Embracing Midnight (18 page)

That got everyone’s attention. Roger Reinke’s lips pressed into a thin line. Norton’s gaze remained riveted on the jar and its gross content. Forque crossed his arms and looked pissed. Yuan looked insulted.

“We’re food to them,” Yuan said, speaking as if she were addressing a small and rather dim child. “Their diet consists of a single element: blood.”

Electricity rippled through the room.

An uncomfortable silence followed, the agents holding their collective breath at the sideshow freak in the jar.

Bile rushed up again, burning the back of Callie’s throat. The room around her felt unbearably hot even though the temperature hovered around a cool sixty. She swallowed it down. The thought that something like this lived inside Iollan Drake made her throat, and heart, ache. And her body. The steely planes and solid muscle sending her into the throes of rapture didn’t belong to a human being. Thinking of the way he’d touched her, claimed her, made her throb all over.

Knowing what she knew now, would she sleep with him again?

In a heartbeat.

The feeling of doubt kept nagging.

Callie glanced at the tiny Asian woman. “Having been in the position of donating a few pints, I have to admit I don’t remember the experience as unpleasant or threatening.”

Yuan swooped in with her hammer, determined to nail down the facts. “Most likely because they have the ability to alter memory. Think about it, agent. Would you like the idea of one of these things invading our political leaders? These things spread as easily as a virus, invisible and almost undetectable.”

“Everything has an agenda, and we feel this species is no different,” Forque added in the authoritative manner of the expert. His expression turned grave as he went on. “For them it’s at a primal level: survival. And at what cost to human lives? We suspect the clans we’ve detected are only the tip of the iceberg. These things are spreading worldwide even as we speak.”

As if looking at the victim of an accident, Norton couldn’t seem to tear his gaze away. “This is getting spooky,” he mumbled, visibly shaken. “I mean, if these fuckers look like us and act like us, how the hell do we tell them from us?”

Doctor Yuan beamed at the brighter pupil. “We’ve identified a couple of telling traits of symbiotic possession inside the human body. One is a prominent ridge of scarring at the base of the neck—the entry of the symbiote into the body.”

“So we just go around asking to see people’s necks?” Norton asked sarcastically. “That ought to simplify things.”

Callie suppressed a snicker. Norton had a habit of shifting into asshole mode when displeased with the answers he received. In Norton’s mind, things had to make sense. Things like this most definitely didn’t make sense to a Jew from Brooklyn.

Doctor Yuan lost her spark. “Another thing we’ve identified in hosts is an unusual amount of scarring on the neck and shoulder area. These things have a distinctive bite and leave an equally distinctive scar. Agent Whitten, I am sure, can show you hers if you have any doubts.”

Callie blushed, feeling every bit the sore thumb. She’d offered her neck more than once. Willingly.

“A host—or
bloodmate
—is usually chosen from the pool of former victims,” Doctor Yuan continued.

“Like anyone would volunteer to be fucked over by that thing.”

Callie frowned daggers.

Norton caught her displeasure and shrugged, giving a weak smile. “Sorry. Present company excluded.”

Callie decided to gather her own information. Norton could taste his own shoe leather later. “I’ve seen three of these things up close. In all three instances I noticed the eyes to be a brilliant coppery shade with an almost oval, nearly animalistic, iris.”

“That’s the most telling trait we’ve identified so far,” Doctor Yuan confirmed. “Another is their extreme sensitivity to sunlight. They can’t take it, at any level.”

Professor Forque broke in, speaking with a certain grim amusement. “Put them in the sun and they fry like eggs.”

Callie grimaced. Empty hands opened and closed. She had no doubt that Forque hadn’t tested the theory on more than one specimen. Gruesome thought. “Sounds horrible.”

Forque shrugged as if she’d commented on nothing more than the day’s weather. “Another way we can identify their clusters is through electromagnetic spectrum. In their shifting of energy, the Niviane Idesha produce nonfatal levels of electromagnetic radiation due to accelerated electrons.”

Callie went still as a thought occurred to her. “So shouldn’t these things be of more interest to the military?”

Doctor Yuan reassumed control. “If it flies, they get it. If it’s ground bound, we get it,” she explained dryly. “Our main area of interest lies in their longevity and ability to shift. If we can rework their DNA to suppress the blood hunger, imagine what a boon that would be to humankind.”

Sounded more like a curse to Callie. More along the lines of the splitting of the atom than the fountain of youth. Abilities like that in the hands of humankind didn’t bode well. People were stupid, destructive, and irresponsible. Scientists with a God complex in particular.

