Forever, page 8
Off in the distance, voices were in volley, the back-and-forths dimmed by closed portals, the exchange of syllables the kind of thing that humans couldn’t track. As a symphath, though, he heard everything. And he saw things, too.
The pasty little groundhog of a man in front of him was north of forty—going by the receding hairline and the paunch—but not by a lot, and his emotional grid was lit up like a Christmas tree: Thanks to Blade’s bad side, he could burrow into the secret, private places of almost anybody, visualizing both their nitty and their gritty. And because of what he was, he never failed to draw off the negative emotions, the upset, the paranoia, the fear, all of which were represented to him in a three-dimensional, CAD-drawing-like effect.
Like the balloon in a comic strip, bobbing over their head.
As a mewing sound burbled up between them, Blade catalogued his prey. The scientist in the white coat had sweat running down his bloated face and bubbling over his upper lip, and his heart wasn’t so much beating as flickering, the pulse at the carotid artery a tremble that was oh-so-close to the very thin skin of the throat. The features of the face didn’t register very clearly; then again, there were other details that were a tastier meal for his mind.
“H-h-how did you get in here,” the man stammered.
Blade smiled and did nothing to hide his fangs. And what do you know, his victim’s wide stare locked on them.
“You have bigger problems than my entry.” Blade inhaled again, and leaned in so close, they were practically kissing. “And speaking of penetration, pity I don’t have more time. I’d enjoy getting to know you. Inside and out.”
Whimpering now, the sound high-pitched and repetitive. Like the squeaky toy of a dog.
“Unfortunately, time’s ticking,” Blade continued. “Oh, and don’t be complimented, by the way. I have very low standards. I’m positively indiscriminate about who I’ll fuck.”
Moaning. A weaving on the man’s feet, as if the hyperventilating and the inefficient pump of his cardiac muscle were causing him to pass out. “Where did you come from…?”
Blade stared into the black holes of the man’s pupils. “Hell.”
With a jab of his fist, he gored into the abdominal cavity with his gold knife, feeling the organs give way like fabric, the energy created by the contraction of his shoulder and arm muscles transferring down the hilt, through the blade, and into the loose bundles of the digestive system.
The gasp was right by Blade’s ear, like a lover coming, intimate and just for the two of them.
“Look at me,” he whispered as he eased back while leaving the knife in place. “Dr. Randall Hertz, look at me—that’s it. That’s right. Now, listen carefully. Your legal address is One-Oh-Nine Prescott Lane in Charleston, South Carolina. You have a wife, Susan. You have two children, Martin, who goes by Marty and is named after your father, and the other one is Mary. The idea to go with M names was your wife’s.”
Those eyes got wider as that face got even paler.
“If you give me the codes to the cages in the experimentation unit, I won’t leave here and go directly to your house and slaughter the three of them wherever I find them.”
“Please,” the man breathed. “Please, don’t hurt my—”
“You have tortured and killed males and females here. You have taken them from their families. You have injected them with drugs and subjected them to experiments for the last ten years. You have left this fucking shithole and gone home to your fucking mate and your young while they have suffered. You’ve slept like a fucking baby in your goddamn bed, and filled your belly, and enjoyed all the creature comforts during your breaks—while those in the steel cages with the wires and the IVs and the motherfucking implants and electrodes suffered. So considering all that, I’m presenting you with an opportunity to save your family that you do not deserve. Give me the codes.”
It was, of course, all bullshit.
The first thing Blade had done when he’d come up behind the man, spun him around, and submitted him against the corridor’s wall? Burrowed into that brain and retrieved the codes.
But that was the difference between vampires and symphaths. A vampire would have gotten what he needed, slit the throat, and gone along his way. A symphath? This emotional exchange was a feeding that was necessary. He consumed the surges of emotion, lived for the flares along the grid, hungered for that priceless instant before death rendered this man nothing but a wind-down of biological functions.
