Chapter Seventeen
Briar
Hudson found another keyboard in a nearby lab. It reminded her of the EEG machine he’d heisted from one of his colleagues. It was a good thing the professors were easy going about equipment, because as Briar helped Hudson clean the slime, it became apparent they were going to need to borrow a lot.
The keyboard was already in the trash, but the test tubes, a couple microscopes, and some of the consumables, like gauze, tape, and alcohol pads, had been slimed.
Briar held up a carton of pipets. Ribbons of slime oozed along the outside and slipped to the floor. “I don’t remember it being so slimy. It’s like they went to extra effort to get this stuff everywhere.”
Behind her, Sylvain choked and coughed. She turned, and caught him breathing slowly, eyes closed. In his hands, he held a medical file. It too was covered. As if he sensed her watching, Sylvain opened his eyes, accidentally glancing down at the file in his hands, coughed and gagged. “It smells gross. I can’t do it.” He dropped the file in the sink and backed away.
“I didn’t know vampires could puke,” Briar said. “Huh.”
“You can’t smell it. I—” His shoulders heaved, and he hurried to the lab door and opened it. “I’m going to patrol. Sorry.” He slipped out, shutting the door behind him.
Briar glanced at the three guys left. None of them seemed especially pleased about the cleanup, but no one looked as green as Sylvain had. Poor man.
“I should go with him,” Marcus said and began to peel off his gloves.
“Nice try,” Hudson said. “But you’re the only other person who knows how to clean this equipment.”
“Briar does,” Marcus complained.
“No,” she apologized. “I don’t. It would take Hudson longer to explain to me how to clean it than for you to do it. I’ve got my own job. Quit breathing and start de-sliming.”
Valen chuckled and tossed a handful of paper towels in the garbage. “We’re almost finished anyway. I think, Hudson. You should probably just burn the paperwork. In fact, maybe if we light all those burners over there it’ll get rid of the smell.”
“It’ll also activate the sprinkler system, so that’s a hard pass,” Hudson said. “I’d offer you cotton rolls to put in your nose and alcohol, but those are ruined, too.” Of all of them, besides the now absent Sylvain, Hudson was the only one not cleaning. Instead, he was accessing the files on his computer, identifying which ones had been opened and copied.
One thing was certain, after today, her vampires would not underestimate the intelligence of the crawlers. As Briar scooped a handful of ruined chromatography paper strips into the garbage, she thought about the creatures. What a horrible existence they must have. They lost everything—their lives, their humanity, their identity—and then they were forced by their maker to essentially be a slave.
Briar had learned a little about the soldiers Asher kept, and in her opinion, of two horrible deals, they’d gotten the slightly less worse one. At least in their case, they didn’t know they’d become grotesque. They didn’t see, and understand, that they’d lost everything.
“Did you ever become friends with any of the crawlers?” Briar asked, resting her back against the sink.
Valen shook his head, but Marcus laughed. “Uh. No. Definitely not.”
“Why not?” she asked. If they were capable of higher understanding, and perhaps they had been known to the guys before they’d been changed, what stopped them from interacting with them?
Marcus shrugged and carefully cleaned the equipment in front of him. “No point. They rarely lasted longer than the task they were assigned.” Briar didn’t answer, and Marcus paused his cleaning to glance up at her. “Why?”
“It just seems a sad existence,” she replied quietly. “To have awareness, and see yourself disintegrate. To understand others’ contempt. Poor creatures.”
“Don’t feel sorry for them,” Valen said. “I never knew an innocent who became a crawler. Often, they were the greediest humans Asher could find. He’d promise them immortality in return for some favor, and they’d gladly agree.”
“So he made them crawlers on purpose?” she asked.
“No,” Valen said. He placed the mop in the bucket and squeezed the water from the cotton. “Crawlers are accidental creations, but now that you’ve brought it to my attention, I do find it interesting that the only crawlers I knew were the worst type of humanity.”
“Did you ever try to turn anyone besides Annie?” Briar asked and immediately regretted the question when Valen dropped his gaze to the floor and shook his head.
“None of us did,” Marcus said quietly. “Not while we were with Asher. Only masters made vampires. Or crawlers and soldiers.”
“I wish your equipment was working,” Briar said, flinging off a spot of ooze that was stuck to her sleeve into the sink. “We could look at this more closely. Perhaps we could see the differences between you and the crawlers.”
“You have so many questions,” Hudson mused from his seat at the computer. “It would take an eternity to answer them all.”
The room was silent after his pronouncement. Briar imagined they all were thinking of the request she’d made to be turned immortal like them. Hudson’s words hung heavy in the air, and after a moment, unable to stand the awkwardness, Briar spoke again. “I’ve been thinking about the purpose of my genetic mutation.”
Though it wasn’t audible, there seemed to be a collective sigh of relief with Hudson quickly latching onto her idea.
“What did you come up with?” he asked. “Chance? Heredity? Virus?”
“Nope,” she answered. “Evolution.”
“Really?” He rolled away from the computer and waved a hand in the air to encourage her before crossing his arms. “Go on.”
“Well, I started thinking, what could I possibly gain from staying out of the sun? There has to be a reason, right? And as far as I know, neither one of my parents has a relative with my similar condition. I mean, first cousins, second cousins, third cousins… But what if, somewhere way back in time, there was a reason for me to stay out of the daylight.”
“Like what?” Marcus asked. “Asteroid pushing the Earth closer to the sun?”
“Haha,” she answered. “No. Mimicry.”
“Mimicry.” Hudson smiled. He rubbed his hand across his chin. “Go on.”
