5
Ingraham Institute
Blackmere Manor
Undisclosed Location near Richmond, Virginia
He’d been alone for so many decades that he’d long since bypassed the disbelief, the rage, the grief. The madness. 1550 had been a particularly bad year; if he tilted his arm just so under the light he could still make out the faint, white tracks of scars down the inside of his forearm where he’d clawed himself. But, like all long-term prisoners, Valerian had settled. There had always been guards, some more sadistic than others; some terrified; and there had always been those who would use him. A few mages, another vampire, once. And then, beginning in the seventeen-hundreds, an endless string of doctors who wanted to poke and prod him like one of their lab specimens. Some he’d cooperated with; one he’d decapitated. The guards had thrown boiling oil on him, then; it had taken two years for his hair to grow back.
He’d projected his consciousness often, with varying degrees of success. It was easier now that the Institute had taken over his care; they kept him well-fed and he was stronger, could reach farther, stay for longer. He’d made some exceedingly interesting friends that way, as of late.
But he hadn’t had real, in-person company in so long. In centuries. So long that he’d begun to think that he wasn’t lonely at all, and that in his lifetime of captivity and confinement, this might be as close to decent as he could get.
And then the wolves had come.
The Baron Strange was a legend, arguably the most notorious wolf in existence, certainly the oldest still living. Valerian had smelled him the moment he entered the basement, the unmistakable musk of wolf filtering through the air vents and into Val’s shitty little cell. He’d sat up so suddenly that he’d yanked his chains, their silver-lined titanium cuffs biting into his wrists.
Truth told, he’d been disappointed when he finally met the man – wolf – himself and saw that the great Fulk le Strange had become soft and hesitant in his old age. He’d given up, Val supposed, just as he had. Grown weary of expending so much energy on ruthlessness.
But that wasn’t it at all. Le Strange had found a mate, and he would behave like a housepet so long as he thought his cooperation would keep her safe.
Fulk was entertaining, but it was Annabel le Strange who had reminded Valerian that he was, in fact, lonely.
He heard her now, the faint scrape of her boot soles across the concrete floor, and sat up from his listless slouch in the corner, pushed his hands through his ratty, knotted hair – for what little good it would do. He’d been beautiful once; he supposed he still was, but he could feel the dirt caked into every crease, taste the foulness of his own breath. He tried gamely to pick the tangles from his hair with his fingers, but it did little good. Beyond a mouthful of fresh blood, his greatest fantasy was of a steaming bathtub.
The first door in the sequence unlocked with a low, deep thud and a hiss of air releasing. Then he could smell her sharply, wolf and pine needles and warm late-summer air. The hinges of the barred door creaked when she pushed through it, and her footsteps came down the hallway to the end, to his dim cell. She appeared on the other side of the bars in cutoff shorts, harness boots, and a faded old long-sleeved Zeppelin shirt.
She smiled and held up a little glass bottle. “Look what I brought you.”
“What is it?”
She turned it on its side and slid it through the meal slot; it just barely fit. “Mocha Frappuccino. It’ll change your life.”
He shifted forward – chains slithering over the floor – and plucked the offering from the shelf. “To be fair, it doesn’t take much to change my life.”
“You know what I mean.” She dropped gracefully to the floor and settled cross-legged, casual and relaxed in a way that no one ever was around him.
The bottle was sealed with a bit of plastic – a marvelous invention – and Val smiled inwardly as he peeled it off and listened to the satisfying pop of the top when he twisted it. Whenever Annabel brought him gifts, they were always still enclosed in their original packaging: a silent assurance that they hadn’t been tampered with. He could still remember the cramping of his abdominals after those cretins in 1976 had slipped him poisoned milk. They’d laughed when he’d started to vomit up his own stomach lining. That was alright; he’d clawed their larynxes out with his fingernails a few days later, gotten his first taste of human blood in a decade. So. It all worked out in the end.
Annabel laughed when he took an experimental sniff of the drink. It smelled like milk, and coffee, and chocolate, and the faint tang of chemical preservatives and sweeteners.
“It’s good,” she said. “I swear.”
