Not If You Were the Last Vampire on Earth (12 page)

Chapter 30

Her

Alex and I moved to his bed where we fell asleep tangled underneath the sheets. He had fallen asleep first and I’d scooted closer to him and pressed an ear to his chest. His heart was beating in a steady, strong pulse. The sound of it was an audible sedative and it wasn’t long afterwards that I nodded off as well.

But we were awakened several hours later by the sounds of footsteps pounding down the nearby stairwell.

I sat up with a start. Footsteps?

Alex sat up just as quickly beside me and met my eyes. He looked as jolted as I felt. But then his face registered something I wasn’t experiencing. Fear. Expected fear.

In a fluid moment, he leapt from the bed, turned and took a hold of my wrist. He used the restraints on either side of the bed to secure my arms.

His eyes were wild with concern as they met mine. “I love you, Tasha. Please don’t forget that no matter what happens. Please.”

I pulled on my wrist. “What is going on?” I asked frantically.

He didn’t answer. He shrugged into his shorts and threw on his shirt, buttoning it haphazardly and skipping the bottom two. He took the blanket and covered my naked body. All this happened in rushed seconds and no sooner had he retreated to the corner of the room, fumbling with some syringes than a team of people came walking into the space.

I say team because that’s the only way to describe them. They moved in unison, one in front, two behind, and yet two more behind them, stopping together in the doorway and each looking up and down, this way and that as if the hospital room held secrets they needed to seek out with their gazes.

One of them, a girl in standing behind the guy in the lead, landed her gaze on me and it didn’t move. Her eyes narrowed into slits.

“Long time no see,” the guy in front said, shrugging out of his jacket. He draped it on the end of the hospital bed and finally trained his eyes on me. “Well, I’ll be damned.”

Alex turned from his corner and pushed on the end of the syringe. A clear liquid expelled a few drops from the point. His smile was foreign to me. It was a tight strain, unnatural looking and twisting his face into an expression I’ve never seen.

“Hello, Vince. I didn’t expect to see you here.”

“No. Why would you? We cleared this place two years ago. No one is supposed to be here. You’re supposed to be in Los Angeles.”

Alex shrugged. “I had a hunch on the way there and made a detour back here. Got caught up in my research.”

“For a year?” Vince glared at him. “We found your car running on the 105. We thought you’d died.”

“I hopped a motorcycle,” Alex protested, standing a little taller. He matched the other guy’s glare. A challenge. “I had to jump on this while it was fresh in my mind. No big deal.”

Vince backed off slightly but kept his expression hard. “Well, some of us worry over your hide, Alex.” He glanced at me. Curiosity leaked into his features. “A human? I didn’t think there were any left.”

“She’s vital to my research,” Alex said in an offhand tone. However, his body stiffened and he angled it slightly to come between me and the team of what must be fellow vamps. “Let’s go in the other room and I’ll catch you up with my research.”

My mouth was pursed into a thin line in fear. The girl vamp kept glancing at Alex suspiciously. His eyes also kept darting back towards her. I didn’t know what I should do.

No matter what happens…

I waited, deathly still, and allowed Alex to maneuver the situation. He rolled his eyes as he turned towards me. “Of course this means she’ll have to wait,” he said in an irritable voice as he approached the bed. I wanted to trust him but instinct took over and I began to thrash in my restraints.

I hated his eyes. They raked over me with annoyance as I fought. He tapped the side of the syringe with his finger, then held my forearm down and pushed the tip into my vein, depositing the contents into my body.

I silently glared the word
traitor
at him but he refused to meet my gaze.

And then he grew fuzzy.

And then I slept.

Chapter 31

Him

I was going to tell her.

Every single day I woke up thinking,
This is the day
.

And then I just couldn’t. I would clear my throat at breakfast and then let my resolve die in my mouth when her eyes met mine over her bite of oatmeal. She usually grinned, probably remembering the other activity we called breakfast that filled her up but not in the full stomach kind of way. How could I risk losing that grin? How did I even broach the subject?