“Give me the codes,” he prompted.
“S-s-s-seven-twenty-two-nineteen-eighty-one. T-there’s only o-o-one.”
Blade smiled. “Your birth date. How cute. But not very safe. You should have gone with something more unusual, and used a few of them. What if someone infiltrated this facility with an eye toward destroying what you’ve worked so hard for.”
Down at the gold knife, Blade’s hand was getting coated in warm, fresh blood, the tide lazy because of a lack of pressure and the erratic heart rate. It was almost like he’d come inside the man, his ejaculate making a reappearance.
Abruptly, he had to steady the scientist by wrapping an arm around the small of his back. As if they were waltzing. “Randy, let me ask you something.”
Moaning. Fluttering of the eyes. Like the dying man was in ecstasy.
Blade gave him a little shake. “Randy, did you honestly think one of us wasn’t going to come for you? After all these years, and all the different sites, did you really not think that, sooner or later, we were going to find you?”
With that, Blade twisted the knife.
Then he snapped off the hilt.
As the body dropped to his feet, and that ruby red stain instantly doubled in size, Blade dropped what he had gripped onto the chest. The black wrap of boxing tape made him think of how long it had taken him to attend to the weapon’s grip, and he smiled, wondering what humans would make of such a dagger.
Except they weren’t going to find it. When he was done here, there wasn’t going to be anything bigger than the diameter of a quarter left, and more to the point, the lab’s owners were going to be so busy hiding the remains of the site, no kinds of forensic investigation would be performed.
Such a shame. At over sixteen hundred dollars an ounce, there was a pretty penny in the weapon, and at least if it spooked some human, he’d get some value out of its abandonment. And he would have taken both parts back with him, but he preferred to leave something of himself behind in his victims.
With grim intent, Blade stepped over his prey and kept going.
He knew what he was going to find.
But he hoped, this time finally… he would be wrong, and some of the subjects would still be alive.
NINE
SO YOU’VE CHANGED your mind.”
As Gus repeated the words Daniel had just thrown out at the guy, the good doctor mostly kept the disappointment from his voice. And clearly, this wasn’t the first piece of bad news C.P.’s head scientist had gotten tonight. Even before he’d sat down at the table just off the big kitchen, he’d looked like he’d been hit by a truck.
“I’m sorry,” Daniel said. Then he glanced at Lydia. They reached for each other’s hands at the same time, and as she squeezed his palm, he let out a long breath. “I just…”
Gus held up both his palms. “I’m not going to argue with you. Don’t worry about that.”
“We’ve come to a mutual decision,” Daniel finished.
Lydia nodded and brushed a wisp of hair out of her eyelashes. “We think it’s… time to live instead of trying desperately not to die.”
The doctor nodded and sat back. Then he clapped his thighs and rubbed the top of his legs, his torso rocking in his chair like he was frustrated but trying to stay cool. “I get it. Trust me—”
The clipping sounds were dim at first, but as they got louder, Gus dropped a cuss word. Or seven. “And here she is, Miss America,” he muttered under his breath.
At that moment, C.P. Phalen entered the alcove, and as usual, her perfume was like the beat of her stilettos—a banner announcing her presence. Not that she needed the extra highlight. With those heels, her Truth or Dare Madonna hair, and that tended-to face, she was polished as her marble floors and just as cozy. Daniel had never seen her out of her wardrobe of business suits, and had long ago decided she’d come into the world looking like the evil villain in a Marvel movie.
“So I gather we’re not moving forward,” she said.
“No.” He glanced again at Lydia. When she nodded firmly, he murmured, “I’m sorry.”
Actually, the more honest statement was that he was confused as fuck. He’d had one plan. Then another. And now he was back where he started with refusing that Vita-12b the lab had cooked up. For a military man with a strict sense of discipline, the flip-flopping was making him mental—and he was no happier with this resolution than he’d been with the other, go-for-it one.
