Agent Down: Region Two Series Book Two, page 25
Liv never would’ve let us in here unless there was a crisis.
“The team—were there more vampires after I blacked out?” Bruce. Bruce had been down, laying beside the truck. Had I been wrong, did he have a bleed I hadn’t sensed? Some even more devastating injury?
Hands caught my shoulders. I blinked up at Stavros, both of us now by the door, feet from the bed. His grip kept me from charging through the exit. Heat flooded my face. I hadn’t meant to move, and hadn’t realized I had.
“You dispatched the last vampires, and the team is well.”
“Then…why are we here?”
“You were the emergency.” He paused, seemed to consider what he wanted to say, even more precise than usual. “Your sisters and brother are formidable. They refused to take my word as to your eventual well-being.”
Embarrassment and the weight of failure filled me at screwing up so badly. Enough that agents worried I’d bite it. But the bitterness mixed with a shard of…hope. I was pretty sure this was what hope had felt like. Pride, too.
Kimi and Josh had voted. They’d convinced Liv to bring me in instead of leaving me to desiccate in a pit fighting ring.
I flexed my hands, the sharp pulling of my skin interrupting again. I rolled my hand over. Medical tape stretched over the back, exactly where an IV would go.
“They didn’t. Kimi didn’t—” I couldn’t finish the damning thought. This was why we were alone. Kimi had thought she was helping by giving me blood. Instead, she’d accidentally broken my rule. Stavros’ rule. There was only one outcome for this disaster. “Do it in the desert. Not here where they’ll see and blame themselves.”
Kimi couldn’t know the blood was a death sentence. My last act was making sure she never did.
Stavros squeezed my shoulder, then recalled he didn’t do PDAs, even private ones, and dropped his hand. “They respected our law. Your brother siphoned from the outcasts’ carcasses. Your sister gave you the blood of only our kind.” He frowned. “I’ve never known it to be done in such a fashion, but I felt when your needs were met.”
“Yeah, IV’s and transfusions.” Big deal. I was interested in the important part of his statement. “You called them my brother and sister, not ex-team.”
He’d hammered it in, that words had power, and I had to take in and incorporate that I was a vampire now not a person. I had no ties except to Stavros, others dead when I lost my humanity. Monsters—I used to call vampires ‘predatory mutations’—until I became one. We were monsters, and monsters didn’t have family or friends or teams.
I’d hated him every time he forced me to repeat it. Night after night until I quit screaming it in his face, and recognized it as truth.
Stavros sighed. “They see you as their sister. It’s not simply a thoughtless habit—I feel their belief.” He touched the center of his forehead.
The motion highlighted the fine lines that rarely appeared, Stavros far too composed and practiced to stress. The same lines that I’d caused the first six months, when my raw emotions pummeled him. They had sent him out into the sun for relief multiple times, wasting blood that was hard to come by because he was stuck with me instead of hunting. What the emotions of four people, all wired after a mission, plus processing my stupid emergency drama were doing to him…
I scanned the room for our gear. No jacket, no machetes. Whatever. Those could be replaced. “Let’s go.” I jerked the door open.
Liv and Kimi stood outside it, Liv with her fist raised to knock. Her brow did that thing, calling you out on your shit with one simple move.
Kimi got to it first though. She signed, “You’re better?”
“Yes.” I peeled the tape off and balled it up. “This was kind of brilliant. Thanks.”
Liv propped against the door frame, arms crossed, basically barricading the exit. “Were you planning on thanking us in person, or just bailing without a word?”
“A text later counts as a word.”
Kimi could still swear more creatively in ASL than most people could verbally.
I reached for her elbow, then stopped myself. Contact only heightened emotions, and that I didn’t need. If I’d been paying more attention outside the fighting pit, the straggler vamps would’ve pinged my radar. Instead, I’d been focused on Bruce, and this dumpster fire was the result.
