Mine, page 14
The mental projection was so resonant, so complete, that he in fact became what he told himself he was.
Nothing.
The transmutation was a practiced shift of his corporeal existence, and as his consciousness retreated behind the vault he created, he thought of the wolven. Her sex was not the right sort for him. He did not favor females. But his attraction went so much deeper than body parts.
His reaction to her was extraordinary because she was extraordinary.
Unlike all the males and men he had ever slept with, he had a kinship with her that was both in the flesh—
Stop it, he told himself.
The illusion needed to be maintained down even into his innermost thoughts in case he met any of his kind. And not just on account of what he was doing. The projection was necessary for there was nothing to be trusted in this labyrinth of ant-like passages, even in one’s private quarters—
As he came to a corner he could not see around, he felt a vibration of warning go up his spine, the signal subtle, but the kind of thing that, like his constant preoccupation with the wolven, had to be immediately quelled.
Steeling himself, he followed the curve, and there it was: The male was far older than he, the stride uneven from rickety joints, the back bowed with age, the head tilted at an angle as if the neck couldn’t be properly straightened. So the symphath was so much more dangerous than one Blade’s age. In contrast to the usual course of things, whereby advancing age was associated with weakness, elders were a worse threat as they had wisdom and experience to enhance their manipulative tendencies.
On the approach, Blade made a point to turn his face toward the male. The last thing you wanted to do was avoid eye contact, as the perceived submission could be an invitation to mischief. But you did not want to stare too long, either, as that would be interpreted as aggression and present an interesting challenge if the other was up to it. Thus, among “polite” society—which did not exist herein and was more a term of art referring to the citizenry—there was a perfect interlude of acknowledgment, two seconds or so. After which, if both parties were disinclined to engage, gazes would resume forward facing—
The elder’s lingered for a moment too long.
Has my mask slipped? Blade wondered.
Instantly, he halted that consideration. And he could not look over his shoulder to see if the passing had been completed or whether the older other had about-faced and changed his course.
Approaching another turn in the subtly lit passageway, Blade prepared to glance to the right in a manner that was just slightly more exaggerated than the usual motion when one took a corner. Three… two… and…
The pivot on his feet was sharper than it needed to be, his robing swinging with his body—and as if he were checking to see if something had caught his hem, his eyes flicked to his heels.
In his periphery, there was no one.
He needed it to stay that way.
Though he had not been dawdling, he sped up the now, his strides lengthening. He had memorized the subterranean layout long ago, and he needed no refresher as he piloted into the farther reaches of the Colony. In fact, he knew them even better than the central parts, which he tended to avoid.
His dealings with humans were not exactly disallowed, but he did not need any help with them. Or questions. Which would lead to problems.
When he reached the outer rim of the labyrinth, he promptly turned around—and headed back from whence he came. He was careful to take a random series of inefficient routes… and the portal he had actually come in search of took its time in making an appearance. Which was the plan. Still, as he seemed to walk for hours, he began to worry that he might have, in fact, gotten turned around.
No one behind him.
This was good—
Blade stopped short. Turned on his heel.
Ah, finally.
Curling up a fist, he rapped on the polished wooden door. He did not wait for an answer, and opened it wide.
The private quarters that were revealed by a sudden, automatic illumination were a study in minimalism. Unlike this portion of the tunnel, it was a full construction with a proper floor, walls, and ceiling, as well as heating and cooling, electricity, and all the mod cons in the kitchen. But the suite was solely functional, its simple furnishings sparse, hard-angled, and uncomfortable-looking, but classic of the postmodern, fifties era.
Frankly, he hated orange accents on anything, and the wood grain mixed with the chrome was discordant.
“Greetings, cousin mine,” he called out. “Wherever are you? You departed your workshop before I arrived to rescue your current project.”
Crossing the living area, he came to stand by a closed door just off the galley kitchen. No knocking this time. With his hand on the gun he had hidden in the deep pocket of his robes, he immediately opened things.
The bedroom beyond was dominated not by a bed, but by a high-tech suspension rack, where one’s ankles were locked in and one’s body could be tilted so that the head became the feet.
“You are still sleeping like a bat, I see.”
Blade walked around the contraption and peered into a bathroom that had swimming-pool-blue tile with black accents and a toilet that had been manufactured at the same time as the B-52 bombers of World War II. Breathing in, he did not smell any cologne, shampoo, or soap. No cleaning supplies. No scent of the male at all.