He was still leaving Lydia alone. And sooner rather than later.
The difference was that at least now she didn’t want him to keep with the medical pollution. She just wanted… to be with him.
Same page at the same time, finally.
Not that C.P. was happy about it.
The woman looked at Gus, who was focused on the Coke can he’d brought in from the kitchen. The guy seemed to run on the stuff, yet he was never twitchy, never the kind who bounced a foot under the table or tapped fingers. Then again, he’d probably last slept a full night through back in the nineties and was running on fumes.
C.P. pulled a chair out and sat down at Gus’s left. As the man shifted his seat a little away from her, you didn’t need to be a body language expert to see the rift between the two.
“Of course, you have to do what’s right for you,” the woman said in a neutral tone.
“Listen, we can leave,” Daniel offered. “Lydia still has her rental house and I can get the care I need there—”
A pair of noes came right back at him.
“You will stay here,” C.P. said.
“I’m not your problem—”
“I didn’t say you were,” she snapped. “You’ll stay here because—”
“You’re hoping I’ll change my mind,” he countered.
C.P. took a deep breath and held up her hand. “Daniel, don’t take this the wrong way—but fuck you and fuck off.”
Daniel had to laugh. “You know, I’ve always liked the fact that you’re a straight shooter.”
“Not as straight as you think,” Gus said under his breath. “Well, except in the—”
C.P. shot him a glare that, under any other circumstance, should have blown the scientist out of his chair, through the wall behind him, and onto the terrace.
Gus just gave her one of her own eyebrows back at her. Then he seemed to—did he just hum boom-chicka-wow-wow?
As silence landed like a piano dropped on the table between the four of them, Daniel felt like he was in an MRI machine, trapped even as he wasn’t tied down. Meanwhile, out in the kitchen proper, it was a case of business-as-usual, utensils clanging on steel pans, chefs chatting, something hitting a saucepan with a hiss—
“Oh, my God.” Daniel frowned. “Onions.”
“I’m sorry?” Lydia said.
“I smell onions.” He tapped the side of his nose. “It’s funny. I haven’t realized how much my olfactory sense has been off.”
Gus cleared his throat and leaned into his forearms. “You’re going to find a lot of things returning. The side effects from the immunotherapy will retreat quickly. You’re young and otherwise healthy, except for the cancer that’s killing you.”
While Lydia recoiled, Daniel blinked at the images that came back to him. In the course of his clandestine work, he’d dropped all kinds of enemies, in all kinds of ways. With knives, guns, his bare hands.
None of his training was helpful in this situation.
Then again, cancer was hardly an opponent you went at like that.
“Sorry.” Gus rose to his feet and slapped a hold on his Coke. “Didn’t mean to be too blunt. Come to the lab tomorrow. I’ll run some fluids into you to support your kidneys, and I’ll take some bloods and see what we can rebalance. I’m not a juice-cleanse kind of guy, but there are things I can do that’ll help you feel better.”
“Okay. Thanks.”
As Gus took off, Lydia covered a yawn with the back of her hand and Daniel got up—and though getting to the vertical involved his cane and some careful balancing, she knew better than to try to help him. Relying on that kind of assistance always made him terrified he would lose what capabilities he had left, even if, thanks to the neuropathy in his feet, he was always a drunk, even when he was sober.
Always on the deck of a boat, with only his eyesight to orientate him.
“Let’s eat something in our room tonight,” he murmured. “Come on. You’re exhausted.”
As she looked up at him, her eyes were drooping. So were her shoulders. “That sounds amazing.”
Daniel stood up a little taller. It felt good to take care of his woman, even if it was only with the suggestion of a night in—and about time, too. She’d been his nurse instead of his lover for way too long.
He carefully turned his head to C.P. so he didn’t end up going throw rug on her marble floor. “I’ll tell Chef we’d like trays sent down.”
