Disappointed and seething, Elijah held his tongue and gave her a nod, watching them drag April out of the market and down the corridor to the city’s prison cells. It was an isolated area, quarantined for the people’s safety. He might be able to sneak in there later, but it would not be without difficulty. He gritted his teeth as Katrina waved to him nonchalantly and left with the guards. He had missed his chance to talk with the girl.
But he had made a decision: he was going to enjoy killing Katrina, if it was the last thing he ever did.
Chapter Fifteen
Cheshire Smile
April
PULLED UNCEREMONIOUSLY ALONG, I let the guards hold my weight, not helping them one bit. They cursed at me, tugging and digging their nails into my flesh as I dropped my body slack, giving them the brunt of my dead weight to contend with. Struggling was useless and would just wear me out further. I wondered where they were taking me. Wherever it was, I was not going to go into any prison cell lightly. Especially not with some other guest they had mentioned.
Waiting for the most opportune time to escape was my only option. It wasn’t going to be easy. The woman who accompanied the guards had her hawk eyes on me. Her very essence reeked of something unnatural, which made me shudder under my clothes. Whatever she was, she wasn’t human either, but I doubted she was a hybrid human or vampire. I wondered how many were affected by the viral outbreak down here in their, supposedly, safe abode. If the virus had made it down here, was everyone immune? And what the heck was Elijah doing down here? He seemed pretty comfortable with the surroundings and I wondered what exactly he was hiding. I had more questions than I’d had before arriving. I had to get out of there before we arrived at the prison where it would be impossible to escape. I had to get out now or never.
I shifted my feet, picking up the pace to be even with the guards. Immediately using their surprise at me finally helping with my own weight, I stomped on one of the guard’s foot, pulling the other one on the side of me into him, where they collided into each other. I didn’t count on the guard behind me to slice my back with his Rambo knife as I stumbled over the two trying to run forward. The pain in my back was agonizing and I stifled a scream as I fell, sprawling across the floor. As I pushed myself off the ground, I felt a sharp prick on my thigh. I kicked at the woman who held the now empty syringe in her hand, making her drop it before getting my footing and running ahead of the collapsed guards.
I had run around the corner and farther down the hall when my vision began to blur and my legs turned to jelly. Drips of blood spotted the ground behind me, and I felt myself melting to the ground before I finally let my body fall. I struggled to turn around and stare up at the fading ceiling, unable to move but hearing everything around me, including the chaos of the guards stumbling to catch up. The perfectly crisp, white tiles lining the floor were smeared with crimson fluid. It stood out stark against the pale, pristine color. My voice gurgled in my mouth as my jaw slackened.
The woman came to hover over me, giving me a most sinister grin as she mouthed to the guards to take me to infirmary first, then to the cell. She wanted me alive when I met my new cell mate.
I don’t like the sound of that, I thought. Then my vision darkened and the world was silent.
~~~~~
SOMEONE WAS DRAGGING me once more, grunting and cursing at having to lug my dead weight along. My eyes were heavy and felt like lead had been melted into them. No matter how much I tried, I couldn’t open them. The same for my entire body; it hung languidly with my legs occasionally bumping into my captor’s bulky thighs. I was slung over their shoulder, jerking with every step they took. A stinging ache ran along my back where I assumed they had stitched me up. The slight itch emanating from my healing skin assured me that I was healing well, but I had lost a significant amount of blood, making me feel weak and dizzy.
From the rough, bulging muscles under my stomach, I could tell my holder was a male, strong and burly. I wondered if it was Elijah. He seemed to know more about what I was than I did, which concerned me. If he knew about hybrid humans, could there be more out there that he had already run into? No wonder he had not taken any chances when it came to subduing me. He was also pretty strong—too strong actually. For a human male, his strength was abnormal, a lot like mine. Maybe he wasn’t quite human either. I’d have to see if that was true, but at the moment I didn’t see how I was going to accomplish that.
Being taken prisoner hadn’t exactly been in my plans.