Back out in the bedroom, he went to the closet. There were plenty of red robes hanging on the horizontal rod. Plenty of slipper shoes just like his own lined up on the floor.
Still no scent of his cousin.
The last thing he did before he returned to the living area was run a forefinger across the top of the Leave It to Beaver pine bureau. The stripe that was left behind in the fine accumulation of dust was obvious as a neon sign.
That brutal workshop had not been his cousin’s personal residence.
“Where have you gone,” he murmured.
Before he left the quarters, he paused and pivoted back around. The only visual chaos in the place was a block of floor-to-ceiling shelving across the room, the books upon the various levels of all different thicknesses and lengths.
He walked over to the collection of tomes, his eyes bypassing the engineering and computer programming titles to search the dark crevices created by the lack of homogeneity…
The camera eye was in the lower third all the way on the left, a tiny lens that, if one had not been looking for it, one would have missed it. Motion activated? Probably. Just like the lights.
Squatting down, he stared into the artificial iris. Then he brought his hands up to his hood… and revealed himself.
In the last twenty years, as he had been searching for the human labs that had experimented on vampires, he had had the sense that he was someone else’s prey, that those animatronic soldiers that had inevitably shown up around his men were in actuality meant for him: The units had never attacked the labs or the scientists. They had found his operatives from time to time, but not with any regularity, and if clashes occurred with his men, the conflicts had been incidental, rather than anything that appeared tactical in nature.
And then the clarifying event had occurred. He had been up on Deer Mountain, falling in love on sight with the wolven Lydia… when one of the lookalike cyborgs had found him and tried to kill him outright.
So yes, he was their target.
During his recovery from that bullet wound, he had had plenty of time to think about who he knew who had the resources to create an army out of nuts and bolts, and also the hatred for him that would provide sufficient impetus for such an endeavor. Dear cousin Kurling had come to mind—and in fact, Blade had noted the human alias the symphath used in that world in a couple of entries in the database he’d kept with his men.
Kurtis Joel.
Which was how Daniel Joseph had known to bring it up to the wolven.
Within the Colony, Blade had been so careful to keep his little explosive side hustle quiet, but now he was seeing that his hunch about his cousin was confirmed. Kurling had sussed his efforts out somehow, at some point, and abducting the doctor had been a way of closing in on the last of the underground labs.
And how had Blade known where to go for the rescue? He had engineered a little tip owed to him by a male who had sought pleasure of the painful kind. A male who was mated and wished to keep what he enjoyed private.
A male who had given himself over to Kurling once or twice, who knew where Kurling’s “workshop” was.
It had been time to find out the truth of his cousin, that which had been suspected pushed into the reality of truth: The reckoning had been long overdue, but Blade had not wanted to know on some levels.
Besides, he had been working too hard to accomplish his goals.
Kurling’s motive was obvious. As far as their bloodline was concerned, Xhex had earned her banishment to that lab twenty-plus years ago by associating with a vampire. That Blade was ahvenging her? Well, it proved he had a little too much of “the weakness” in him: Half-breeds were tolerated only if they declared their association with what was considered, in these underground environs, the better half of their mix.
To do something to benefit another? Unheard of, in symphaths. To defend the honor of a half-breed sibling who had chosen the lesser side of herself to be with? Impermissible.
And his bad choices were threatening the respect and station of his bloodline within the hierarchy of the Colony.
Perhaps his dear cousin had witnessed him coming and going, and had followed. Or maybe there had been some footprint in the sand of his obsession that had been an inadvertent tipoff.
The whys did not matter now.
Reaching forward, he pinched the little lens between his forefinger and thumb. Then he pulled the tiny camera out as if it were a splinter, the wiring coming along until it reached a terminal point of tension.
With a jerk, he dislodged all kinds of volumes as the wire went on a goose chase down the back of its shelf. The scattered thuds as the textbooks hit the bare wood floor were like a tap dancer with heavy feet and no rhythm, and he took satisfaction in the noise and the disruption of the order. Eventually the fragile optic nerve snapped, and he wound up the considerable tail, as well as the ocular head, and put the lot of it in the pocket of his robe.
Standing over the open-faced tomes, he regarded the texts. Unlike the decor and furnishings, the writings were new, going by the drawings of complex circuit systems, the details of computer motherboards, and the depictions of artificial limbs and joints.
