Chapter 18
18
Recovered Journal of Dr. Georgia Clark
February 3, Year 1, Emergence Era
I’ve always been hopeful but not like this. A new lab, tons of supplies, every single scientific device for epidemiology at my fingertips! I’m giddy. This is it. I can feel it. This is where we make history and save lives. Somebody pinch me!
I get clear of the piano and the landing below, the fall so quick yet impossibly long. Hurtling down, I close my eyes.
That’s when he grabs me.
The sudden jolt rattles my teeth, and I taste blood where I’ve bitten my tongue. I scream, pain flaming to life in my shoulder. Dislocated from the hard stop.
“What the fuck?” Valen roars and pulls me over the rail, his grip on my arm so strong that my bones ache. “What do you think you’re doing?” He shoves me back into the wall, his blue eyes wide as he stares down at me.
“Just let me go,” I whimper.
“Never!” He leans down until his gaze is level with mine. “I will never let you out of my grasp, little rabbit. You are mine. This body, mine! Your life belongs to me! You will not harm yourself!” he bellows.
“It doesn’t matter.” I meet his glare. “I’ll just do it again. Or something else. Anything to get away from you.”
He takes in a deep breath, his jaw tense as he breathes it slowly out his nose. Then he says, his tone cold and even, “First you want to kill me, but now you’ve changed your mind?”
“I can’t kill you.” I wince as he leans into me, the force of his fury like a blow.
“You’re wrong about that, as you are about most things.” He bares his teeth. “Never try something like this again.”
“Fuck you!” I scream and shove at him, kicking and flailing, anything to get him away from me.
He takes it all, even when I manage to get a hand up and slap him right across his goddamn face. He doesn’t so much as flinch.
I rage and rail against him until my body gives out, my impotent anger burning up like kindling. My shoulder aches, my busted arm hanging limp, and I have an empty feeling inside me. Hollowed out from what I tried and failed to do. I’m still alive. I don’t want to be.
When I go still, he sighs and straightens, his arms caging me against the wall.
“You let her die. You—” Grief chokes me as sure as a hand at my throat. The horror of Melody’s death, the awfulness of standing and watching and doing nothing. It’s a bottomless well, cold and black in its endless depths.
“She was of my blood,” he says it softly.
“Why didn’t you do something?” I look up at him. “She trusted you. I saw it in her eyes. She looked at you, and you did nothing. Nothing!”
He stands silent.
“You could’ve saved her.”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you?” I erupt again, my anger flaring and then dying out like the head of a struck match. A sob catches in my chest. “She’s dead. We just stood there and watched. She was the only bit of kindness, the only one of you with a soul left. She was…” She was a friend . I realize it now, far too late. “You didn’t help her.” It sounds so weak, my voice, my regret. A thin sheet of glass, already cracked in a million different ways, one breath away from falling completely apart.
He meets my gaze, something unknowable in his eyes. Something like … pain. Can he even feel that? Does he hurt? Was Melody anything more than a servant, a forgettable cog in his infernal machine?
“You killed Juno.” My voice breaks on my sister’s name.
Whatever was in his eyes is gone, replaced with derision. “And?” he sneers.
I can’t breathe, can’t reply. I can do nothing in the face of his callous confession. He doesn’t care about the harm he causes. He never has.
“Do you care about anyone?” I ask, emotion turning my voice into a whispered plea. “Didn’t you care about Melody?”
His expression closes again, his eyes going hard like flint.
“You mourn her rather than the pitiful humans we slaughtered while you danced?” he taunts.
“Fuck you.”
“Foolish little rabbit.” He grips my chin and tilts my face up. “You should worry about your own kind. The millions who will die while you sit here pitying yourself. Your sister was nothing. The humans we ripped apart at the ball were nothing. Their bones are already out for the vultures, their blood gone to feed their betters. This is how it will be with all humans. The sooner you accept that, the better.”
“I’ll never accept it.” In a sudden burst of insanity, I thrust my head forward. I catch him on the nose, pain blooming on my forehead as he jerks back.
“There she is.” He’s on me again before I can even take a step, a malevolent grin on his face as blood drips down his upper lip. “My little rabbit has claws.”
He kisses me hard. No warning, no escape. It’s an assault, his tongue swiping between my lips and carrying the taste of his blood with it. I try to turn my head, but he holds me still, his hand at my throat, his body an impassable wall.
I scream, and he only delves deeper, his tongue dancing across mine. When I bite down, he withdraws before I can take a piece of his tongue, my teeth clacking together with a snap. Blood smeared across his grinning lips, he’s a terror. A nightmare that can’t be escaped.
“Listen well, Doctor.”
The compulsion takes hold, gripping my heart with an icy fist. “You will never attempt to take your own life again. You will never harm yourself again.”
My hands fist. Hatred, an endless pool of it, rises inside me.
“Tell me you understand.” His eyes are icy blue.
“I understand.”
“Good little rabbit.” He eyes my mouth again.
“I’ll bite your fucking tongue off,” I grate out.
“A sacrifice I’m willing to make,” he whispers. “Perhaps later.” With eerie speed he backs away, then turns and disappears down the stairs.
I sag against the wall, my already broken spirit bearing extra bruises. This was my last chance. My only chance. I slide down until I’m sitting, my entire body limp. I test my shoulder. It doesn’t hurt. I rotate it around. Everything is back in place. Did he heal me? He wouldn’t. And how? He’s made it quite clear he enjoys my suffering.
