Chapter 7

 

 

“Uh, guys, I really don’t need this many test subjects.”

Becca stood out the front of her hidey-hole cabin. She looked thin and tired; her eyes had dark circles that would have been driving my BAFF insane. There was two things Jayden detested, and that was unkempt eyebrows and uneven skin tone. Poor Becca had probably lost her mind listening to him fuss over her for the past few days.

Sam’s eyes were locked on the ragged ashpire as he untethered the five vampires he had strapped to the roof of his snowmobile. As I jumped out of the buggy I’d shared with Ryder, I stretched my legs and back. We’d been traveling for at least a billion hours. Flights out of Cali, then a private plane, then vampire hunting – which I was annoyingly excluded from – and then finally the huge ass trip to this tiny speck of civilization.

Sam had not been kidding when he said his bugout place was isolated. We’d driven for a long time in our snowmobiles. Would have been quite the sight with five vampires strapped to the roof, but luckily there was nobody out here to see us.

“Better to have too many than too little,” Ryder said to her.

It was nearing midnight and the sauce that Jared and Sam had concocted to make the vamps groggy would be wearing off soon. Turns out AT20 could be home brewed. It involved blood wine, sinus decongestant, and some other weird shit I didn’t recognize. My hand went to my neck where the Sanctum had darted me and I shivered, thinking of that drugged feeling.

After helping the boys load the creepy vamps into the basement of the charming 1920s hunting cabin, I collapsed onto the couch.

“I could sleep for a week,” I moaned to Jayden.

All of the boys were downstairs securing the vamps with bolts and chains. Becca was in her makeshift lab making tiny final corrections to her formula.

Jayden was grinning and giving me this crazy look.

I groaned. “What? I’m too tired for your games.”

Jayden leaned forward, positively bubbling with excitement. “Becca and Sam hooked up one dark snowy night two years ago.”

I sat up quickly, almost cracking him in the face. “Shut up!” I whisper screamed. “You got that out of her?”

Jayden nodded. “Best sex of her life. Only sex really, and then she wakes up and realizes it was all a mistake.”

My mouth dropped open. I was totally in love with Ryder, but damn, I didn’t think sleeping with Sam would be a mistake. Boy had it going on.

“What? She’s loony.”

Jayden nodded, picking at his cuticles. “She realized he was her very best friend in the whole world and didn’t want to ruin that.”

“Ughhh.” Those two were the worst. One of them afraid of ruining the friendship and the other one afraid to have any liabilities to be used against him.

Whatever. Totally not my business. I could stay out of it … maybe. Okay, probably not.

Becca came out of her lab then and I threw myself backward on the couch.

“Hey, what are you guys—”

“Nothing!” I blurted, and Jayden snort laughed. Becca looked confused. Shit, I was such a bad liar.

She let out a few uncomfortable chuckles. “Okay, well, if you’re doing nothing, do you want to help me prepare the samples? I need an assistant or two.”

I jumped up. “Yep. Sure.”

I really wished Jayden hadn’t told me about the hot sex. Now I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Taking a few deep breaths, I made a concerted effort to put it to the back of my mind.

“So…” Becca said as we entered her makeshift lab. “I have three candidates for the cure that I’m ninety percent sure will work, and two that are fifty-fifty.”

I could see a bunch of beakers and empty syringes lying around. “Okay, tell us what we should do.”

She nodded, and over the next hour Jayden and I helped her label the cures one-five and put them into the syringes. Only at the last minute did she add some type of stabilizing compound I didn’t understand.

After we were done she stared at the five syringes and chewed a fingernail. The liquid inside was clear and it amazed me that with one bag of my blood she was able to extract the cure and turn it into this vaccine of sorts.

“Okay,” she said.

“Okay,” Jayden and I echoed.

I realized then how much pressure we had put on her. Here we were making this entire plan for curing the vampires and setting up the network and spreading the word and she hadn’t even figured out the cure yet.

She grabbed the labeled syringes and slipped them into her pocket, and as we turned to leave she picked up a tiny handheld camcorder with tripod and handed it to Jayden.

Crossing through the hallway, we made our way down a dim and narrow set of stairs and into the dark, creepy, freezing basement. The walls were cement and the fluorescent lighting cast eerie shadows on the tied-up vampires before us.

The vampires were chained to various things. Two were on the steel drain pipe, two on the water heater, and the other one chained to a large stabilizing column.