Norton’s frown returned. Damned if he wasn’t going to start up again. Callie didn’t blame him.

Roger Reinke’s gray eyes narrowed. A scowl hardened his features into something sadistic. “We’ve developed weapons that take care of these things just fine.” He pressed his agents with a look conveying a great deal more than mere words. “We’re going to do whatever it takes to stop these things. We have to stop their invasion into the population if at all possible. If we have to use deadly force, then so be it.”

Oh, no.

Hearing his words, Callie felt the sick clenching nausea seeping into her guts turned into sharp shards of ice. The hair on her arms stood up. She turned away from the thing in the jar. Straight into the body on the gurney. A face filled with fear met her gaze. The fear looked familiar. Too familiar.

She froze. A frisson of something cold and acidic spread through her. Her gaze immediately whipped toward the corpse’s neck. Recognizing the dotted line of shallow punctures circling his neck, her heart leapt inside her rib cage. The only difference between this body and that of the woman she’d viewed less than a week ago were the eyes. Where the female’s had been a natural color, the pupils of the male’s eyes looked as stony and white as pure marble.

The girl had been seen with Drake. Agents were tracking both. Two and two came together as to why the mutilated body would be dumped back on the streets.

The girl was human. Wholly human.

Petrified by her discovery, breath deserted her.

This isn’t right
.
It can’t be.

Needing to confirm her suspicion, Callie looked at the wrist of the corpse. Sure enough, there it was. That small dotted line of punctures. Ditto, the opposite wrist. Identical in every way. Except the eyes. That gave them away. The eye color. The girl’s were brown.

Her pulse shot into hyperspace. The whole scene was strangely surreal. This corpse bore identical damages to other corpses she’d viewed, the most recent purported to be a victim of Drake’s.

A lie.

She knew that as surely as she knew her own name.

A jolt arrived as the realization penetrated her skull, from inside her own body. This time the chill going down Callie’s spine penetrated clear to the core. The blood drained from her head so quickly she was positive she’d faint.

Her guts curled into knots. There was a strange buzzing in her ears. Callie prayed for strength. And she prayed even harder she was mistaken about the suspicious conclusions suddenly gripping her like pit bulls that wouldn’t let go.

Praying didn’t change the facts and she knew it.

Callie had to step away, close her eyes, and try to erase the visions lingering in her mind. Having the truth dumped in her lap without warning was disturbing. She didn’t want to look at the mangled corpse anymore. Especially when the victims in question had been hunted—and slaughtered—by her own government.

Definitely trouble with a capital
T.

C
allie sat in the back of a crowded van, crammed between Paul Norton to her left and Roger Reinke to her right. Dressed in tactical combat gear and the vest, she hardly believed the day’s events had progressed to this point.

Hunting vampires.

Capturing
, she mentally corrected herself.

Their orders were clear: Do not kill the subjects. That honor was reserved for people like Doctor Yuan and Professor Forque. Such decisions were made above her head. She had her orders. Personal feelings had no place beyond her duty.

They hit a bump. Shoulders jostled.

Paul Norton elbowed her. Hair neatly cut and beard shaved off, he no longer looked like the junkie he’d portrayed for months. “Fucking unreal, huh?”

Holding her gun in her lap, Callie glanced down. The legendary items of vampire hunting were different in the real world of the twenty-first century. Instead of stakes, crosses, and holy water, the agents were outfitted with guns, infrared goggles, and Geiger counters.

“Yeah, really wild.” Tension arced through her. Grip pressed against her palm, this new weapon felt strange in her hand. Better get used to it. She’d be using it a lot, if what Professor Forque said was anywhere near truth. From now on, she’d be part of the first response team. Where these things were found, she’d be sent. The pace in her career had just stepped up.

Callie drew a breath.
I can do this.
Maybe it was better she’d made the choice she had. The weaker emotions, the ones she’d struggled to keep in check, likely needed to be put in their place. Personal feelings would no longer be allowed to get in the way of doing her job. It wasn’t as if she didn’t understand or comprehend the threat such a species as the Niviane Idesha posed to humankind.

All she had to do was her job—like it or not.

She considered her weapon with detachment. Undesirable but necessary. “Who’d have thought we’d be shooting the fuckers with silver.”

About the size of a standard .38, the gun fired small dartlike ampoules primed with pure liquid silver. As explained by Doctor Yuan, colloidal silver inhibited the symbiont’s ability to draw oxygen when introduced into the system of the host. That in turn rendered its supernatural abilities useless.

The van screeched to a stop. Double doors opened, spilling a bunch of caffeine-wired, bleary-eyed federal agents out into the street.