Kurling had been smart not to come for Blade in the Colony. That was not a good hand to play in this game, for such intraspecies aggression came with a swift and sure censure from good King Rehvenge.
Indeed, the new regime looked down upon rabble-rousing, and penalties were severe.
Additionally, Blade was a powerful enemy. Outside, on the fringes of the human world—that was a better field of combat. More fun, too, for it added a necessary complication that no doubt Kurling had enjoyed surmounting with his little windup toys.
Alas, the subterfuge was over.
It was time to fight this war out in the open.
May the best male of the bloodline win, Blade thought as he strode back to his own quarters.
EIGHTEEN
ONE GOOD THING about it being mid-November in Caldwell? Sunset came early.
As Xhex re-formed downtown on the fringes of the financial district, the chill seeped through her leather jacket and tightened the flesh of her shoulders and arms. She ignored an involuntary shiver. She would adjust quick.
After John Matthew materialized next to her, they both scanned the environs. The alley they’d chosen was on the narrow side, and there was a buildup of trash running down both sides of the chute, like a river of the shit flowed on the regular and the periphery caught the loose chum to create a shore of soda bottles, plastic bags, and flyaway newspapers. Off in the distance, a deep-throated horn blasted on an overpass leading up to the closest of the two bridges, and off to the south, there was a squeal of brakes, as if the warning sound had triggered an accident in another part of the city.
John Matthew put his hand on her elbow. When she nodded in response, they walked forward.
The Black Dagger Brotherhood had been fighting a war for centuries with the Lessening Society, and the threat to the vampire species had migrated over the Atlantic Ocean to the New World with the race’s relocation from the Old Country back in the eighteen hundreds. Courtesy of the tragic continuity, as well as the inevitable passage of time, the Brothers had established facilities to support their efforts all over the urban field of conflict, from safe houses embedded in human neighborhoods to storage units and armories—and most recently, even a soft serve ice cream place.
That serviced Rhage, of course.
Emerging onto Market Street, a wind coming off the Hudson River carried a familiar stink that was muted by the thirty-degree temperature, and they hunkered into their jackets as they headed three blocks farther down, to a set of fire-station-worthy garage doors. The building the panels opened into was a nothing-special that was kept grungy on the exterior on purpose—and she and John Matthew were granted access at a side entry immediately.
Inside, things weren’t much warmer or fancier, but they didn’t have to be. The arching interior space was all raw concrete blocks, caged lights, and exposed electricals and duct work. Then again, the main attraction was inanimate. The floor space was almost completely taken up by a mobile surgical unit that had always reminded Xhex of the one from Stripes: The vehicle looked like an upscale RV, but inside, it had been retrofitted with everything Manny Manello or Doc Jane might need to save a fighter who’d found the wrong end of a gun. Dagger. Rocket launcher.
Vishous stepped out from around the front bumper. The Brother was strapped up under his own black leather jacket, his already powerful body padded by the bulk of the holsters under his armpits and the ammo belt around his waist. In the center of his chest, strapped handles down, were the deadly black daggers he used against the enemy with such skill and ferocity.
“Come on,” V said. “I’ll take you downstairs.”
As her mate nodded, Xhex had an out-of-body experience as they were led over to a steel door in the far corner. After V entered a passcode, the locking bolt retracted, and she caught a flash of copper as the Brother stood aside and she was the first to enter a well-lit concrete and steel stairway.
When they got to the lower level, V stepped forward again and did his business with another keypad. The corridor that was revealed was a short-and-sweet, and she did not have to ask which of the doors was the morgue’s.
It was the one that was a meat locker, all stainless steel once again, with a righteous latch and a system of flexible aluminum cooling ducts around the jambs that made it look like an octopus was trying to eat the entrance like a piece of metal toast.
No passcode this time, and no talking. They all knew why they had come and the reason for this visit was nothing that lent itself to casual chatter like how good Fritz’s turkey dinner had been back at the mansion, or what anybody wanted to do for New Year’s, or when Deadpool 3 was coming out.
V did the honors with the release, and there was a hiss as the vaper lock let go. Inside, a shallow receiving room was tiled on three sides by gray and white stone squares. The alternating pattern was anchored by brisk white mortar that burned the eye under the glare of the fluorescent ceiling panels. Then again, the facility had been installed, only what, like, six months ago? No wear and tear, yet.