“They’re all yours, Becks,” Sam told her, and my heart pinched at the endearing tone in his voice. She pulled out the syringes and motioned to Jayden to turn on the camera. He set it up and began filming her.

“I’m Dr. Rebecca Leander and this is trial one of the vampire cure,” she told the camera.

Whoa, it didn’t hit me until now how monumental it was that we were curing an entire race.

Becca walked to the first vampire, a scraggly male who was moaning softly. “Subject one will receive cure number one.”

She pulled out the syringe with a one on it and inserted it into the man’s vein at the elbow. His eyes flew open and his mouth widened as he bared his fangs at her. Before anyone could act, Sam was there blindingly fast, ripping Becca out of harm’s way.

The two shared an intense look for a moment, and finally Sam spoke: “How about I inject them?”

Becca gave a slight smile and nodded. Sam proceeded to inject the other vampires with the other cures.

Before we had tied them up, Becca had taken blood from each one of the subjects and written their subject number on their arm in black permanent marker. She was meticulous in documenting everything that was happening, every step of the way.

Now she stared at all of the subjects, lost deep in thought.

“What now?” I asked eagerly.

“Now we wait.”

Jared, Sam, and Markus stayed downstairs while the rest of us went upstairs to wait it out. Becca headed back to her lab to test the subjects’ blood for God knows what, and I was staring at the lines of worry crossing Ryder’s face. Sleep was going to take me soon; I hadn’t had a good night’s sleep since we left on the trip to California, and here, safe in this cabin on this old comfy couch, I felt my eyelids drooping. But I was worried about my boyfriend.

“What is it?” I asked him softly.

He seemed to consider my words before turning to me. “The enforcers that the vampires killed back in the Hive… I recruited every single one of them. I brought them to their deaths.”

By mutual agreement, none of us spoke of those who’d been killed. We couldn’t deal with that and with everything else that was happening. But it was never far from my thoughts. Clearly Ryder’s either.

My heart aching, I grabbed his hand. “Ryder, you can’t do that to yourself. It’s not your fault. Ash don’t have many choices in the Hive. It’s enforcer or some other dead end job, which could also get them killed by a vampire. That’s why we’re doing all this. To give ash a chance at a real life.”

He didn’t seem to buy my words but he did attempt to give me a reassuring smile. One which did not even come close to reaching his hardened eyes. “I need retribution for them. The thought that they were slaughtered like that …”

Shit. He was right, and there was nothing I could say to make this easier. I squeezed his hand and snuggled myself closer, trying to offer him comfort. Eventually, I lost the battle with my eyelids, and surrounded by Ryder’s warmth, I fell asleep. My dreams were filled with blood and loss.

 

I awoke to screams. Heart pounding in my chest, I was up and off the couch in seconds, completely disoriented and looking around to get my bearings. On the floor close by were Markus and Oliver curled in their sleeping bags, dead to the world.

The screams came again and I grabbed my gun, taking the stairs to the basement three at a time. When I turned the corner and the scene came into view, I cringed.

One of the vampires – number two – was thrashing and screaming, surrounded by a pool of bloody looking vomit. The other vampires were watching with calculated looks. Sam and Ryder had guns drawn, and Becca was frazzled trying to put something together with Jayden.

“It’s a reaction. His version of the cure was too potent and his immune system is going haywire, attacking itself.”

“What did you do to me, you bitch?” the vampire screamed, and his eyes were bloodshot; lines of broken capillaries filled the whites and even some of the silver. Sam took two paces forward and the butt of his gun came down on the back of the vampire’s neck. Lights out. One of the other vampires was watching with a look of unease. He was frowning and … was that fear in his eyes? I peered closer and I could see his eyes were less silver. Subject three was written on his arm.

“Becca, he’s healing,” I blurted out and pointed to number three. Becca looked up from her tray and with her laser-like focus started doing her science observation thing. The silver-black irises beneath her fake glasses were practically glowing. She handed Sam a syringe. “Give this to him,” and motioned to the guy he’d just knocked out.

Subject three backed up as Becca walked closer. “What’s going on?” he asked.

Becca smiled. “We’re going to cure you.”

His mouth popped open and I saw the shock register. “I heard rumors but…”

Becca shifted the camera around so that it focused on test subject three. “How do you feel?”

