Know Thine Enemy

CHAPTER Twelve



As a child, Izzie would hide in the pews at church and play with her favorite stuffed dog while Harrison took confession. It wasn't a frequent occurrence, and became a dead practice when she was nine or ten. Still, she clearly remembered Harrison snapping at her when she inched near the confessional, telling her what was being said inside was between the sinner and God.

Whatever happened with Ryker fell under the same classification. Something had changed. She felt it with every step she took, every breath that pressed against her lungs, every heartbeat. The fire she'd felt earlier had faded, erasing the effects of whatever Briggs had slipped into her food. The instant Ryker's fangs found her throat something inside her chest had exploded, breathing into her nervous energy unlike anything she'd ever felt.

Izzie wasn't an idiot. The girl that lived outside these walls understood the dangerous implications of allowing a vampire to sample her blood. It actually gave her a measure of perverse comfort imagining Wright's fury. How he'd sit her down and go on a two hour rant on the dangers of letting the enemy close. People died when they became addicted to a vampire's bite—damn, she'd known that just from running into junkies on the street. Men and women alike who couldn't get enough of the rush. It's out of this freakin' world, man. I'm tellin' yah.

The very notion she could see herself outside, remember what that girl felt like, and imagine slipping right back into her shoes and taking back the night provided an even hand of relief and anxiety. That life was all she knew. She might have been prepared to leave it, but emerging from a hellhole like this into the big bad world without so much as a compass was enough to scare the piss out of anyone.

She also feared the drug Briggs had given her—the one that had burned her from the inside out and prompted her to spread her legs so easily for Ryker—was nothing more than her repressed sexuality finally making an appearance. Harrison had beaten any inkling of womanly desire out of her before she'd had her first period, and the only thing that had provoked her to address her virginity before was the knowledge if it had to happen, better with someone she knew and trusted. Physical pleasure hadn't mattered a damn that night with Wright, which said nothing about his skill as a lover and everything about her attitude toward sex. Sex was evil. Sex was dirty. Sex was what got her mother killed. Sex was what ruined Harrison's life.

Therefore the thought of begging for a f*ck from a vamp she barely knew struck Izzie as wild and completely out of character. That wasn't her. Not her.

Neither were these feelings—this sense of need. This want for another.

But damn if the feelings weren't there.

Whatever else, Ryker's bite had gone a long way in helping her see clearly for the first time in days. Upon awakening to find herself here, a part of her had regressed to a person that should have died alongside Harrison. A frightened child trapped in a woman's body—a woman just now developing a sense of understanding for the world around her. And even more than that, Izzie felt energized—alive. She felt she could break walls with her fists and tear down her cell door with nothing more than a sturdy kick.

She felt indestructible. Perhaps that had something to do with the bite, as well.

Somehow she knew she had already stayed her last night in this strange version of Hell.

When Briggs entered her cell with her evening meal, he didn't seem notice the change in her. He smiled and chirped a bright, "Hello!"

Izzie nodded but made no move to get up. Since returning to her cell, she had taken seat against back wall, her arms propped on her legs.

"Remarkable performance today," Briggs said, taking long strides toward the table. "A true pleasure to watch."

She feigned a smile. "So much for privacy, huh?"

"White lies never hurt anyone."

"Yeah, f*ck you very much."

He flashed her a nasty little smile. "Not my job, I'm afraid."

"Did you dose me with something, doc?"

Briggs placed the tray on the table, then looked at her, the picture of innocence. "Dose?"

"I didn't feel right in there."

"It looked like he took care of that pretty quickly."

Izzie balled her hands into fists. "You sick f*ck."

"No shame in enjoying the sessions."

"You gave me something."

The doctor shrugged. "We have some drugs we wanted to test, and while you did make a convenient subject, I'd hesitate before placing blame on being under the influence. This medication wouldn't alter your behavior—rather lower your inhibitions."

There wasn't much difference, if her experience trolling bars had amounted to anything. Izzie pursed her lips but didn't respond, her gaze instead falling to her evening meal. Briggs had served her soup again, though he'd remembered to bring a plastic spoon this time. Perhaps he felt she'd earned a utensil with how compliant she'd been during their recent tests. Or maybe he just didn't give a damn.

