Embracing Midnight (20 page)

Callie took a deep breath, hoping to clear her head a bit more. She needed to convince Roger that Iollan Drake wasn’t a threat. If they let him go, he’d disappear. Somehow she’d find him again, or he’d find her. She just knew it.

And then it happened. Precious time ran out.

Voices shouted, moving closer and closer. More agents burst in, weapons drawn, giving the familiar warning to freeze. Seconds later, the entire place seemed to be swarming with jacketed bodies.

Callie’s guts knotted as agents rushed forward. Several men surrounded him at once, backing him into a corner with their weapons. They came too fast, from too many sides. The night had, for once, failed him. The shadows no longer gave sanctuary.

A couple of agents shoved Iollan to his knees, twisting his arms up behind his back. Seconds later, solid metal cuffs ratcheted around his wrists.

The sight barely registered because strong hands grasped her arms and hauled her to her feet. When they stood her up, she struggled to jerk out of their grasp. Her knees wobbled, refusing to hold her weight. No such luck. She wasn’t going anywhere her legs didn’t want to.

Callie groaned. She’d tried to free Iollan and failed. Guilt swooped in on crimson-tipped wings, wrapping her in a dark mantle of shame. “Fuck.”

She watched Iollan’s captors grasp his elbows and bodily haul him across the room. They were none too gentle; there was no guarantee the prisoner would make it downstairs intact. Agents believed one of their own had almost fallen in the line of duty. A few looked more than eager to play catch-up.

Callie briefly closed her eyes, silently praying they wouldn’t kill him. A hand on her shoulder forced her eyelids open. Her gaze automatically trekked toward Roger Reinke.

Concern creased Reinke’s face. “Did he hurt you, Agent Whitten?”

Callie shook her head. “No, I’m fine. Really.”

She wasn’t.

C
old and inhospitable. That’s what Callie thought of the prison block. No way she’d want to be a prisoner in this place. White ceramic tile floors and walls gave the block a sterile and impersonal atmosphere. Sinister even. Thick steel doors dominated.

Doctor Yuan, Professor Forque, and a couple of lab assistants led the way through the forbidding maze of halls. Like a man on his way to his execution, Iollan Drake walked between Roger Reinke and another agent. Since his capture Iollan had mantled himself in silence. He wouldn’t respond to the questions the scientists had peppered him with, choosing instead a show of fangs. Just the way a wild animal would. This wasn’t earning him any brownie points, nor did it prove the more evolved species to be more intelligent.

Callie didn’t blame him. Put in his position, she supposed she’d give a show of fangs, too. Right now she didn’t think it was the right tactic for him to employ. Might be better to show he was more human than the humans. The way he was being treated and regarded would probably improve a lot.

Callie was hailed as the conquering hero, the agent responsible for capturing the
most wanted
of the species. Her success had come at a price, one she realized she hadn’t been prepared to pay.

Callie felt horrible for betraying him.

The claustrophobia of the whole situation overwhelmed her. As an agent of the government, she was also government property. Refuse to cooperate and she’d probably be sitting in one of these cells herself. No way they’d let her run free, memory or not. At least Toryn and Cadyn had escaped, most likely in hiding. Iollan must be grateful for that small mercy. Not that he had much to feel grateful about.

A cell was chosen, a door unlocked. Everyone went inside, most of them willingly. Two not so willingly.

A small square cell, maybe twelve by twelve. Not much to it. In fact, except for the floors and walls and a strip of phosphorescent light glaring down from above, there wasn’t even a bunk.

Callie stiffened. What the fuck was going on?

She soon found out.

Doctor Yuan produced a syringe out of one pocket of her white lab coat. “Hold him still,” she ordered the agents.

Callie frowned. The sight of any syringe automatically set her nerves on edge. “What the hell is that?”

Doctor Yuan approached Iollan. “Just something to keep him calm while we cuff him.” Uncapping the needle, she nodded to the men. “Hold him, please.”

Drake’s lip curled back, showing the full length of his upper and lower fangs. A low growl emanated from his throat. Muscles bunching, cords thickening in his neck, his pale eyes blazed as he struggled between the agents.

Roger Reinke and his partner moved into action. They pressed Iollan back against the wall, anchoring him with their weight. “Better hurry up, doc,” Reinke wheezed. “Holding this fucker back is like trying to hold back the ocean.”

Yuan didn’t blink an eye. She calmly stepped up on the tip of her toes and slid the needle into the vampire’s jugular. Under the plunge of her finger the syringe emptied into his veins.

Iollan’s growl turned into the low rumble of a moan deep in his throat. Stubbornly, he wouldn’t let it out.