With the strength I have left, I pull myself up and grip the railing. When I try to throw my leg over, my body disobeys.
“No.” I lean forward. Again, my body stops me from going too far, from toppling over and down to the next level. It’s as if an invisible hand is holding me back. “No.” I swallow hard, my face hot. But it doesn’t matter how I try to deny it. Valen’s compulsion is in my blood.
Once again, I’m nothing more than his marionette. No free will. No way out. He’s taken everything from me, and I’ll never get it back.
I busy myself with my journal, writing down everything that’s happened to me, every iota of information I know about the vampires. It’s silly, indulging in the reckless hope that maybe one day a series of fortuitous events might land my journal into human hands. But it’s all I have. There’s nothing left for me to do, no way to change my fate. So, I write it all down until I’m pushing on the edges of my memory, the sharp pain in my head a warning that I’ve gone too far.
There are only pieces, flashes of images that don’t seem to fit any real pattern. Faces, cherry blossoms, lab equipment, Gene.
I blink. Gene. I remember him. I’ve never been able to put a name to his face, but it just came to me. He’d been the custodian at the university where I worked. Then he came to DC with us. After that … was he at the lab with me? My memory goes murky. Frustration wells when my headache threatens to return.
Fatima. I think about her instead. I know she was with us in DC. She’d been Juno’s aide ever since she won the governorship. Now she’s a vampire, Gregor’s vampire. Foreboding lodges in my gut, my mind spinning out a million theories in a single second. The most obvious is that Fatima was somehow in on it all along. Did she push Juno to make the deal with Gregor? She’d been in the meetings. Everywhere Juno went, Fatima was always there. Even more so than Candice, who’d taken more of a quiet role once Fatima showed up.
“With her iPad and all her political savvy.” Candice rolls her eyes.
“Hang on, I thought you liked Fatima?” I chew through a particularly tough piece of steak, the meat more like boot leather than food.
“I do.” Candice cuts her meat in neat squares. “I guess she just makes me feel old, and I get crabby about it, all right?” She wrinkles her nose as Vince walks in while giving orders into his radio. “Can you cut that shit out at the dinner table?” she snaps.
“—perimeter sweep before it gets full dark. Out.” He pockets the radio and grabs his plate. “Grumpy this evening,” he remarks and serves himself a hockey puck piece of steak.
“I’m not grumpy.” Candice cuts her meat into even smaller pieces with a vicious sawing motion. “I’m just a little crabby.”
“She’s worried she can’t keep up with all the new technology,” I translate.
Vince scoffs and sits down, then flips his tie over his shoulder. “What new technology? Everything’s shut down. We’re working with 20 th century tech.” He pats the radio in his pocket. “My cell has a signal for maybe five minutes of every hour, and the power is getting more questionable.” He bites a hunk from his steak and chews as Candice glares at him. After a big swallow, he adds, “Look, you aren’t behind is all I’m saying.”
“Fatima is always flitting around and acting like Juno can’t wipe her ass unless it’s in her separate calendar.” Candice makes a childish face, one distinctly at odds with her wrinkles and gray hair. “A separate calendar. Can you believe that? I’ve kept Juno’s calendar for years . Never had an issue.”
“What’s that saying, ‘more hands make less work’ or something like that?” Vince offers.
“Hi everyone.” Fatima strides in, a somewhat stiff smile on her face.
Shit, she must’ve been listening. “How are you today?” I ask a little too brightly.
“All good. Juno should be down in a minute. She’s just finishing up a call with Washington about the Houston situation.”
“The food bank assault?” Vince scowls. “I thought they had that handled with additional National Guard.”
“Juno thought so, too.” Fatima serves herself from the veggie trays. “But apparently a lot of the angry locals are ridiculously well-armed. They need more troops to keep the distribution area safe for civilians.”
“Was that call on the calendar?” Candice asks pertly.
I give her a death glare, but she completely ignores me.
“It was on both calendars, yes.” Fatima says evenly as she takes her seat. “I added it this morning.”
A tense silence settles over the room, only the sounds of chewing and the occasional grunt from Vince interrupting the stalemate.
“Anyone want to hear a joke?” I blurt.
Candice gives me the stink eye. “Professor, maybe you should sit this one out.”
“I’d love to hear a joke.” Fatima smiles.
I clear my throat. “What did the famous auctioneer’s tombstone say?”
Vince and Candice exchange a puzzled glance.
“What?” Fatima asks.
“Going, Going, Gone!” I slam my hand on the table as if it’s a gavel.
Candice snorts a laugh.
“Is this what passes for jokes in these rough times?” Vince gives me half a smile as Fatima giggles.
The tension eases.
“Is that gallows humor? That’s what they call that, isn’t it Professor?” Candice asks.
“Shitty humor. Can’t believe they think you’re a genius around here.” Vince shakes his head, a twinkle in his eye as he ribs me.
We’re a family again, cobbled together before and after the plague arrived.
“Well fuck Washington, am I right?” Juno strides in, her presence lighting up the room. She stops and eyes us all suspiciously. “Why is everyone smiling?”
The memory comes and goes in a blink, but it hits me with the force of a gut punch. I curl into a ball, my journal forgotten as I revel in the memory, turning it over and inspecting it like a treasured, but rusty, coin. We were happy. The world was falling apart, but we were happy with each other, happy with what we had.
Now they’re all gone—Candice, Juno, Vince. And Fatima has become something twisted and evil. I still feel the touch of her cold fingertips along my skin. What happened to her?
What happened to all of us?