Hunting the Dark (26 page)

Sadly, my threats were empty, considering that I didn’t even know where ‘here’ was, but it made me feel better to throw my weight around. I took a step toward Stark, ignoring all the weapons that were suddenly aimed at me. Maybe if they shot me I wouldn’t have to go through with this
examination
.

‘Fine.’ She nodded at the lab dude who was still watching me from his corner, mouth slightly open. He’d been working on that sleek-looking computer, but whatever he’d been doing was long-forgotten as he watched the drama unfolding in the room. ‘Bradley,’ Stark said, ‘why don’t we see what’s happening in Room Six?’

Room Six? Now things were getting interesting.

Bradley jerked into life, rubbing his hands together and looking excited about something. He typed rapidly on his space-age keyboard and then stepped away from the large monitor.

What I saw on the screen wiped away all traces of even cynical humor and I couldn’t hold back a gasp. Flashing a look of pure hatred at Stark, I edged closer to the computer terminal. Bradley’s eyes widened in panic, and two of the guards took a step toward me. The big guy raised the tranq gun and I stopped moving. I didn’t want to go down again. Wasn’t sure I’d be able to function at all if I had to come back from yet more of those drugs. My legs were shaking enough as it was.

Dr Stark said, ‘Now do you see why you have no choice?’

I closed my eyes for a moment, then opened them and gazed at what I assumed was a security camera view of Room Six. The lighting was dim, but I could still see what Stark intended me to see. She had moved to stand beside me, and I’d been so engrossed in the screen that I hadn’t even noticed. That should have worried me more than it did – my lack of awareness – but right now all I could think about was the fact that she had me. Stark always seemed to be trying to figure me out. Trying to unravel me, the way she wanted to somehow unravel my DNA.

This time she’d won.

She whispered in my ear, and I swallowed at the feel of her hot, eager breath. ‘If you cooperate for
all
of the tests, he won’t be harmed any more than he has been already. I’m sorry it had to come to this, Marie. I really am.’

Jason Murdoch was kicking the door of Room Six – his cell – and I assumed he was yelling a lot of very obscene things. I couldn’t hear any of them, because there was no sound coming from the monitor. As though he was aware that he was being observed at that precise moment, Jace turned to face the camera. I could see the bruise on his left cheek, and his eye looked like it might be closing up a little. The silver ring was missing from his eyebrow and the flesh was torn. Blood pooled at the corner of his mouth and I swallowed, wanting to look away as hunger sliced through me. But I couldn’t look away, because they had Jace and it was all my fault. They weren’t interested in him; he was human. Not part of their plans, just an innocent caught in the supernatural crossfire.

No, they simply had him here as insurance. His presence would keep me under control, so it seemed strange that they hadn’t played this card earlier. Maybe Stark really had hoped I’d cooperate of my own free will.

Whatever.
I swallowed and tried to hide how much I was trembling. Whether it was from fear or rage I wasn’t entirely sure.

Everyone was watching the screen, like it was the most fascinating thing in the world. Jace flipped us off. With both hands.

‘Nice,’ I whispered. I totally approved.

‘Switch it off,’ Stark said to the unfortunate Bradley. ‘I think she’s seen enough.’

They had Jace.
They had Jace, and I didn’t even know why I was surprised. I’d been wondering what had happened to him after the dagger incident, but things had been moving too fast for me to keep track of, especially with a ton of drugs running through my severely blood-depleted system.

‘No further harm will come to him,’ Stark said. ‘You know what you have to do.’

‘You’ve already been torturing him,’ I snapped, glaring at her. ‘How can I trust you to leave him alone now?’

‘“Torture”,’ she said, her expression one of disappointment. ‘Such a distasteful word. I understand that your Mr Murdoch has been making rather a nuisance of himself. Some of the guards were forced to  . . . restrain him.’

‘By beating the crap out of him?’

Dr Stark didn’t reply. She simply began readying her equipment as though this was just a normal medical exam. The nurse – Faye – handed me a new gown and stepped back quickly. ‘Hurry up now, Marie,’ Stark said. ‘We’ve wasted enough time already.’