“Well, mimicry has lots of purposes. The simplest is that bigger and meaner predators don’t eat you. But it’s a little less obvious. Like—if you’re forced to live among predators. What if your scent confuses them, so as a result they don’t eat you.” Briar raised her eyebrows. “What do you think?”
“Wasmannian mimicry,” Hudson answered. “Interesting idea.”
Marcus finished his cleaning and leaned on the wall near Hudson. “So you think—way back—your ancestors survived by confusing vampires and running away?” He shook his head. “Sorry, Briar. I can’t see it. We’re really fast.”
“I thought of that,” Briar said excitedly. Valen strode toward her and wrapped her in his arms, trading places with her so she leaned her back against his chest. She wrapped her arm around his and sighed happily. This was her dream come true, surrounded by people who loved her while she debated scientific topics. It took her a moment to remember what she was talking about, distracted as she was by the realization of her fantasies. “It’s just a theory, remember. But what if my scent binds you to me. Makes you want to protect me, rather than eat me.”
“It makes me want to do both,” Valen rumbled from behind her. His lips nuzzled her neck as he placed a kiss against her skin. “This is a very good theory.”
The door to the lab opened, and Sylvain strode in. He took a breath and grimaced. “It’s not as bad as it was. Are we done here?”
“Briar was explaining something,” Valen said, smoothing his hands along her arms. “Be quiet and listen.”
“It’s not a theory that can be proven, unfortunately,” Hudson said. He turned back to his computer and shut it down before standing. “Humans are not as clear-cut as say, insects, who use pheromones to make more dangerous insects believe they are of the same species.”
“I know” Briar said. “But I like to think there’s a reason I am the way I am. That there’s a purpose for my condition. I mean, for the first few years of my life, I was able to walk in the sun. Why was that?”
Hudson stood, narrowing his eyes. “You never told me that.”
“No? I thought I had,” Briar said. She tried to remember the many, many emails she’d sent him. “I was sure I’d mentioned my first burn.”
Hudson glanced at his computer longingly, like he wanted to get right back to work. “Dammit,” he muttered. “I want to stay here, open what I had saved on the computer, but there’s too much work to do to just dive right back in.”
“You backed it all up, didn’t you?” Briar asked and then wrinkled her nose. She hadn’t meant to sound patronizing. Uttering a sentence like that after a computer issue was like asking someone who lost their keys where was the last place they saw them. “Sorry, Hudson.”
“It’s fine.” He reached for her, and Valen dropped his arms. Briar went to him, hugging him tight. “I know what you meant. I believe I did. I had a program that backed up automatically. I suppose I could check some of my work from home. I left the laptop there. Besides, the ventilation system in these labs is good, but it hasn’t yet filtered out the smell.”
“So let’s go home,” Briar said. “You can disprove my theories there.”
He kissed her head, and she shivered. If she could spend her whole life wrapped in their arms, she would be the happiest person on earth. The thought struck her again—how did she get so lucky?
“I don’t want to sound like a broken record,” Marcus droned. “But I do have a lab as well. We could go there. To Harvard.”
Briar giggled. “I would love to go to your lab.” She straightened and turned in the circle of Hudson’s arms to face Marcus. His green eyes were light, happy. The shadows were likely to return. His past had a lot of pain and ghosts, and they would turn up when they least expected it. But he didn’t have to hide them anymore. She hoped he knew that.
“I would feel better,” Sylvain said from where he waited, “if we went home. I don’t want to be fucking around in Boston when Asher is out there, planning fuck-all.”
“Sylvain has a point,” Valen agreed. “Cleaning this up put us closer to sunrise. And I didn’t make it home for Briar’s clothing. If we leave now, we’ll get there in plenty of time. Otherwise she’ll be stuck here all day.”
“I’m missing more class,” Briar said. It was a small price to pay for her safety, but it needled her all the same.
“Class or your life,” Sylvain stated. “What do you want to do?”
Briar glared at him, but he only lifted the side of his lips, amused. “Live.”
“Then let’s go,” Sylvain said. “Valen, you stay here with Hudson. Marcus and I will scout ahead before doubling back.” He flashed to Briar and tugged her into his arms. He smelled like cleaning agents and the soap from the restroom. “You won’t even know we’re gone. That’s how fast we’ll be.”
She hugged him back. “I know. Marcus already told me. Vampires are really fast.”
Sylvain chuckled, and she reveled in the sound. Her beast of a man was less and less grumpy. He smiled more and laughed at least once a day. As he moved to leave her, she hugged him tighter. “I love you,” she said against his flannel shirt. The wavy strands of his hair tickled her nose as he bent his head to kiss her.
“Love you, too,” he said and, with a glance at Marcus, left.
It took Hudson seconds to shut the place down, and then they were hurrying through the lower level of the building toward the exit. Valen and Hudson were silent; one in front of her, one walking behind. Hudson kept her hand in his as he rushed her through the hall. Briar kept her eyes open, too, even though she wouldn’t see a problem until it was right on top of her.
What would it be like to keep up with them? To be as fast and as strong? How far could they see? What did the world sound like to them?
Sylvain stood at the exit, and as soon as she was close enough, he swept her into his arms and into the waiting car.
Then they were off.
Briar sighed and leaned back against the leather seat. Sunrise was a little while away. The streetlights were still on, but the sky had lightened from black to navy and the clock on Marcus’s dashboard read five-thirty. The traffic was moving smoothly as they headed toward home, and the rhythmic flash of the street lamps soon had her struggling to keep her eyes open.
“Go to sleep,” Hudson whispered. “I’ll wake you up when we get home.”
Briar nodded, too tired to answer, and in a matter of minutes, she was asleep.