Captive: A Graced Novella (The Graced Series), page 3
Laney was not fool enough to believe the vampire was harmless simply because his hands were full. He was humoring her for some unknown reason.
“Why do you need the blanket there?” the guard asked, seeming to stare at it, then her, then back at it.
“To provide privacy,” Laney replied, her tone implying it was more than obvious.
“She has a bite on her neck that needs to be washed. I do not see why this requires privacy.”
But he didn’t pull the blanket down.
Laney leaned into the semi-dark space, now enclosed on three sides: one by blanket, two by concrete wall. She pulled the stained bandage from her sister’s neck, dismayed to see the stream of blood running down from the bite. Vampires only needed to puncture the neck in two places then suck at the wound; Jane’s neck was torn.
“Idiot,” Laney muttered.
“Who is?” Jane asked, still as a stone.
“The vampire who bit you.” She probably shouldn’t have said that aloud, since a vampire stood nearby, but she couldn’t contain herself.
The blanket swished to the side as the vampire guard leaned into their space. His eyes narrowed as he took in the wound, with its slowly congealing blood. He held out the saline and fresh bandage.
“You are correct in your assessment. This wound is unnecessary. I will speak with my superiors and ensure that the humans are fed from in an appropriate manner.”
Jane turned to the guard. “Why do you care?”
Laney wanted to hush her, but it wasn’t like she’d been particularly careful with her words, either. Instead, Laney tore open the small plastic saline tube and poured it onto the wound. She was careful to not use all of it. With one of the clean bandages, she wiped the wound as clean as possible, but that only made it renew bleeding. At least there weren’t pieces of lint or anything stuck in the raw mess. Jane barely whimpered. Laney couldn’t believe the tolerance for pain that Jane was exhibiting.
Her sister was truly amazing.
Laney then said the words she’d never imagined saying before: “Can you please lick the wound?”
Jane recoiled, giving Laney a look of betrayal.
The guard dropped the blanket and then walked around to stand next to Laney. Quite businesslike, he tilted Jane’s head to the side and swept a long, glistening tongue over the wound. Laney watched critically, ignoring Jane’s flinch and rapid breathing.
“Probably should do it again,” she said.
Jane glared.
The guard repeated the process and then stood, licking his lips clean. His purple eyes bored into Jane’s. “You taste sweet. That’s probably why the vampire lost control. Warn whoever feeds next.”
Like it was all Jane’s fault. The asshole. But he was an asshole who had perhaps just saved Jane’s life.
Nodding at Laney, the vampire turned on his heel and left, not even bothering to see if the wound began to heal. Placing a fresh bandage over the bite, Laney pressed down. Jane hissed.
“Hold this.” Laney made Jane take hold of the cloth. Turning around, she checked that no one was watching them. Quickly, she popped the contact from her eye and gave it a wash in the leftover saline solution. Then, she rinsed her eye with the liquid.
“Is anyone nearby?” Laney asked.
“No.”
Sitting down next to Jane, facing the rear wall, Laney blinked rapidly, her eye singing with relief. Carefully, she held the contact in a small pool of water on her palm. It bobbed in time with the slight shaking of her hand, a brown striated circle with a clear center. She’d had to stockpile these a decade ago, rationing them out as long as she could. They were all well past their use-by, and she risked an eye infection wearing them, but she had to blend in with the humans. Her poor eye could do with more than a few minutes’ break, but it was all she could risk. None of the other humans knew she was half-Graced. They’d hate her, maybe even hand her over to the weres or vampires for breeding purposes. Jane was luckier, because Hazel eyes didn’t necessarily mean an active ability, and so the humans could tolerate her. But one fully colored eye? That was different.
After about five minutes, Laney popped the contact back into her eye. She’d long ago learned to do so without the aid of a mirror. Once righted, she turned back to her sister, who had been watching her silently.
“You made him lick me.” The words had been soft, but no less accusatory.