I thought of Jace, battered and bloody in that room – a cell much like my own – his defiant screams still ringing in my ears. Now I was sure whose screams I’d heard on my way to the lab. I closed my eyes for a moment, trying to wish myself back home.

When I opened them again, nothing had changed and the real nightmare began.

After I’ve gotten changed, two men wrap their hands around my upper arms and others take hold of my ankles. More people seem to have entered the room, but I can’t be sure from my position.

I try to stay still, to allow this, but instinct means I have to move, to fight them. It’s hard to do much, though, with the silver burning me and the occasional jolt from a cruelly-aimed Taser. Also, with the reminder that Jace is already hurting because of me, and as stuck in this madness as I am.

I become increasingly spacey – the tranqs they hit me with earlier are holding me under what feels like a giant invisible wave. I am drowning, but at the same time I am wide awake and aware of what these sickos are doing. The heavyset man closest to my face gives me a dead-eyed smile. They’re enjoying their jobs and I hate them for it.

I imagine stretching up and taking a bite out of his meaty throat, but I can’t move. Not even a little.

They slam me down onto the examining table, laughing among themselves the whole time like this is some kind of game. Maybe, to them it is. The cool steel beneath my back makes me shiver involuntarily, even though the cold doesn’t really bother me. Not now. I snap at a hairy hand that moves too close to my face, grazing flesh with fangs and tasting copper.

The red-haired man smashes his fist into my face, and I can’t do anything about it because of the drugs and silver-threaded restraints and the voltage one of the women blasts me with to keep me down.
Cowards.
They are all cowards and if  . . . no
, when
I get free I will make them pay.

She
will make them pay:
Moth.
My very own inner monster.

For now I simply have to  . . . endure. Vampires are good at that. We have an eternity in which to practice.

And then the tests begin: a series of methodical invasions into my flesh. Needles and blood pressure and heart rate monitors. It is all bizarrely  . . . normal. Blood tests, resulting in more vials of blood than I have seen in a long time. My own blood – it feels strangely personal seeing it there. Intimate. Like they are seeing a part of me that I hadn’t intended to share. I am still hungry, but watching each syringe as it is filled doesn’t make me feel any worse. Holly once told me that a vampire’s blood is sort of dead. It doesn’t have the nutrients that we need to survive, which is why we don’t crave the blood of our own kind – not unless that vampire has very recently fed from a fresh human vein.

I watch, in a distracted sort of way, as Stark directs the increasingly perky Nurse Faye. They work together as though this is a well-practiced dance. It is almost soothing, and I find that I am pathetically grateful that they left the stupid gown on; let me keep a shred of dignity. I just lie there, a slow-burning rage building inside me. I feel vulnerable. Ashamed. I hate every person in that room, but I think of Jace and what they will do to him if I don’t play by their rules. At least for now.

I wish for Theo to come riding in to save me, something that I can’t remember thinking in a very long time. I was far more used to saving myself. But, right now, I would have given anything to see him kick down the door and sweep in like a beautiful, avenging angel. My own personal demon.

But he doesn’t come of course, and I am truly on my own. I tell myself to be strong, that it’ll be OK. Hang in there. None of this matters.

I’m not convinced. It is impossible to hold onto myself when these people are so intent on stripping me down to the bone, and taking everything that I am.

I had no concept of how much time had passed.

They’d dumped me inside some kind of weird glass cage. For the first time since my ‘arrival’ at the Facility, I wasn’t chained. I stared at the walls and sighed. It might
look
like glass, but was more than likely reinforced in a way that would make it impossible for me to break.

Nausea and a headache threatened to overwhelm me. My new cell was, once again, silver-lined. This time it wasn’t particles in the walls (because of all the glass), but the entire floor was coated with the stuff.

At least those  . . . people  . . . had given me back my clothes, so I was wearing the black leggings and tunic combo that I’d worn for meeting Jace at Harvard.

