The Rift Uprising, page 17
I leap up and straddle him with my legs. I wrap both arms around him and lick my lips. This wasn’t exactly how I imagined this would be, but given my particular life, it totally figures. My instincts were right—he is somewhat shocked, but I can tell by the look in his eye he’s not entirely displeased. He smells amazing, an odd mix of blackberries and sea salt. I breathe him in. He slides his hands up my thighs and cradles my bottom in his palms. I have never been this close to a man in my life and I can feel the Blood Lust inside me building, fueling my power.
“Kiss me,” I whisper, but I don’t wait for an answer. Instead, I touch my lips to his. I would have been more aggressive, but considering he has fangs and all—and I’ve never actually kissed anyone—I do my best. I hear him growl inside my mouth. God, I am a sick person, but this guy is hot and I can’t deny that the whole experience is, in its own way, kind of a turn-on. No, scratch that—a massive turn-on.
Which is exactly what I am hoping for.
The fury explodes in my limbs and I squeeze harder, my mouth still on his. I feel his body tense and then scramble to get me off of him, and he manages to throw me. I feel like nothing in the world can stop me. I’ve never let this anger run its course and it feels wickedly good. I am panting now. I want to rip him apart. I ache to kick him in the chest so hard that his sternum breaks. My strange behavior has thrown him off balance and he is not prepared for the solid punch I land to his temple. He staggers a bit. I punch him again with an upper cut and he tries to shake it off. He looks at me with narrowed eyes. I see desire and rage.
Perfect—I feel the same way.
He runs at me, and I leap up over him, somersaulting in the air and landing behind him. I could take out my knife or my gun, but I don’t want to. I want to kill him with my bare hands. I have never felt so strong in my life. I know I could crush his windpipe if I get close enough . . .
And then I remember Ezra, the implant, the disk. I have to let him hurt me. I feel like that’s impossible. I can’t let the Blood Lust go. I’m on fire. The vampire uses my momentary distraction to pick me up and throw me as if I was nothing but a rag doll. I land in the soft peat. He hasn’t hurt me. Not even a little. I spring up again and then jump to a low-hanging branch above me. I use the momentum from swinging to hit him hard in the stomach. It works. Finally he’s down.
My rational mind is screaming to get injured. My body is literally trembling to hurt him. I scramble over to where he is in a flash. I am straddling him again now, me on top. I hear him laugh and say something in his own language. He’s not scared of me. In fact, if I’m not mistaken—and based on what I am feeling beneath me, I’m not—he’s pretty excited. It must be so simple for him. He wants blood and sex. I want everything. I want to hurt him, kill him, kiss him, undo his pants, press his eyeballs back into their sockets, lick him, strangle him, and let him hurt me. It’s too much. I try to pin his hands down, but instead he rolls me over so that he’s on top of me.
I have never felt the weight of a man this way, between my legs; it’s foreign and strange. He absolutely should not be here, but I can’t help the feeling that this is exactly where I want him to be. I don’t know if it’s my screwed-up wiring, or his exotic strangeness, or that finally, somehow, I am getting this kind of physical contact. He grinds against me slowly. It feels so good, and I am ashamed and furious. I buck my hips to try to get him off of me, but since I have zero experience in the sex department, it takes me a few seconds to understand that I am only making things worse. I stop and stare into his deep violet eyes. There is only one way I am going to win today. I go perfectly still. While my body is retreating into opossum mode, however, my mind has other plans. I close my eyes and turn away from his beautiful face, exposing my neck. I can feel my jugular beating from the exercise and the adrenaline. He sees it. I know he does. I feel his mouth on my skin. His breath is hot, his lips are almost gentle at first. He kisses me and the only thing stopping me from raging against him is that my base instincts have strategically retreated and are waiting for another opportunity to fight back. My brain knows the truth of it. When his teeth sink into my vein, I involuntarily groan. It’s painful, yes, but it’s something else, too. It is dark and savage and . . . hot. Nice girls don’t want to be hurt this way. I am not nice. Maybe this is all I deserve in the end. I could take out a weapon, shoot him in the forehead or cut his throat. The only reason I’ve engaged him hand to hand is so that I could get injured. The only reason I want to get injured is so that I can do this for real, without the violence. The irony of this is not lost on me as I feel the sticky blood he is sucking out of my neck trickle down behind my ear. I am suddenly very tired. It all seems pointless now. The edges of the forest blur and darken. The tension I’ve been holding in my body evaporates completely. If I was all alone I know I would be dead soon. I don’t even really care that much.
