Charlie woke so suddenly she sat bolt upright in her bunk, eyes wide, heart pounding, dreams still hovering around the edges of her mind.
Soft and wavering, like a mirage, those dreams. Killian, bending over her in a hospital bed, pressing a wet sponge to her mouth. She remembered how thirsty she was, how she latched on to that sponge to suck the moisture from it as if she’d been dying of thirst.
But wait, it hadn’t been a sponge, had it? What, then?
“Welcome to Fort Rogers. Hope you don’t plan to sleep this late every morning.”
The girl doing the talking wore green cargo pants and an olive drab tank top. She was ripped. Her black hair was pulled back into a tight ponytail and her skin was the color of caramel.
“I was told to let you rest till you were ready. So? Are you ready?”
Sitting up in the bed, still in her hospital gown, Charlie tried to decide what to make of the girl. “Ready for what?”
“Breakfast. Then the grand tour. And then you get to decide if you want to stay or not. Be a part of something bigger than you. Something important.”
“I get it now. You’re what? Some kind of recruiter?”
She shook her head. “Nope. Just another BD like you. Well, maybe a little different.”
She came closer, scooping a neatly folded stack of clothes from a nearby three-drawer stand. There was one beside every bunk, ten bunks in the room, five on each side. “I’m Mariah.” She held out the clothes.
“Charlie,” Charlie said, taking them. They were the same clothes the other girl wore. There were socks, a sports bra and a pair of underpants as well.
“Shower’s through there, Charlie.” Mariah pointed to a door at the end of the barracks. “There’s a footlocker under your bed. Everything you need is provided for you here. Get yourself cleaned up and dressed, and I’ll take you to the mess hall for some breakfast. LT’s gonna meet us there.”
“All right.” Charlie took the clothes with her and headed into the bathroom, which had six private stalls. Three of them were showers and three were toilets. There was one sink and a mirror, and she thought if all ten bunks were occupied, there should’ve been at least five of each.
Didn’t matter. She wasn’t staying here. She’d rather languish at her grandmother’s middle-of-nowhere cabin in the woods than join this troop. Or whatever it was.
She was buzzing and nervous, and yet hyper-aware. She had no idea how she could feel the way she did after nearly dying from blood loss. She felt good. Strong. And it seemed to her that her senses had sharpened. She’d noticed that last night, but thought it might be shock or something. But it was still with her.
She took her shower at record speed and emerged dressed in what was apparently the uniform of this place. But she left her hair down, because she was feeling slightly defiant.
She saw Mariah notice it, but the other girl made no comment. She just opened the door into bright morning sunlight. They fell into step side by side, walking over a winding strip of pavement amid other barracks and across a central yard where Old Glory waved and snapped from a giant flagpole. It was situated in the center of a circle of lawn and flowers, which was surrounded by a loop of pavement. Like a hub. The pavement went in four directions, including the one from which she’d come. Buildings lined three of them. The fourth seemed to veer off into wilderness. A group of men and women dressed just like she was, were jogging off in that direction. This place was far bigger than she’d realized at first.
“That big square that looks like a warehouse is the mess hall,” Mariah explained. Charlie would’ve known that without being told. She’d been smelling the food since they’d left the barracks. “Breakfast is over, but Cook had orders to hold a plate for you. Bear in mind, this is a one-time deal. You stick around, you get up at reveille like the rest of us, or you don’t eat.”
“Good thing you’re not a recruiter. You’re lousy at it.”
The girl looked at her sternly. Charlie smiled, but she didn’t seem to get it. “Hey, I was joking, okay?”
“Yeah. Okay.” Still no smile. She pushed down the bars on a big set of double doors and sailed through. “Cookie, you got something for the newbie?”
“Cookie” was another girl, around the same age as Charlie and Mariah. She was blond and unsmiling as she took a plate from somewhere with a pot holder and set it on the counter that separated the kitchen from the cafeteria. “It’s hot.” Then she put a mug beside the plate, and pointed. “Coffee’s over there. I think there’s still a cup or two left.”
“Thanks,” Charlie said. She plucked a few brown paper napkins from a stack and used them to pick up the plate. It burned her fingers anyway before she dropped it onto a table. Mariah had two mugs filled before Charlie even got herself seated, and she put one in front of her, then slid onto the bench seat directly across from her and pointed at her plate. “Steak and eggs. We’re all about high protein here. BDs need more than ordinary people do. And BD-Exers need more yet.”
“What’s a BD-Exer?” Charlie asked.
Mariah just smiled. “LT will explain that to you before the day is out.”
