhere. Her sharply carved brows bent in the middle as we moved closer towards her. “You okay? Something wrong? Has Wade—”
Atlas passed her without so much as breaking his stride, pulling me towards another endless hallway. I looked back, frowning slightly in apology at the girl as she stood in stupefied curiosity behind us.
I was all but running now, trying to keep up with him as he pulled me along towards whichever destination he was aiming for. My arm was almost numb from his grip.
“Will they kill her?” I asked, and I wasn’t sure which answer I wanted to hear. Frustrated now that he was still carting me along like a heavy purse, I shoved the heel of my palm into his back, trying to break him out of whatever obnoxious alpha anger thing he had going on. “Hey. I’m not a fucking doll. If you want to yell at me for being down there or whatever, then yell at me. But don’t manhandle me through the entire Guild Headquarters while ignoring me and every single person we pass.”
He stilled, turning into a statue so quickly that I didn’t have time to adjust my speed without crashing into him. He didn’t so much as budge while I flopped awkwardly against him, my cheek ramming into his granite back.
I stood there for a moment, waiting for him to say something or let go of me or look at me. Just...something.
And then when he did react, I almost wished he hadn’t. That I had just let him storm off, swinging me around helplessly after him until we were in the cabin and I could hide, properly-chastised, behind my door.
Instead, with cool, calm precision, he turned his neck to the right until his face leveled with a dark door. He shoved his way through and I spilled into an empty classroom filled with abandoned desks and old papers.
He shut the door behind us, not a moment after my foot crossed the threshold, and spun me so that my back pressed against the glossed wood. Long, lean muscles caged me in, his hands gripping on each of my shoulders now. He didn’t need to use any pressure, I wouldn’t have budged from this spot of my own volition. Blood was swirling through my veins so fast that my ears were filled with the sound.
With a steady breath, I tried to compose my racing heart and looked up at him, meeting his fiery gaze. His brown eyes looked almost yellow when I was up this close. Less than a few inches separated my face from his. And I stared at the way his nostrils flared softly every time air passed through his lungs, like he had to remind himself to breathe.
“Atlas? Are you—”
“You don’t listen do you?”
“I—”
“Like, ever. You never listen. You do what you want, when you want, and you don’t give a fuck who it screws over in the mean time, even if the person getting screwed over is you.”
“I—”
“I mean, you’ve been in our world for what? A couple of weeks? And how many times have you almost gotten yourself killed? You do understand that you were in a room with a vampire? By yourself. And instead of leaving as soon as you realized where you were and what kind of situation you were in, you walked towards the vampire like you had a fucking deathwish. Who walks towards a vampire without a team of protection at their back? All of this, minutes after you had promised me you’d go home?”
In all of my time training with him, I think this was the most I had ever heard him speak. And for once, I was hoping he shared his thoughts and feelings less.
“Technically, I didn’t promise I was going back to the cabin, you just asked me...to,” I said, almost instantly regretting that of all the sentences he’d allowed me to finish, that was the one we were stuck with.
A long, intense silence drew out between us and all I could think about was the fact that we were standing so close together that we were both probably inhaling each other’s exhales in an oddly intimate sort of suffocation.
His eyes narrowed, the edges of his glare sharp enough to skin
me alive. A low, deep rumbling sound reverberated in his chest and I briefly wondered if he was in fact a vampire with the way he was suddenly looking at me like he wanted to bite off my head.
“I’m sorry, okay. I should have left the room as soon as I realized what she was,” I said, no longer able to stand the silent standoff. “But I’m not sorry for trying to check on Ralph. Because whether anyone cares or not, when I was last up against a vampire, he was the one who had my back. He’s my team.”
I paused, suddenly filled with the rightness of that sentiment. I trusted Ralph completely. And if it weren’t for him—twice now—I would be dead.
“And,” I continued, my spine straightening with growing confidence, “while it would have been my fault if I were attacked just now, the same isn’t true for the vamp attack outside of Vanish or the wolf attack back in my hometown. Neither of those situations were my fault. It’s the fucking twenty-first century. Don’t blame the victim. And furthermore, while I appreciate the fact that you thought I was in some sort of real danger against an immobilized baby vamp, I would appreciate it more if your way of handling it didn’t consist of dragging me about like a damn suitcase, bruising my arm, or jumping down my throat. Sort of ruins the archaic heroism trope you were probably trying to go for.”
As if he was stunned, and only just now coming to, his eyes widened until they almost resembled the little girl’s. He glanced down at his hands, at the way they pressed me into the door, and dropped them like I’d burned him. In a flash, he was halfway across the room like he was trying to put as much distance between us as possible.
He opened his mouth to speak, but we were interrupted by a loud knocking on the other side of my skull.
“Atlas, Max, that you? What’s all the yelling about?” Eli’s deep voice crept through the wood and I stepped away from the door so that I could let him inside. “Jesus, you alright, Max? Look a little worse for wear. I heard about the whole situation with Reza this morning.”
This morning? Had it really been such a short while ago? It felt like it had been days since I was lying back on a gurney while Greta reset my nose in a symphony of painful movements.