Ultraviolet (12 page)

He raised the gun and aimed, but Violet reached out and snagged the cuff of his shirt, jerking his arm off to the side. The electric red dot of the laser aim wobbled around and snaked across a couple of the other vampires. They shifted nervously. “Oh, for fuck’s sake,” she said in exasperation. “It’s a
child!
”

Nerva turned and fixed her in his cold gaze, then with his free hand he grabbed her by the wrist and yanked her face to his. His mouth covered hers in a hard kiss, one completely devoid of any warmth or feeling.

Violet pulled free and stared at him in surprise. What the hell? She could feel the way her lipstick had smeared across her face, taste his saliva on her lips. It was utterly revolting.

“This is the end of us,” he said carelessly, then shook himself free of the grip she still had on his gun hand. “Your work’s done. You can go.”

She took a small step backward, then hesitated. Freedom? From what? Nerva and his little pod of power, but to what end? A few more weeks or days, maybe less, of her severely troubled life, and then . . .

A quick glance around the room confirmed that she was way outnumbered here—these weren’t weak little humans dressed up in armored clothes and helmets with misconceptions about her abilities. These were ’Phage assassins, fully mature and well transfused just like her, as strong and fast as she was and just as highly trained. The humans were annoying, but in reality they were mostly just . . . entertainment. These Hemophages had the potential to be
deadly.
As if to confirm this, their eyes tracked her like dueling hawks zeroing in on a lone rabbit with no place to hide. She was that rabbit.

Violet swallowed. “For the record,” she said, “I don’t agree with this.”

Nerva and the others simply stared back at her, unmoving. Uncaring.

As much as everything inside her wanted to fight it, Violet was smart enough to know that there was no way she could win here. She waited one more moment, then inhaled deeply and glanced at the boy in the briefcase a final time. Ultimately, without saying anything else, she turned and strode out of the conference room.

She didn’t turn and look back as the door slid shut behind her. Everything she was leaving behind seemed to be in slow motion, but Violet didn’t dare increase her pace or look over her shoulder—she couldn’t see any surveillance cameras, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there. Nerva and the other Hemophages could be watching her right now—in fact, they were probably doing just that—making sure she was well out of range before Nerva decided to do his dirty little deed. Speaking of dirty, she reached up and used the back of her hand to scrub at the lipstick smeared across her mouth, wishing she had soap and water so she could wash away the traces—the
smell
—of Nerva on her face. His scent lingered on her flesh like the last traces of disease, something insidious and worse than the HemoPhagic Virus itself. Very shortly, there were things that she would have to do, consequences for her actions, so many what-ifs that were all about to happen that Violet felt like her mind was racing at light speed. Even that wasn’t fast enough for her to find all the answers, and what was coming down at any second, everything about to happen back in that room, would only generate more questions, not reasons.

She wasn’t in the conference room, but the events that were taking place there weren’t a mystery. Right about now, Nerva would be stepping up to the table with his laser gun charged and ready. The cold-blooded bastard was probably enjoying it; in his former life, Nerva had been an egotistical graphics design guru, a man on the fast track to being a dot com millionaire and loving every bit of it. He’d had a high-rise condo with a city-wide view, fast cars and faster women, and all of that, as well as his passion for high-stakes, public gambling, had crashed around his ankles when he’d caught the virus. The clubs he frequented refused his business, and no amount of money could convince them to look the other way when he came calling. His oh-so-loyal employer had kicked him out on his ass—clearly the equal opportunity and nondiscrimination laws didn’t apply to Hemophages, especially once the uninfected stopped considering them human. No job, so no income, and eventually even his careful investments were bled out by the decadently high payments on his mortgage; he lost it to the bank when none of the real estate agents would sell it for him, and no potential buyers would look at it when they found out he was a ’Phage, anyway. The bank was less than overjoyed, although after sending in a hard-line decontamination team, then ripping out everything and redoing it, they were finally able to put it on the market as “sanitized.”

