35
“Congratulations, Major Treadwell. You’ve done what no one else has been able to.”
“Kidnap a girl?” Jake said before he could rein in the impulse.
Dr. Talbot pulled back a fraction, hands braced on his giant desk. He looked like he’d been physically struck by the words. If circumstances were different, Jake might have laughed.
Agent West, as oily as Jake remembered, slid into the silence that Dr. Talbot’s shock had left, all business, no smiles. “LC-5 is a weapon, major, not a girl. She was bred in a Petri dish, brought to term in a surrogate, and brought up in a lab. She belongs to the United States government, and she was made for one purpose and one purpose alone: to fight in the war.”
Jake took a breath. And another. “What war? Fucking – Iraq, or Afghana–”
West pulled a piece of paper – a photo printed on glossy card stock – from the file in his lap and slapped it down on the desk. “This war.”
Jake looked…
And was speechless.
Recovered, Dr. Talbot cleared his throat and said, “This is bigger than you, or me, or whatever moral hangups you have, major. It’s about the survival of the human race.
“We’ve known this was coming for a long time. We finally, finally have Vlad, and his assured cooperation. Now it’s time to fill out the rest of the chessboard.”
Jake sat back heavily in his chair, head throbbing. “That’s…that’s not real.” But there wasn’t much denial in his tone.
“Very real, I’m afraid. The world isn’t what you’ve always thought it was, Jake. It’s much, much more frightening.”
~*~
The person who entered her room was not the doctor or nurse that Red had expected. A tall man, long black hair past his shoulders. Handsome in a narrow, sharp-nosed way. Blue, blue eyes, and a red leather jacket. He paced slowly into view, shoulders drawn up, tense and careful. He came to a halt poised on the balls of his feet, ready to flee. Or attack.
His eyes. She recognized a bit of herself in him. Or, not really. He wasn’t like her, she didn’t think, but he was different. Not altogether human.
“Are you a doctor?” she asked, voice a rough, dry scrape.
He didn’t flinch, but his mouth tightened. “No. But you’re a mage.”
“A what?”
He cupped his hand; it was empty, but the gesture was unmistakable: the way she held her own hands when she called fire.
“I didn’t know that’s what it was called,” she admitted.
He took a breath, nostrils flaring, brows pinching together over his long, straight nose. “Do you know who your parents are? Were?”
“I don’t have parents.”
“Yes, you do. I can smell them in your blood.” He growled; a quiet pulse of sound, a rumble like an unhappy dog.
Yes, he was different.
Through the receding haze of unconsciousness, and the numbness of the cuffs, a thought dawned, and with it, sadness. “Oh no,” she said. “Are they keeping you here, too? Like they are me?”
His mouth twisted to the side, caught somewhere between a smirk and a grimace. “Something like that.”
“I’m Red,” she offered; it felt absurd to introduce herself like this, lying on her back, unable to shake hands.
His expression shifted, closer to a smile now. “I’m Fulk.”
“Fulk, do you know what happened to – to my…” Tears filled her eyes and she blinked them away. “My friend?”
He shook his head. “No.”
~*~
“My hubby’s got no love for mages,” Annabel said. She sat on the end of Sasha’s bed while he paced back and forth alongside it, brimming with nervous energy despite the blood that had been drawn.
“Me neither,” he said. He didn’t know if he could still smell the distinctive charred scent of the mage, or if he was remembering it. Her scent had been dampened, though: that of a forest fire after it had been put out for a week. Something wrong about it.
“No,” Annabel said, and a little shiver in her voice brought Sasha up short; he glanced over at her. She was studying the floor, the cheap white tiles laid over the stone for the sake of sterility. “I mean, he hates them. Distrusts them. It’s deeply personal for him.” She lifted her gaze then, asking Sasha to understand without being told.
Sasha stared back. “Monsieur Philippe turned me, and tricked me, and killed all my friends.” All but Nikita. Oh, Nik. “I understand.”
She nodded and took a breath. “Them bringing that girl here…you know about Familiars, right?”
“Vampires have a left and a right hand. A mage and a wolf.”
“Yeah. I’ve thought since the beginning that they want Fulk to be Vlad’s wolf. And now I think they’ve gone and found him his mage.”
He thought about that for a moment. “Then what do they need with me?”
She snorted. “That’s selfish.”
“It’s the truth. Why do they need me?”
She shrugged. “Maybe…”
They both went stiff at the same time.
“Your friends are coming to get you,” she said.
Sasha’s lungs squeezed. “I’m bait.”
“They want to build an army,” she murmured. “And they’ll start with everyone we know.”
~*~
Val had decided to call his little cat Poppy, because her color reminded him of the first blush of orange on the tender insides of poppy petals. She seemed to like it; then again, she seemed to like everything, including ear scratches, which he administered now to the sound of deep, blissful purring.
“It’s nice to be petted, isn’t it?” he said, and she purred some more, leaning into the delicate movements of his fingertips. “I wouldn’t know. No one’s ever petted me.” Not in a kind way, at least.
“You’re slipping,” Annabel said, sitting down cross-legged in front of the bars.
“No, I heard you coming.” He stroked his hand down Poppy’s back and she lifted into the movement.
“You two are getting along.” The baroness sounded fond.
Val finally lifted his gaze and saw the lines of strain lurking in Annabel’s smile, beneath the warm fondness she bore for the cat, and the picture he made with her. “You didn’t come here for small talk.”
“I do like to talk to you, but you’re right. I didn’t.” She blew out a breath. “They brought in a mage.”
“Ah. The little red-headed girl.”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t care to speak with her, if that’s what you’re after.”
“No. Sasha and I were just putting together a theory.”
“Should be cutting edge.”
“Shut up. Listen: we think they’re…collecting people. Immortals. We think Sasha’s friends are driving right into a trap.”
“It’s a possibility.”
She sighed. “Jackass. Will you help?”
Poppy climbed up into his lap and kneaded his leg through the thin, threadbare layer of his pants. He settled a hand on her back, felt the vibration of her purr. “Oh, fine.”