Bracing himself for a launch attack, Riker opened the door. The kid inside shrank against the wall, the acrid scent of his terror coming off him in waves.
“We won’t hurt you,” Nicole said, but the kid just stared with wide, crystal-blue eyes, his thin body shaking so hard his teeth chattered.
Fuck. They didn’t have time for this. “Come on, kid. We’re rescuing you.” When the male didn’t move, Riker snared him by the arm and dragged him out of the cage.
“No!” the kid shouted. “No!” He wriggled like a spitting-mad kitten and tried to claw his way back inside the cage.
“Hey,” Nicole said softly. “It’s okay—”
The kid’s croaked “Help” cut her off.
“Shit,” Riker muttered, as he wrapped his arms around the kid’s body to stop his struggles. The boy rocked his dark head back and caught Riker in the mouth hard enough to make his ears ring. Too bad his hypnotic ability only worked on humans and some animals. “Got sedatives around here?”
Nicole dashed to the cabinet where she’d gotten the boric-acid antidote and spent a few precious moments locating a sedative and measuring it out into a syringe.
“Jesus,” she muttered as she injected the kid. “Do they even feed him?”
The boy immediately settled down enough that Riker could prop him against the wall and leave him.
“Start the fire,” Riker said. “I’ll get Neriya and handle any other vampires.”
An alarm blared, and shit, their time had run out.
Riker put on a burst of speed and tore open the refrigerator door. Cold air stung his cheeks as he darted inside . . . and found a chamber of horrors.
Dead vampires hung from hooks in neat rows, and body parts sat in metal bins or were wrapped in plastic and stacked neatly on shelves. Riker had seen a lot of gore in his life, had witnessed atrocities that still haunted him to this day. But this . . . this was worse than anything he’d ever encountered.
Save your mental trauma for later.
Shoving the gruesome scene to the back of his mind, he searched for Neriya. When he found her, hanging at the back of the fridge with her throat slit, the boiling of his blood countered the freezing temperatures. Rage and hatred and horror mixed like volatile chemicals that threatened to tear him apart and take down everything around him.
He’d failed.
The room spun and closed in around him as the reality of the situation crushed him in its cold, dead fist.
His mission to rescue Neriya had met with disaster, and now, not only was a valuable, gifted female dead, but his clan was doomed to war.
War and, likely, extinction.
“Riker, hurry!”
With the icy deliberation of someone with nothing left to lose, he strode out of the meat locker and checked the remaining chambers. Empty. All except the conjoined breeding chamber where the na**d male watched them, his gaze glued to Nicole. In a few strides, Riker was inside the vampire’s cell. The male, no more a vampire than a corpse was a living person, crouched, his fangs dripping with drool.
Behind Riker, Nicole splashed something on the floors and walls, and the harsh reek of chemicals burned his nostrils.
“It was you, wasn’t it?” he asked the creature. “My mate was put into a cell with you.”
The only reply was a bloodthirsty growl. Riker should hate the vampire, should want to rip him apart with his bare hands for what he’d done to Terese and countless other females. Instead, Riker felt only pity.
This male was as much a victim of Daedalus’s cruelty as Terese had been.
With lightning speed, he slipped behind the vampire and snapped his neck. When he stepped out of the cell, he found Nicole staring at him.
“You killed him.”
“I put him out of his misery.” The kid was still sitting where Riker had left him, his eyes glazed. Maybe it would be best to put him down, too.
“Don’t even think about it,” Nicole snapped.
“Where’s Neriya?”
“Dead.”
Nicole fumbled the lighter in her hand but caught it before it hit the floor. When she looked up, her eyes were liquid with regret. But they both knew there was no time for mourning or useless apologies.
“Pick up the kid.” She flicked the lighter mechanism and lit the corner of a paper as he threw the skinny male over his shoulder.
With one last look around, she dropped the flaming sheet and grabbed the garbage bag full of files. The place went up in a flash. Searing heat licked at their backs as they fled the building through a rear exit.
