A Shade of Vampire 30: A Game of Risk (16 page)

“There’s not a single other person or organization on the planet right now who shares the vision we have. Nobody else is working for the grander scheme of things. They simply live day by day, as though wearing blinders, without a thought for long-term planning or the history of the human race.

“The reason it has been crucial for us to suppress the antidote in order to keep ourselves in control is because the moment the governments sense they no longer desperately need us, everything comes crashing down. The governments themselves are filled with stupid, incompetent people after nothing but power and assets. If they did not absolutely need us, they would not care for the IBSI. The leaders would all go off on their separate agendas, too blinded by their own selfish motives to think clearly or even consider for a moment how the human race will survive in the future… This world is full of monkeys, Lawrence. Monkeys in high places. The
only
way to deal with such a scenario is by force. By giving them no
choice
but to comply. That is why the IBSI must dominate and rule with an iron fist. That is why we can have no cracks! No loopholes for them to spot and use to try to thrust us out.” He paused to draw in a breath. The passion he had exerted in delivering his speech had flushed his cheeks. I could practically feel his intensity emanating through the screen, making the atmosphere of my small room buzz.

When he continued it was in a quieter, though no less impassioned tone. “It pains me to see that you too have fallen into the trap of short-term vision. Looking around you and seeing only what is there today, rather than what will be there tomorrow. You too have, albeit unwittingly, been blinded by selfishness—by your personal connections. The friends you made on that island, the young woman you seem to have taken a fancy to… even your mother.” He closed his eyes, rubbing his face with his hands. “Her death was a tragic waste of a good life… I loved her, Lawrence, despite what you might think. I loved your mother deeply. But even I could realize that love equated to selfishness. If I was truly a man capable of love and compassion to others, then I would show it to as many people as I could. Your mother died thinking that she was doing what was right by exposing the antidote, not knowing she was actually attempting irreversible harm… And then when you eavesdropped on my conversation that night of your graduation, and you overheard me talking about your mother, you freaked out—as was to be expected. You confronted me and although I tried to explain, you would not listen… It was like déjà vu. I had no choice but to sedate you and impair your memory. And then I had to think what on earth I was going to do with you… You are my son, Lawrence. I had already been through the trauma of losing a wife. I did not want to lose you, too.

“So I decided to give you a second chance. You were, after all, still so young. I hoped that if I could wipe your memory of that night, we could start afresh. So it was I who essentially volunteered you for the new drug trial we were preparing to run. I did not want you around Chicago. We took you to The Woodlands, where we had an underground lab. Where you would be isolated and—we thought—safe. Then, as usual, The Shadow League came along and wrecked everything. I had to personally go to The Shade and grovel in order for them to return you to me.”

He paused, his eyes boring into me. “And now, Lawrence… I’m not sure where we can go from here. I’m not sure that I can ever trust you again. If the memory wipe did not fix things between us, then nothing will.”

I glared back at him, although I couldn’t honestly say that it was with the same intensity as before. His explanation for his actions, spoken with such conviction and self-assurance, had shaken me. It had me wondering whether he really was telling the truth—whether, all along, he had truly believed he was working for the long-term benefit of humanity.

It would explain a lot of things—like how he could bring himself to murder his wife, and why he had deliberately distanced himself from his own son. It was a personal sacrifice. He had to essentially make himself like a robot in order to step up to his self-appointed duty. In order to act logically, impassively, unswerved by emotion. In order to stick rigidly to the path he believed would lead to humanity’s liberation.

My lips parted, but I did not know what to say. I felt hollow inside.

What if my father is right?

What if sacrifices have to be made in order to bring long-term benefit to Earth? What if the people of The Shade truly are only short-term thinkers?

It felt like sand was sifting beneath my feet, the room around me spinning.

As much as every instinct told me that my father had it all wrong, there was something about his assurance that shook me to the core.