I heard other footsteps behind us, lighter and shorter, making me think of a woman’s movements. Maybe it was that witch of a woman who’d had me stitched up to throw me into some cage with the other thing she had mentioned. What the point of that was evaded me. I wasn’t looking forward to meeting “it.” I had to get my body working soon if that’s where we were heading. I didn’t want to be eaten alive.
I tried turning my head slightly, but my neck barely cooperated. My hair was loose and thankfully hung over my face like a curtain. I managed to finally open my eyelids and peek around through a parted sliver in the strands. I saw high heels, dark maroon, confirming my suspicion that I was being escorted by the woman. The man holding me wore a dark brown shirt and black cargo pants. He didn’t seem to have the right build to be Elijah. That was too bad, I would have liked to do some damage to him.
Testing out my fingers, I slowly curled them into my palms, making sure it wasn’t obvious enough for Miss Dictator to notice. If I could gain control of my body before getting thrown into the cell, maybe I’d have a chance against whatever was lurking in there. The sedative was strong, and its lingering effects made me question what sort of heaping dose they had given me. I hoped I would get a separate cell from the “thing” and discover they had been joking all along.
Come on body, wake up!
“No, not that one! Put her in the cell with him,” the woman’s voice hissed. She sounded upset, but I was pretty sure it wasn’t because of me. “I brought you a little snack.”
This definitely was not going to be pleasant.
I wiggled my toes in my boots, happily finding them functioning well. Maybe I’d be recovered enough to survive whatever abomination sat in there waiting to devour me.
“Come near the bars and I electrocute you.” The hard edge to her voice made my hair stand on end. There was an authority to her that I couldn’t pinpoint exactly, but it made her dominant over the guard. I quickly concluded that yes, she must be some sort of supernatural, too. What she was, I’d yet to find out.
I was unceremoniously dumped onto a thin, stained mattress lining one side of the cell, but my captor miscalculated and I slipped off the edge, landing hard on the abrasive, concrete floor with a thud. No one seemed concerned about it since next came the slam of bars as they shut the door and the locks clicked. My wardens shuffled away without another word as I pushed myself up with my shaky arms to sit and glance around at my new home, searching frantically for whatever shared its space with me now. Seeing nothing, I studied the bars and cell. A prison cell. Oh, yaay. Complete with a sink and a commode with no privacy. Great.
I scampered up and leaned against the frigid bars. The hallway ran to the left of the room. More cells stared back at me from across the way and one cell stood darkened next to me on the left. There were only four cells, mine being the biggest and the darkest. Not really a prison so to speak, but more of a sort of holding cell. I wondered why I was here, what good it would do to hold me prisoner. Why they would put away another human was beyond me. Especially as food for some demented creature.
“Elijah! Let me out of here!”
“Cozy isn’t it?”
The bars twanged as I launched myself back, ready to pummel the person behind me, but instead I just exacerbated the pain in my back. It surged through my skin, making me suck in my breath to keep from passing out. I flicked my eyes about to spot my cellmate, but he wasn’t there. I saw nothing but shadows in the dim light of the holding cell. Squinting into the
darkness, I watched as a figure emerged from it, stepping forward with eyes twinkling. One was a bright opulent green and the other the calm dark brown of dampened earth. Long, red-mahogany strands framed his face, reminding me of how it had whipped about in the howling wind, high above the city at the edge of the Stratosphere Tower.
I gasped, sucking air into my seized up lungs. My eyes widened in horror as the man of my nightmares sat solemnly watching me. There was no way he could be alive. No way in hell. I must’ve been hallucinating and I wondered if the medication they had used to knock me out was giving me delusions now. Or maybe my injury was way more severe than I had initially thought.
The man who stood before me was a ghost, a fragment of all things that had haunted the nights in my dreams. I was horrified and frozen in place as he casually leaned against the bars, flashing me a smile full of fangs. Amusement twinkled in his dual colored eyes, gleaming like marbles back at me. The golden halos around his irises reflected the dim lights of the cell back toward me, a hunter trapped in bars with the prey handed to him.