He took a sip, and found she was right. Not homemade, but sweet, and thick, and better than the slop they brought him on his dinner tray every night.
“Yes,” he agreed, “thank you.”
She clapped her hands together once, satisfied. “I brought you something else, too.” Her smile turned sly before she glanced back the way she’d come, held out her hand, and made a kissing sound with her lips.
A cat trotted up to her, butted her palm with its tiny striped head. It was small, probably young, only a year or so. A female orange tabby with big golden eyes that it turned on Val with curiosity, and not a touch of fear.
Animals had always liked him.
“I thought you might like to have a friend down here,” Annabel explained, and something shifted in the dark confines of Val’s heart, pushed at old rusty padlocks and rotted hinges.
“Oh,” he said, and took another sip of his drink. “Well. I suppose that was thoughtful.”
She chuckled, the sparkle in her eyes indicating she could see right through him. “She doesn’t have a name yet. I thought you could give her one.”
Val capped the bottle and set it down slowly, the cat watching him the whole time. He wiggled his fingers and she came to him, slipping right through the narrow bars and padding up to him with her tail aloft, expression bright and eager. He folded his legs and she climbed up into his lap, purring and butting his chin with her head.
Oh, dear. That was lovely.
“Hello, beautiful,” he murmured, reaching to scratch behind her ears.
Her purring intensified and she leaned into the touch, happily kneading his leg.
“Ooh, she loves you,” Annabel said.
“Yes.” He ran his hand down her back, watching her spine lift into the motion. “Unfortunately for her.”
When he glanced up, he found Annabel watching him with sympathy.
“Don’t pity me. It makes me feel pathetic.”
She snorted. “We wouldn’t want that.”
The little cat circled and then laid down in a tidy coil, warm and purring.
“Can I ask you something?” Annabel said.
“Ah.” He smiled. “I knew you didn’t come to bring me a cat.”
“Hey now, I did! Don’t make me out like one of them.” She was of course referring to his captors – whom he guessed were her captors as well, in a way. “But you said some things to Fulk the other day, and I’ve been curious.”
“About what, my dear?”
“You said Alexei Romanov is still alive.”
“He is. Have you much interest in Russian nobility?”
“Don’t get cute.” She tried to look stern, but was smiling. “That whole story – the whole family getting killed? The Bolsheviks? – that’s crazy. Who isn’t interested? But you know what I mean.”
They studied one another a moment, and Annabel’s eyes narrowed, some of her true steel peeking through the youthful veneer. “They left Fulk and me alone for a long time,” she finally said. “And then they called. Things are in motion, Fulk says, and he’s right. Something big is coming. He’s always wanted it to be us against the world, but just the two of us can’t fight off something this big. It’d be nice to know if there’s any friendlies out there.”
“Friendlies,” he mused aloud, stroking the cat. “I’ve never known any in my own life.”
“Not any?” she asked, teasing at first. And then her face fell. “Oh no. Val.”
“Your sympathy is charming, but unnecessary, I assure you. As to your question: I don’t know if they’d be friendly toward you, per se, but there are others. Ones who won’t want any part of any foolish war my relatives see fit to stir up. And who certainly wouldn’t approve of the things they do here in this house.”
Annabel nodded.
“What do you think of my brother? Now that’s he awake.”
She blinked, clearly surprised by the question. But didn’t answer right away; chewed at her lip a moment. Finally, she said, tone careful, “He calls you Radu when he talks about you.”
A burning sensation blossomed in the pit of his stomach, hot and furious. Pain like a wound. He sucked a quick breath through his teeth and lifted his head, stiffened his neck, shoved uselessly at the old waves of rage that lapped and frothed inside him. “Well,” he said, aiming for crisp, coming off tense. “He would. Valerian was my mother’s chosen name for me. It’s the name my father wanted that always turns up in the history books.”
The cat rolled over onto its back and reached up with her ginger paws to bat at his fingertips. Her little claws hooked in his skin, sharp enough to make him smile.
“I’m sorry,” Annabel said.
“Don’t be,” he snapped, and regretted letting his composure slip. He tickled the cat’s soft belly with his fingers and tried to regain his bored, lofty tone. “So what goes on upstairs? With all you aboveground dwellers.”