Hey, Tasha. Remember how you assumed there was no one left in the world except the two of us? Well, actually…you’re the only human I know of and we live in a land populated only by vamps. Want some jam with your oatmeal?

I just wanted to live in our bubble a little longer. In my experience, revelations with Tasha have always ripped holes in our relationship that were jagged and angry and painful before they were healed. I understood that it was a necessary part of our growth, especially since I held a wider knowledge of how times are post-Sweep and she was just discovering what was outside of her backyard.

But these past few years have been painful for me and I didn’t know I could be happy like I was when I was with her. And I was selfish. I didn’t want to risk it yet. I thought I had more time.

But apparently, I didn’t.

I wasn’t the only vamp to survive The Sweep. There were camps of them in a lot of the major cities. My serum had been used for years before The Sweep in the vamp community to supplement blood bank feedings. Vince and I as well as a handful of other vamps and vampires had created stores of them and sold them on the vamp market. During The Sweep and after when money was nothing more than something to wipe your ass with, we turned philanthropic. We rationed the serum instead of selling it. Security was set up around the remaining blood banks to protect the source and the stores of serum were kept secret. City scouting for remaining humans became routine. Not only to generate more blood, but to protect them. With starving vamps, surviving humans were becoming casualties quickly.

I helped with the efforts at first, but the whole ordeal became so sickening for me I faded further and further into the background, lending my help in the form of research. I’d already figured out how to create more serum with less than half the blood originally needed. As long as I kept producing, Vince and the others didn’t give a shit if I refused to round up humans.

Unfortunately, even the rounded up humans couldn’t escape a tempted vamp. Until Tasha, it’d been almost two years since I’d seen one. This resulted in power struggle over the remaining stores. In this new society, control of those stores equaled power.

“What’s with you?” Vince asked angrily, breaking me from my thoughts.

I shrugged. I just finished showing him my progress on my research. The blood serum was known to many. I had started it at the same time I started medical school before vampires started dying off in The Sweep. The virus study was known to few. There would be several vamps wary of having live viruses sitting in a lab. Many would vote to stamp them out despite my arguments that there could be latent strains anywhere, ready to mutate.

The fetus study is known to no one. Until now.

I told them all about it. I needed something big to explain my secretive detour to Houston, which actually really was my third project. I spent a lot of time in Houston’s medical center while in pre-med and I knew what resources awaited me here. I told no one because I didn’t want anyone here with me. I wanted a dead city, a quiet place. I wanted to pretend my world wasn’t reduced to the slap hazard society of leftover vamps that kept changing the rules to tussle for power.

I also told them about it because I needed a large distraction to eclipse Tasha. She could not be the most interesting discovery.

I failed. She tied as the most interesting discovery.

“What about the girl?” Vince demanded. “How could you find a human and not report it to Clearance?”

“Clearance is nowhere near here,” I replied. I used a bored tone so that the balance of power didn’t shift to him. I didn’t want him or anyone else to think I was answering to him. “And I wasn’t leaving my research to fall apart to hunt them down and turn her in. I have it under control.”

“You shouldn’t have even come here.”

I rolled my eyes. “The news about my work on fetuses does not leave this room. I’m only telling you because you’re here.” Tasha’s words about what I was doing rang in my head.
Cattle
. “The result of this research is a person, so we’re going to approach this cautiously.”

“Can it be done?” Vince demanded.

“Well, that’s what I was trying to figure out before you came barging in here.”

I let my eyes float over the room. Vince has always led one group of vamps or another. They were always roaming from city to city, barking out orders. His knowledge of the stores of the serum gave him that power. With him were two of his right hand men, Xavier and Trent. Decent vamps, just trying to scratch out a place in this hell on earth. The woman with them I knew well. Intimately well. Jade Draven was my ex-girlfriend. She belonged to nobody. Her presence here with this group only meant that for now, she was entertained. For now, she was under Vince’s skin.