Briggs seemed different tonight, or perhaps this was something she was seeing for the first time. As she approached the table, his eyes roamed her naked body with unabashed interest. Izzie's skin crawled, but she did her best not to visibly react, instead focusing on the offering of food and the bizarre surge of energy strengthening her muscles.

"I wonder," he said, "how your Mr. Ryker would react if we paired you with another."

Her chest tightened. "It's Ryker again, is it? What happened to all that Subject 061 bullshit?"

"When it's just you and me, Izzie, there's no need for formalities."

"You're the one who imposed them."

"And I'm taking them away." He swallowed and licked his lips when she was within reach, then ran his curled fingers down her arm. "You like what he does to you, don't you?"

Another surge of strength crashed through her, pressing at her skin in desperation of release. The feel of his flesh against hers had her stomach twisting. Eating wasn't an option. "I make the best," Izzie replied through her teeth, "of a bad situation."

"Mmhmm." Briggs's gaze remained trained on her breasts, his hands twitching. "And if our tests were to include studying the lengths to which a vampire can become fixated on a potential mate by studying his reaction when forced to watch you with another, you would make the best out of that situation as well? You would scream and moan for him, too? Beg him for dick? You would—"

That was it. A proverbial it as no one else could define. Something inside her broke and shifted thought and action into autopilot. Her hand moved of its own volition, seizing the plastic, soup-bathed spoon and thrusting it with blind expertise into the soft tissue of Briggs's throat. It took a few delayed seconds for reality to catch up with the present, and by the time Izzie realized what she'd done the moment for reaction had passed. Blood pooled at the base of the wound and lazily trickled down his pasty torn flesh. Briggs's eyes wide in shock, his face ashen, his legs buckling. And then it was over—over before it started. His lips parted and he hissed something—a curse, a plea, a cry for help—but it came out nothing more than a whisper. Briggs toppled uselessly to the ground, and was gone the next second.

If she breathed any harder she would drown in oxygen.

"Holy motherf*cking hell," Izzie sputtered, staring at her hands.

Briggs was dead. She'd killed Briggs. Briggs was dead.

And she'd killed him with a f*cking spoon. A plastic one, at that. That wasn't possible.

Only he was dead, and there was no arguing with a dead man.

Izzie blinked and shook her head. She couldn't stand here and stare at his body all night—despite how perversely gratifying it was—nor could she allow herself a moment to stop and contemplate how it had happened. The bizarre, twisted energy pushing against her veins felt vindicated but not satisfied, and she'd be damned before she stopped without putting up a larger fight. In seconds she was moving again, tearing Briggs's pants down his legs and his shirt over his head. It would be a loose fit, but some clothes—even from a perverted f*cksack—were better than none.

"There," she muttered once she was clothed, kicking the dead man's side for good measure. "And, while I have you here, gotta say if it'd been up to me—on my terms—you would've died in a dirty alley with Harrison's knife up your ass. You're welcome for that."

After one last glance at Briggs's body, she turned her attention to the cell door.

"All right, Izzie. You've seen other girls do it."

It wasn't much of a pep-talk, but it was the only one she had.

She inhaled deeply before splitting the air under the power of her scream that would put Jamie Lee Curtis to shame. From there, it didn't take long. Someone must have been close.

"Hello?" A man. Maybe one of the quiet, albeit willing assistants. "Dr. Briggs?"

"Please!" Izzie said in a voice that wasn't hers. "I think he's had a heart attack!"

The door opened and revealed an unfamiliar face, one belonging to a guard rather than an assistant. A guard with a gun. At once she saw everything line up, as though watching herself from afar, and understood immediately luxuries like hesitation or second thoughts weren't on the table. Izzie smashed her fist into the man's eye, her other hand wrestling the drawn firearm out of his grasp without anything resembling a fight. Were she the type to be concerned over something being too easy, warning bells would have sounded a long time ago. As it was, she barely felt winded.