LT for lieutenant, or maybe for Lucas Townsend. Either way, same guy. Charlie noted that her grandmother had said the same thing about a high protein diet, then she tucked into the food, hungrier than she’d been in a month, and surprised by how every bite made her want more. The flavors exploded on her tongue in a way she’d never experienced before. Apparently Cookie was a world class gourmet who could make ordinary steak and eggs taste incredible. She’d intended to chew, swallow, sip, and ask questions. Instead, she wolfed the food, barely taking a breath in between bites. She was embarrassed, and her plate bare, by the time she managed to get a grip again.
Lifting her head, she must have looked apologetic, because Mariah said, “It’s okay. When you haven’t been getting enough, it’s like that. We’re all the same here, Charlie. We understand each other.”
She nodded slowly. Maybe they did. “What is this place, exactly? I mean, I thought it was some kind of safe house for people like me, but it looks more like a military base.”
“Not military. We don’t belong to any branch. We’re a special unit in training. A vampire attacked you last night, didn’t it?”
She nodded, once again haunted by the hazy memory of Killian, gathering her upper body in his arms, bending over her, feeding her...something.
“One got my whole family,” Mariah said. “My mother. My baby sister.” She closed her eyes. “I wasn’t home when it happened. Out drinking with some friends. I thought I was being kidnapped when LT and some other officers took me as I stumbled out of a bar. But I found out later they’d been tipped off. They were trying to protect me, to get me to safety. Another team was sent to rescue my family, but it was too late.”
“God.” Charlie no longer wondered at the other girl’s lack of lightness or humor. It was a dark tale. “How long ago?”
“Two months.”
“I’m really sorry.”
Mariah nodded. “Cookie was married to her childhood sweetheart. They got him, too. All of us have lost someone to those bloodsuckers. Where’s your family?”
“I was staying with my grandmother, but I think she can handle herself.” She wondered, though. Would Killian go after her mother? She’d be an easy target. Not Roxy, though. Not Roxy with her cache of weapons and her alarms and her eight-hundred and two cell phones and all her precautions.
Except Roxy was deluded. She wasn’t afraid of vampires at all. She was more afraid of the government.
“I’d like to call her.” As soon as she said it, she knew it would be impossible. Roxy changed phones like most people changed socks. But maybe she could call her mother and find out how to reach Roxy. She needed to be warned, at least.
“You take the tour, you make the decision, we take you back if you want to go. No calls from base. It’s not safe. Can you imagine if the vamps found out about this place?”
“I thought they were
all dead. Or mostly all.”
“You thought wrong. There are more of them out there than anyone knows. That’s not for public dissemination, by the way. Gotta keep the populace from panicking. And besides, we’re the ones in danger, not them.”
She nodded, not liking that truth, but accepting it.
“The people here have had enough of hanging around waiting to be vampire food. I don’t like being a victim. This unit is giving me a way to fight back. And there’s more, too. I can’t even tell you the stuff you get by staying here–”
“That’s right, recruit, you can’t.”
Lieutenant Townsend stood in the doorway. His cargo pants were camo print, and his green shirt was a T, not a tank. No insignia anywhere, but Mariah jumped to her feet and saluted when she saw him. “I wasn’t going to, Lieutenant Townsend, sir.”
“At ease. I know you weren’t. I’m gonna take over the tour from here. Go change up and join the others on the obstacle course, on the double.”
“Yes, sir!” She headed out of the mess hall like her boots were on fire. “Yeah, see, that’s not gonna be me, LT,” Charlie said. “Not in this lifetime. I’ve never called anybody sir in my life, and I don’t intend to start now.”
He smiled. “That’s your call. But there’s a lot to see, Charlie. Come on, let’s get started.”
She hadn’t stood up, and she didn’t. She was feeling rebellious, tired of being told what to do, taken where people wanted her to go, protected and kept in the dark about God only knew how many things. So she sat there, instead. She finished her coffee, and noted with regret that Mariah hadn’t had a chance to finish her own. When her mug was empty, she got up, walked to the doorway where Lieutenant Townsend stood waiting, and said, “All right. I’m ready now.”
“Good.”
The private jet’s pilot was one of Rhiannon’s regulars, a human completely under her thrall. Weak-willed mortals were invaluable assets to the Undead. Of course, Roland often disagreed with her about the ethics of using them. (Her mate was sometimes far too ethical for his own good.) But this was an emergency situation that would save lives. Even he hadn’t argued this time. Oh, he might have, until they’d received an urgent text message from their mortal friend, Roxy.