“Hello love, miss me?” he snickered, letting his hands dangle out of the bars as his head rested against them.
Christian.
He didn’t look like the extremely sick and dying man I had last seen. He looked pretty sturdy, maybe bit pale and thin, but not too bad if you asked me. As a matter a fact, my shock slowly bled away as my anger toward him resurfaced, claiming back control of my body and making my heart jumpstart into a tumbling rage.
“You!” Poison for words spilled from my lips and I clumsily shifted my weight on my legs. They were working again, but I was still not as surefooted as I would’ve liked to be. Narrowing my eyes as they adjusted to the muted lights, I wanted to run over and clock him one across the face, and make him feel all the pain he had caused my mother. Make him feel the pain he had caused me, make him hurt for all of the life he had drained from her very soul.
He backed away a few steps as I approached, readying to pull his arms out of his sockets. He didn’t look afraid but was merely curiously looking back at me. This enraged me even more as I curled my fingers into my palms, digging in my nails as I dared him with my eyes to come closer. I would show him a thing or two about vengeance if I could just manage to grab him without falling over.
Christian seemed to know what I was up to and did not stand within range. He produced a slight grin and kept it pasted across his face as a low, haughty laugh rumbled from his throat. I waited, squeezing my fists so tight I could feel the skin almost breaking from the bite of my nails.
“Now, now, April. Don’t go and hurt yourself. I’d prefer not to smell the tantalizing scent of your tasty blood, if you don’t mind.” He sighed as his smile faded. He stepped back towards the rear stone wall of his cell and slid down, letting one of his legs extend in front of him and the other bend to let his arm rest upon it. He ran one hand through the dark red and brown strands that lay in long, thick locks covering his shoulders and back. He sighed, looking somewhat tired and pensive, as if he’d forgotten I was there. “Do yourself a favor and relax. You won’t be going anywhere tonight.”
Christian’s eyes closed as though exhaustion had suddenly hit him. I was left unsatisfied and standing ready for a fight. My jaw ached from the tension I had let take me over, and I let my hands fall to my sides, unsatisfied. Watching him for any clue as to what was going on, I suddenly remembered that he was also a prisoner here. How had he ended up here when I had been so sure he had not survived our attack on his hive? How was it that he was very much alive?
“Aren’t you supposed to be dead?” I stated more than asked, not wanting to settle down and sit quite yet. I wanted answers first, and I couldn’t rest, or let him rest for that matter, until I had some. “How did you get here?”
“Doesn’t matter how I got here. It only matters how the hell I’m getting out of this place.” His multicolored eyes glowed in the darkness like cat eyes, making me look away. His grim face was unsettling.
“I thought you died. How did you make it out alive?” I tilted my gaze back toward him as I continued, “I thought I killed you.”
He chuckled, rubbing his neck as he groaned. His eyes wandered back to me, serious and cold. “You damn near did.”
He didn’t move from his spot or let up his stare, making me feel somewhat exposed. Scanning the room, I realized he was right. He could’ve killed me if he’d wanted to. I wasn’t going anywhere. I sat on the hard makeshift cot that was to be my bed for the night. I was trapped.
“But how…?”
“How what? How did I survive your disembowelment of me?” Christian sneered, knowing he had me. I needed to ask him so much now that destiny had landed us together again. I needed to ask him about what had been done to my mother. But I desired revenge. I wanted it for her, at least. The only thing he could do before I ended him for good was own up to what he had done. “One of my friends found me. Gave me some blood and an injection that remedied the sickness. He’d been sent to deliver it to me and arrived just after your group had left me for dead. If he had not come when he did, I wouldn’t be talking to you now.”
“Well, aren’t you the lucky one.” I muttered.