“We needed the saliva to help the wound heal,” Laney said.
“But—”
“I know,” Laney said. “I know.”
*
Laney knew it wouldn’t be long before she was summoned to act as a donor. In the meantime, she had begun seeing to the small aches and pains and hurts of the female villagers. It gave her a purpose, and also strengthened the story she’d told about her being a doctor.
Doctors were expected to help people, after all.
Her makeshift surgery often meant poor Jane had to rest on the top bunk, as Laney had appropriated the bottom space, but her sister never complained. She knew that Laney needed something to do, or she’d go crazy. Back at the village, they’d at least had the veggie patch to worry over. Plus, each evening they had recited their research, gone over it, picked it apart. With Jane’s memory, they hadn’t even needed paper, which had long been unavailable. Here, they couldn’t risk going over their work, and there was nothing else to do.
Her current patient was Maude, a forty-something woman who had recently fallen pregnant. She wouldn’t say who the father was, and Laney didn’t particularly care. She was doing a general checkup – the vampires thankfully hadn’t fed from the woman yet – and everything seemed to be going fine. But she was limited in the things she could check. She’d asked the guards for more medical equipment, but most of them just ignored her requests. The first guard hadn’t been back since.
Footsteps approached the shrouded bunk, but she ignored them. Pulling down the dull gray shirt over Maude’s slightly protruding belly, she stood. “Everything seems to be tracking fine.”
Maude made as if to stand, but the blanket was swished aside. A short female vampire stared at the both of them, her eyes lingering on the swell of Maude’s stomach in a disconcerting manner.
Turning deep violet eyes on Laney, she pointed one finger at her. “You.”
Laney looked at the finger. “Me?”
The vampire smiled, her teeth white and shiny in the light. “It’s your turn.”
Chapter 6
I admire the were called Wolf. He’s honest. Most of the time.
~ Quin Kirkman, Journal
Wolf could feel Trace’s eyes on him as he stripped the arsenal of weapons from his body. Wolf’s hands paused in their task. Looking up, he met the stern yellow gaze of his best friend and second in command. It was rare that two such strong alphas could get along as well as they did, but their friendship had been forged in a bloody childhood.
He went back to stripping away his weapons. If he was going to be captured, he didn’t want to hand over his favorite knife, gun or garrote. Instead, he’d take fewer weapons of lesser quality. Enough not to raise questions, but not so numerous that he’d be losing too many of his clan’s precious resources. Even though his teeth and claws were as deadly as any knife, there was a comfort he obtained from cold steel that he just couldn’t get with his hands alone.
“This plan is foolhardy. It has so many holes in it, it’s a joke.” Trace’s deep voice rumbled through the air.
“What else are we meant to do?”
Trace folded his arms across his mammoth chest. “Leave the humans to rot.”
The werebear was being practical. Humans weren’t people, at least, not anymore. Not since they became the only source of food available to his species.
Wolf glanced up from the pile of weapons spread over the metal table. They were in Wolf’s room; it had a single bed, a desk, a chair and a shelf with a row of books. And now, a pile of weapons. “And potentially lose securing a Gray?”
“There will be other Graceds.”
Wolf closed his eyes, his hands stilling. “Will there?”
Graceds were a dying breed; they owed nothing to humans and weres, or vampires. They’d experienced the worst suffering of all the humanoid species as a result of the centuries-long war. If it hadn’t been for Quin’s familial connection, they wouldn’t even have the opportunity to permanently work with a Graced.
And in a way, Wolf felt like he owed Quin. Not him in particular, he figured, but the race as a whole. Wolf was second generation; his grandparents had been Graceds who’d been forced into being sperm and egg donors, and then his grandmothers into being gestational hosts. His parents had both been taken away from their mothers as soon as they were born and their yellow eyes became apparent. They’d then been held at separate laboratories until the activists had been foolish enough to break them free.
Funny how the activists had been some of the first to die.
