Chapter Twelve
Several hours later, Gunnar stopped the bike at a food stand on the side of the road and bought loaded hotdogs for them both. They took the food and paper cups of coffee to a picnic table and ate in silence for a few minutes.
“This is good.” Bryn munched his dog.
“You have a bit of ketchup…” Gunnar reached across. He brushed the speck of sauce away with the pad of his thumb. Bryn’s lips were soft and pink…tempting.
Bryn stared at him. “Uh, thanks.”
He has the thickest, darkest lashes I’ve ever seen on a man. Gunnar distracted himself with coffee. “That was a satisfying case, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah. That poor kid. I wonder what’ll happen to him.”
“I guess he’ll be looked after until his father is officially cleared then he’ll be able to go home. His mom will be going to jail and so will her boyfriend.”
“I hope they rot.”
“Yeah, the trauma is going to be with that child for the rest of his life. The only positive is that his grandfather is taking an interest. With mom out of the picture, maybe bridges can be built.”
“I hope so. So many kids are growing up in group homes. Family is important.”
“Your group home was okay, though, wasn’t it?” Gunnar asked.
“It was good. The housemother was brilliant and the place was happy even though we didn’t get many luxuries. I can’t complain. I didn’t remember my parents so it was all I ever knew.”
“So are you ready to talk about what happened after that? Tell me about the Facility.”
“You really want to know?” Bryn frowned.
“What you went through affects everything you do, so yeah, I want to know. It’ll give me context. I want to know you better.”
“If you buy me another dog, I’ll spill. And a bag of donuts. Please.”
“Fine. I can always go for second helpings.” Gunnar bought the food and was soon back at the table.
“I don’t know where it is. The Facility, I mean,” Bryn began. “They drugged me so I was unconscious on the journey. Warden was there when I arrived and I saw him occasionally—I think he was checking on my progress—but he wasn’t there all the time.”
“He must have had you on his radar to work for him from the start.”
“Yeah, but I didn’t know that at the time. If I had to guess, I’d say the Facility was probably in the desert somewhere. It was definitely underground. There were no windows and no natural daylight. Exercising was all done inside.”
“Sounds like a prison.”
“It was for me.” Bryn fiddled with his coffee cup. “My movements were monitored and restricted. There were other people coming through the place all the time for training but only short term. They avoided me, so I assume they’d been told not to interact.”
“Must have been lonely.”
“There was so much confusing crap going through my head I didn’t have much time to think about it. Never was much of a socializer.”
“Color me shocked.”
“Hey! I can people… When I have to. Okay, when someone makes me, but that’s so not the point. Let’s just say I had plenty of time with my own thoughts.”
“Okay, so who is this vamp dude you mentioned?”
Bryn sighed. “His name is Giles Delacourt, a British import. He came from some aristocratic family who relocated to the States for diplomatic work when he was a kid. He had his eighteenth birthday here and tested sanguine while he was at some private school in Washington State. That was twenty-five years ago and, lucky me, he never went home.”
“I gather you and he didn’t hit it off,” Gunnar said.
“You could say that. So, like a lot of vamps, Giles went into science. Psychology to be exact. I saw his résumé and he had a shitload of degrees, had research papers published in respected journals and he’d written a couple books…
His main interest was modifying behavior.
Getting his hands on me must have been a dream come true. ”
“But your training must have been regulated, right?”
Bryn gave a short laugh. “That would be no. He was given free rein to turn me into a usable tool and that meant finding out exactly what I could do, what my limitations might be, the physical and psychological impacts, the effects of various stimuli and environments on my abilities. Alongside his research, there was a physical fitness program, diet control and education to degree level in law enforcement and criminology. Not that I ever graduated. The Facility isn’t an officially recognized educational establishment, so that’s something else they took away from me. I was supposed to go to Harvard.”
“Describe him. I want to get a picture of him in my head.”
“Not quite as tall as you, so about six feet. Dark, almost black hair with a bit of premature silver, very dark-brown eyes so they looked black in the right conditions. Pale skin. In fact, picture a charismatic vampire in an old movie and you’ve got him.
He wasn’t at the mild end of the sanguine scale, let’s say.
He’s the most vampire vamp I’ve ever heard of, right down to the pointy teeth. ”
“Are you saying he could turn into a bat? Could you intimidate him with holy water and a cross?”
“Sadly not. Nor was he allergic to garlic. He did have a very strong fondness for blood and I’m not just talking about taking his steaks rare.”
“You mean he…” Gunnar made fang motions at Bryn’s neck.
“No, he did not bite me in the neck, Gunnar.” Bryn took off a glove then turned his arm over. “He did it here.” There was a scattering of marks across the inside of Bryn’s wrist.
“What the fuck!” Gunnar was full-on growling.