But as this visit proved, such a depreciation would come.
The bank of refrigerated units took up the whole of the rear wall. Three levels up, six across. Eighteen slots. Which seemed like a lot of vacancies? Then again, at the rate she was killing people, it might only take her a year—
“Fuck,” she heard herself say.
“Manny told me it’s this one.” V went over to the second in from the left in the middle level. “You ready?”
No, not at all. “Yes—wait,” she cut in as he went for the release. “I want to do it.”
V nodded and eased back.
Unlike all the other individual doors, the one Vishous had indicated had a label sitting in the holder above the latch. Somebody had printed an address on it in black pen: 17th and Market.
Right. Time to…
Reaching out, she watched from a great distance as she pulled the lever. There was a sigh of air releasing, and she smelled the flesh immediately, even though the remains were being kept cold. Under her hand, the slab rolled out smoothly, and the body was covered by a white sheet.
Feet first. Was there a toe tag?
Standing by the head, she pulled the covering off the face slowly, and though she had the urge to recoil—maybe so she could throw up on her hellren’s shitkickers?—she forced herself to stare down at what she’d done.
He’d had blue eyes. Which she’d wrapped in that red bandana.
And the sockets were clean as a whistle.
Neat job, indeed. Then again, she’d had practice—
In quick succession, she saw other faces, just like this. All male. All without eyes. All… dead. But they hadn’t been dressed in club clothes. They’d been in lab coats.
Scientists. Humans who had wanted to understand her kind.
Sadists who had enjoyed making things that screamed and begged for mercy suffer.
In the end, she had slaughtered them all at that lab she’d been imprisoned in: The ones who had pumped her full of TB, Ebola, leprosy, and polio to see what a vampire’s body was susceptible to. Who had tested her reproductive organs. Who had operated on her again and again, just so they could measure the healing capabilities they could not comprehend.
They hadn’t used anesthetic.
And neither had she as she had taken their eyes.
Your grid is collapsing.
Staring into the face of a male she didn’t recognize, she had no memory of the killing—and she didn’t get it. She’d already ahvenged herself. She’d killed her captors and burned their little house of toys down. Now she was happily mated, with a good job. A stable life.
Nothing.
The transmutation was a practiced shift of his corporeal existence, and as his consciousness retreated behind the vault he created, he thought of the wolven. Her sex was not the right sort for him. He did not favor females. But his attraction went so much deeper than body parts.
His reaction to her was extraordinary because she was extraordinary.
Unlike all the males and men he had ever slept with, he had a kinship with her that was both in the flesh—
Stop it, he told himself.
The illusion needed to be maintained down even into his innermost thoughts in case he met any of his kind. And not just on account of what he was doing. The projection was necessary for there was nothing to be trusted in this labyrinth of ant-like passages, even in one’s private quarters—
As he came to a corner he could not see around, he felt a vibration of warning go up his spine, the signal subtle, but the kind of thing that, like his constant preoccupation with the wolven, had to be immediately quelled.
Steeling himself, he followed the curve, and there it was: The male was far older than he, the stride uneven from rickety joints, the back bowed with age, the head tilted at an angle as if the neck couldn’t be properly straightened. So the symphath was so much more dangerous than one Blade’s age. In contrast to the usual course of things, whereby advancing age was associated with weakness, elders were a worse threat as they had wisdom and experience to enhance their manipulative tendencies.
On the approach, Blade made a point to turn his face toward the male. The last thing you wanted to do was avoid eye contact, as the perceived submission could be an invitation to mischief. But you did not want to stare too long, either, as that would be interpreted as aggression and present an interesting challenge if the other was up to it. Thus, among “polite” society—which did not exist herein and was more a term of art referring to the citizenry—there was a perfect interlude of acknowledgment, two seconds or so. After which, if both parties were disinclined to engage, gazes would resume forward facing—
The elder’s lingered for a moment too long.
Has my mask slipped? Blade wondered.
Instantly, he halted that consideration. And he could not look over his shoulder to see if the passing had been completed or whether the older other had about-faced and changed his course.
Approaching another turn in the subtly lit passageway, Blade prepared to glance to the right in a manner that was just slightly more exaggerated than the usual motion when one took a corner. Three… two… and…
The pivot on his feet was sharper than it needed to be, his robing swinging with his body—and as if he were checking to see if something had caught his hem, his eyes flicked to his heels.