Just revved. And pissed.

"All right, then," Izzie said, cocking the gun and thrusting the business end against the guard's sternum. "I'm here to see a man about a vamp. You wanna be that man?"

The guard nodded fiercely, his hands shooting up. "What do you want?"

"You know where they're keeping Ryker?"

"Who?"

Her jaw tightened. "Maybe you know him better as Subject 061. You know where he is?"

"Y-yes."

"Looks like this is your lucky day, kid. By all means." She jerked her head, indicating he should move. "Lead the way."

The moment felt surreal—hell, everything did. Gliding across the floor, mindful the softest peep could bring down the house. The air filled with the ragged, terrified breaths of the clumsy guard, offsetting the thunderous echo of her racing heart. She expected her hostage to fill the silence with a load of the usual, "Don't do this. I have a family," protestations, but he had at least enough wits to know speaking wouldn't do him any favors.

As it was, she didn't care if he was the Pope's love child. Anyone who walked these halls freely was an accessory to kidnap, torture, and rape, and therefore deserved no mercy.

The guard stopped outside a cell just a couple turns down the hall from hers and indicated the door with a jerk of his head.

"This is it?"

"Yeah."

"Open the door."

Again, she expected an objection, or a claim that he didn't have access to these rooms. Instead, he nodded and withdrew a room keycard from his pocket.

"You'll let me go?" he whispered.

"You knew what they were doing here?"

He could have argued or played innocent, but instead he said, "Yes."

"You didn't try to stop them."

"I'm a soldier of Heaven. These are beasts from Hell."

"Yeah. Here's the thing, though. Somehow I can't imagine Jesus locking up an innocent girl and making her f*ck in front of an audience." She snatched the keyboard from his hand and cocked her head, leveled the gun's nozzle at the guard's temple, said, "Why don't you ask him?" and pulled the trigger. Blood splattered against her face but she didn't flinch. She watched him fall to ground with indifference, then slid the keycard into the lock.

Then she looked up, not sure what she expected. This all still felt like a dream.

The look in Ryker's eyes was unlike anything she'd seen, and likewise something she knew she would carry with her forever. A middle ground between awe and astonishment, as though trying to determine whether or not he had imagined her. At that moment, she felt touched by God.

"Oh hell," he murmured, taking a dazed step forward. "Izzie, are you real?"

Izzie flashed him an uncertain grin. "I dunno about you, but I've had just about enough of this place."

Ryker nodded, his gaze drifting to the mark on her throat. The place where he'd tasted her. And instead of the disgust or fear or any of the thousand possible things she would have expected, her blood pumped hot and she found herself weak with an emotion she couldn't name.

"You're coming with me?" she asked.

"I didn't think you'd want me to."

"I didn't fake everything."

His expression turned molten. "I didn't fake a second."

And before she could blink, the self-imposed shackles collapsed and the beast in her chest ripped toward freedom. With a growl on her lips and hope spearing her heart, Izzie stormed forward and met Ryker halfway, flinging her arms around his neck.

Then those blue eyes pulled her into oblivion and she surrendered completely, and before she could do so much as gasp his name, her cheeks were between his hands and his lips had crashed upon hers.

And then the floor fell away and the walls melted, and there was nothing but them. Ryker's mouth moved against hers, hungry, demanding, his tongue prying her lips apart to taste her every corner. And Izzie was so stunned she could do little more than stumble back, her racing mind stuck on repeat. She seized his forearms and secured her balance. And Ryker kept kissing her. Pouring every inch of himself into the union of their lips. When he pulled away, it was to sigh her name. When she needed to breathe, he would pant for air while peppering her face with sweet kisses. It was the most passionate embrace she'd ever known—the sort of thing she'd only recently dreamed of touching, and only with Ryker.

It ended, of course. All good things did. But when her eyes met his again, she found herself swallowed in warmth.

"Wanted to do that forever."

"Me too."

"Good." Ryker grinned and nipped at her lips. "What was that you were saying about getting outta here?"

She nodded shakily and released a deep breath. "Let's blow this popsicle stand."