Becoming a Hemophage had twisted Nerva’s mind and made him worse than human, worse than ’Phage. Filled with bitterness and the desire for revenge, he convinced himself that he
enjoyed
blood and the sight of it, the smell, even watching it ooze from an open wound; Violet wouldn’t have been surprised to discover he drank it like the ridiculous legends of the old centuries, just because it
was
legend.

If they had any common sense at all, the others in the room would back away from Nerva, make sure they were out of firing range just in case something went wrong and the heat seal component on the gun failed or, worse, he got caught up in his killing. As it was, Violet thought Nerva was a fool—if the child’s blood could kill them, why was he so eager to destroy the boy and take the chance of exposing everyone? Because he was bloodthirsty, that was why.

At the end of the hall she turned the corner. There wasn’t any reason to even think about it—she knew he would never reconsider. Right about now the tall, dark-eyed Hemophage would be pointing the barrel of the laser gun at the child’s head. He would smile that pleased-with-the-world smile, and then he would squeeze the trigger.

Halfway between where the hallway turned and the elevators was an AutoVend machine, its plasticized front cheerfully advertising soft drinks, snacks, and a few health-conscious mini-lunches for the few and far between who actually tried to keep their bodies healthy rather than just get a pill for it from the doctor when they were older. Seated on the floor next to it, with his back against the wall and his knees drawn up to his chest, was the boy who had been inside the white briefcase. He was an obedient young boy, and he’d stayed in precisely the position Violet had ordered, clutching her activated cell phone so that it would train on his own unmoving body as the three-dimensional object continued to project.

Back in the conference room, the air would be full of the smell of hot fabric—the case’s softer, inside upholstery—and metal, but not burned flesh. Nerva’s expression would have initially been shock, but now it would be twisting into full rage. After he waved aside the sparks and smoke, he would reach inside the briefcase and yank out the charred and twisted remains of Violet’s mic-phone, that handy little piece of advanced technology that had allowed her to project the three-dimensional image of the boy inside the case’s flat space.

And then Nerva would start bellowing for her.

The young boy looked up at her with placid brown eyes that made it clear he had no idea how much danger he and Violet were now facing. What would it matter if he did? It wasn’t like there was anything he could do to save them, or even buy them time. Violet snatched the cell phone from his hand, then pulled him to his feet and hauled him roughly toward the elevator. Before he could ask—if he even wanted to—she shook her head. “Don’t overthink it,” she told him tightly. “It just turns out I was right and we’re getting the hell out of here.”

The elevator door was already opening as they ran up to it. Violet could see Hemophages crowded up to the inside of the door as it was opening—Nerva must have already sounded an alarm. They hadn’t expected her to be right there so she had the element of surprise. She used it to her advantage, too, yanking one of her machine pistols out of its flat-space holster and firing into the control panel, not caring if any of the Hemophages got hit. Their life spans were limited anyway, and if they were Nerva’s flunkies . . . well, they were probably close to being just like him.

But it wouldn’t be long before the vampires inside the elevator pried the doors fully open and came after them. The fire stairwell was their only option, and Violet made short work of the locked metal door, kicking it so hard that she nearly took it off its hinges. She wanted to go down, but it was a good thing she leaned over to double-check the way. Already she could see a couple Hemophages clambering upward, their hands skimming along the surface of the banisters. Pushing the boy behind her, she took a precious three seconds to aim carefully and track the team as it climbed. When she was ready to fire, her bullets literally vaporized the two hands that were showing.

With all that screaming, Violet and the boy didn’t even have to try to be quiet as they ran up and toward the roof.

ELEVEN

He had never been more angry in his life.

Nerva skidded to a stop in front of the closed elevator and his furious glance took it all in at once, the mangled door, the shredded control panel. He didn’t even need to hear the words of his waiting lieutenant, Luthor, to know what Violet’s next move had been. He could hear the screams in the stairwell, so she’d already made mincemeat out of the two soldiers who had been dispatched to stop her from fleeing toward the ground floor. God, had they even slowed her down? Doubtful.

“She went up,” Luthor said uselessly.

Nerva almost couldn’t say anything. Why had Violet done this? Her behavior made no sense at all, and she was endangering everything she’d worked for, including the survival of her own species. Did she think the humans were going to help her? Forgive her?
Accept
her? How ludicrous.