He thought that would earn an eye roll, or at least one of her snorting little laughs. But instead, she frowned.
“I don’t know,” she said, “but that awful old Dr. Talbot is up to something.”
~*~
The first cold prick of the needle was a relief unto itself. Jake had never tried recreational drugs in his life – had never taken a single hit off a joint, no matter how much the other boys had teased and prodded – so he didn’t know for sure that this was what a junkie felt like, but he suspected it probably was. The prep alone was enough to have his muscles unclenching, his jaw slowly relaxing. Rolling up his sleeve. The cool touch of the nurse’s fingertips on his arm. Pressure of the tourniquet. The tap, tap, tap of her nail on the syringe brought all the tiny hairs on the back of his neck to attention. And then the sharp, bee-sting bite of the needle going in.
He breathed out, slow and deep, relaxing each limb, willing the constant tension in his stomach away. The serum, the pale, translucent pink of blood plasma, hit his veins with its usual warm fizz. Like champagne moving through his blood, effervescent and invigorating, bringing with it a sense of calm, and a surge of strength, that he suspected must be the work of strong opiates.
He supposed he’d broken his clean streak, then.
Not that it mattered.
“Alright,” the nurse said, cheerful but soothing. “Great job.” The plunger depressed the last of the serum and she withdrew the needle with a practiced movement, pressing a cotton ball to the pinprick with her other hand. “Bend your arm,” she said, but didn’t have to; he was old hat at this by now.
He bent his arm, putting pressure on the cotton ball, and allowed himself to enjoy the pleasant buzzing in his head while she trashed the syringe and set about finding him a Band-Aid in one of the drawers by the sink.
Jake had joined the program six months ago, and by now, the novelty of his surroundings had dulled to normalcy. It was amazing, he thought, how quickly humans adapted and then grew complacent; nothing stayed fascinating for long.
Although Blackmere Manor worked hard to do so.
The exam room, where he now sat on a paper-covered, padded table, was one of several in the basement of the manor house. Three white sheetrock walls encircled a standard box-shaped space, sink and bank of cabinets in one corner, exam table, biohazard disposal box. But the far wall was composed of old, worn-smooth stone, patches of lichen and damp crawling across its surface. Overhead, the fluorescent tube fixtures hung suspended from long chains hooked into a vaulted stone ceiling laced with modern pipes and wires that clung like poison ivy vines.
“Here we go,” the nurse – he thought her name was June – said, bustling back up to him. “Let’s see the war wound.” She chuckled at her own joke.
Jake extended his arm without cracking a smile and watched her smooth a bandage over the injection site. He’d seen war wounds. This wasn’t one of them.
“Okay, major,” she said, and he didn’t correct her. He’d told her, and all the other nurses, that he’d been discharged and shouldn’t be addressed by his rank anymore. None of them had listened. “Hop down and I’ll take you to see Dr. Talbot.”
Jake unrolled his sleeve and slid off the table, following obediently behind June as she opened the door and led him out into a bright white hallway lined with heavy wooden doors. That was the thing that always stuck out from the rest of the manufactured hospital environment in the basement of Blackmere Manor: the reinforced, medieval-style doors, silly-looking in their modern frames. He’d always wondered if they were original to the mansion, a stab at blending the old aesthetic into the utilitarian blandness of the lab; but then he’d heard the screams, and he’d begun to think they were practical doors, designed to keep people out…or in.
The hallway where he received his regular injections opened into a wider hall, this one lined with labs, full of techs and scientists in white coats hurrying back and forth, eyes glued to the tablets they carried. They swiped their way in and out of doors with key cards, never sparing so much as a glance at Jake or his nurse escort.
That hall led to a massive room with soaring cathedral ceilings, and no windows, the heavy dark stone giving the place the air of an underground sanctuary…or a massive tomb. Jake had no idea what happened here, only that there were more scientists, and lots of tables heaped with expensive-looking equipment, voices echoing off the walls.