Yuan stepped back. Satisfaction glinted in her dark almond eyes. “That’ll keep him quiet a while.”

Iollan’s eyelids fluttered, but he forced himself to keep his eyes open. His hair was limp, and dark circles ringed his eyes. Unusually pale in the filtered light, he seemed to have skin with the transparency of paper. His flesh looked cold, with no sign of a pulse. His gaze had dulled, the vibrant color of his irises nonexistent, sapped away by the poison Doctor Yuan had introduced into his veins.

Callie gritted her teeth, forcing back the emotions rising in the back of her mind. The sight of this magnificent man reduced to little more than a lab rat caused tears to sting the backs of her eyes. She quickly blinked them away. Right now she felt the lowest of the low, as if she’d slain the last living example of an extinct species.

Focus,
she ordered herself. She had to find a way to get Iollan out of this evil place. She didn’t know how yet, but she vowed that she’d move heaven and earth to find a way. Twice he’d had the chance to kill her and twice he’d drawn back. He wasn’t a killer, except in self-defense. He’d have been right to take her life and she knew it.

Tucked into her shoulder holster she had a weapon that would fire real bullets. A mad fantasy flashed through her mind. She could pull her gun and drop the agents, then get Iollan the hell out of this place. Then she’d get him somewhere safe, where no one hunted vampires.

Fat chance.

Her fantasy shattered when Iollan slumped against the wall, then slid to the floor in a semiconscious heap. His head lolled to one side.

Callie winced. So much for that idea. Iollan wasn’t in any shape to walk across the room now, much less make a mad dash for escape.

Doctor Yuan pointed to a far wall. “Put him there.”

Roger and his partner dragged Iollan to the wall. Metal rings had been fixed into the concrete. One of the agents removed the cuffs holding Iollan’s hands behind his back and pushed him into a sitting position. At the same time, Doctor Yuan’s assistant produced another pair: thick leather cuffs and a leather collar.

Callie gasped at the sight. As the assistant opened the collar, she saw a row of short silver spikes inside. The device went around Iollan’s neck. He winced as the restraint bit into his skin. Cinched tight enough for the spikes to penetrate vulnerable flesh, the restraint device was locked and then attached to the ring in the wall by a short chain.

Her brow wrinkled in fierce disapproval. “What the hell is that?”

Doctor Yuan didn’t blink. “We can’t feed too much liquid silver into their systems or we’ll poison them. We’ve found that the penetration of solid silver works much better; keeps them unable to shift.”

The sound of tearing material told Callie the other two cuffs were being applied. Her gaze swung back toward Iollan, watching as his wrists were securely cuffed and attached to the rings.

Iollan hissed when the cuffs went on, hands weakly flexing open and shut. The spikes penetrated the soft skin of his inner wrists, releasing tiny rivulets of blood before the pressure of the spikes resealed the wounds. By the look on his face he’d like to tear everyone a new asshole.

Callie pointed. “Christ, he’s bleeding.” Arms slightly spread, Iollan’s cuffs were attached to the corresponding rings on either side of his body. His hands hung at the level of his head. All in all it looked very medieval and extremely uncomfortable.

“It’ll stop,” Professor Forque said, speaking for the first time since they’d entered the cell. “These things have an amazing capacity to heal.” He was dead serious.

Callie shifted, planting her hands on her hips. She leveled him with a withering look. “You guys must get this stuff from the de Sade school of research. This is fucking inhumane. Isn’t this kind of treatment against the Geneva Convention?” She hadn’t intended for the words to come out laced with disgust.

“He isn’t a prisoner of war,” Roger Reinke pointed out. “Doesn’t apply here.”

“Oh? Then what is a prisoner of our government called if held against his will and tossed into a tiny cell without any facilities except for torture?”

“Calm down, Agent Whitten,” Roger Reinke warned quietly. “This isn’t torture. It’s the way we handle them. A few days of solitary and he’ll change his mind about how he wants to be treated.”

Anger rising like a hot flash of red inside her skull, Callie’s eyes narrowed. “It’s wrong. It’s degrading. You’re collaring him like an animal and chaining him to a wall. If that isn’t a clear violation of basic rights, human or not, I don’t know what is. No wonder they consider us at war against their species.”

Roger Reinke refused to be baited. “Drop it, Whitten. Insubordination won’t be tolerated.”

She didn’t have much choice, it seemed. Close to putting her ass on a very narrow line, she fought to rein in her fury. Hard to do, but necessary.