That was the problem with raising someone in a cell; they didn’t exactly have the best people skills. Both his parents had eventually figured out some semblance of civilization – mostly so they could fit in and pretend to be ‘normal.’ But the wildness had never really left them. How could it?
He couldn’t have asked for better parents, though. They’d protected their pups with a fierceness that most humans couldn’t imagine. All but two of their offspring were long dead though; only Wolf and his brother, Odo – Odolf – were left.
“We’ve held this stronghold for fifteen years; we’ll hold it for another thousand if we have to,” Trace said.
“I’m not concerned about the stronghold.” They’d taken it through cunning and planning. They now knew every nook and cranny of the underground establishment; whoever tried to take it would be seriously underprepared. There was no way he was ever going to hand it back to a bunch of asshole vampires.
Wolf began selecting the weapons he had little attachment to and which could be – relatively – easily replaced. “I’m worried about the human settlements. If we lose those, we’ll starve to death.”
“We’ll just put out more soldiers …”
“I don’t even know why that settlement was left unprotected in the first place. It is well within our lands, but if anything, that means it should be better guarded. It was our own stupidity that did this. It’s our job to set it right.”
Wolf wasn’t in charge of guard duty; he’d left that to a senior soldier who he’d thought was competent. He’d have a talk to the idiot and see why he’d decided that leaving a gaping big hole in their protection was suitable. They’d lost a handful of scouts and guards when the vampires had breached the perimeter, but the leeches had done it so fast and so cleanly that it took Quin informing them of the infiltration for them to learn of it.
Whoever had done the genetic engineering to ensure that weres and vampires could only survive on human flesh and human blood had been an absolute moron. They’d probably planned to create the necessary organs in a bunch of petri dishes, to be doled out as needed. But when the labs were destroyed, so too was that handy renewable resource. Now, the clan’s doctor (the only one they had) had to harvest livers from humans – cut away just enough so that the liver could grow back on its own, but also enough so that whoever fed off it would be sustained. Then hope the human didn’t die from infection. It was a massive flaw in their system. If they could survive off cow or sheep or any other kind of liver, then they wouldn’t need to be tied to an ever-dwindling human population.
They’d be free.
“Security has been increased,” Trace said. “I talked to the soldier who’d been in charge of the roster and deployment.”
“Can they still walk?” Wolf raised an eyebrow.
“For now.”
Trace had probably kept his temper in check, then. The man was lethal when riled; it was part of his bear nature. While the soldier was at fault, there were only a few hundred weres in the clan, and they had to patrol an area of several hundred acres. Mistakes could – and did – happen because of short-staffing.
“We should seriously start considering bringing the humans closer in, maybe even housing them in the bunker,” Wolf said, sliding a hunting knife into a sheath and strapping it to his thigh.
It’s what the vampires often did. Kept the food source straight at hand. But the weres believed that humans needed sunshine and fresh air to be healthy; and the healthier the human, the quicker they’d grow their liver back.
“There isn’t room for all of them in the bunker.”
Which was true, unfortunately. But they had to be better able to protect their food source. Not all of them were wolves; there were bears, coyotes, and a couple of leopards, although it was hard for the cat shifters and wolves to live under the same roof. Their animal sides bristled, while the human halves tried to get along. But they all had one thing in common: the need to eat.
Chapter 7
I’ve stolen so many medical supplies over my life. Maybe that should be on my tombstone: ‘Here lies Quin, scary son-of-a-bitch and stealer of saline solution.’ (My favorite is the SOB part.)
~ Quin Kirkman, Journal
Laney was taken from the dormitory and led down a series of halls. She was with a group of five other women, who were joined by six of the men from the settlement. She recognized all of their faces, knew them all by name, but somehow they felt like strangers. They were all quiet, some with expressions of fear, others with faces strangely blank. She couldn’t see any bite marks on any of their necks, which were left exposed by the low-necked shirts and sweaters they had been provided. They emerged through a steel door and into the weak sunshine, the sky a washed-out blue. It had once been a bright color, she was told; a shade of azure so intense it could sing in the soul. Now, that hue could only be seen in the eyes of a Graced.
