To drive that fact home, Nerva and his men whirled and brought up their weapons as someone burst into the stairwell. So far, so good—it was only another ’Phage, a man they hadn’t realized had managed to survive the outside attacks. His black and violet eyes were wild with fear and fury. “They’re right behind us!”
Nerva gnashed his teeth, feeling the razor-sharp edges of his elongated canines sting against the sensitive skin inside his bottom lip. “They’re not going to stop until they’ve hunted us down and killed every one of us,” he growled. “We have to stand here.” He jerked his head toward the ceiling. “The lights,” he ordered. All three of his men immediately raised the barrels of their guns toward the ceiling; an instant later, at the same time as the hallway door burst open and the human soldiers spilled onto the landing, the roar of their gunfire was washed over by sparks and the hissing of electricity as they shot out the lights.
In the wink of time between the harsh glare of the fluorescents and the sudden darkness, Nerva’s gaze crossed the small expanse of space and locked with the lighter but just as fierce gaze of Daxus himself as he followed his team into the tight confines of the stairwell.
Blackness.
“Night vision!” Daxus shouted. “Go night vision!”
“Sir, we are not equipped!”
The semi-panicked whisper from one of Daxus’s men generated one overlong frozen moment of silence, then one of the humans’ form was silhouetted by a blast of gunfire. Nerva actually laughed as the Hemophages moved around the human like wraiths, enjoying his dark moments of victory as they happened again, and again. In the space of mere seconds there was no gunfire, and no sound.
Clunk! Clunk! Clunk!
Red emergency lights suddenly clanked on around the landing, casting a dark glow on the bloody human bodies crumpled on the floor. Of the humans, only Daxus was still standing, and as Nerva looked over at him, the Hemophage let a wide and ugly grin spread across his mouth. He knew Daxus and what the man had done, and it was high time he paid for his sins of genocide against Nerva’s brothers and sisters.
Incredibly, Daxus only smiled back at him.
Then sidestepped out the door.
Nerva snarled and moved after him. With Nerva leading, the Hemophages went after Daxus, following in an unhurried, ominous line as the Vice-Cardinal of the ArchMinistry walked down the hallway and turned into a doorway labeled
SNACK ROOM.
Just because they could, the Hemophages watched Daxus as he pulled out a sterile packaged sanitary wipe and ripped it open. He chose a clean coffee cup from a cluster on the counter, then peered into it and grimaced; finally, he cleaned it thoroughly, inside and out, with the sanitary wipe.
“So,” Daxus said without bothering to look up. “Are you going to kill me?”
Before Nerva or any of the others had a chance to answer, Daxus stuck his hand beneath his jacket; his fingers came back out wrapped around a small pistol wrapped in a medical-grade sterile covering. A small smile played at the corner of Daxus’s wide mouth as he methodically unsheathed it and fussily dropped the leftover packaging into the trash. “Do you think you
can?
”
The Hemophages’ eyes widened at Daxus’s nerve, especially when the human set the gun down on the counter, then lifted a coffeepot from one of the burners and filled his cup, all the way to its rim. He returned the pot to the coffeemaker, then carefully picked up the overfilled cup.
While Nerva stood back and watched warily, his soldiers saw their chance and went for it, yanking their guns up as they counted on the fact that the human was more concerned with his precious coffee than his own safety.
And Daxus killed all three of them before any one of them could so much as squeeze a trigger. One shot each, no fanfare. Just a triple blaze of incredible, almost superhuman speed, and that was it.
Daxus lifted his gaze to Nerva’s astounded one, then raised the coffee cup he still held in one hand, toasting the Hemophage with it. Not a single drop had spilled over its edge. “Now,” said Daxus as he brought the cup to his lips and took a sip, “I think you and I have matters of mutual self-interest to discuss.”
You’re unbelievable, Violet. You jeopardize
everything
by coming here!”
Violet faced Garth with her shoulders and back ramrod-straight, although she really wanted to wilt beneath Garth’s accusing stare. He was right, of course—the traveling eighteen-wheelers that the vampires used as bases of operations, medical labs and facilities, and weapons storage were safe only because no one but the Hemophages knew about them. The boy was human, and everywhere he went the human security forces eventually showed up. The semitrailer in which she and Garth were standing right now could be closed up and out of here inside of five seconds, but God forbid the humans should actually find out just
how
the vampires had been avoiding them all this time.