Professor Forque stepped between them. “Don’t you think right now he’d tear your throat out if given the chance? At the base level, they are no more than animals, and we must treat them as such.”

Feeling like dirt, Callie lobbed a nasty scowl. “No. I don’t think he’d tear my throat out.” Her breath rushed out and her knees felt wobbly. “He’s had plenty of chances and didn’t. He could have killed me tonight, and he didn’t.”

Forque offered a thin smile. “Given your level of intimacy with the subject, I can understand your emotional attachment, Agent Whitten. Let me assure you we’re taking that into consideration. In fact, we’re expecting you to act as a liaison toward convincing him to cooperate with us during his testing.”

Callie’s first reaction was to refuse. Then she rethought her strategy. Agreeing to cooperate would keep her near Iollan. She silently cursed herself for showing her anger. Getting pissed off would get her kicked behind a desk again.

Not a good strategy at all. She didn’t trust Yuan or Forque a bit.
Keep your friends close and your enemies closer
, she counseled herself.

She nodded stiffly. Given the government she worked for, she didn’t have many choices. “Of course. Having come this far, I’d expect nothing less.”

Forque nodded. “I want to assure you, Agent Whitten, we intend to treat this specimen very carefully. Though we’ve caught others of the species, this is the first time we’ve gotten hold of a sire. That will make all the difference in our research. The rest have been drones, and fairly useless in the area and reproduction of the species.”

The floor opened up under her feet. “Sire?” The single word tripped stupidly off her tongue.

Forque referred the answer back to Doctor Yuan.

“We’ve determined the Niviane Idesha have a very structured reproductive cycle,” Yuan explained. “Most symbionts are asexual, unable to replicate themselves. However, like a hive has a queen bee, this species has a hermaphroditic symbiont capable of reproduction. When another sire is birthed, it in turn branches out in a new area to begin its own clan. Drake is a sire.”

Callie’s guts turned to liquid ice. She glanced at Iollan and blanched. Reproduction of the species? Oh shit. Speaking of reproduction. She counted back, searching her mind. The first time they’d made love, he’d been very careful to use a condom. But the second time, no, he’d taken her without one. Though she’d also been with Cadyn and Toryn, they hadn’t taken her vaginally. The third time she’d been with Iollan, again no condom.

She imagined slapping her hand to her forehead, something she’d soon be doing in private. Since she’d gone undercover she hadn’t been regular in taking her birth control pills either. Talk about stupid. She bit back a groan, trying not to remember how beautifully their bodies fit together and how incredible sex between them had been. When he’d entered her, she’d welcomed him. And when he’d climaxed, her womb had retained his ejaculate. Alien sperm.

Oh, God, what if I’m
…No! An automatic refusal rose in her mind. Remembering her bouts with a queasy stomach, she swallowed, trying not to choke over the lump simultaneously rising in her throat.
If
she were carrying a baby, the pregnancy could be ended with no one the wiser except herself and her doctor.

Some protective female instinct kicked in. She realized the idea of carrying Iollan’s child wasn’t exactly repulsive. Handsome, charming, and alluring, he was an easy man to fall in love with. She didn’t have to examine her heart to know she was already halfway there.

Standing there, Callie suddenly felt so alone. Shivering, she considered Forque and Yuan. If they found out, there’d be no way she’d be allowed to abort. She couldn’t imagine any child of hers chained up like a dog because it wasn’t…human. She was a fool to have walked herself straight into an unplanned pregnancy.

Possible pregnancy
, she reminded herself. Nothing’s solid yet. Just to be sure, she’d be making a trip to the drugstore as soon as time allowed. She didn’t know how long a woman was supposed to wait before testing, but she wasn’t taking any chances. She wanted to know ASAP.

Callie slipped on a blank expression. No time to think about herself. Looking at Iollan, she saw his breathing appeared to be uneven and his movements, limited as they were, seemed restless. His sharp teeth gnashed in pain. The effects of the silver were beginning to fully manifest in his system.

Enough of this. Callie started to rush toward him.

Roger Reinke caught her arm. “Leave him alone, Callie. You don’t know what you’re doing.”

Refusing to be deterred, Callie shook off his hand. “He needs help.” Going to Iollan’s side, she dropped to her knees beside him. Her gaze sought his. “Calm down,” she whispered. “I’m here. I want to help you.”

Iollan shook his head as if to warn her away. A wry smile twisted his lips. “I need no help from your kind.”

Stung by his words, Callie blinked back tears. Just being close to him, seeing him in such torment set her on edge. “I’m sorry,” she murmured. “I didn’t mean for them to do this to you. I swear I didn’t know it’d be like this.”