Because bad situations could always get worse, Josh and Bruce spilled into the hall. Even I felt it, like static in the air, the extra emotions heavy and turbulent as an incoming lightning strike.
I glanced at Stavros. The lines on his forehead and around his lips added years to his appearance. I turned back to the crowd. “Thank you. I mean that. But it’s time for us to go.”
“Just like that?” Josh pressed in with Kimi.
Behind me, Stavros went rigid. The bond between us hummed, some of Stavros’ insulating control breached. Josh and Kimi’s energy sparked against me from the front. The mix of the two realities meeting made my skin crawl.
I caved and took the half step back, until my shoulder touched Stavros, hiding in his aura and kinda hating myself for my weakness. Hating that I wasn’t fueled enough to withstand simple interactions. IV aside, the vampires hadn’t been powerful and I was still…not hungry. More hollow-ish, like part of my mass was missing. That was how I knew when I needed to feed, when I felt physically too light, too easily unbalanced.
If I had burned through blood, Stavros had done far more. I pushed his rule, catching his hand. Trying to strengthen the bond and read-read him the way he could with me. “Did you…?”
A hint of emotion played over his face, softening him. “There was sufficient amount for you alone. I’m well enough though.”
I hated this. With the same steady hatred that fired me to fight vampires. I’d gone from looking out for a team, taking care of them, to being the one that needed help. I was the weak link.
Bruce’s growl came through loud and clear, even from the back of the pack, hidden by Josh’s height. “This is how the fuck you say thank you?”
I met his anger with my own version. “Let’s cut the crap. None of you can really want us here. This was an emergency situation and you felt you had no choice. Now, the emergency is over.”
Liv straightened, jumping to the logical but wrong conclusion as to why we needed out. “You can’t control yourselves in such close, extended proximity to humans.”
I didn’t see a weapon but she was armed, and debating using it.
“Our control isn’t an issue,” Stavros said.
Liv glanced between us.
I shrugged. “What he said. None of you trip my trigger at all.”
I realized what I’d said, and how it came across, at the same time a wave of pure fury came off Bruce.
The look Liv gave me was cold as one of Bruce’s kitchen blast-freezers.
“You can’t want us here,” I blurted.
“Like you give a shit about what any of us do or don’t want,” Bruce answered.
Liv held up her hand…and he shut up. Another change since I’d been gone.
“You want us to trust you.” Liv looked at me from under her brows. “Fine. Give me a reason. Stay here, where we can see what you do. Let us see what your reactions are now, and how we might—might—be able to integrate my team with your team in the field long term.”
“We have to go back.”
“What, like that crap-hole is better?” Josh shoved into the conversation again.
“It’s sufficient.”
“Victoria.” Stavros joined the conversation. Just not the way I expected. “This idea has merit.”
I wheeled around on him. “What? No. This, all of this, the noise and the people and—and the general peopling can’t be comfortable for you. I won’t ask you to do that.” No matter how much the part of me I hadn’t finished shedding wanted to.
Clearly there had been more than hygienic-questionable vampire blood transfusions taking place while I was out of it.
“We agreed the situation must change, at least for the foreseeable future. No matter how uncomfortable change may be. This is an acceptable extension of our lessons.” He switched his attention to Liv. “Are there more private quarters?”
“These are as private as it gets.”
Stavros’ tactful reference to lessons meant my last test. He’d decided my staying here was an even better way to train, and assure I was reliable. Adding a significant layer of extra work for me, and a larger opportunity for me to screw up. Instead of leaving it at ‘sorry, no room’, heading back to our base, and making it easier for myself, my mouth took over, ignoring my brain. “The annex.”
The annex, the extra area attached to the gym, used for the ultra-rare creatures that HQ might need for experiments, or that we needed to extract information from.
“Those aren’t living quarters,” Kimi signed.
“They have everything we need—space and privacy.”
Liv straightened and turned for the main area. “If you want furniture, you two are hauling it out there yourselves.”
I didn’t know if the invitation was the best possible outcome, or the worst.