“Jesus, Ryn, what the hell?” someone says—Boone, I think—from somewhere behind me. I hear a thump, and the weight of the man who was between my legs is gone in an instant. I struggle to look around, but it’s impossible with my eyes closed. I want to open them, but I don’t have the strength. I feel pressure on the wound on my neck and some other loud voices. I want to tell them all to shut up so I can sleep, but my mouth isn’t working, either.
I drift in and out of consciousness. I feel myself being lifted off the battlefield and onto a stretcher. The medic shoves a needle into my arm, I assume to replenish the blood that has been taken. I feel the movement of the van. We are speeding back to base. The momentum of the car makes my body sway. It’s almost like being rocked. I manage to open my eyes once I am in the infirmary. I catch a glimpse of Edo. When I hear the click of the disk over my implant, I smile weakly.
“Do not try to be brave, Citadel Ryn. You have lost much blood.”
I see the concern on her face. I don’t care about the blood. I don’t care about whatever pervy thing just happened out there by The Rift. The first part of my plan has worked—not, I’ll admit, that it was much of a plan. Edo and a doctor begin repairing the vein in my neck. I don’t even feel the sutures they are sewing. There’s nothing more that I can do at this point. I know they have drugged me to keep me from moving. This is part of my plan, too. I give in to the blackness that has wanted to take me ever since the vampire first put his mouth on my neck. I sleep.
For hours.
It takes only a few seconds for me to get my bearings once I wake up. Loss of blood is not the same as a bump on the head, which is good—I need to be on my game. Edo. She looms over me; her eyes are so blue they look neon. It is hard to read the face of someone who has so little expression. Edo’s features are set somewhere between exasperation and worry. I think.
“Citadel Ryn, you were injured most grievously,” Edo rasps. The gorgeous face of the vampire flashes through my mind. I shift my body uncomfortably. He’s probably dead now. “Why did you not use a weapon? Why did you try to fight him with nothing?” Edo’s small, childlike hands flutter around her.
“Let me ask you a question,” I say, staring directly at her, “where do you live?”
She pauses for a moment and then cocks her head to one side. “I live here, at Camp Bonneville. Seventy-three Roones came through all those years ago, and we are scattered equally among the fourteen Rift sites. Why?” She has taken a step back. The concern, or what I may have taken for concern, has left her face.
“Why don’t you live in the Village?” I ask her directly.
Edo sighs impatiently. “Because our talents are needed here. Why are you asking these questions when you should be resting? Why does it matter where I live?”
“Because you’re a person. Because we did something—us, perfect humans that ARC is trying to turn every sentient Immigrant into. We sucked you out of your world and put you in this place, this prison, where you aren’t even allowed to speak your own language. Doesn’t that piss you off? Why do you even help us?” I hadn’t meant to say that. I basically just admitted that I’d been to the Village. It must be the drugs. My words are embers, like shooting sparks. I shake my head. I need to shut up, but when I look at Edo, I feel unsure about everything.
“I am surprised, Citadel Ryn, to hear you speak this way. It was the Roones, after all, who placed the device in your body that made you what you are. Made you into the kind of girl who, for a few short seconds of intimacy, would wrap her legs around a blood-sucking creature who might well have killed her. In the face of that, what difference does it make where I lay my head at night? I rarely sleep.”
I turn my head away, wincing slightly at the pain in my neck. I feel the tears well up, but I keep them pooled beneath my lids. Clearly I am sensitive right now—I guess the pain, blood loss, and drugs will do that. I have to keep it together. I have to get home today.
