16. V for Vindictive Bitch
Chapter 16
V for Vindictive Bitch
W hen the empty, endless sleep I’d been drowning in finally slipped away, my body was paralyzed and I couldn’t open my eyes. Whatever drug they’d given me, it rendered my body immobile.
Fucking figures.
But I could hear the familiar click-clacking of a keyboard and metallic clang of something nearby. Then footsteps approaching, which were heavy and male by the sounds of it. Someone else walked over, but their steps were much lighter and far too hesitant to be a Hunter or someone in a position of power.
Using my sense of hearing and touch was all I had. I couldn’t breathe or take in the air around me, so smelling was off the table. I relied solely on what I could hear, and I took special care listening to every sound that might serve me now or later.
By the resonating echo of every noise, the room was very likely small and enclosed. And by the needles penetrating my skin and straps binding my arms and legs to some sort of bed, it was probably some kind of medical lab. Had to really love the irony of ending right back where I started—as a lab experiment .
But first and foremost, I was a Hunter. I wouldn’t bemoan my capture; I’d figure this shit out and escape. Grams prepared me for this, and I wouldn’t let her down. I wouldn’t let Phillip and Sloan down.
If they’re still alive…
The acid in my throat was excruciating, but the burn was worse because I couldn’t move or react to it. It just overtook the senses—until I centered myself on the task at hand and not the fate of my two Hunters.
“I want every test run on her again, dammit. Find out what she can do. Now ,” a voice I vaguely recalled said, laced with frustration.
“But, sir,” a woman’s voice murmured, the sound of rustling following her soft-spoken response, “her body is showing signs of distress. She needs to recover before we do anything more.”
“Donna—”
“We have her blood, and that should help with determining some other things in the meantime. But if we do too much too soon, there could be lasting effects and—” the woman argued, a little louder than before.
“I don’t care what effects there might be on her!” the angry man cut in sharply, sounding a little too huffy-puffy for my tastes.
And they call us women emotional. Ha!
“We only need to know how to replicate it, and then we’ll get rid of her. She’s a liability as it is. Too many people are already asking questions.”
Oh, great. They planned to make more of me. Now I really had to get off this damn table and get my hands on the blood they took. My to-do list before managing a brilliant escape was growing by the second.
My fucking life, right?
But it was a relief to know that at least Donna didn’t sound like a mindless drone. Something nagged at me about her name and voice, though. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but it sounded familiar. Like a forgotten memory.
“But the leaders—”
The man, who I now recognized as my silver-eyed captor, Lux, chuckled without humor. “The leaders are so afraid of some foretold Fae prophecy that they don’t want to mess with her, but she was created for the sole purpose of getting across the planes without diminishing Hunter powers.”
Fae prophecy? That’s not ominous.
“You were on the same goddamn assignment, Donna. You know all of this. She’s ours to do what we will with. Once we know how to replicate it, we won’t need her anymore. That’s why I was against a natural home upbringing for her in the first place, but you and those bastards insisted it would facilitate better results.”
My hatred for this asshole grew with every word out of his terrible mouth. I never thought anyone would come close to how evil Eros was, but here this dude was, the very definition of villainy.
Upside to all of this was evil guys tended to monologue. All that these villain types ever babbled on about was kill this, stab that, “Oh no! She outwitted me again!” like this was some sort of Scooby-Doo special.
Lux huffed contemptuously, continuing his self-righteous monologue, “Lot of fucking good that did. Now we have a real problem on our hands. Rose has gone missing after burning down one of our archives.” Go Grams! “Two of the best Hunters in the Organization have gone rogue. If you don’t salvage this, it’s your head I’m serving to the leaders.”
Got to love how surprised these villains acted when people betrayed them. Like it was such a surprise that people who they meddled with, blackmailed, threw to the wolves and left for dead would somehow figure out it was probably not in their best interest to keep— I don’t know —involving themselves with the assholes responsible for it.