Callie hurried out of the van. Her forehead was cold and clammy despite the warmth of the day. Sliding on a pair of sunglasses, she surveyed the area. As a lead agent, she’d be one of the first to go in. At this point she had the most experience in dealing with the things.

She glanced at Roger. His mouth was a thin tight line, his gaze flinty and merciless. He’d scarcely said ten words to her.

The efficiency of the bureau never failed to amaze her. It was awesome to see agents fan out and take their places, moving like clockwork and never missing a beat. Dark vans blocked off the street on both sides; police cars rerouted traffic away from the area. A literal wall of moving metal formed a ring around the target area. Nothing would be getting in. Nothing on two legs would be getting out, either.

When the FBI took control of an area, they took control of every last inch. Held at bay by extra police officers called in to assist in crowd control, the locals gawked like kids at a circus seeing pink elephants for the first time. Everyone wanted to see and know what the hell was going on.

Tight-faced feds were equally tightfisted with information. The word out on the street was that it was a drug raid. Given the area and accessibility of the building in question, that sounded plausible and logical. Dealers made a quick backtrack, hustling off to check their own supplies.

Callie glanced up and down the street, so familiar in a creepy sort of way. She’d pointed the way to this location, giving investigators their first solid leads into how the creatures managed to hide so efficiently and be virtually unseen. During daylight hours the Niviane Idesha needed to be out of the sun’s light, a thing fatal to their species. Abandoned and condemned buildings were more than perfect. They were everywhere.

The sun tilted lower, reminding everyone the time to get moving had arrived.

Callie checked her watch. Another hour before night descended. The raid had to be timed with perfect synchronicity, when the creatures would just be beginning to rouse from their state of
daysleep
, unfed and at their weakest.

Roger Reinke stepped up beside her. A cadre of special agents equipped and trained in handling the aliens joined them. Aside from Reinke and Norton, Callie knew none of them. They obviously knew Roger. All eyes turned toward him.

“I don’t have to remind you guys not to use excessive force unless necessary,” Reinke said, his tone allowing no discussion. These things move fast, but they’re sluggish this time of day, weak. Hit them with one, maybe two shots. Any more than that and we’ll be dragging bodies out of there.”

The men all nodded in agreement.

“We’ll take ’em down easy,” one agent smirked.

“They’ll never know what hit them,” another said.

“Good. Let’s do this right, then.” Roger Reinke glanced over at Callie. “You sure you can handle this?”

Drawing in a deep breath, Callie nodded once. If they knew how bad she shook inside, they’d send her packing. She felt hopelessly out of her depth. More than afraid, she was fucking terrified. “I’ve been in there, seen what these things can do,” she heard herself say flatly. She flicked the safety off her weapon. “Time for a little payback.”

The agents went inside, spreading out through the first-floor lobby. A couple carried Geiger counters, checking the readings.

“Well?” Reinke asked. “Any activity?”

“Through the fucking roof,” the agent answered. “There’s definitely been a concentration of heavy activity here.”

Roger considered the plan of action. “Spread out through the floors. Be careful of structural damage. If it looks like it isn’t safe, don’t go in. Force as many as you can into shifting. We want Drake, but we’ll take as many as we can round up.”

“Yes, sir.” Infrared goggles went on.

Reinke turned to Callie. “You want to lead the way to where Drake took you?”

Heart rate bumping up a beat, she nodded. “Third floor.”

“You know what to look for?” Reinke asked as they ascended the stairs.

Puffing slightly, Callie frowned. “I’ve seen them in action,” she reminded him. “They move like shadows.”

He tapped the infrared goggles perched on the top of his head. “You can see more of them through these.” He laughed a little. “Actually look like a big Frisbee.”

Midstep, she paused, cocking an eyebrow at him. “You’ve done this before, I take it.”

He shrugged. “A few times. When you see one, fire. The silver will force an almost immediate shift.”

She nodded. “This I have to see.”

Reinke flicked a glance at her. “I hope you do.”

“So, tell me. How did you even get in on this?”

Reinke scowled. “I wondered when you’d ask that,” he mumbled.

“Don’t lie,” she insisted point-blank.

Roger’s mouth quirked up. “About six months.”

She threw him a suspicious look. “The bureau broke us up, didn’t it?”

His mouth twisted bitterly. “Yes.”

Callie swallowed, sorted through myriad questions and came up with the answers on her own. Surprisingly the conclusions arrived with little anxiety. At least their abrupt parting made sense. “I see.”

Roger glanced away. “I had to make a choice and I chose my career. I didn’t want to, but I had to if I wanted to take the step up.”

