But he was looking at her now, and when she shivered, it was only in part because of the pain.
The nurse skated a gloved hand down Adela’s thigh alongside the knife wound, and even that much hurt terribly. She bit back a grunt; pinned the tip of her tongue between her teeth until she tasted blood.
“Hmm,” the nurse murmured. “Somebody got you good.” She leaned down to inspect it closer, and Adela found that she had to look away, her gorge rising when she saw the red and pink of skin layers in the clean slash where Palmer’s knife had bit deep. “The bleeding’s stopped, thank goodness. We’ll get you all patched up and put you on some antibiotics. How are you feeling?” She patted Adela’s hand. “Nausea? Headache? How’s your pain?”
She swallowed hard against another wave of sickness. “Bad. All of the above.”
“Okay. Hang tight.”
When the nurse moved over to the cabinet to get supplies, Vlad pushed off the wall and stepped toward her.
It took every last ounce of nerve not to shrink down into her jacket collar. “I don’t need a babysitter. I’m fine.”
His gaze flicked over her dispassionately, touching her wound, the bare skin of her leg, in a way that made her want to cover herself, then her face. His eyes – a dark, unspecific color she couldn’t name – settled on hers and he lifted his hand – his wrist – to his mouth. He bared his teeth – his canines were long, and sharp, abnormal – and bit himself.
“What the hell are you doing?” she snapped, and the nurse turned around, startled, arms full of supplies.
Thick red pearls of blood welled; a few lingered in the corners of his mouth when he drew back from his punctured wrist, and he licked them away with a quick flick of his tongue. “Here,” he said. “Better and faster than antibiotics.” He said the word with disdain. And, impossibly, offered his bloodied wrist to her. Held it toward her face, like she would…like…
“What the hell are you doing?” she repeated.
His lips curved in what might have been a grin. Might. “Where do you think that medicine they pump into you comes from?”
Something a lot like fear thrummed in her veins. She thought she might pass out.
“What do you want me to do with that?” Her voice came out quiet and cracked, and not at all demanding like she’d intended.
“Drink,” he said, simply.
Oh God. Oh shit, oh shit, oh God.
When she only stared at him, dumbfounded, he finally gave up. With a shrug, he licked the blood from his wrist a few times and stepped back.
“Suit yourself.”
She took a few shallow breaths through her mouth. “What…what are you?”
He said, simply, “I am a vampire.”
“Oh.” Black spots crowded her vision. “Okay.” And she passed out.
*
In one of the many towns where they stopped just long enough for her fire dance to earn them a roll of cash, a parking lot carnival had boasted that it possessed an elephant. It had indeed. A female Indian elephant, small, the wide space between her eyes speckled with pink. In the half-light of dusk, Red had been struck by the wiry bristles of her tail; the white, impossibly wide toenails on her big pad-like feet. She’d been in a corral of tubular panels, meant for horses or cattle, quietly munching alfalfa hay one dainty mouthful at a time.
Red had stood at the corral for a long time, not touching the rail, because when she’d tried to do so, unconsciously, fascinated, the carney in charge had snapped at her to keep back. So she’d linked her hands together in front of her, squeezing tight first in excitement, and then wonder, and then…sadness, as an unexpected melancholia swept over her. A beautiful wild thing in a cage, all alone, numbed by the wrongness of it.
She dreamed of that elephant, and Rooster’s hand on her shoulder, a gentle squeeze of silent commiseration, in the flickering moments just before full consciousness returned. And then she was fighting her way through a dense fog.
Bright lights. Eyes watering. Painful cold numbness all through her body, pins and needles, an unfamiliar tension. She turned her head and it weighed a thousand pounds. She opened her mouth and her tongue stuck to her palate, two dry sheets of parchment pressed together.
Soft beeps, and hums. Medicinal smells.
She was back. They had her again.
She managed to blink the crust from her eyes and found that she was in a small, white-walled room, surrounded by machinery whose lights flickered in unknown combinations. Her hands lay on her chest, bound by the thick cuffs, and this time, with both of them fastened into place, her power lay dormant deep beneath her skin, untouchable.
She was alone.
Red closed her eyes against he burn of tears. She didn’t regret it, not if Rooster was out there still alive.
But panic began to swell inside her all the same.
They had her again. And this time, after all the blood Rooster and she had spilled, there would be no pretense of gentleness.
Somewhere behind her, a door clicked open.
35
“Congratulations, Major Treadwell. You’ve done what no one else has been able to.”
“Kidnap a girl?” Jake said before he could rein in the impulse.
Dr. Talbot pulled back a fraction, hands braced on his giant desk. He looked like he’d been physically struck by the words. If circumstances were different, Jake might have laughed.
Agent West, as oily as Jake remembered, slid into the silence that Dr. Talbot’s shock had left, all business, no smiles. “LC-5 is a weapon, major, not a girl. She was bred in a Petri dish, brought to term in a surrogate, and brought up in a lab. She belongs to the United States government, and she was made for one purpose and one purpose alone: to fight in the war.”
Jake took a breath. And another. “What war? Fucking – Iraq, or Afghana–”
West pulled a piece of paper – a photo printed on glossy card stock – from the file in his lap and slapped it down on the desk. “This war.”
Jake looked…
And was speechless.
Recovered, Dr. Talbot cleared his throat and said, “This is bigger than you, or me, or whatever moral hangups you have, major. It’s about the survival of the human race.
“We’ve known this was coming for a long time. We finally, finally have Vlad, and his assured cooperation. Now it’s time to fill out the rest of the chessboard.”
Jake sat back heavily in his chair, head throbbing. “That’s…that’s not real.” But there wasn’t much denial in his tone.
“Very real, I’m afraid. The world isn’t what you’ve always thought it was, Jake. It’s much, much more frightening.”
*
The person who entered her room was not the doctor or nurse that Red had expected. A tall man, long black hair past his shoulders. Handsome in a narrow, sharp-nosed way. Blue, blue eyes, and a red leather jacket. He paced slowly into view, shoulders drawn up, tense and careful. He came to a halt poised on the balls of his feet, ready to flee. Or attack.
His eyes. She recognized a bit of herself in him. Or, not really. He wasn’t like her, she didn’t think, but he was different. Not altogether human.
“Are you a doctor?” she asked, voice a rough, dry scrape.
He didn’t flinch, but his mouth tightened. “No. But you’re a mage.”
“A what?”
He cupped his hand; it was empty, but the gesture was unmistakable: the way she held her own hands when she called fire.
“I didn’t know that’s what it was called,” she admitted.
He took a breath, nostrils flaring, brows pinching together over his long, straight nose. “Do you know who your parents are? Were?”
“I don’t have parents.”
“Yes, you do. I can smell them in your blood.” He growled; a quiet pulse of sound, a rumble like an unhappy dog.
Yes, he was different.
Through the receding haze of unconsciousness, and the numbness of the cuffs, a thought dawned, and with it, sadness. “Oh no,” she said. “Are they keeping you here, too? Like they are me?”
His mouth twisted to the side, caught somewhere between a smirk and a grimace. “Something like that.”