Chapter 38
Bruce
“None of you trip my trigger.”
“All we need is privacy.”
Vee’s voice telling them—him—how little they appealed to her and how little they meant, repeated in Bruce’s head on an endless loop. The audio was accompanied by 3D images of her pressed against the damn vampire. His hand wrapped in hers and her blatant concern. Vee had been prepared to leave them, without a word. Yet again, her new go-to response. She had a new family, and they weren’t included.
Bruce was the worst kind of hypocrite. After telling Josh that Vee didn’t belong here, hell, after telling Vee she didn’t belong, he hadn’t been able to stay the fuck away. Especially not when the vampire had laid Vee on the med bay table, already looking dead, or when Kimi hooked up the shitty IV after figuring out how to use congealed vamp blood.
As soon as the last of the blood left the tube, the hovering vamp scooped her up and disappeared to the empty room Liv offered. If the vampire had willingly remained, then the situation wasn’t as routine as he acted. Bruce had been ready to take a fire axe to the guest room door after Vee had been in there for most of a day, out of his sight and with no update.
“I don’t think Vee meant it that way.” Josh’s tone was subdued, nearly lost in the evening breeze rustling across the rooftop, wrestling with his own version of processing Vee’s dismissal.
Bruce didn’t look up from his study of the potted thyme, one of a dozen herbs scattered over the roof deck. “She meant it.”
Jamming his foot against the floor, Josh stopped the meditative back and forth creak of the platform swing. “Man, I don’t get a sex vibe off them. They’re not—you know.”
“Jesus Fucking Christ.” The curse lacked bite though. “I know that, asshole.” As bad as the situation was, at least Vee wasn’t banging some antique. That age difference would’ve been another level of skeevy and wrong on top of this whole crisis.
“I’m saying, she was still off. Not completely healed, or whatever the equivalent is now, and you know how prickly she always was after an injury. She’s not as flat-out mean as Liv, but she hasn’t ever been a fun patient. The worse the recuperation, the worse her attitude is.”
Bruce had to agree. He got where the whole vamps as undead myth came from. He’d stared at her chest the entire drive in watching for the next breath, each agonizingly far apart. The monitors Kimi attached freaked right the fuck out over injured vamp BP and heart rate, too.
So had he, pacing the hallway outside the room until Liv couldn’t take him anymore. She’d gone to check, despite the vamp’s high-handed, “I will inform you when Victoria is ready,” grand pronouncement as he left the med bay.
Liv arrived just in time to catch Vee ghosting them. Barely steady on her feet, face ashy-pale under the brown, but not able to wait to get away from them.
Josh kept going, as relentless as his sisters. “C’mon. We have to cut her some slack.”
“She left us. Her choice. She doesn’t want to be here now and as far as she’s concerned, she doesn’t need anything from us. Vee’s never had any trouble communicating and she was pretty damn clear tonight.”
Kimi popped up, scaling the ladder like gravity didn’t apply to her. “She’s a crappy patient and kind of a snot. She is so not okay and does need us though. We only have to remind her. We also need her.” Kimi flicked her finger at Josh, using the initials for their favorite game. “CoW marathon with Jace in five minutes. You in?”
The last gaming invite was directed at Liv, still on the stair connecting rooftop to the hallway.
“Pass.” Once the other two left, Liv joined him, letting the hatch close on Josh’s animated gaming battle plan rundown.
Liv watched Bruce, while he watched the sun vanish behind the mesa. The pushy crows that usually lined the tree gave way to the tiny bats that swooped around the security lights, picking off mosquitos and moths.
When she finally spoke, her tone blended with the darkness. “I can tell them to move back to whatever hole-in-the-wall suits them.”
“Do you want her gone?”
Liv tilted her head back, joining him in watching the bats, taking her time. “My reasoning for observing them is tactically sound.”