“Ryn,” Edo says, and I feel a slight weight on the edge of the bed. “We all have our parts to play in this. The Immigrants in the Village give up their customs and beliefs. Citadels give up their adolescence; sometimes they even give up their lives. We Roones give up every spare moment we have to find the best solution to each new problem The Rift presents us with.”
I clench my eyes shut and then rub them with my thumb and index finger. Does Edo really care about me? I want to believe it so bad. I want to believe that all of this is for the greater good. And since she’s not lecturing me about the Village, it must mean she doesn’t care that I broke in there. But if Ezra is right, then the Roones must be helping ARC with whatever it is that they are hiding. Because clearly the biggest problem with the Rifts—the fact that they exist at all—isn’t being worked on by anyone, let alone the Roones.
“Well,” I concede quietly, “I guess the Citadels are a necessary evil. Emphasis on evil. It’s torture. But I am not convinced that every other species that comes through The Rift should have to give up who they are to feed into some grand delusion ARC has, or that by doing so they’ll become less threatening. Why are they so afraid of everyone who’s different? It doesn’t seem smart, not if you’re playing the long game.”
Edo stares off and looks past me, as if she can see through the wall behind my head. “Fear can be good, Citadel. Fear drives the instinct to run from a fight you cannot win.”
“Agreed,” I say as I sit up. “But fear creates monsters. Fear created me. Fear fuels angry mobs, starts wars, and lets the powerful keep the powerless down. Ethically . . . wait, do ethics even apply anymore?” I huff out my breath in a single laugh. “I’m not sure we’re the good guys. I don’t think what we are doing with the Immigrants is right.”
“The Village is not a bad place. Humanity has its flaws, but for the most part, you are a good and honorable people. I have seen far more of the other species, in much more detail, than you have. I have studied them at length, and so my opinion on this matter is based on both observation and research. The concept of humanization creates community and cohesion. It allows an Immigrant to focus on our shared similarities instead of highlighting our vast differences. Humanization is the best solution.” Edo is smiling without showing me her teeth.
“You’re lying,” I tell her abruptly, because suddenly I don’t feel like dancing around some version of the truth. For some reason, I want her to know that I see what others can’t or won’t. I don’t know why. Maybe I’m testing her. Maybe I’m just tired of hiding so much of myself away. When I think about it, it’s probably a version of both.
Edo stands up and backs away from the bed. “What?”
“You. Are. Lying. Your super-ninja box-chip thingy has given me many gifts, but the ability to lie and to catch the lies of others—that’s my own special talent based on both observation and research, not to mention years of fieldwork. You aren’t being honest with me, and that’s okay because it doesn’t really matter what either of us thinks. We can’t change anything. We can only do our jobs.”
Edo looks away and with a single finger taps the electronic pad she is holding. She is making it clear she no longer wants to have this conversation, which works for me. “I need to go to the bathroom.” I sit up fully and swing my legs over the side of the bed.
“I can help you, or I can get a nurse.”
“No.” I cut her off harshly. “I can manage on my own. Take the IV out. I don’t need it.”
Edo looks me up and down, studying me as I stand here. She walks over and removes the tape from the skin on my arm and then slowly slides out the needle.
“Thank you,” I say, and I mean it. It really doesn’t matter if she is being honest with me. Edo has always been good to me. She has always been kind when the other Roones have only been cold and condescending.
I walk to the bathroom and close the door. I sit on the toilet and start to pee. I reach back and grab the disk from my neck. I was hoping that maybe I would have been injured just enough to keep my uniform on. No such luck; they must have removed it in my sleep. I am in a hospital gown. There is nowhere for me to hide the disk. Thankfully, I had a contingency for this, too. I take some toilet paper and wrap it around the small silver piece of metal. I relax and shove the wad of toilet paper up inside of me. It feels like a tampon, sort of. I am annoyed that I have to resort to this. I wait a few seconds, flush the toilet, and open the door with a contrite look on my face.