They’d flown the night through with the sun behind them, as if in pursuit. Dawn was pushed back with every time line they passed, flying westward from a private airstrip in Brasov, Transylvania to one in upstate NY. There, they refueled and then continued on across the US, landing at last on a hidden runway within a cathedral forest outside Portland, Oregon.
Rhiannon watched their pilot go off on foot, heading into the city with a hefty wad of cash and a set of false memories to explain how he had arrived there. He would emerge from his dazed state enough to use the cell phone she’d tucked into his pocket and call one of the numbers she had programmed into it for him—a Portland cab company, a nice hotel where a room was already reserved and paid for in his name, and his home number in Albany. He would find commercial airline tickets back home awaiting him at the hotel’s desk. His disappearance would be blamed on a temporary lapse of cognitive function, possibly stress related, and he would go on to live a happy life, never knowing the service he had provided to his own kind, as well as hers.
Rhiannon smoothed a soothing hand over Roland’s tense shoulder. “It’s over now, darling. Your feet are once again firmly planted upon solid earth.”
“I hate flying in those contraptions. It’s unnatural.”
“If you’d only allow Vlad to teach you shapeshifting, you could fly without them.”
She was teasing, and he knew it. Not every vampire could master every skill, and there were precious few who could manage to change their form. Vlad was one. He could become bat or wolf. Vixen was another, but she’d been a shapeshifter before she’d become a vampire. Rare individual, that one. Rhiannon wondered if she’d survived the war of 2011, and hoped so. Reaper and his little gang of vampires were dear to her. She hoped they’d all survived, but hadn’t heard from any of them since she’d been forced to flee to Romania.
“Come, Pandora,” she whispered as she turned to walk back into the woods. The trees were huge, bigger than she’d seen anywhere, and she’d been almost everywhere. Never here, though. The forest must be virgin, the trees, thousands of years old. Older than she was, perhaps. Had they been saplings in this wild and untamed land when she’d been a little girl in the temple of Isis in Egypt? Had they seen as much as she had?
Rhiannon had a feeling of camaraderie with the arboreal giants as she walked among them. Seldom did she feel small or insignificant, but in this great forest, she came close to that. Even the lush ferns were higher than her head, and the smells, the scents of the trees, their needles and cones and sap, were an olfactory feast.
“Darling.” Roland’s hand curled around her nape, sending shivers of pleasure right to her toes.
She tilted her head in catlike pleasure. “I’m sorry, my love. The majesty of this forest is overwhelming my sense of purpose.”
“And your purpose is?”
“To get to Roxy, of course. We should have plenty of time to help her recover her stolen granddaughter before Devlin and his gang of killers even arrive here. Cargo ship.” She rolled her eyes. “Amateurs.”
“Agreed. But if those are our goals, then why are we traipsing through this forest, back toward the plane?”
She turned around and smiled up at him. Rhiannon was tall for a woman. Particularly for an ancient Egyptian woman. Not that there were many of those walking around today. Roland was taller. She loved that he was taller. “To camouflage it, of course. It won’t take long.”
“Ahh. The Glamourie?”
“It is my specialty.” They emerged from the sentinel conifers to the edge of the clearing where her speedy little jet awaited their return. Rhiannon stopped, stepped her feet a bit farther apart, and gave her hands and arms a shake. Roland gave her room to work. He loved watching her use magic. He’d told her so a thousand times. And she loved practicing it. The magical arts had been a part of her since long before she’d become a vampire. She had been taught by the priestesses of Isis, after all–the most powerful magical practitioners there had ever been.
Arms to her sides, palms turned outward, Rhiannon stared at the jet, and then past it, at the trees that were its backdrop. In her mind, she conjured an image of those trees that came all the way down, rather than stopping where the jet began, so that the space the jet occupied vanished, and the trees were all there was to be seen. Near the bottom, she imagined the grasses and wildflowers, the giant ferns and berry briars, also continuing. Once her vision was firm in her mind, she closed her eyes and slowly raised her hands outward and upward. As she did, the grasses, flowers and ferns rose up in her mind’s eye. The tree trunks, limbs and leaves, lowered down like a curtain over the plane. When her hands met over her head, she twisted her palms outward again, and brought both arms down fast. Then she opened her eyes and looked. “There. Since inanimate objects give off very little discernible energy, that should hold until I reverse the spell.”
Roland stood beside her, shaking his head. “You never fail to amaze me. Even after all this time.”
“I hope I never shall,” she told him, and she trailed a forefinger down his cheek, to his neck, leaned up and kissed him slow.