She swallowed hard and made herself meet his intense, intelligent eyes. “The humans want me,” she finally said in a voice that sounded very, very small. “Nerva wants me. I . . . didn’t have anywhere else to go.”
A muscle in Garth’s jaw ticked in anger as he stared at her without answering. His normally calm face was hard along the edges beneath his light brown hair. She didn’t think he’d ever looked at her so sternly, and it wasn’t like she hadn’t pulled enough stunts to justify it. But this one . . . oh, boy.
“Besides,” she gave him a smile that came out weak, “You have all my guns.”
He opened his mouth to snap at her, then shut it as a reluctant smile softened his tough, worried features. Finally, he looked back into the trailer, where the boy—Six—was nosing through the laboratory equipment. Clearly he was familiar with this kind of machinery; he kept his hands safely in his pockets and while he examined everything, he touched absolutely nothing. “So what’s his story?” he finally asked.
Violet tilted her head, feeling a little of the anxiety bleed out of her muscles. Paranoia had worked hard at her, and she’d had the horrible notion that Garth was going to stand strong and turn her away. That would have been a death sentence for her and the boy. “You tell me,” she ventured. Instead of answering, Garth inhaled deeply. Then, his face troubled, he climbed inside the truck and motioned at Violet to follow.
Thanks to flat-space technology, the interior of the trailer was much more spacious and well equipped than the outside implied. Rows of lights gleamed overhead, illuminating space that stretched out to at least four times more than the outer walls implied. The floor, like all the countertops and the walls, shone with medicinal cleanliness—Garth was a stickler for that, and just as anal retentive about having things put away where they belonged. His habits couldn’t be faulted; on more than one occasion he’d saved her life by knowing just where the right surgical instrument was to close up a badly bleeding wound, just what to combine to bring her back from the edge of eternity. In times past, Violet had wanted that, though now she was feeling her age and exhaustion.
Still not daring to speak, Violet watched Garth pull on a pair of sterile surgical gloves, then kneel in front of the boy. Maybe it was the laboratory environment, or just that Garth looked much more like a medically oriented person than Violet, but this time the child didn’t protest. In fact, he didn’t even move—just stayed utterly still as Garth pushed up his lips to check out his gums, then first one of Six’s eyelids, then the other, checking the child’s color and pupil dilation response. Seeing the child used as a lab rat made Violet’s muscles tense involuntarily, but it was also something she had to get past if there was any chance at all of finding out what was so special about this boy. When she spoke, her voice was even and unemotional, completely masking the turmoil she felt inside. “Can you make an assessment?”
Garth stood and yanked off his gloves. They made an unpleasant echoing sound inside the trailer, something that must’ve brought back unpleasant memories for Six. He winced instinctively, then was still again; Garth noted the reaction and looked down at the child thoughtfully. Steady once more, Six looked back at him, his face as emotionless as Violet’s. She had an idea that, like her, Six was hiding his feelings. “I’ll need to take some blood,” Garth finally said. His eyes searched hers. “It’ll take a few hours.”
Take blood? Violet couldn’t help but remember her struggle to do just that less than an hour ago, the way Six had resisted her efforts and threatened to scream. But when she and Garth glanced back at the boy, he was already obediently rolling up his sleeve. Was it the laboratory environment here in the trailer and the sense that he had nowhere to run, or did the child have some empathy for Violet’s kind after hearing her recount the circumstances of their war? She had no way of knowing. What Violet
did
see was that Six’s arm was a clinically organized mass of scars, a road map of physical evidence detailing how often his body had been tested and cruelly used in the past.
She could stand almost anything, but sometimes the sheer senselessness of the world and how it treated the most innocent of those who lived in it just made her want to cry.