In his periphery, there was no one.
He needed it to stay that way.
Though he had not been dawdling, he sped up the now, his strides lengthening. He had memorized the subterranean layout long ago, and he needed no refresher as he piloted into the farther reaches of the Colony. In fact, he knew them even better than the central parts, which he tended to avoid.
His dealings with humans were not exactly disallowed, but he did not need any help with them. Or questions. Which would lead to problems.
When he reached the outer rim of the labyrinth, he promptly turned around—and headed back from whence he came. He was careful to take a random series of inefficient routes… and the portal he had actually come in search of took its time in making an appearance. Which was the plan. Still, as he seemed to walk for hours, he began to worry that he might have, in fact, gotten turned around.
No one behind him.
This was good—
Blade stopped short. Turned on his heel.
Ah, finally.
Curling up a fist, he rapped on the polished wooden door. He did not wait for an answer, and opened it wide.
The private quarters that were revealed by a sudden, automatic illumination were a study in minimalism. Unlike this portion of the tunnel, it was a full construction with a proper floor, walls, and ceiling, as well as heating and cooling, electricity, and all the mod cons in the kitchen. But the suite was solely functional, its simple furnishings sparse, hard-angled, and uncomfortable-looking, but classic of the postmodern, fifties era.
Frankly, he hated orange accents on anything, and the wood grain mixed with the chrome was discordant.
“Greetings, cousin mine,” he called out. “Wherever are you? You departed your workshop before I arrived to rescue your current project.”
Crossing the living area, he came to stand by a closed door just off the galley kitchen. No knocking this time. With his hand on the gun he had hidden in the deep pocket of his robes, he immediately opened things.
The bedroom beyond was dominated not by a bed, but by a high-tech suspension rack, where one’s ankles were locked in and one’s body could be tilted so that the head became the feet.
“You are still sleeping like a bat, I see.”
Blade walked around the contraption and peered into a bathroom that had swimming-pool-blue tile with black accents and a toilet that had been manufactured at the same time as the B-52 bombers of World War II. Breathing in, he did not smell any cologne, shampoo, or soap. No cleaning supplies. No scent of the male at all.
Back out in the bedroom, he went to the closet. There were plenty of red robes hanging on the horizontal rod. Plenty of slipper shoes just like his own lined up on the floor.
Still no scent of his cousin.
The last thing he did before he returned to the living area was run a forefinger across the top of the Leave It to Beaver pine bureau. The stripe that was left behind in the fine accumulation of dust was obvious as a neon sign.
That brutal workshop had not been his cousin’s personal residence.
“Where have you gone,” he murmured.
Before he left the quarters, he paused and pivoted back around. The only visual chaos in the place was a block of floor-to-ceiling shelving across the room, the books upon the various levels of all different thicknesses and lengths.
He walked over to the collection of tomes, his eyes bypassing the engineering and computer programming titles to search the dark crevices created by the lack of homogeneity…
The camera eye was in the lower third all the way on the left, a tiny lens that, if one had not been looking for it, one would have missed it. Motion activated? Probably. Just like the lights.
Squatting down, he stared into the artificial iris. Then he brought his hands up to his hood… and revealed himself.
In the last twenty years, as he had been searching for the human labs that had experimented on vampires, he had had the sense that he was someone else’s prey, that those animatronic soldiers that had inevitably shown up around his men were in actuality meant for him: The units had never attacked the labs or the scientists. They had found his operatives from time to time, but not with any regularity, and if clashes occurred with his men, the conflicts had been incidental, rather than anything that appeared tactical in nature.
And then the clarifying event had occurred. He had been up on Deer Mountain, falling in love on sight with the wolven Lydia… when one of the lookalike cyborgs had found him and tried to kill him outright.
So yes, he was their target.
During his recovery from that bullet wound, he had had plenty of time to think about who he knew who had the resources to create an army out of nuts and bolts, and also the hatred for him that would provide sufficient impetus for such an endeavor. Dear cousin Kurling had come to mind—and in fact, Blade had noted the human alias the symphath used in that world in a couple of entries in the database he’d kept with his men.
Kurtis Joel.
Which was how Daniel Joseph had known to bring it up to the wolven.