His arms came around her waist, pulled her hard against him, and he bent over her neck, nibbling and nipping until her body yearned. “Later, my love,” she whispered. “Roxy first. Remember?”
One sharp bite made her wince in pleasure, then he lifted his head. The glow in his eyes was for her, and she knew it, relished it. “All right, my love. But I’ll hold you to that promise.”
Rhiannon pulled out her cell phone in its glittering, beaded case, and looked again at the text message she had received just before leaving Romania. It had come from a number she did not recognize.
“Granddaughter abducted. Desperate Prayers Invoked. TOC.” br />
She’d deciphered the simple code easily. “Desperate Prayers Invoked” clearly referred to DPI, the Undead’s most hated enemy. TOC was Roxy’s way of identifying herself. The Oldest Chosen.
“Where is she?” he asked.
“That’s what we’re about to find out, my love.” She typed in a text. “We’ve arrived. Send coordinates.”
Within seconds, the map feature on the small but amazing device, took over the screen, showing an X that was highlighted. Rhiannon clicked the “find route” command, and the screen changed to one showing how to drive to the spot. Of course, they wouldn’t need to drive, and there was still an hour or so until daylight. She turned the phone to show Roland. “It’s less than twenty miles.”
“Eighteen point seven,” he said.
“Even you must admit to the amazing capabilities of this little handheld computer.”
“I’m not a fan. No one has to remember anything anymore, or even learn anything. Computers are a crutch. They weaken the mind. But conveyances bother me more.”
“I think you simply hate to admit to such a human weakness as motion sickness.”
“You think wrong.”
She smiled and fluttered her lashes. “I’m never wrong. But I won’t make you admit it just now. We can make it in no time on foot, taking a direct route through the forest. We don’t even need to liberate a car.”
He brought her hand to his lips for a lingering kiss, met her eyes, and together, they crossed the road, entered the woods on the other side, and sped off too fast for even animal eyes to detect.
“This is my favorite part of the base. Look.”
LT was awfully attentive. The kind of attentive that told Charlie he was into her, which was okay. She was wary, though. The last guy who’d given her shivers up her spine had turned out to be a hungry vampire out for a quick meal. Even if it felt like he was the soulmate she’d been searching for all her life. So she told herself to just play it cool for now.
Lucas had shown her the company gym where people had been working out on every imaginable piece of equipment. He’d shown her the Dojo where martial arts training was going on. He’d taken her through the infirmary where empty beds with clean white sheets were lined up, and the only activity was in a sectioned off portion near the back that held a lab on one side and an office on the other. There had been several people in white coats and goggles in the lab, messing around with beakers and test tubes doing she had no idea what.
And now they were standing at the Combat Training Field, according to the sign, where men and women in olive green shorts, T-shirts, and running shoes were tackling an obstacle course like a bunch of athletes in training. There were three groups taking turns on a course. The obstacles included saw-horses they had to jump, a mud pit they had to traverse using a long pole, and some razor wire that required a twenty foot belly crawl. And there was a tall wooden wall at the far end that she presumed they would climb over when they reached it.
As she watched them, Charlie felt an old familiar longing in her gut. She’d always wished she could be one of those people. The strong, active, muscled types who could jog for miles or do fifty push-ups or play sports adequately enough to be on a team. But she couldn’t. She’d never been strong.
The sun was high, and it was a gorgeous day, cool but bright with just enough of a breeze to be perfect. The wooden wall caught her attention again as the first group of recruits reached it. It had knotted ropes dangling from it, and one recruit after another grabbed the rope and scaled the wall more or less like Spiderman.
Charlie shook her head and looked at LT. “I’m not athletic. There’s no way I would ever be able to do that. Any of this.”
“Neither could most BDs, Charlie. None of them could begin to tackle this course when they arrived here. The Belladonna Antigen begins making you weaker than normal humans long before you’re aware of it. Just keep watching, though.”
The second group had reached the wall, and one by one they grabbed the rope, placed one foot on the wall, and launched themselves over the top. Charlie’s jaw dropped. “Are you kidding me?”
“Wait. Just wait.”
The third group came to the wall, and didn’t even touch the ropes. They just jumped, springing into the air as if they’d been launched there, and landing on the other side easily.
She frowned, not taking her eyes off of them. “That wall has to be fifteen feet high. How is this possible?”
“It’s twenty. And that’s the part I haven’t told you yet.”
“I don’t get it,” she said. “They have the antigen, just like I do, right?”
“Yes.”
“And you just said it makes you weaker, even before you’re aware of it, didn’t you?”