“So go after her!” Nerva snarled.

Luthor swallowed visibly and wouldn’t meet his gaze. “The Blood Chinois control the top ten floors of this building,” he finally mumbled.

Oh . . . not good. It was a nasty but necessary reminder for Nerva. The Chinois were a testy, ugly-tempered bunch to deal with—they had a tendency to fight first and ask questions later. Ironically, that was exactly how the vampire population had been forced to act thanks to the ArchMinistry of Medical Policy. It had taken a very long time—years—and a lot of bloodshed on both sides to convince the Chinois that a peaceable existence between the two factions of society was a good thing; a major basis for that settlement was the ironclad promise from the Hemophages not to trespass on their turf. To violate that treaty today would be to reopen a never-quite-healed wound. “Call them,” Nerva finally said. It was the only thing he could think of that might help them handle this; if Violet wasn’t stopped before she managed to leave this building, they might never find her.

Luthor activated his phone and looked at Nerva knowingly from below half-closed lids. “Kar Wai’s no fool,” he told his boss. “He knows he’ll lose resources if he stacks against Violet.” He raised one eyebrow. “He’ll want his pound of flesh.”

Nerva’s lips pressed together grimly and he thought about it again. That was true, and the price would likely be heavy. But the boy was too important to let Violet escape. “Whatever he wants,” he finally said with reluctance. “Give it to him.” He turned away and headed back to the conference room, while off to the side his two injured soldiers slumped against the wall. Their wrists were bound with tourniquets and their faces were pale with pain and blood loss; beneath the bandages, their fingers were mangled and more than significant chunks were missing. Too bad they couldn’t regenerate their appendages—had the vampires in the old legends been able to do that? He didn’t know, but these two were scarred for whatever remained of their life span. He wondered how many more of his kind would end up sacrificed just so that he could get that “weapon” back and destroy it. He glanced back at Luthor and saw the other man talking animatedly into his phone, then grimaced and thought of Violet going up against Kar Wai. He thought the Chinois and his men could take her down, but they were going to pay hell doing it.

And then it would be his turn.

“I’ll probably never have to pay it anyway.”

Violet pulled the slender boy up to the final landing at the top of the stairwell, then slammed open the door and hauled him onto the rooftop with her. She got three feet, then skidded to a halt. There were more than twenty Chinois already waiting there, spaced at carefully calculated intervals that would never allow the two of them to escape . . . at least, not easily. How the hell had they gotten here before her? Via other entrances, of course—this was their territory. They probably had all kinds of tricks at the ready.

She pushed the boy behind her and he stumbled backward a few steps, then stayed there—so far so good. Walking slowly, keeping her hands visible at all times, she moved closer to the center of the roof. Then, with excruciating slowness, she drew out her machine pistols and held them up so each one of them could see her as she let them fall at her feet. She wasn’t sure if they knew about her flat space weapons, but she sure wasn’t going to reveal that secret card unless there was no other option.

When none of them moved aside, her eyes narrowed and she turned to face the leader, Kar Wai. She’d never met him face-to-face before, but she, like everyone in the upper third of this building, knew who he was. The Asian man was slickly dressed in an expensive black suit with a bright white oriental shirt collar showing above it—maybe even real silk rather than synthetic, a real rarity since the silk worm had gone extinct—but the fashion didn’t fool Violet. These people could fight wearing anything—in fact, that was one of their pride points. Kar Wai smiled with exaggerated patience, like a middle manager assigned to do a job no one else wanted. “You’re not ArchMinistry,” Violet finally said. “You’re not even vampire—you’re Blood Chinois. Let me pass.”

Kar Wai shook his head as though he were talking to a slow-learning child. “Sorry, Violet. Can’t do.”

Violet regarded him dispassionately, not particularly surprised that he knew her name. Nerva would have told him that much when he’d offered Kar Wai the job. But with the Blood Chinois, life was all about the numbers—they valued quantity above almost everything else. Money, property, inventory, lives. Maybe it would help to remind him of the consequences he would face if he crossed her. “You’re going to lose resources, Kar Wai.”