Once outside, Nicole stopped on a grassy knoll at the edge of the property. The clan’s beat-up Jeep was parked within sight, but Nicole didn’t even look in its direction. Despite the blare of sirens bearing down on them, she very slowly swung around and stared at the flames engulfing the lab. He expected to see grief in her face. Or pain. Or even anger. Anything but what he saw reflecting in her eyes.
Acceptance.
Nicole had just willfully destroyed part of her life, and now she was watching the remains burn to ash. Her strength humbled him, and when she finally turned her back to the crumbling skeleton that had belonged to her family, she did it with a finality that astonished him.
They didn’t look back again.
---------------------------
Nicole wasn’t sure how far they’d run with Riker carrying the kid over his shoulder after they parked the Jeep on property discreetly owned by MoonBound.
But every time she faltered, tripping over branches or stumbling from exhaustion, Riker would catch her. It hadn’t taken long for VAST to swarm the forest, and the sounds of pursuit kept her moving. Now, with the shouting voices practically upon them, her panic made her even clumsier.
“It’s okay,” Riker said, steadying her with a hand around her biceps. “Clan warriors are attacking our pursuers.”
She sucked in a panting breath. “You could have told me earlier.”
“Didn’t want to ruin the surprise.”
“In the future, keep in mind that I don’t like surprises,” she muttered.
They continued on, thankfully at a slower pace, and after a few minutes, the boy came around, his groggy gaze unfocused and confused.
“Hey, kid,” Riker said. “We’re almost home.” He lowered the boy to the ground.
Standing, the male was at least six feet tall, but he probably weighed no more than Nicole. His shaggy black hair fell in a mop to his jaw, and he had to push it out of his face to see. He wobbled as he looked around, his eyes wide, his mouth hanging open.
“Where are we?” The boy’s strained voice was barely audible. “What is this?”
“We’re in the forest outside of Seattle,” Riker said.
“We’re safe. The humans can’t touch you here.”
The boy backed away from them in a panicked scramble, and when he bumped into a tree trunk, he yelped and leaped away as if he’d been bitten. He sucked air in huge gulps, his gaze darting everywhere at once, as if he was looking for somewhere to run.
“You’re okay,” she said, in a low, steady voice. He reminded Nicole of a stray kitten she’d once coaxed out from underneath a bush. “You’re safe now. Where are you from?”
The question seemed to stump him. “From?”
“Yes.” Reaching out, she took his hand. It was cold and bony, and her heart broke. “Where did you live before you were captured by humans? Where’s home?”
The boy frowned. “The lab is my home.”
“Are you saying you were born there?” Riker asked, incredulous.
A crow cawed nearby, and the kid gave a start.
“I-I was born in a human house. But the lab is all I remember.”
The lab was all he knew? Jesus. “Where are your parents?”
“I don’t know who my sire is.” The boy’s voice was so quiet she had to strain to hear. “My mother is dead.”
Nicole wanted to hug him. Losing a parent was awful enough, but then to be raised in a lab . . . she couldn’t even begin to imagine that kind of nightmare. “Did she die during childbirth? How did Daedalus get you?”
“She was a servant. A wild vampire broke onto the grounds and killed her. Humans cut me out of her belly before I died.” He gave her such an honest, innocent look that her eyes stung. “They saved me.”
Good God, he was actually grateful for how Daedalus had treated him. She cut a glance at Riker . . . and gooseflesh erupted from her scalp to her toes.
Riker had lost all the color in his face and was staring at the boy, his jaw clenched, his throat working on swallow after swallow. Something was very, very wrong.
“Riker?”
He didn’t acknowledge that she’d spoken. He kept his gaze fixed on the boy. “How old are you, kid?”
The boy blinked, as if not understanding the question.
“How old?” Riker barked.
The boy made a noise of distress and shrank away from them both, lifting one skinny arm over his face.
“Nice,” she snapped at Riker. “Well done.” She eased close to the kid again, speaking in soothing tones. “We’re not going to hurt you. I promise. You can tell us. When were you born?”