His lips pressed into a frown, staring at the metal bars around us. He slowly got up and stepped toward his own cot. The light above it had been busted, leaving his side of the cell in darkness. Lying down, he left his back exposed to me as his voice came out firm but sincere. “I know I don’t deserve your sympathy or even your empathy in any way. But you don’t know anything about me, April. I wouldn’t judge anyone so quickly. Especially….” Christian swiftly shifted in the cot, turning to face me once more. “Especially since you left me pretty messed up, I was already delusional with sickness.” He lifted up his shirt to show me the pale scar that ran along his stomach. It was pearly white, well healed but still a scar.
The translucent flesh entranced me, its unnatural appearance had me shivering. He was so pale, like he could use a few pints. “April, I know you have a million questions to ask me.”
He’d caught me off guard with such simple words. I was disarmed in a jolt and I hated him for it. I bit at my lip, turning away to sit on my own disgustingly dingy cot. Closing my eyes, I wondered if I even wanted to know what he could tell me. What if he didn’t know the answers, and there was no redemption for my mother? She was lost and broken. Nothing he had to say would make a difference, would it? The damage was still irrevocable, and there was no comfort in that.
And yet, a small part of me still wanted to know if he could fix her and still wanted to make him pay, make him feel the pain and wreckage he had left for me to clean up. To make him squirm under my grip for what he had done to her would be nothing less than satisfying.
“What did you do to my mother to make her lose her grip on reality? Why did you do that to her?” A quiver ran through my voice as I choked back a sob. Tears stung my eyes and I quickly closed them, trying my best to shunt the pain away. I had to have answers. Funny how things had turned out. He’d been dropped right in front of me once more, the source of my questions himself, of all people. Only he could tell me how to cure my mother.
“I didn’t do anything to her.”
“Liar!” I glared at him, sending knives at his back with my eyes. “I don’t believe you.”
Christian shifted again, coming to face me. Leaning on one arm, he let his eyes linger on mine until I wanted to squirm from the intensity. They were peaceful and sorrowful. Something told me he wasn’t lying at all, so I relented to his stare and waited for his answer, feeling my anger dissipate into a prickling disappointment.
“I’m sorry it’s not what you want to hear, April. But I didn’t. She was in the care of my laboratory overseer, Rick Fortunato. Unfortunately, I was unaware of any methods he used on his ‘experiments,’ as he referred to his subjects, until right before Blaze’s hive attacked mine.”
Christian’s face fell into a melancholy that made him look just a bi
t older than his years. His answer left me at a loss for words and all I could think about how much I wanted to know how old he was. He couldn’t have been more than twenty when the virus had hit. Now he was stuck at that age forever, or so was the common belief that one became immortal when the change turned a person into a hybrid vampire. No one really knew yet if it was true or not. Not enough time had passed to see if hybrid vampires were truly immortal, frozen in time, or just aging really gracefully.
“I didn’t know, I swear,” he continued on. “I never knew he would try to change her into one of us. He told me the effects of a vampire transformation didn’t take, but that was after he’d saved me. He said he’d had to mutate the virus to force any change on her, since she was human, but highly immune. That might’ve turned her mad, I don’t really know. He never got a chance to verify the results before you guys burst in and took her.” His frown made it apparent that he had not approved of the things this Rick Fortunato had done in his lab. “Is she alright? What happened after you were reunited?”
“What happened? She lost her damn mind, that’s what happened! Before I got caught in this god forsaken underground tomb, she was locking herself in our supply room cage because she was afraid she was turning into a feral vampire.” I sat up and put my head in my hands, seething at my thoughts. “She’s afraid of hurting me and Jeremy. Now I can’t even help her or protect him because I’m here, stuck with you, of all people.” My head dropped back, bumping on the hard, unforgiving metal. Tears burned at my eyes, making me groan, frustrated at everything.
“I’m sorry.” His face saddened, remorse swimming across it.
I groaned loudly, hitting my fists against the warped mattress, wishing so much that I could change things. “This is nuts!” I ran my fingers through the tangles in my hair, pulling and taking some strands with them. “But you, you look fine! She’s not anywhere near fine. I can’t fucking believe you’re still alive.” Shaking my head, I managed to open my eyes and wipe the spilling tears as fast as they came. “No offense, but you’re an ass.”