A banded and studded wooden door set along one wall led to a narrow, cramped, lamplit room that looked like it had once been a storage area of some sort, and which now served as Dr. Talbot’s office. One of them, at least. On his first visit here, his eyes bandaged, Jake had been led into a room that felt wide and airy, and smelled of lilies, and whose floor had been slick hardwood that clicked beneath his shoes when he walked. This was definitely not that room.
The nurse gave a cursory knock, then heaved the door open and announced, “Major Treadwell is here for his appointment, sir.”
“Oh, good, send him in,” the doctor replied, voice lifting in that eager way Jake had come to expect as normal.
It set his teeth on edge.
Nurse June motioned Jake in and then closed him in with Dr. Talbot – and the man in a black suit seated off to the side of Dr. Talbot’s desk, lenses of his glasses catching the lamplight, legs crossed at the knee, tidy white hands clasped together in his lap.
Jake pegged him as a suit right away, some alphabet agency type with friends in high places; the sort of man who’d never broken one of his manicured nails, never served his country, nor his city, nor his community in the capacity of a warrior.
“Good evening, Major Treadwell,” Dr. Talbot greeted, sitting forward eagerly and folding his hands together on the desk. “I trust your treatment went well?”
Jake halted in front of the desk and fell into parade rest out of old habit. “Yes, sir.”
“You’re feeling well?”
“Very well, sir.” And he was. Fit, and vital, energy coursing through his veins in a way it hadn’t since Basic.
“Excellent.” The doctor beamed at him a moment, and then reached for the thick manila file folder that waited on the corner of the desk, one out of a stack of others just like it. It landed on the blotter with a slap. “Have a seat, Major Treadwell.”
He didn’t want to – he wanted to get out of this room as fast as possible – but he did so, settling on the edge of a dusty leather wingback that looked as if it had been dragged down from the upstairs part of the house.
“Major,” Talbot said, “I’d like to introduce you to Special Agent West.” He gestured to the suit, and dread began to gather in the pit of Jake’s gut, a stone gaining momentum as it rolled downhill, heavier and heavier.
One side of Agent West’s mouth twitched in what might have been a smile. “Dr. Talbot’s been telling me all about you, Major,” he said. He had the sort of unremarkable, unobtrusive voice that nevertheless raised goosebumps down your arms. Or at least did on Jake’s. “He says the serum trial has worked better than the doctors could even hope. And that you have a spotless record to justify its use.”
“Had,” Jake said. “I was discharged.”
Agent West’s mouth stretched a little wider. “A minor hurdle.”
His pulse kicked up a notch, and he knew it wasn’t the result of the adrenaline rush that usually followed an injection. “Hurdle to what?”
“Perhaps I should explain,” Dr. Talbot said with a little sigh, and a falling-away of his bright and open smile. He looked older, then, small and tired. He adopted a serious expression, more in keeping with his status as a doctor, and somehow it eased some of the mounting dread in Jake’s gut.
“Here at the Institute,” the doctor said, “we’ve been working for decades on medical technology that is only just now enabling us to make incredible breakthroughs in the healing of combat trauma – as you of course know.” Yes, he knew. “For me, personally, I’d like to see this technology integrated into civilian medicine, but the work has attracted many curious eyes – including those at the Pentagon. They have a valid interest. It’s our belief that, with prompt and proper application of our VT-1431 serum, the men and women of the armed forces could not only be saved and healed, but allowed to return to combat.”
Return…
Return to…
Combat.
Oh.
Jake opened his mouth to speak, and made a tiny, undignified gasping sound instead. “Are…are you serious?”
“Quite,” the doctor said, hint of a warm smile returning.
“In the future,” Agent West interjected, “there would be no reason for an officer in your position to be discharged. But seeing as how that’s already happened, there will of course be all sorts of red tape to cut through.”
“There’s no precedent for this sort of thing, you understand,” Dr. Talbot said. “It will take time.”
“In the meantime,” West said. “We think a show of tactical and physical competence could really help your case.”
“Yeah.” Jake’s voice came out a strangled, hope-choked whisper. “I mean, yes, sir, absolutely.”
Dr. Talbot brought out the beaming smile again. “It just so happens,” he said, “that we’ve got a mission in need of a man like you.”