Which meant she wanted to see if any of her sister remained, as badly as Josh and Kimi did, but wouldn’t ever admit it. Maybe not even to herself, going by how she and Vee were suddenly sniping at each other every other word.
The hell of it was, so did he. In the face of Vee’s rejection, he still lived from one breath to the next, praying his Vee existed inside the cold, driven vampire shell she was wearing. Purpose sparking to life, he pinched a handful of thyme from a pot.
Liv twisted to face him as he flipped the roof hatch open. “What are you up to?”
Liv wasn’t giving up, and neither was he, no matter how much hurt and anger was simmering on either side.
“Reminding Vee of who she is.” Food had been the bridge between them first time they learned to communicate, when a barely socialized soldier, and a relationship phobic jerk were forced to coexist.
Food was his love language, according to Vee. Meaning the kitchen was his best hope for getting through to her again, prying her out from the remote shell she was hiding under. It was the only avenue left to try to bring her back to them.
Chapter 39
Vee
I pulled in the last of the blood and felt when the unnerving emptiness in me filled enough. That one last drop needed, like leveling off a measuring cup, except my version was like my center of gravity had steadied. I dropped the vampire, booting its body closer to the incinerator, Stavros’ meal already burning to ash inside while I refueled. Done, I stretched, fingers reaching, and turned to check on Stavros’ opinion of our second inter-group mission.
The entire team stood in the center of the morgue-turned-vampire-disposal center, watching me.
They’d watched me drain a vampire after my taking it down. It hadn’t been dead when I latched on to drink, and I’d been so off, I hadn’t realized we had an audience. Something too much like guilt and panic fluttered in my stomach.
I pulled on Stavros’ training, and crushed the emotion. This was me. I’d been a well-disciplined predator long before becoming a vampire. “Perimeter secure?”
My back turned on them again, I told myself it wasn’t because I was afraid of their reaction, and hauled the body to the incinerator, stuffing it in and slamming the scorching door.
Liv matched my brusque tone. “We’re clear on this end.”
I brushed past her. “I’ll double check with Stavros for stragglers or surveillance, then we’ll meet you at the truck.”
I pulled a vampire disappearing act, little point in walking and pretending to be human now.
Stavros crouched on the peak of the roof, surveying the area. He rose at my appearance, in as animated a mood as he ever got. “This foray went well. We—” He stopped, catching sight of my face.
“They saw me feed,” came out, instead of the question of whether we were all clear I’d meant to ask. “They saw it.”
“Did they attempt to harm you?” Stavros was beside me in a blink. He tilted my chin up, and inhaled, checking me out.
“No.” I started shaking my head, and couldn’t stop. Shivers hit. Except I hadn’t been cold-cold since being infected. “They saw me.” The entire show, complete with fangs and drinking blood from a living creature.
“You yourself stated that was a possibility, when we ran scenarios before deciding to approach this experiment.”
“I know.” I didn’t know why I was reacting this way now.
“Do you believe they will attack us once we reappear?”
“Maybe? I don’t think so?” I settled on, “No.” Liv wouldn’t have wasted the opportunity for a kill shot while I was distracted if she intended to eliminate me.
“Don’t be ashamed.” Stavros applied pressure, raising my head and forcing me to meet his eyes. His aura lapped at the edge of mine. “Never be ashamed. What you are was forced on you, yet you’ve used our curse for a good and righteous cause.”
I opened all the way, not ashamed of needing his surety and deep calm. Steadied, I stepped away. “I’m not ashamed of you, or of what we do.”
We dropped to the cluttered dirt yard, and my bravado aside, walked sedately to the truck instead of the usual whoosh and appearing.
Everyone but Josh was already inside, my brother half in and standing facing us on the passenger side running board, elbows folded on top of the roof and completely relaxed. “Speed it up. Liv’s got a report to fudge, and we’ve got a team to beat.”
Stavros frowned, checking with me, and I translated. “Company online gaming competition. It’s hardcore, with bragging rights bestowed on the winner and deep shame upon the losers.”