I had to stop being swayed by my own emotions in this moment and think clearly. Examine my father’s words objectively. He believed that the only way forward was to develop the human race into something else. Something more powerful—practically hybrid supernaturals. He was imagining a day long into the future where the human race would be but a shadow of its former self. But this mass-scale interference with nature simply didn’t seem right. Every instinct inside me told me that this could not possibly be the solution. It simply felt too… contrived. Too artificial.

There had to be other ways to safeguard Earth’s future than this. Even if the IBSI did develop the drug to such an extent that the transformation could run as smoothly as simply popping a pill in one’s mouth.

I swallowed, finding my voice again. “I have heard you,” I said, trying to speak diplomatically, even though I was still tearing up inside imagining the night he’d assassinated my mother. “I have listened to you carefully and tried to understand everything you have said. The motives behind your actions… But I’m still led to the conclusion that you’re wrong. That you couldn’t be
more
wrong.”

My father’s brows lowered, his expression darkening in disappointment.

“I don’t believe that the world has been waiting for you and your organization to come along to develop this drug, that without you and it, there is no future worth dreaming of for the human race… Have you even listened to The Shadow League regarding their long-term plans? Do you even know what they are striving for, what kind of future they are envisioning?”

My father stayed stoic, his lips pursing.

In truth, I didn’t know much about what The Shade’s leaders were planning either. I had not spent enough time with them. But I knew them to be an intelligent, thoughtful and sincere group of people who worked tirelessly to do what was right even when it would be so much easier to turn a blind eye. They were safe in their haven of an island already, weren’t they? They took up the thankless task of defending the weak because they saw it as their duty.

And I didn’t believe that they were only thinking in the short term, like my father assured me they were. If he had never asked for their plans, what authority did he have to make such a statement?

“Have you even met with The Shadow League for a discussion? Have you even given them the time of day to figure out a way you could join forces and work together, rather than constantly against each other? If you are truly in this for the betterment of mankind, why on earth wouldn’t you?”

My father blew out. “I was afraid that you would venture down this train of thought… Unfortunately, there are irreconcilable differences. And yes, I do know what their so-called ‘long-term strategy’ is. We would have to be rather dense to not have guessed it by now, given the destruction they have caused to our bases in the supernatural dimension. They believe they will be able to recruit the very supernaturals who are causing us problems and turn them into the humans’ loyal protectors overnight. They are a lunatic bunch, with their heads up in the clouds. There is no pragmatism to their approach. They want to place their faith in these creatures who have already proved a million times over again that they cannot be trusted. They live in a utopia. The only thing they’ll end up doing is making the situation worse by recruiting yet more supernaturals to swarm down and—”

“But have you actually
talked
to them about this?” I couldn’t help but press. “Have you
spoken
to them? They’re not stupid or impractical, as you make them out to be. I know—”

My father stood abruptly from his chair and disappeared from the view of the camera. When he reappeared, he was much closer, so close that I could make out every line in his face. He was leaning on the edge of his desk. He stared directly into the lens, even as his right arm reached around the back of it.

I tried to lean forward again in my own seat while meeting his gaze steadily. “Listen to me,” I said. I wasn’t sure what he was about to do, but I had a sick feeling in my stomach. “I could arrange a meeting. You could sit down to talk amicably. Like gentlemen. There’s no reason for such division and animosity. They are forgiving people and I could go there myself to—”

My father held up a hand with a grimace. “Enough, Lawrence,” he said quietly. “I am afraid that you will not be going anywhere for a long, long time…”

The screen flickered and went blank, plunging me into silence.

I
t was torture watching Grace
. On more than one occasion, I wondered if I could even stand to continue sitting by. It was like watching a flower rot, a rare and beautiful bird lose its feathers, one by one. But I couldn’t bring myself to leave. Like watching a train wreck, I committed myself to staying until the very end.

I had all but lost hope that Ben would return before her transformation was completed.

Her fate was, in many ways, even worse than mine. Whatever the IBSI had messed up in my body, it would not cause me to turn into a Bloodless. Instead, my organs would just slowly shut down and I would die. A straightforward and hopefully not too drawn-out death.