Within the Colony, Blade had been so careful to keep his little explosive side hustle quiet, but now he was seeing that his hunch about his cousin was confirmed. Kurling had sussed his efforts out somehow, at some point, and abducting the doctor had been a way of closing in on the last of the underground labs.
And how had Blade known where to go for the rescue? He had engineered a little tip owed to him by a male who had sought pleasure of the painful kind. A male who was mated and wished to keep what he enjoyed private.
A male who had given himself over to Kurling once or twice, who knew where Kurling’s “workshop” was.
It had been time to find out the truth of his cousin, that which had been suspected pushed into the reality of truth: The reckoning had been long overdue, but Blade had not wanted to know on some levels.
Besides, he had been working too hard to accomplish his goals.
Kurling’s motive was obvious. As far as their bloodline was concerned, Xhex had earned her banishment to that lab twenty-plus years ago by associating with a vampire. That Blade was ahvenging her? Well, it proved he had a little too much of “the weakness” in him: Half-breeds were tolerated only if they declared their association with what was considered, in these underground environs, the better half of their mix.
To do something to benefit another? Unheard of, in symphaths. To defend the honor of a half-breed sibling who had chosen the lesser side of herself to be with? Impermissible.
And his bad choices were threatening the respect and station of his bloodline within the hierarchy of the Colony.
Perhaps his dear cousin had witnessed him coming and going, and had followed. Or maybe there had been some footprint in the sand of his obsession that had been an inadvertent tipoff.
The whys did not matter now.
Reaching forward, he pinched the little lens between his forefinger and thumb. Then he pulled the tiny camera out as if it were a splinter, the wiring coming along until it reached a terminal point of tension.
With a jerk, he dislodged all kinds of volumes as the wire went on a goose chase down the back of its shelf. The scattered thuds as the textbooks hit the bare wood floor were like a tap dancer with heavy feet and no rhythm, and he took satisfaction in the noise and the disruption of the order. Eventually the fragile optic nerve snapped, and he wound up the considerable tail, as well as the ocular head, and put the lot of it in the pocket of his robe.
Standing over the open-faced tomes, he regarded the texts. Unlike the decor and furnishings, the writings were new, going by the drawings of complex circuit systems, the details of computer motherboards, and the depictions of artificial limbs and joints.
Kurling had been smart not to come for Blade in the Colony. That was not a good hand to play in this game, for such intraspecies aggression came with a swift and sure censure from good King Rehvenge.
Indeed, the new regime looked down upon rabble-rousing, and penalties were severe.
Additionally, Blade was a powerful enemy. Outside, on the fringes of the human world—that was a better field of combat. More fun, too, for it added a necessary complication that no doubt Kurling had enjoyed surmounting with his little windup toys.
Alas, the subterfuge was over.
It was time to fight this war out in the open.
May the best male of the bloodline win, Blade thought as he strode back to his own quarters.
EIGHTEEN
ONE GOOD THING about it being mid-November in Caldwell? Sunset came early.
As Xhex re-formed downtown on the fringes of the financial district, the chill seeped through her leather jacket and tightened the flesh of her shoulders and arms. She ignored an involuntary shiver. She would adjust quick.
After John Matthew materialized next to her, they both scanned the environs. The alley they’d chosen was on the narrow side, and there was a buildup of trash running down both sides of the chute, like a river of the shit flowed on the regular and the periphery caught the loose chum to create a shore of soda bottles, plastic bags, and flyaway newspapers. Off in the distance, a deep-throated horn blasted on an overpass leading up to the closest of the two bridges, and off to the south, there was a squeal of brakes, as if the warning sound had triggered an accident in another part of the city.
John Matthew put his hand on her elbow. When she nodded in response, they walked forward.
The Black Dagger Brotherhood had been fighting a war for centuries with the Lessening Society, and the threat to the vampire species had migrated over the Atlantic Ocean to the New World with the race’s relocation from the Old Country back in the eighteen hundreds. Courtesy of the tragic continuity, as well as the inevitable passage of time, the Brothers had established facilities to support their efforts all over the urban field of conflict, from safe houses embedded in human neighborhoods to storage units and armories—and most recently, even a soft serve ice cream place.
That serviced Rhage, of course.
Emerging onto Market Street, a wind coming off the Hudson River carried a familiar stink that was muted by the thirty-degree temperature, and they hunkered into their jackets as they headed three blocks farther down, to a set of fire-station-worthy garage doors. The building the panels opened into was a nothing-special that was kept grungy on the exterior on purpose—and she and John Matthew were granted access at a side entry immediately.