As their eyes met, the way she looked back at him was intense. Then again, she’d put so much into this drug she was developing, and after all the things she’d done for him, he didn’t like letting her down. Especially because he had a feeling she had invested in him and his health care fiesta because she’d assumed when he got to the point where he was out of options… he’d take the only one that was left.
“I’m sorry,” he said softly.
She just shook her head. Then gave him the oddest little smile. “Don’t be. I get it.”
* * *
When Lydia came up to the door of their bedroom, she was surprised as Daniel lurched forward and got things for her, pulling the panel open and holding it in place with what certainly passed as a flourish.
“If you go take your shower,” he said, “I’ll let in the food when it comes.”
She moved past him, and felt curiously off balance, even though he was the one who had the cane. “I, ah, I’m sure it will appreciate the warm welcome.”
“Only if it was raised right.”
Flustered for no good reason, she watched Daniel shuffle over to their bed and sit down with a groan. As he closed his eyes and released a ragged breath, she knew that the only thing worse than being in their reality… would be returning to it from some fantasy that, with their joint resolve, he was suddenly going to survive. They were getting a respite, not any true relief.
And they’d just closed the remaining door they had.
As she thought about what lay ahead, a flush rose up her throat and she put a hand to her frizzy hair. Before she fell apart again, she said, “I won’t be long. In case the food comes.”
“Don’t worry about it. I can get the door.”
“Thank you.” She shook her head. “I mean—”
“Take your time,” he said gently.
For a moment, she tried to remember the last time she had felt seen by him—and not as in come-into-a-room-and-be-identified, but seen.
“I’ve missed you,” she blurted.
Daniel opened his mouth as if to point out the obvious. Then he nodded. “I know. I’ve missed you, too.”
This was what they needed, she reflected. He’d been right all along.
As the quiet stretched out between them, Lydia felt the absurd impulse to kiss him. Which shouldn’t have felt strange, should it?
“I won’t be long,” she repeated awkwardly.
In the bathroom, she reached into the marble shower and turned on the fixture that was mounted on the ceiling. You’d think it would be the greatest thing, a “rain” effect that made a person feel like they were communing with nature. In reality, because you couldn’t vary the angle, if you wanted to get the shampoo out of your hair, your nose was getting a fill whether you enjoyed drowning on an otherwise dry vertical or not.
Given the luxury she was surrounded by, it was hard to imagine she’d pine for her little rental, but as she suddenly missed that modest house like it had been burned to the ground, she wasn’t stupid. It wasn’t just about the cheap shower stall.
God, all the introspection lately was giving her heartburn.
Taking her clothes off and letting them fall to the black marble floor, she got into the shower before the water was all the way warm, and as she shivered, she thought about everything Daniel had had to endure. This was what was on her mind as she efficiently shampooed and conditioned and soaped, and after she was finished, she stood under the falling water, closing her eyes and feeling the tapping massage on her tight shoulders—
The moment the easing of her muscles registered, she yanked herself out of the relaxation.
Cutting off the water, trying not to think, she wrapped herself in composure instead of a towel as she went over to the pair of sinks. Even though she instantly got a chill, her skin goosebumping up all over, she brushed her teeth on autopilot, forgetting that it was dinnertime instead of bedtime. She only remembered this as she was spitting out her Crest into the sink, but then that was another way to commune with where Daniel was at, wasn’t it.
Change of taste. Food no longer as appealing because it had—
“Lydia.”
Jerking up from the black marble basin, her eyes shot to the mirror. Behind her, through the open door, Daniel had propped himself up against the headboard, and as he stared at her, he had the strangest expression on his face.
Without thinking about it, she covered herself with her hands and spun around. “Are you okay?”
“Sorry,” he said as he looked down.
“I’m coming.”
Grabbing a towel, she hustled over to the bed. “What’s wrong? What do you need?”
“I’m fine.” Daniel’s hand lifted to brush her off. “I just need—”
Knock, knock, knock.
