Chosen by Blood (5 page)

Knox almost smiled. Whether the human ever rectified his past mistakes or not, Knox wasn’t going to make it any easier for him. “ As well as any female who knows her clan is dying and that her government still possesses the means to finish the job.”

“The vaccine doesn’t kill vamps,” Mahone snapped.

“No. It just contaminates what we need to stay alive.”

“Your kind don’t die—”

“Don’t even try,” Knox warned. Given the state of his clan, half of them might as well be dead. Since the distribution of that damn vaccine, the vamp clan had been able to find a few immaculates, human donors with clean blood, but they were extremely rare. The rest of the time, his clan drank the blood of animals. That was more acceptable for the clan’s limited number of dharmires, whose need for pure blood was diminished, but even they still felt its loss. Knox was nowhere near his optimum strength; he hadn’t been for a long time. As for the full vampires in his clan? At best, they were listless. At worst, delirious, bordering on insane.

Not even Mahone knew how bad things had gotten.

“So why am I here?”

Mahone leaned back in his chair and studied Knox intently. “You’re here because you want something I might be able to give you.”

Knox cocked a brow and smirked at the human his mother had once called “friend.” “And what’s that?”

“A chance to save your clan.”

 

 

Felicia took several steps closer to the human and the dharmire. The male finally spotted her and snapped, “What you looking at?”

Felicia pretended to flinch and drop her keys, making him laugh. Stooping down, she watched as the man once more pressed up against the girl and whispered something that made the dharmire giggle. The giggle, however, had an edge of hysteria to it. When the man groped her breast, Felicia couldn’t take it any longer. Straightening, she addressed only the female. “Excuse me, miss, but you need to come with me.”

“Back off, bitch.”

Almost wearily, Felicia smiled tightly. “That’s ‘Special Agent Bitch’ to you, sir. This female’s underage and obviously under the influence, which means—”

“She’s twenty-five,” the man jeered.

Yeah, and Hugh Hefner keeps inviting me to the Playboy Mansion, Felicia thought. “Perhaps you didn’t hear me when I said I was a special agent. As in, I’m with the FBI.”

The man laughed with obvious disdain. “I heard you.” He tauntingly tongued the dharmire’s ear, flicking it obscenely even as Felicia’s eyes narrowed. The dharmire looked completely out of it. “Did you hear me when I told you to back off? Bitch.”

A warning buzzed in Felicia’s ear. Even with today’s turbulent climate, there weren’t many citizens who’d so casually disparage a federal officer. Instinctively, she reached inside her jacket for her weapon. Before she could close her fingers around the butt of the gun, however, someone grabbed her from behind, clamping her arms to her side and cutting off her air.

“Hey, Toby,” the man restraining her said, “thanks for keeping her busy while I—”

Felicia slammed the back of her head into her assailant’s face and then, spreading her fingers wide, dug them into the vulnerable skin near his groin. With a surprised shriek, the man’s arms loosened slightly, enabling Felicia to twist around. With a vicious chop to his neck, she took him down. Smoothly, she spun, pulled her weapon, then pointed it at “Toby,” who had just taken a step toward her.

“Uh-uh,” Felicia said softly.

He froze.

Crouching, never taking her eyes off Toby, she pat-searched the man on the ground. He was still out cold and would be for a while. Holding up his ID, she memorized his name before returning his wallet to his pocket. Then she rose and smiled tightly. “So, Toby, who is she and where did you find her?” she asked, jerking her head at the dharmire, who was now swaying and blinking owlishly at them.

“She’s my girlfriend . . .” he began even as he reached inside his jacket.

Felicia shot a round into Toby’s shoulder. He fell back against the wall with a muffled shout. His legs buckled and he slid to the ground. Staring first at the spreading blood on his shoulder, then at Felicia, he exclaimed, “You fucking shot me!”

“You reached inside your jacket,” she calmly responded.

“Not for a weapon, you crazy bitch!”

“What then? A Hallmark card?”

He didn’t answer.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought.” Stepping closer, she reached inside his jacket, pulled out a cheap .22 caliber pistol, and tucked it inside her rear waistband, shifting so that Aaron Turner, the man on the ground, could never reach it should he wake. Her eyes flickered disdainfully to Toby’s groin and, she was certain, the other diminutive accessory he was packing. “Why am I not surprised? Now, I’ll ask you one more time and then I’m going to aim lower. Who is she?”

“I don’t know . . .” He screeched when Felicia lowered her sights on his crotch. “No wait! Her name’s Mara. I picked her up at the Greyhound Station around the corner. I invited her for a drink.”

“Uh-huh. And what’d you pump her up with first?”

“Just—just some ecstasy.”

Shit. Drugs didn’t affect vamps as badly as they did mages, but a vamp who took one dose of ecstasy would likely be twice as affected as a human. Twice as helpless. “Did you rape her?”

“What? Of course not.” The man whimpered when Felicia took a step closer. “I didn’t, I swear.”

Gently taking the dharmire by the arm while keeping the gun steady, Felicia guided her to her side. “I hope you’re not lying. If you are, you’ll have to deal with something far scarier than me. This girl is part of the Devereaux clan.”

The man paled even more and sweat covered his face in a glossy film. “D—Devereaux?” he whispered. “You mean she belongs to that—to that vamp who fought in the War? The one who—who . . .” He swallowed hard, obviously too scared to continue.

“So you have heard of him. Good. Then I don’t have to say anything more, now do I?”

Stepping carefully around Turner, Felicia tugged the girl toward her car. She’d just opened the passenger door when Toby’s whine reached her.

“I didn’t know she was his.”

Felicia paused. She looked down at the young girl beside her and smiled ruefully. “Then that was your first mistake. Because they’re all his.”