He rolled his neck. “Achy. Hot. Tired. Hungry…”

Becca and I shared a look. Holy shit, he said hungry not thirsty. I looked at Ryder, hoping to share the excitement, but all I saw was an emotionless face, dark circles under his eyes and nobody home. What was happening to him? I knew he was struggling with the death of his enforcers, but this was really taking a toll. Had he slept at all when I passed out on him? In fact, I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen Ryder even go to sleep. I always seemed to crash before him, and he was up before I got up too.

I was distracted for a moment as Becca crouched next to number three. “I’m going to take a blood sample, okay?” Her voice was low and calm. A few of the other vampires were pulling against their chains, fighting whatever was going on in their bodies, but he just nodded.

Jayden stepped up. “I’ll get blood bottles for the assholes and a sandwich and water for the nice one.”

Hilarious. Jayden had impeccable timing. Becca just dismissed his comment with a nod of her head, and he turned to run upstairs.

I slipped in beside Ryder. “You look tired. Get some rest. I’ll take over now.” We had at least three enforcers down here at all times with guns and a Taser. Electricity was a good way to take out a vampire for a short time. We also had some more of that homebrewed AT20. Worst case, we could always break their necks.

Wow, never thought I would say that.

Ryder just shrugged. “I’m fine. I can’t sleep.”

Dammit, I didn’t like that tone. We had been so busy trying to get to the Californian Hive and steal these vampires, I had neglected to see the signs that were wearing Ryder down. His entire enforcer team had been slaughtered and we didn’t even have a funeral for them. Their bodies were probably unceremoniously burned.

Becca was done now and she met subject three’s gaze. “If you’re feeling better by tonight, we can untie you.”

He nodded.

“Untie me too,” one of the vampires said, his voice growly. “I like my blood warm.”

His gaze was making me uncomfortable, and he wasn’t even looking at me.

“That’s not happening,” Jayden said, coming into the room holding the tray of blood bottles and food. “You will drink this cold and bland, just like the rest of us.”

Becca looked at subject one, who had just spoken. “He can’t help it. His oxytocin was practically nonexistent.” That was her way of calling him an asshole. So damn polite. We really needed to do something about that.

Shuffling back so Jayden could get to the vampires, a waft of stale clothes from a zillion hours traveling hit me. Since it looked like they were okay down here for now, I needed to get changed. “I’m going to go shower,” I said to Ryder, and he just nodded.

My heart was clenching in my chest as I walked up the stairs. I couldn’t shake the awful feeling that this thing with Ryder was getting worse. He was pulling away from me and I had no idea how to stop him.

 

By the time full darkness had fallen, everyone was exhausted. Becca had been in her lab all day. Every three hours she was taking samples from subject three and reporting that his oxytocin was rising and the virus was virtually disappearing from his system.

Ryder was basically ignoring me. He went from outside perimeter watch, to a few hours’ nap time, and then back to vampire test subject watch. I couldn’t get a moment alone to pull him aside. Finally, just after dinner, Becca came charging out of the lab, grinning broadly.

“It’s the cure!” she said, waving some papers in the air.

I was playing cards with Markus. We both threw them down and stood.

“Number three?” I asked.

She nodded. “It was one of the ones I put fifty-fifty odds on. I expected that this cure wouldn’t bind properly to the white cell, or not long enough to enact a full body response. But it did! Subject three is permanently cured in less than twenty-four hours.”

Holy shit. I let her news sink in. We had a cure for the Anima Mortem virus.

“Can we mass produce this here?”

She seemed to consider. “I’ll need some of my bigger machinery down at the main lab.”

Ryder’s voice came out of nowhere. “I’ll take her.”

I turned, frowning. “I can come too.”

Ryder waved it off. “I’ll take her and load up the snowmobile and we’ll be right back. Nightfall is the perfect cover.”

Markus shared a look with me but didn’t push it.

“Fine.” I shrugged, pissed off and worried. Mostly worried. Yeah, the snowmobiles were small, and if she was lugging big equipment up here, there wasn’t really room for me too, but I didn’t like this feeling that Ryder was deliberately avoiding me. Felt like we’d jumped back to those early days when he was messed up about his fiancée. Ryder internalized too much, and carried too much guilt. I needed to find time to talk with him properly, but it clearly wasn’t going to be now.

Becca gave Jayden some instructions. He had officially become her lab bitch – his words, not mine. Sam was still downstairs on vamp duty.

Ryder crossed the space and kissed me quickly on the cheek. “I love you, Charlie.”