Jace.
I couldn’t help remembering him on that monitor. He was in a bad way, and it was all my fault for getting him into this in the first place. Fighting tears and panic, I tried to think – forcing myself to work out a plan. Escape.
Fight
. Anything but this hopeless fear that I’d be stuck here forever. I squeezed my hands into fists and tried to believe that I would be OK. That Jace would be OK too.

I managed to find a position, sitting cross-legged, that meant no part of my skin was touching the ground. The soles of my bare feet were already burning, but I didn’t think I’d stood for long enough to cause permanent scars. See? There I go again, trying to look on the bright side.

I was in a circular enclosure in a room filled with similar  . . . containers. They were like transparent booths, all space-age and creepy. I counted: there were twelve of them, including mine. The lighting was pretty bad, but my inhuman eyes allowed me to see enough to know that I wasn’t alone.

The cell next door to me was occupied.

I watched the girl through the glass that separated us. Subject Ten was sitting with her booted feet on the ground, knees bent with her chin resting on them. Her eyes were shut, but I had no doubt that she was completely aware of my presence. The wire-tight tension in her body told me that she was very definitely not asleep, and somehow I doubted that she was meditating. Adrenaline seemed to thrum both inside and all around her. Adrenaline, energy, and something dangerous.

I named her: Hunter.
Predator.

It was an uncomfortable realization for someone like me: someone who was only just getting used to the idea that I’d been irrevocably changed into something other than human. A predator of a different kind. Top of the food chain. But if I was part of a secret world that walked in the shadows, stalking their human prey (at least in the movie-version of my life), who was this girl? I mean, really? Where did she come from and
what
was she?

Obviously we were being watched. I figured they wanted me to talk to the girl next door. Luckily for them, that was precisely what I intended to do.

Gritting my teeth against the pain, I scuttled on my hands and knees to the transparent wall that separated us. I sat down and waited for her to acknowledge me.

Her eyes snapped open and we gazed at one another across the width of her cell.

I touched the glass. ‘Hey,’ I said.

Subject Ten narrowed her eyes. Her
silver
eyes.

I leaned forward. ‘Why do you have the same eyes as me?’

She blinked. ‘It is the vampire virus – some of the effects of vampirism give me similar attributes.’

I still wasn’t convinced by this whole ‘vampirism as a virus’ deal, but Dr Stark had seemed pretty certain. And why would she lie about it? I honestly couldn’t see what she had to gain, and could only conclude that, at the very least,
she
believed what she was saying. And maybe there was some truth in it. Maybe it
did
make more sense than magic.

I didn’t know anything anymore.

According to Dr Stark, this girl was a
dhampir
. Something impossible in a whole world of impossibilities. That freaked me out more than anything, and I wasn’t entirely sure why. Perhaps, on a quantum level, I recognized her as someone who had been bred to hunt me. To
kill
me.

‘So it’s true,’ I said. ‘You’re half-vampire?’

‘I am  . . .
dhampir
,’ she replied.

I swallowed, taking that in. Letting the new knowledge – the confirmation – settle into my bones. Her very existence could cause chaos among all the different vampire factions of the world, but also among the humans who knew about us. I wasn’t naive enough to think that the Nemesis Project was the only one of its kind. There would be others, just like Stark and Co., wanting to study and use us. And if we couldn’t be used: destroyed. A dhampir would give them the means, no matter what the good doctor would have me believe about her so-called desire to find a cure for vampirism. There would be plenty of others who would just be glad to have a killing machine.

And what about the vampires? Would they want to destroy Ten? What would Theo do with her, if she fell into his hands? Were there more dhampirs out there, somewhere?

I focused on getting as much information as I could. I didn’t know how long Stark intended to leave us here together, so I had to make the most of my opportunity. ‘How long have you been in this place?’

She just watched me, as though trying to imprint everything about me in her mind. I got the impression that she wasn’t used to having conversations like this. I couldn’t work out whether she was upset, angry, or  . . . anything else. My own advanced senses could still detect the tension in her athletic frame. She wasn’t as relaxed as she might seem on the surface, and yet she didn’t seem in a hurry to try getting out of here. Maybe she was used to being caged.