She nodded. Who the hell wouldn’t? The bureau had to make sure that an agent working a top-level security position was solid and stable in all areas of his life. An affair, even with a fellow agent, wouldn’t be sanctioned. “Given the same ultimatum, I’d have probably done the same thing.”

He snorted in that old familiar way that she’d once found so endearing. “So I’m not an entire bastard?”

The muscles in her cheeks involuntarily bunched. A smile sneaked out. “Half a bastard then,” she conceded. “Somehow I have a feeling I’m here because some strings were pulled.”

Roger looked at her, his handsome face grave. “I wanted my best agents. Not many women could’ve walked into this the way you did and made it a success. I knew you would.”

Standing a few steps above him, Callie looked down. Her heart no longer slammed against the wall of her chest when she recalled their affair. Over. Not even in a painful way now, but definitely a conclusive one.

“Thanks, Agent Reinke.” All she needed to say.

“You’re welcome.” A pause as his mouth quirked up slightly. “Agent Whitten.”

With an unspoken agreement, they started walking again. They reached the third level. Where Callie remembered a door, a gaping space where a door had once stood ruled. Only the crappy faded carpet looked the same.

“He might not be here anymore.”

Reinke lowered his goggles. “We’ll see. There were three apartments on this floor. Lots of crevasses, places to hide. These things don’t need much space. I’ll check out the place over there. It’ll be dark soon. Better get a move on.”

“Okay.” Callie headed toward the one she knew.

Pushing the door open, she stepped gingerly over the threshold. She looked around, wincing a little at the devastation. Such a beautiful place. Now nothing more than a vague memory to be manipulated by an alien species.

Callie slipped on her goggles. Everything looked different, disorienting her until she got used to the change in her eyesight. Once her vision adjusted she saw everything fairly well. As she picked her way through the debris, her boots creaked with every step she took. She felt a chill creep into her bones and a long shiver ripped through her. The atmosphere around her was spooky, eerie even.

A swell of claustrophobia cut through her, a smothering shroud of foreboding, guilt, and regret. She felt a tightening in her chest, a strange emptiness in her mind. Suddenly she wanted to get out, get away from the place where her induction into things not of this world had taken place.

Callie quickened her pace. Her strides carried her swiftly through the first room and into the second. In a swift, half-conscious thought it occurred to her that he’d probably abandoned it. In fact, she hoped he had. Why would he risk staying?

For her? Of course not. Sleeping with a man three times didn’t mean she was in love with him, no matter how much she’d enjoyed the experience. As for the
L
word. Better to stay emotionally unattached. Less risk to the heart.

Not ready to take another blow yet.

“If he had any sense,” she muttered, “he got the hell out of here.” Callie laughed, but there was only self-condemnation inside the sound. The late-afternoon sun filtered through the remnants of bay windows, flooding a good portion of the multi-room apartment in sunlight.

A shot of movement in one dark corner near the sunken area where the Jacuzzi had been stopped her.

What the fuck?

She peered through her goggles, disbelieving her eyes.

A shape, blazing hot, darted across the floor. Zipping down one wall, it abruptly stopped, hovering.

“Shit!” Lifting her weapon, Callie rushed up, almost stumbling in the process. “I actually can see the fucker.”

The silhouette went into motion.

Adrenaline seared her veins. Sweat trickled down her temples. She ignored it. As long as it didn’t fog up her goggles she’d be fine. Her forefinger instinctively curled around the trigger, feeling but not pressing. For a few seconds her hands trembled.

Movement. A quick flash.

Callie’s whole being focused on the shape revealed by her goggles. A sense of familiarity filled her and she knew,
just knew
, the thing’s identity. Drawing a breath to steady her nerves, she tracked it. She had the target clearly in her sights.

Any minute now.

The thing zigged to her right.

The barrel of Callie’s gun expertly followed. Her attention stayed fixed on the shape, but she didn’t fire. Not yet. A twinge in her neck warned of trouble with her aim. She relaxed her muscles. Tense muscles made for jerky reactions. Her mouth was dust dry. Her heart pounded against her rib cage as if she’d just done a hundred yard dash.

Focus. Concentrate.

Callie swore and adjusted her stance. Adrenaline kicked in, giving her an extra and much-needed jolt of energy. No telling head from tail, ass from elbow. She’d just have to fire and hope she hit something.

Getting it in her sights, a smile curled up one corner of her mouth. “You didn’t run far enough, motherfucker.” She pulled the trigger. Instead of a loud bang, a soft puff filled the air as the dart released.