The boy eyed Riker warily. “The lab people do tests on me every June. They say it’s my birthday. Last time, there were a lot of tests because they said it was twenty years.”
“Oh, God.” Riker’s voice grew constricted.
“Terese . . . she died twenty years ago last June.”
It took several moments for Nicole to process what Riker was saying, and when she did, she clamped her hand over her mouth in stunned silence. This gaunt vampire kid, who looked to be no more than sixteen or seventeen, was Terese’s son.
Nicole studied his face, mapped the curve of his jaw, the color of his eyes, and even the shape of his lips.
He’d inherited it all from his mother.
Riker was still staring, shell-shocked and maybe a little apprehensive and lost. Nicole had to pull herself together to help him. To help them both.
She squeezed the boy’s hand. “What’s your name?”
“Subject One.”
“That’s what they call you?”
He nodded.
Nicole’s gut crash-landed in her feet, and she was very glad when Riker swore, several nasty, choice words that perfectly expressed her feelings right now.
“Riker?” She moderated her voice, going for calm and quiet, knowing her next question was a sensitive one, and it could go over very, very badly. “What was Terese going to name the baby?”
“I wanted Sebastien,” he croaked. “Bastien, after my brother.” Riker stood still as a blade, his eyes closed. As the breeze picked up and ruffled his hair and the leaves overhead, he lifted his lids and gave Nicole the briefest nod of permission.
Memories of Terese swirled in Nicole’s head. She remembered Terese’s gentleness, her warm embraces, her soft voice. She remembered a woman who had made more of an impact on Nicole’s life than her own mother had. The pain of losing Terese had stayed with
Nicole, but now it was as if a piece of her was back. No matter how horribly wrong today had gone, something good had come out of it.
Nicole’s eyes stung as she took both of the boy’s hands in hers and smiled. “From now on, you’ll be known as Bastien. Is that okay?”
He tested the name on his tongue, saying it over and over until finally giving her a fragile smile. “I think it’s okay.”
Chapter 23
Shit. Of all the millions of words that could be running through Riker’s head right now, shit was the one that kept repeating itself over and over. Somehow he’d kept the presence of mind to take Nicole and Bastien— holy shit, Bastien—straight to the clan’s lab to have them checked out before he lost his shit.
Yeah, there was a whole lot of shit going on.
So while Nicole and Bastien— unfuckingbelievable—were getting a medical once-over, Riker was jogging down the hallway leading to Hunter’s chambers as if his feet were on fi re. He’d needed to get away from
Bastien, to outrun his own feelings.
His own guilt.
Already he regretted the way he’d treated Bastien.
He’d yelled at the poor kid, then stared at him, speechless. He’d been immobilized by shock, rendered helpless by his own disbelief. He’d let Nicole comfort the boy while Riker tried to untie himself from the knot of emotions that had been strangling him.
Had Bastien even understood what Nicole and Riker had been talking about? Did Bastien know that he was, for all intents and purposes, Riker’s son?
Shit. The next conversation with the boy was going to be fun. Hi, I’m your father. Well, sort of. An insane monster is really who sired you. And the humans lied when they told you your mother was killed by a vampire. She killed herself because she hated you. And then I left you to be raised in a lab like a rat in a cage. Good talk, son. We’ll toss around a ball or something later.
Riker stumbled as emotion overcame him. He should have been there. He shouldn’t have just assumed the baby died with Terese. He’d missed what should have been twenty happy years with Bastien. Missed his first steps. His first words. The boy could have grown up safe and wanted, with a father who loved him. Instead, he’d grown up inside a box in a sterile, cold laboratory.
Footsteps rang out in the distance. Riker pulled himself together before someone saw him in the middle of a breakdown and jogged the rest of the way to Hunter’s chamber. He burst through the heavy double doors and wasn’t surprised to see the chief standing in the middle of the room, hands clasped behind his back and an expectant look on his face.