He dashed off then before I could say anything. I took a step after him, but he was already in the snowmobile with Becca, and then they were gone. I stood outside in the cold as everyone else trudged back inside. Jayden was on his way to release number three.

As snowy winds whipped around me, I crossed my arms over my chest, as if I could halt all of the fear and worry from tearing out of my heart. I couldn’t stop thinking about Ryder’s last words. The way he’d said it … had my heart aching and my stomach tied up in knots. Initially I thought it was just because I hated that we would be so far apart, especially with the mental distance already between us. But as I stood there forever, the cold chilling me to the bone, I realized that the reason for the potent fear filling me was that his I love you had sounded a lot like goodbye.

 

Three hours after Becca left, she returned … alone. The second she walked in with a note in her shaking hand, I knew.

“I couldn’t stop him,” Becca said, and tears lined her eyes. “He loaded the equipment and then drove me to the safety of the thick trees and then he—”

“Noooo!” The word ripped from my throat as I ran for the door. Becca’s hand came out quickly. I paused long enough to see that the note she was holding was in Ryder’s handwriting.

“For you,” she said.

I could barely see through the tears overflowing down my cheeks. I knew that last “I love you” had been different. Fuck. This couldn’t be happening. Why would he just leave us like that? We could have helped him.

Clutching the note, I forced myself to read it.

Charlie,

I’m not the man you fell in love with. The genocide of the enforcers has broken me. I can’t sleep without seeing their blood spilling. We should have known that our anarchy would bring about more consequences than just for us. We never warned them and they paid the ultimate price. I can’t live with my mistake one second longer. Leave no man behind. I failed them and I need to make up for it. Justice will be had.

I love you and I’m going to make it right.

I’ll be back for you.

Ryder

I collapsed into a sobbing mess, and of all the people to close his arms around me it was Sam who held me tight and rocked my body.

“Shhhh, it’s okay. We’ll figure this out,” he whispered in my ear as I clutched onto his shirt.

The pain settled over me, weighing my limbs down so that I could barely stand. That motherfucker. The love of my life just went off on a suicide mission. He was a badass, but one man couldn’t take on the Hive, could he?

Heavy footsteps caused me to pull away from Sam and meet Kyle’s wide eyes as he ran up the stairs.

“What’s wrong? I heard you scream.” Kyle was scanning me for wounds. He wouldn’t see them; my wounds were internal. I couldn’t even find the words, so I just thrust out the note.

The enforcer observed mine and Becca’s drawn features as he took the note. As his eyes hit the paper, his face fell. When he was done he crumpled it up and threw it against the wall. His face was an agonized mesh of emotions, his eyes screaming. I knew Kyle would share my pain. All of these guys were close with Ryder, but Kyle and Ryder had a special bond. A lifetime of friendship.

Breaking away from Sam I stepped into Kyle’s space. Our eyes met and something passed between us; no words were needed. Like the time we’d waited for hours in the hospital room, not knowing if Ryder would live or die, this was another moment for us, and I knew without any words that Kyle and I would get Ryder back.

Sam never missed a thing. “You can’t go running off after him like idiots. We already risked ourselves once. Let’s think this through.”

I turned on Sam and I knew my eyes would be blazing silver. The fury and fear was filling me, washing away the tears and leaving pure bitch in its wake. “Ryder is not thinking clearly. If he was he’d know that storming into the Hive out of anger will only get him killed.”

Sam put his hands out. “I know, and that goes for you too. Let’s take tonight and think up a proper plan. Ryder is long gone, you won’t catch up with him. I’d bet my life that he took the chopper. I showed him how to fly. He knows I have contacts that could get us another one if we needed it.”

I felt sick. Ryder, alone in a chopper, hell bent on taking down the Portland Hive? FML. What was he thinking? Boys were stupid.

“In the morning we’re leaving.” I gestured to Kyle and myself. We all knew the others would have to stay. Becca and Jayden couldn’t handle all those vampires alone.

Sam shook his head and I walked to the door. “I need some fresh air. When I get back, we figure out a plan.”

I brushed past Becca and burst out the front door of our little remote cabin, taking off into the snow-drenched forest. I missed my running, the days when I could jog without a care in the world. Jumping over fallen logs, the anger subsided slightly, and with that there was a sliver of space for the pain to hit again. Crap. Tears started to flow.