“Yes, I did. And you already know that most BDs don’t live much past thirty-five. Almost none of them in fact. The average lifespan used to be around forty-two, by the way. We don’t know why it’s getting shorter, but it is.”
That distracted her momentarily. “Almost none live past thirty-five. That means that some do?”
He nodded. “Yeah. There are one or two exceptions that we’re aware of. But it’s rare, Charlie.”
“Do you know why some live longer?”
“Like your grandmother, you mean?”
She didn’t confirm or deny it.
“We don’t know. We’re trying to find out. That’s part of what we do here. Research is as much a part of Fort Rogers as training is. It’s even named after one of our first and most ground breaking researchers–Curtis Rogers. But your grandmother...well, she’s...not a person who’s likely to cooperate with us in those efforts.”
“I know. She’s stubborn.”
“It doesn’t matter, though. We’ve found an answer.”
Charlie frowned and watched as the three groups of recruits returned to the beginning of the course and started again. They were smiling, laughing, animated and high-fiving one another. “What do you mean...an answer?”
“A cure,” he said.
Her heart jumped in her chest. “A cure?”
“More than that, Charlie. We have developed a drug called BDX. We give a series of treatments that not only cure the side effects of the Belladonna Antigen and remove that sentence of an early death, but make you stronger in the meantime. Way stronger.”
Blinking slowly, she searched his eyes, trying to tell whether he was lying or not, but she’d never been much good at reading people.
He looked away, focusing on the recruits again. “Group One has only had the first treatment. Group Two has received two of them, and Group Three has had the full series. Three intravenous treatments over three days, and you’ll be jumping that wall like they are.”
She wanted to be strong and healthy and vibrant, and she really wanted to live past thirty-five. She almost told him so right then, but there was something holding her back.
“If this is true, then why aren’t you distributing this formula far and wide to every BD in the country by now?”
He gazed out at the course where the recruits showed off their skills. The sun gleamed off his dark hair. “FDA. We’re lucky they’re even letting us run these trials.”
“So it’s experimental.”
“Yeah.”
“How long have you been experimenting on human beings, Lieutenant Townsend?”
He didn’t even flinch, didn’t try to deny it. “Since the war. Three years now.”
“So then how do you know they won’t die around the age of thirty-five?”
“Because they’re no longer growing weaker. They’re growing stronger. Every physical test indicates–”
“But you’re not sure.”
He pressed his lips. “I’m as sure as I need to be.”
“And you want something from me, from them, in return for this miracle cure, right?”
He stared at her for a long moment, then smiled shaking his head rapidly. “Man, you’re something aren’t you? No small talk. Cut
right to the chase. Am I right?”
“It’s usually the shortest path to the truth. So you’re offering me this drug, this treatment that will make me able to leap small garden sheds in a single bound. What is it you’re asking from me in return?”
“Fair question. I want you to stay. To live here. To train here.”
“And what would I be training for? Some kind of re-run of the Vampire War?”
He nodded. “That’s right. This camp, and these trainees–this is how we prevent mankind’s extinction, Charlie. This is humanity’s last line of defense against the next wave of vampire attacks. And it is coming, believe me, it is coming. We didn’t get them all the first time. They’ve had two years to propagate, and they are pissed.”
She drew a deep breath, looked around her and nodded. “I want the cure. But I don’t want to be a part of whatever this is, and I sure as hell don’t want to fight vampires. I don’t want to fight at all. I just want to live out my life in peace. So I guess my decision is...thanks, but no thanks. I’m not into playing guinea pig, and I’m not into violence or genocide.”
“Charlie, aren’t you hearing me? We can cure you.”
“Yeah, I got that. But um, I’m not all that near my expiration date yet, so I’m just not feeling the urgency. A little more testing, a few more years to make sure this cure of yours actually works can’t really hurt anything, can it? I’m not warrior material, LT. Never have been. So you have my answer. I get to go home now, right?”
He blinked, clearly surprised. It must not have been the response he was expecting, she thought. Apparently, most BDs didn’t say no when offered this sort of a trade. Well she had. Now she would find out if he’d been telling the truth when he’d told her the choice was hers. Somehow, that was the part of this whole scenario that she didn’t quite believe. And maybe that was because she’d spent a little too much time in the company of her paranoid, conspiracy-theory nut of a grandmother, but whatever.
“Fine. We’ll have you home before sundown.” He didn’t look her in the eyes when he said it.
Charlie was not relieved. She would believe it, she thought, when she was home. With her mom, not Roxy.
Chapter Nine