“Calm down, Wolfy. It was a trade-off. The occasional snack in exchange for books, DVDs or access to the news. It was consensual. He never forced me.”
“It’s still wrong. He was in a position of power.”
“Maybe, but he could have made me do it and he didn’t. He didn’t need the blood but said it was satisfying in a way raw meat and blood bags would never be.”
“How else was he more sanguine?”
“He could move much faster than a normal vamp—like a blur—and he could also merge with the background in a way that made him almost invisible.” Bryn paused. “He handled all my augur training himself and he had a sadistic streak he didn’t bother trying to hide.”
Gunnar’s growling got deeper. “One day I want to meet Mr. Delacourt.”
“I’m sure you and he would be best buds.”
“So when you say sadistic, what exactly do you mean?”
“He pushed everything further than it needed to be pushed. He wanted to know how many truth reads I could do before I blacked out from the pain. You’d think once would be enough to test that boundary, wouldn’t you?
But not for Giles. He tried it over and over again.
I lost days to blinding headaches and blackouts.
He decided he needed to understand if I could do the same things under different conditions so he experimented with heat, cold, being wet…
that last one was fun. He kept hosing me down with cold water between reads. For ten fucking days.”
“Was he trying to kill you?”
“Sometimes I thought so. He wanted to know if I could still work under the influence of drugs or booze. He had to strap me down for those. Forced me to drink alcohol. Injected me with who knows what. None of it made any difference. I can do what I can do but he was convinced there must be something that would stop me. He tried pain, a shock collar, all kinds of illegal shit. Then there was pleasure…forced stimulation…and denial…thirty days in a chastity cage. All the time I had to touch people, see their memories, test their truthfulness.”
“Fucking piece of shit.”
“Do you know what doesn’t work? Touching dead people. The recently deceased or long ago. I can’t do anything with a corpse.” Bryn’s hands were shaking. He hid them beneath the table.
“I’m not even going to ask where he got the subjects from.”
“Neither did I.” Bryn gave a wry grin. “It’s over. In the past. I was too stubborn for him to beat…and too fucking angry.”
“Took guts.”
“Or blind stupidity. One thing, though, I’ve always been interested in the idea that the gene mutation has happened before.
That it reemerges every so often and that all the myths and legends about werewolves and vampires came from people trying to understand what was happening.
Maybe not so many people were affected way back.
I mean even now numbers are small. What if the Black Death was the same virus?
Spanish flu? There are a ton of examples. ”
“Seems possible, doesn’t it?”
“In Eastern Europe, vampires are often depicted as reanimated corpses that feed on the blood of the living to maintain their undead existence.” Bryn shuddered.
“They can be repelled by garlic, crosses, and holy water, and can be destroyed by a stake through the heart. Something that I would have liked to try on Giles.” His grin was feral.
Gunnar rolled his eyes. “In China, the jiangshi are reanimated corpses that absorb the life force of the living. They have stiff movements due to rigor mortis and are repelled by mirrors and the blood of a black dog. Bit random. Giles had no issue admiring his reflection but I never saw him pet a dog and the Facility had a few German shepherds on the security team.”
“The Native Americans had wendigos,” Gunnar contributed.
“Yes! And the Ashanti people have the asasabonsam and the Bantu have the impundulu. Even the Aztecs had the tlahuelpuchi, a vampire that could transform into different forms and sucked children’s blood.
There are loads of others from cultures all over the world, some dating back centuries.
Too many examples for it not to have been a virus. ”
“And viruses evolve, it wouldn’t have always had the same effect on people. What about lupines?”
“Well, in Medieval European folklore, werewolves are often cursed individuals who transform into wolves during a full moon. They are typically depicted as bloodthirsty and driven by primal instincts.” Bryn eyed his partner. “Silver weapons are considered the most effective means of killing them.”
“Hmm.”
“But… In Norse mythology, warriors known as ulfhednar wore wolf pelts and could channel the spirit of the wolf, enhancing their strength and ferocity in battle.”
“I like that better.”
“Thought you would. Anyhow, I’m boring you. I could talk about this stuff for hours. Books were an escape and Giles didn’t object to me doing some research if it kept me quiet.”
“It’s not boring at all. We can talk about it more tonight if you like, but we’d better head back. It’s getting late and it’s been a long day.”
“Yeah. You know, I’ve never told anyone else any of this.”
“I have a trustworthy face.” Gunnar gave a lopsided grin. “And I won’t be sharing with anyone.”
“You think I’m crazy?” Bryn got up from his bench.
“I think you must be as traumatized as that kid from today, but crazy? Nope. You’re belligerent, stubborn and snarky, qualities that helped you survive. I see you, Bryn Ashton.”
“Guess I’m well and truly screwed then. Won’t be able to get away with anything.”
“You got that right. Now mount up. Let’s get home.”