Felicia tucked the dharmire into her Honda Civic and clicked the seat belt into place. The girl closed her eyes, but a few tears escaped anyway. “You know Knox?” she whispered.

“Yeah. I know him.” Felicia got behind the wheel and watched Toby stumble into the bar. Swiftly, she used her cell phone to call the local FBI office and gave the field agent on duty her location, as well as the names and descriptions of Toby and his friend. The Black Hole’s perimeter was video monitored per federal regulations, so she also instructed the field agent to seize the digital files. When she hung up, Mara opened her eyes and sighed.

“Good,” she murmured. “I was afraid he was going to get away.”

“On my watch?” Felicia said lightly. “Nah.” The girl was obviously more cognizant than she’d let on. She’d likely been playing possum, waiting for a chance to escape. Smart.

“He’s going to be pissed at me.”

Instinctively, Felicia knew the girl referred to Knox, not Toby or Aaron. “Probably,” Felicia agreed. Felicia started the car and pulled out of the parking lot. She stopped for a red light about five blocks away. While she was waiting for it to turn green, the dharmire—Mara—sniffed.

“I just wanted to see what he sees. Goddess, it’s not fair that he gets to travel and we don’t. We fought for freedom but we’re still prisoners.”

“You didn’t take a bus here, did you?”

She shook her head. “I teleported. I’d been to the Greyhound Station before, a couple of years ago with my parents. I’ve always wanted to come back, but Knox talked me out of it. Now that I can teleport on my own . . .” Mara shrugged.

Felicia smoothed a hand over the girl’s silky hair. Moonlight and morning dew, she thought, just like Noella’s. “He’s trying to protect you. From people like that man.”

“I know. I hate that he’s always right.”

The girl’s head lolled as she seemed to fall asleep. Felicia continued to stroke her hair. She swallowed tightly as she thought of Knox; as always, desire and affection were what she felt first, followed swiftly by guilt. She’d never be able to have one without the other.

“Not always,” Felicia whispered. “But enough to be damn annoying.”

When the light turned green, she drove through the intersection, then pulled over to text her boss. Kyle was likely with Knox at this very moment. After they talked, Knox would want to see Dr. Barker’s lab notes himself. Then he’d teleport back to the Dome. Who knew? Maybe Mara would be home before Knox found out she was missing.

Felicia gave Mahone a rundown on what had happened, including the fact she’d fired her weapon. Even with the videotapes, the paperwork would be a pain and she imagined going back, making good on her threat to shoot Mara’s “friend” in the balls. But her priority was getting Mara safely home. Whether she chose to tell Knox all the details was her decision. Felicia certainly wasn’t going to narc her out.

Not when she was so committed to avoiding Knox herself.

Several hours had passed since Mahone had rocked Knox’s world. In that time, Knox had read all the files Mahone had given him. Now, he stared at the man he grudgingly respected but certainly didn’t trust.

Regardless of whether Mahone was telling the truth, Knox had no choice but to agree to his offer. He’d do anything to save his dying clan, and that included leading a team of half-Otherborn. The team’s first mission?

Recover the antidote for the synthetic virus that rendered human blood incapable of nourishing vamps. The very virus the FBI had created and distributed just before the beginning of the War.

Talk about ironic.

The real kicker was that the existence of the antidote was presumed, but not confirmed. With more questions than answers, Mahone’s so-called Team Red would have its work cut out for them.

Even so, for the first time in a long time, Knox felt hope.

It was a hope he tried to temper, as well as disguise with genuine skepticism. “What guarantee do I have that this antidote really exists?”

“None. You already knew our scientists, like yours, were searching for an antidote. Now you know exactly what I do. The project leader, Dr. Neil Barker, was murdered two weeks ago. A week before his death, Dr. Barker thought they were close. He’d developed a formula that appeared to reverse the effects of the vamp vaccine after it was injected into lab rats and cadavers, or mixed with human blood samples. Before he could be sure, he wanted to move to the next step—testing the formula on a live human being.”

“Why?”

“In part to determine its viability—they’d come close before, only to have the antidotal effects fade within a few days—and in part to track whether it had any dangerous side effects, both for humans and for the vamps who would be feeding from them.”

“Did you give him permission?”

“I wanted more data on the residual effects exhibited by his existing test subjects. Dr. Barker didn’t say so, but I sensed he was holding back. Whether it was impatience or something else, I felt he was making the switch to human testing too quickly. After he was murdered, his autopsy revealed his blood was clean of the vamp vaccine. The other five scientists on his team are clean as well. The most logical presumption is that they were all injected. Obviously the antidote worked and none of them seem to be the worse for wear because of it. Now none of them are talking. We have no proof of any wrongdoing on their part, so why would they? They all stand to be millionaires once they sell the formula to the highest bidder.”

“If your scientists gave up that vaccine, something more important than money is at stake. If it were just that, given the methods I’m sure you’re using to make them talk, one of them would have caved by now.”

Mahone met his gaze steadily, revealing neither agreement nor guilt.

Knox pushed his fingers through his hair and began to pace, then froze. Anyone who knew him well knew he paced when he was troubled. Sometimes it was easy to slip into old patterns and let his guard down around Mahone, especially when it seemed Mahone was doing him a great favor by telling him about the antidote. He had to remember that Mahone’s loyalty was and always would be to the U.S. of A., and that what looked like a favor was always going to come with strings. “Since you’re obviously not thinking clearly, how about I run through the possibilities?”

Mahone flushed when Knox’s less-than-subtle jab hit home. “Fine.”

“Even if Barker decided to test the antidote on humans before he could be sure of the side effects, why would he risk all the scientists? Have you considered that the vaccine reversed itself? Maybe because of something the scientists were exposed to as a group?”