Inside, things weren’t much warmer or fancier, but they didn’t have to be. The arching interior space was all raw concrete blocks, caged lights, and exposed electricals and duct work. Then again, the main attraction was inanimate. The floor space was almost completely taken up by a mobile surgical unit that had always reminded Xhex of the one from Stripes: The vehicle looked like an upscale RV, but inside, it had been retrofitted with everything Manny Manello or Doc Jane might need to save a fighter who’d found the wrong end of a gun. Dagger. Rocket launcher.
Vishous stepped out from around the front bumper. The Brother was strapped up under his own black leather jacket, his already powerful body padded by the bulk of the holsters under his armpits and the ammo belt around his waist. In the center of his chest, strapped handles down, were the deadly black daggers he used against the enemy with such skill and ferocity.
“Come on,” V said. “I’ll take you downstairs.”
As her mate nodded, Xhex had an out-of-body experience as they were led over to a steel door in the far corner. After V entered a passcode, the locking bolt retracted, and she caught a flash of copper as the Brother stood aside and she was the first to enter a well-lit concrete and steel stairway.
When they got to the lower level, V stepped forward again and did his business with another keypad. The corridor that was revealed was a short-and-sweet, and she did not have to ask which of the doors was the morgue’s.
It was the one that was a meat locker, all stainless steel once again, with a righteous latch and a system of flexible aluminum cooling ducts around the jambs that made it look like an octopus was trying to eat the entrance like a piece of metal toast.
No passcode this time, and no talking. They all knew why they had come and the reason for this visit was nothing that lent itself to casual chatter like how good Fritz’s turkey dinner had been back at the mansion, or what anybody wanted to do for New Year’s, or when Deadpool 3 was coming out.
V did the honors with the release, and there was a hiss as the vaper lock let go. Inside, a shallow receiving room was tiled on three sides by gray and white stone squares. The alternating pattern was anchored by brisk white mortar that burned the eye under the glare of the fluorescent ceiling panels. Then again, the facility had been installed, only what, like, six months ago? No wear and tear, yet.
But as this visit proved, such a depreciation would come.
The bank of refrigerated units took up the whole of the rear wall. Three levels up, six across. Eighteen slots. Which seemed like a lot of vacancies? Then again, at the rate she was killing people, it might only take her a year—
“Fuck,” she heard herself say.
“Manny told me it’s this one.” V went over to the second in from the left in the middle level. “You ready?”
No, not at all. “Yes—wait,” she cut in as he went for the release. “I want to do it.”
V nodded and eased back.
Unlike all the other individual doors, the one Vishous had indicated had a label sitting in the holder above the latch. Somebody had printed an address on it in black pen: 17th and Market.
Right. Time to…
Reaching out, she watched from a great distance as she pulled the lever. There was a sigh of air releasing, and she smelled the flesh immediately, even though the remains were being kept cold. Under her hand, the slab rolled out smoothly, and the body was covered by a white sheet.
Feet first. Was there a toe tag?
Standing by the head, she pulled the covering off the face slowly, and though she had the urge to recoil—maybe so she could throw up on her hellren’s shitkickers?—she forced herself to stare down at what she’d done.
He’d had blue eyes. Which she’d wrapped in that red bandana.
And the sockets were clean as a whistle.
Neat job, indeed. Then again, she’d had practice—
In quick succession, she saw other faces, just like this. All male. All without eyes. All… dead. But they hadn’t been dressed in club clothes. They’d been in lab coats.
Scientists. Humans who had wanted to understand her kind.
Sadists who had enjoyed making things that screamed and begged for mercy suffer.
In the end, she had slaughtered them all at that lab she’d been imprisoned in: The ones who had pumped her full of TB, Ebola, leprosy, and polio to see what a vampire’s body was susceptible to. Who had tested her reproductive organs. Who had operated on her again and again, just so they could measure the healing capabilities they could not comprehend.
They hadn’t used anesthetic.
And neither had she as she had taken their eyes.
Your grid is collapsing.
Staring into the face of a male she didn’t recognize, she had no memory of the killing—and she didn’t get it. She’d already ahvenged herself. She’d killed her captors and burned their little house of toys down. Now she was happily mated, with a good job. A stable life.