Laney took a deep breath of the air, but the smell of chemicals, feces and metal reached her. She hadn’t had a clean breath of air in too long to remember. At least it had been better at the were settlement. The gravel-laden ground crunched under her feet as she came to a stop.
“This way,” the female guard barked.
Laney wished that the guards wore name badges. It would help keep them straight in her mind, rather than ‘Scary Vampire 1’ and so on. Although, it was probably better she didn’t know. She’d start to humanize the creatures in her mind if she knew their names. While they looked human, they were far from it. She had to remember that.
The woman, along with a male guard, herded the small group across the gravel toward a large building that stood proudly, made entirely of steel, by what she could see. They entered through a side door, which the female guard held open. She bared her fangs as the prisoners walked by her, snapping her teeth at Melanie, who flinched on her way past. Show no fear, she told herself. Building her courage, Laney settled a glare on the vampire, who winked at her.
“Adrenaline makes the blood taste better,” the guard said.
Once inside, they were led down another series of corridors and into a main dining hall. Laney updated her mental map as they went. She’d always had an excellent sense of direction; she thought it might be something to do with being part-Gray. Quin seemed to have the same ability.
Once they were all inside the room, the female vampire indicated they should line up in a single row. There was a little jostling as they got into place, but they were eerily silent as they did so. Laney couldn’t stop the little shiver that ran through her.
Looking out over the room, Laney studied the mostly empty expanse. There was a single table that ran across the middle – twenty chairs stood in position on either side, with one at the head. They were all vacant. The table was decorated with pitchers of water and some fruit and meat. Laney wasn’t sure why the food was there; vampires could eat human nourishment, but they received most of their sustenance from blood. Maybe it was for the humans after they had been drunk from? It certainly looked more appealing than the gruel she’d been eating until now.
At some unspoken signal, the vampire guards stood tall and alert in a military resting stance: feet apart and arms behind their back. Seconds later, a door at the rear of the room swung open and a line of vampires flowed in. At their head was a short man with dark curly hair; he was followed by a woman with deep brown skin and bleached white locks. Then another ten vampires followed. They were dressed in various styles of clothing, but their attire wasn’t costly like she’d assumed it would be. A couple even wore guard uniforms. The last to enter was a statuesque woman with long auburn hair tied into a braid. Her violet eyes were wide in her face; almost too large. Her chin was sharp and pointed, her cheekbones high. She was stunningly beautiful, but there was something about her that was utterly alien. Maybe it was the smoothness of movement, the wide unblinking stare that made her seem like something truly other.
The auburn-haired vampire moved to the head of the table and took a seat. The other vampires, who’d each come to stand behind a chair, followed suit. She waved a hand languidly at the line of humans, her gaze scanning them. Laney’s eyes tracked the movement, locking on the delicate-seeming forearm. A line of numbers marched across the inside of the wrist and next to it, a tattoo of a raven.
The digits represented her serial number, which meant the vampire was first generation. And … the raven tattoo only belonged to one member of that prestigious group. This was Tatiana Romanov.
Laney took a few quick shallow breaths, trying not to let her panic show. Tatiana. Bloody. Romanov. They were screwed. There was no way Quin would be able to break her and Jane out from this facility. They were as good as blood slaves for the rest of their lives. Tatiana was known to lead the most vicious of all vampire groups. Even she’d heard the rumors. Why hadn’t Jane mentioned this? Laney could understand the others not recalling, as they would have been affected by the saliva, but surely her sister would have noticed. Jane noticed everything.
“Before we partake of this much deserved meal,” Tatiana began, her voice low and level, “we have an issue to address.” She reclined back in her chair, the picture of ease and relaxation.