I held Grace’s hands when I could—when there weren’t others holding them. And although she was in and out of consciousness, I could’ve sworn I felt her squeeze it at one point, reassuring me that she was aware of my presence.

I wished that there was something I could do to stop her fading. I had already lost Maura. If I lost Grace too, it felt like I would be all alone in the world. Alone and waiting to die.

When Ben arrived, everyone’s relief was tangible. We all waited with bated breath as he fed his daughter the formula. And then everything came crashing down quicker than I could have ever expected. We were forced to race out of the room, though the vision of Grace launching at her own mother would remain etched in my mind for a long time.

What had happened? What had Ben fed her? Had he gotten it from Lawrence? I even wondered if perhaps that guy had deliberately sent along the wrong thing—maybe he wasn’t to be trusted, as Grace and everybody else seemed to trust him. He was the son of Atticus after all, wasn’t he?

We waited outside the hospital door, listening to the sounds of Grace screeching and struggling as her father worked to pin her down. Lucas went in for a while, and then Ben called out to the witches. “We need a cage for her!”

Corrine moved inside, and I caught sight of the room before he slammed the door shut behind him: Ben wrestling with Grace while she lashed out, trying to catch her father with her claws.

After Corrine performed her magic, creating a cage with semi-transparent blue bars, she controlled Grace’s limbs and trapped her inside.

We all dared enter again, circling the cage in horror.

I gazed into her small, dark, almost black eyes—eyes that were completely devoid of the shining turquoise they had once been. Her skin was paper-thin, drained of all warmth, like a corpse’s. Her lips had shriveled, her nose receded completely.

How could there be any coming back from this?

Grace… are you still in there?

I
t was the strangest feeling
. Even as my limbs erupted in agony, my thoughts remained. My brain had not turned to mush. I was conscious of my former self.

But as I tried to communicate with my family, gathering around the magic cage Corrine had created around me, I almost wished that I had gone numb. That I had turned into a vegetable and forgotten everything about my previous life. I wished I didn’t even recognize my family, that they were nothing but sacks of blood to my mind as well as my body. Their expressions as they stared at me were those of utter horror and gut-wrenching despair. My mother had broken down, while my father—my poor father… he’d had to wrestle me away from her. I had tried to attack her.
All
of my family. If he hadn’t stopped me, my mother might not even be alive right now, at least not in her current state. She could be a Bloodless like me.

My thoughts and actions had become entirely disjointed, so much so that it felt like my body was no longer my own. It was dictated by impulses beyond my control. There was nothing I could do to stop the all-consuming thirst for blood.

As I caught sight of my fully transformed body in the mirror, I let out a scream, but I ejected merely a low grunt. My noseless face didn’t even have a place in my worst nightmares. I looked and felt like a corpse, nothing but skin and bone, and so, so cold. But worse than anything was the craving. Like I had been starved yet somehow kept alive to suffer for a hundred years. The expression on my skeletal face was manic, haunted, demented. My body was crying out for blood. Anyone’s blood. Even the vampires’ blood so close to me smelt like the most delicious thing in the world right now. I barely even scented its bitterness. My limbs launched themselves at the sides of the cage, only to bounce back immediately. A piercing screech erupted from my throat, chilling the very core of me.

I had heard of the horrors of turning into a normal vampire from my father, who’d had it particularly bad. He had described what the craving for blood felt like, how for him, there had been simply nothing he could do to keep himself from attacking and slaughtering humans for their vital force. But he’d had an excuse for that. He’d been possessed by an Elder. Bloodless weren’t possessed by spirits; it was their mere biology which forced them to attack—the urge was unfightable, compared to what it was for a normal vampire. Biology which overpowered any and all efforts of the mind.

I wondered if all Bloodless retained their thinking after turning. Whether they all went through this torture. Or maybe my being a half-fae made a difference in my turning compared to others.

It didn’t matter. I couldn’t articulate my thoughts anyway. My mind and soul were locked inside this monstrous being.