The last vamp, a very tall and lean red head in a black t shirt and camouflage – that one I didn’t know. His eyes were aloof. He studied my makeshift rooms with interest, seemingly ignoring our conversation but I had a feeling he was filing away every word.

Vince opened my notes and skimmed through my work.

“Who is this guy?” I asked Jade quietly, jerking my head towards the tall vamp.

She smiled mischievously. “That handsome thing? He calls himself Ike. Can’t get much more out of him, though.”

“Well, what’s he doing with Vince’s crew?”

“Apparently he can fight really well. He broke up a fight over serum in Los Angeles. Took on four vamps by himself. Vince invited him to come along but I have a feeling Ike will only be here as long as it suits him.”

“He doesn’t seem like the lackey type,” I commented.

Jade shrugged. “He’s quite the mystery.”

I glanced at Jade as she watched him. A mystery meant amusement for her. So that explained why she was
really
here.

Vince looked up from my notes with questions in his eyes. He swept his gaze around the room before settling it back on me. “We need to talk.” He flicked his head towards Xavier and Trent. “Scout the hospital for supplies. We’re going to be here a little while. Ike, do a quick perimeter search to make sure no other humans were missed. Jade, do you mind babysitting Alex’s find?”

Jade scowled. “Not my idea of a productive afternoon.”

I attempted to keep a similar scowl off my face. “She’s out cold, Vince. I gave her a high dose.”

“Since when is extra caution ever a bad idea?” Vince pulled Jade into a hug, his hands roaming down her body intimately. I looked away. “I’d appreciate the favor,” he told her softly and her scowl wavered.

“Fine,” she said. “But I always collect.” Her face transformed into one of confidence as she found a way to appease Vince while getting something out of it. With one last look at me, she left the room and headed towards where Tasha slept.

Vince dropped my folder on the table between us.

“You have good work,” he said, almost grudgingly. “Promising. But your fails at are one hundred percent.”

“You try figuring out how to mature a fetus without a womb and I’m sure I can drop the fail rate.”

“I said it was promising. And you should keep working at it. But in the meantime, Alex, we have a womb.”

My blood turned to ice at his words. I had to clasp my hands behind my back to keep them steady. “She’s more useful in blood donation,” I replied. The response turned my stomach. Nausea washed over me.

“She can be useful in both.”

“You can’t drain a pregnant woman of blood. It defeats the purpose.”

“No, but you can balance it.” His look was one of careful measure. “It’s odd you neglected to entertain this solution.”

My jaw clenched. There was no way to finesse this. “I grew up with humans. I’m not like you. I can’t blur their faces and use their bodies as I see fit. They’re
people
.”

“
People
who tried to wipe us out,” Vince reminded me.

“My mother didn’t try to wipe us out. My sister didn’t hunt us down. That woman in there didn’t try to kill us. You can’t push aside an entire species, Vince.”

“Hey, your ideals are noble but we live in a world of vamps. No matter how you try to hold hands and sing for unity, humans are our food supply and we’re pretty fucking low. If we don’t do something, we all die. Humans and vamps.”

“And I’m trying to do something about it! That’s all I’ve been working on for years!”

“Then don’t let your soft notions interfere with a solution that’s right in front of your face!”

A throat cleared in the heated silence between the two of us and we swiveled our heads towards the doorway where Ike loomed. His gray eyes were stoic as he studied us. We didn’t know how long he’d been standing there or how much he heard. His face gave nothing away.

“What?” Vince snapped. His anger at me eroded some of his collectedness and he had to take a deep breath before he asked again in a calmer voice, “What is it?”

“The others need you,” he answered coolly.

Vince glanced at me but I quickly gathered my paperwork under my arm. “Go ahead. We’re done here. I have work to do,” I said, brushing by Ike.