“I’m so sorry, Edo,” I say genuinely.
Immediately she is suspicious. “Why?”
“I forgot I had the disk on my neck and I went to feel my wound and it went flying. I looked all around for it. I heard it drop. I thought it dropped on the floor but I think it flew into the toilet. I flushed it while I was looking around the bathroom. I could be wrong, but I don’t see it anywhere.” This is a good lie. I am calm. I am genuinely sorry because I don’t like lying to Edo. But I’m good at it regardless. I maintain eye contact. I make sure my facial expression matches my words. I do not blink rapidly or look away or fidget.
“That’s all right, Citadel. We have many. Do not worry yourself about it.” Edo really doesn’t seem to mind at all. There is something, though, a look in her great big luminous eyes, that doesn’t sit well with me. Maybe she knows I’m lying and is happy to cover for me. Maybe it is something else entirely.
“I’d like to go home,” I tell her.
“That’s fine. I have recommended to Colonel Applebaum that he should give you and your team the day off tomorrow. It was a particularly difficult fight this morning.” Edo is checking her pad; she has a small frown on her brow.
“Is everyone else on the team okay?” I ask, mentally chiding myself for not asking sooner.
“Bumps and bruises. Citadel Boone was distraught when he saw the parasite sucking on your neck. He was quite afraid you would become ‘a creature of the night,’ whatever that is. I requested the time off for psychological reasons, not physical ones.”
I walk toward the small wardrobe to the left of the bed. When I open it I see that my street clothes have been put inside.
I grab the pants off the shelf and quickly pull them up, under the hospital gown. “Oh, yeah. I guess I could turn into a vampire. But wouldn’t I need to have had some of his blood? I mean, I don’t feel any different, but given what I’m already capable of, maybe I wouldn’t even notice.”
“The species you encountered today was born with a chromosomal deficiency that requires them to ingest the additional white blood cells found in blood to boost their immune system. There is nothing supernatural about them. We tested your combatant’s body for several diseases that could be transmitted via saliva and found none. I do not understand the mythology around this species. I apologize.”
I quickly throw on my sports bra and T-shirt. The first guy I ever kissed and now he’s dead. I hope it’s not some kind of an omen.
“Great. Thanks for checking and sewing me up and everything.” I walk toward the door.
“Ryn,” Edo rasps softly, and I turn. “Be careful.”
“Be careful with what?” What exactly is she talking about?
“You aren’t completely healed. That’s all. Try to rest.”
She smiles at me. I walk out of the room. Edo has just lied. Again. I can’t say how or why I know, but she wasn’t talking about my injuries.
CHAPTER 13
I walk through my front door in the late afternoon, and even though I am not remotely hungry, I remember that I am sharing my house with someone. I will just order a pizza. I don’t have the energy to reheat something, let alone cook. My phone has been going off since I retrieved it from my locker. The team wants to know how I am, wants to know if they can come over. They also want to know if I have a sudden aversion to crosses and garlic. That’s mostly Boone. I have put them all off, as nicely as possible. They cannot come here. They also cannot know why.
I lock the door behind me and climb up the stairs. I go to the bathroom, remove the disk, and then go to my bedroom to change into sweats. I pull down the ladder to the attic and make my way up loudly enough to let Ezra know I’m coming. When I get to Ezra’s room he looks up at me and smiles with obvious relief. There are papers everywhere. The whiteboard he asked me to get him is already covered with formulas. He is so beautifully disheveled that I have to clench my fists just to fight the urge to touch him somewhere, anywhere—I’ve lost too much blood already today. I manage to keep a safe distance.
“What happened? Are you okay?”
I can see that he, too, is having a hard time staying in his seat, not getting up to check me, hug me. I flush when I see his concern, but of course, I have to ignore it.
“I’m fine.” I show him the bandage on my neck. “So . . . it was vampires. Today. I mean, I’m pretty sure they don’t call themselves ‘vampires.’ But that’s what they looked like. One of them bit me.”