The night sky was an ink-soaked blanket of stars and brilliantly colored explosions. She didn’t know what they were celebrating in the city’s interior tonight, but they had fireworks—the display went on and on and on, coating the interior of the truck’s roomy cab with flashes of scarlet, green, yellow, and blue, more colors than Violet could name. It was inexplicable, really, the way she couldn’t stop herself from watching, the way her gaze was drawn to the fire in the sky in much the same way as her ancestors, the ancient ones shared by her kind and humans alike, had probably been mesmerized by the red and orange flames of their first cooking fires. They—
Something inched into Violet’s consciousness before she could complete the thought, a sound that was out of place. She’d left the passenger door open to catch the breeze, and when she turned her head she saw Six look up at her from the open side. For a second, she wasn’t sure what to say, then she patted the seat. “Come on and sit.” When he obeyed, she told him, “Just don’t move. Or . . . talk.” A silly thing to say, really—most children were chatterboxes, but this kid hardly ever spoke a word.
Right now it was no different. He sat next to her and stared out the windshield, leaning forward slightly and placing his hands delicately on the dashboard so he could have a better view of the overhead show. Violet could see the colorful little explosions mirrored on the surface of his eyes, watch as his gaze flicked from side to side across the windshield as he tried to keep up with each new fireworks display. He was, she realized, seeing this for the first time; while somewhere in her consciousness she had known that, the epiphany was that she herself was doing the same . . . through him.
Finally, even though he hadn’t asked, she felt compelled to explain. “Humans,” she said. “Celebrating something.” When she realized what she’d said, Violet couldn’t stop the bittersweet feelings that spiked inside her, little memories that brought nothing but sharp, spiked pain. She had been human once, but the war had taken that away. The ArchMinistry wanted the world to think it was the virus’s fault, but that wasn’t true. Humans were prone to plenty of viruses, and hardly any of the other illnesses segregated its victims the way this one did. The ones that had? Eradicated. The key part was that the
diseases
had been eradicated, not their victims. The truth now was that the sickness part didn’t matter. Even the death part was only a piece of the whole pie. Sickness and death—those things could be easily tolerated, carefully treated, even contained. What couldn’t be allowed to continue was the strength, the speed, all the things inherent to H.P.V. that made its victims
better
than humans. It was all about
power
, not preservation. There was nothing blatant about the ArchMinistry’s extermination of vampires. It was all subjective, much like killing in the name of religion.
But then, there had been entire eras over the course of mankind’s existence that had been devoted to just such battles, hadn’t there?
Six shifted on the seat, bringing Violet’s thoughts back to the present. He seemed to be carefully pondering what she’d said about the humans celebrating, then he looked like he’d finally made a decision. Digging into his pocket, the boy came up with a worn piece of paper, looking at her sideways at he pulled it out. He unfolded it carefully, trying his best to smooth out the sharply creased edges; after another moment’s hesitation, at last he offered it to her. “So you know where this is?” he asked with his customary seriousness.
Curious despite herself, Violet took the paper from him and studied it. The image burned into her eyes, and once again she fought the lump that rose sluggishly in her throat. Behind the stoic facade she kept up, she could feel her eyes burn. Thanks to the fireworks and the moonlight, she could just make out that she was holding a timeworn drawing of a playground. A dozen kids played on the swings and the teeter-totters, more ran happily alongside a merry-go-round. Everyone in the drawing was having a great time, and it looked like an antique advertisement for schoolyard equipment. Six, of course, had never known anything like the scene on the crumpled piece of paper. His question made it clear that he wasn’t even sure such a place existed, and Violet thought he would probably never see one for himself. Sometimes destiny could truly screw over those who deserved it the least.
“When I was a kid,” Violet told him quietly, “a little girl, I used to dream about this . . . old dusty road. There were beautiful daisies growing tall on both sides—bright yellow and for as far as I could see—and they would sway in the wind. I’d walk down it for a long time, and at the end would be a schoolhouse, a red one like in the old movies, with a yard in the back where they’d have stuff like this.” Violet pointed to the picture, then her gaze cut to the window and the beautiful faraway fireworks. “In that dream, I had a family and best friends, and we’d play house and everyone lived happily ever after. It was a happy dream. But then you realize, as life settles in around you, that those places don’t really exist.” She refolded the picture and pushed it back into Six’s hands with a sigh. “Not in this world, anyway. Now I just dream about losing things.” She felt him staring at her and shrugged, suddenly feeling stupid. There wasn’t any explaining what she’d just said, and he wouldn’t understand her anyway. He was too young and naive—