As a girl with daddy issues, Ryder leaving me felt like total abandonment. I know he didn’t think of it or mean it like that, but it tore a hole inside of me. It felt like the lives of his men trumped our future together, because even he must have realized the odds of making it out alive were slim. And why? We were so close to curing them all and ending this forever. But no, that wouldn’t have been enough for Ryder. He had to make the Quorum pay. His men deserved this from him, and he would not rest easy until he fulfilled his vengeance. I just wished it didn’t come at such a steep price.

Footsteps behind me caused me to slow my pace and turn. Kyle was barely winded, standing before me with blazing silver eyes. Neither of us were wearing a jacket and neither cared. The pain was keeping me warm for now.

“I’ve known Ryder since before I could walk. You’re his soulmate and he would never hurt you on purpose. He isn’t thinking clearly. He thinks he’s protecting you.”

His words just made me cry harder, because most of me knew he was right. I nodded as the tears fell down my cheeks and onto the forest floor. My wet lashes were starting to freeze on my eyelids.

“We’ll get to him before he does anything stupid,” Kyle promised, but I didn’t see how that could be possible. I wanted to run out right now and be hot on his trail, but Sam was right. If my lead enforcer was hell bent on enacting revenge, than he couldn’t do it alone and we needed a solid plan.

Kyle’s arm came around me and we walked back to the cabin slowly. Every step I took away from Ryder made my gut tighten in anxiety.

 

Back in the cabin I began to load up my backpack for the trip to Portland. The second the twilight of day hit I was out of here. Going through my personal stuff my stomach dropped when I realized one very important thing was missing. I charged into the lab, where Becca was doing her science nerd thing and Sam was hunched over his laptop.

“Sam, please tell me you took the Sanctum phone from my bag?” My heart was pounding in my chest.

The look Sam gave me told me all I needed to know. That little fucker!

“So that’s his plan. Get Sanctum to help him.” I couldn’t believe Ryder had stolen the phone from me!

Sam thought about it for a second, his head tilting to the side. “It’s actually brilliant. We’re days out from the plan going into place. Paperwork arrived this morning from Cellway. Our covers are assured. But Ryder is still worried about their loyalty. He’s going to make them jump through a few hoops before the plan.”

I growled, despite Sam making a lot of sense. I didn’t want to see logic right now. Ryder took that phone and left me, that’s all I saw. Although a part of me felt slightly better. Involving Sanctum meant this wasn’t a complete suicide mission. Ryder really did plan on returning to me alive. Of course, I might kill him when I got my hands on him, so that would be redundant.

Sam’s computer buzzed and he read something for a second and then grinned.

“Ryder is using the secure phone to contact us. This definitely wasn’t as irrational as we thought. He seems to actually have a solid plan.”

Becca stopped what she was doing now and I strode across the room, avoiding the wires and machines. “What does it say?”

Sam smiled. “He says: I bet our little unicorn is fuming mad. It’s safer this way, she’s everything to me, tie her up if you have to but don’t let her come after me. I’m not alone here, the plan is already in place.”

My mouth opened at that last part and I found myself flexing my muscles, readying myself for his attack. Sam’s eyes locked on me, and I could tell he was actually considering it. Ryder was still their leader, and they were used to his orders. I straightened, and started thinking of every self-defense technique Markus had taught me. I was going after Ryder, and none of these assholes were stopping me.

That’s when Becca said, “Samuel! You can’t be serious. What if I had run off on my own and said you shouldn’t follow me?” She put one hand on her hip.

Sam’s face was frozen in hard angry lines, as if the mere thought of Becca disappearing without him had his insides turning to ice.

“I’d kill anyone who got in my way of going after you, Becca. You know that. I’ll always come for you.”

Becca swallowed hard, clearly not prepared for the emotional depth of his answer. The fact that they had had sex once and never again continued to astonish me. The feels were real between them. I could practically see the attraction and emotion spiraling through the air.

Since it seemed Sam was not about to attack me, I left them to their eye-screwing and slowly crept out of the room. I needed to find Kyle. We were leaving, stat; Ryder was stubborn as hell but so was I. There was another ding from Sam’s computer just as I was crossing the threshold.

Pausing, I turned around. “Tell him unicorn and BFF are inbound and I’ll be the one tying him up later. And not in the fun way.”

Sam smiled, and with a shake of his head turned back to his computer to read the note. His face fell. “Oh shit. Tessa.”

Those three words were enough to bring my whole world crashing down.