Whatever my dad had fed me had sped the entire turning process up. He had looked so confident that it would cure me. What had happened? Why hadn’t it worked? What formula had he fed me, if it wasn’t the one? Where was Lawrence? Was he okay?
Dammit
. I wished I could ask my father these questions now, as he stood so close to my cage. I would’ve given anything in this moment to just be able to say a few simple words to my family and everyone around me—to assure them that I wasn’t fully gone. At least, not yet. To tell them that my mind was still present. That I could still remember. I could think the way I always used to think.

If I could’ve somehow communicated that, I was sure that it would have lessened their plight.

And what was going to happen now? If what my father had fed me hadn’t been the cure, what was? How much longer was I going to have to remain like this? Would I
ever
escape?

As I gazed around each of the familiar faces surrounding me, my eyes rested on Orlando. His large brown eyes were gazing soulfully back at me. I could practically see the questions swirling behind them. Was I really gone? Was there nothing more left of me?

My heart ached for him. There had barely been a minute when he hadn’t been by my side in the past twenty-four hours. He hadn’t wanted to leave my bedside, even though I knew how painful it was to watch me continue to spiral downhill with each passing hour. He had remained alongside me with my mother and the rest of my family, and there had even been a few minutes here and there when he’d been alone with me. Although I’d been lost in pain, I had not been too far gone to notice his hand holding mine, the occasional reach of his palm to my forehead to check that I was still all right… or as all right as I could possibly be in my state.

He couldn’t have known how much his, and all of my family’s, support meant to me. And now, it felt like I was repaying them in the most horrific way possible.

“Grace?” Orlando mouthed.

I breathed in the young man, even his sick blood calling to me. If there weren’t invisible bars between us, I would be on top of him already, digging into his throat, sucking the life force out of him.

Stay away from me, Orlando. Stay away. You’ve suffered enough hurt already.
He had come so close. I feared I might lash out through the bars and catch his eye.

I caught sight of my father speaking frantically with my grandfather and Ibrahim. He was holding a phone in his hand—a phone that I did not recognize and was sure did not belong to him.

“We need to track her down,” my father was saying. “I have her number.”

His words meant nothing to me. Track who down? What number?
What’s happening?
I screamed again in my head.

Then, slipping the phone into his pocket, my father turned to me and approached the cage. He bent down to my level and I was once again filled with the urge to yell at him to stay back as my extended razor-sharp claws thrashed at the cage. They were all gathering too close for comfort. My father was a fae, but I felt the all-consuming urge to attack him all the same. To taste him, even if his blood would bring me no satisfaction.

I had coughed out so much blood in the past twenty-four hours that there was barely a drop left running through my veins. During my next coughing fit, which I suspected would occur soon, I would likely cough out the rest. That would leave my body even more desperate to take a drink.

How long can I last, with my body and mind so in discord with each other?
How long would it be before I went insane? I was sure that it was only a matter of time. There was no way a person could survive this kind of psychological trauma with their mental faculties intact. It terrified me how clear a picture I could already paint for myself about what would happen. The more I gave into my body’s urges, the more I would become aligned with them mentally. I would start believing—and feeling—that they were my own urges. Emanating from me, not my body. I would lose awareness of my former self. My thoughts would blur. And gradually I would sink into the animalistic state every other part of me had already adopted… Maybe that was what happened to everyone who turned into a Bloodless. They started off their heinous second lives with their former minds still attached, and losing them was the final, metaphysical transformation.

“Grace.” My father spoke, his voice breaking through my thoughts. “Can you hear me?”

Yes, Dad. I can hear you. I wish that you could hear me.

“If you can understand me, Grace…” he managed. His voice sounded weak, and to my horror, I realized that the corners of his eyes were moistening as he gazed at me. I had never seen my dad cry. And in this moment, I didn’t think my heart could take it. He sucked in a breath, reeling in his emotions. “You’re going to stay here, safe in The Shade, and we’re not going to stop until we get you back.”

“You haven’t lost me yet,”
I was desperate to cry out.
And I can understand you. I can understand you! Please, just get me out of here. Before I cross the final line.