But even better out of this entire fucked experience was that the dude must really think I was going to die here today to be giving away all their best-kept secrets. Though, most were likely to be in those files we sniped off them. Still, I couldn’t wait to prove this smug asshole wrong. I’d be the chick that got away.
Give it time, Lux. I’ll show you just how difficult it is to kill me.
But I clung onto something he said. Grams, she’d escaped somehow. She was still alive, as far as they knew, had even burned down one of their stupid archives like the fucking badass lady she was, and it was like breathing fresh air after suffocating for so long. Grams wasn’t dead. She was out there being the same badass bitch who raised me.
Something in my core throbbed, but before I could figure out what it might be, it died away to nothing.
The woman beside me made a small sound in her throat, but a door nearby creaked and footsteps resounded on the floor, coming closer.
“We haven’t been able to locate them, sir,” a man’s voice said, a baritone that vibrated in the ears and cut through the clacks of a keyboard and the mechanical sounds of equipment. “But we’ll double-down efforts with our best.”
I didn’t breathe, and from the sounds of the woman near me, no one registered my awakened state. But whatever drugs they had me on made it impossible to do much else but listen.
Figures he’d have me drugged up and powerless, but it was an unbelievable relief to hear my two had gotten away, even if I hadn’t .
“You and your team had better, Grey, or it’s your head I’m serving to the leaders for this ridiculous ineptitude. How hard is it to find and neutralize two Hunters?”
Lux must have a real thing for serving the heads of others to these so-called leaders.
The other man grunted, and then I heard shuffling, likely shifting from one foot to the other—an agitated movement that suggested whoever Grey was, he didn’t care for the way Lux talked to him. “We think they may know where the girl is, so relocating might be necessary.”
That’s promising…
Scoffing, Lux seemed to take a moment to ponder what was said. “We won’t be long. Right, Donna?”
Spoke too soon.
Donna’s small breath was full of resignation, and something about her hesitation suggested she wasn’t there because she wanted to be. “V’s body—”
“I see what this is,” Lux commented, his tone sinister. “You think you can somehow make amends to the friend you got killed? Like that’s going to make her daughter forgive you for what you did.”
Wait…what?
Donna made another sound in her throat, clearly reacting. “I didn’t know they’d be killed,” she argued helplessly. “And you said they wouldn’t be hurt, just given a warning. They didn’t even know anything, Lux. She…Mariam didn’t know anything.” Her voice cut off into a small sob. “She would’ve told me, and I would’ve seen it in her thoughts.” Without seeing her, I knew she was crying. “She was a capable Hunter, and she would’ve listened— ”
“Bullshit. They were clearly sticking their noses where they shouldn’t, and it was only a matter of time. How else did you expect it to end, Donna? Her daughter was a genetic monster created to help us cross over to the other realms, and she would’ve done everything to get her away from us. Three hundred years’ worth of research done by trial and error would’ve been gone, vanished, ended.” Lux laughed again, his mocking tone carrying through the air.
I was still digesting the bastard’s previous accusation, but the way Donna responded was telling all on its own. Her voice quivered. Their deaths weighed heavily on her. Either she was coaxed into giving the information, or she genuinely hadn’t expected it to lead to their deaths.
Grams taught me how to detect deception and outright lies in what others said, and while I couldn’t use my sight to confirm, I was confident that Donna hadn’t wanted them hurt. She cared about my mother. It was clear in the way she said her name and how her voice softened. My mother, even now, was someone she viewed fondly.
“Make no mistake,” Lux went on officiously, “it was your information that got her parents killed. Only a handful of us knew its location. And for the same reason you ratted those two out, you’ll put an end to this girl when the time comes. Don’t lose sight of all you’ve done here to advance the Organization’s goals. The girl is a liability. Prophecy or no, she has the power to destroy our entire operation, and that means you and the ones you care about.”
“Brother—”
Brother ?
Hissing, Lux cut her off. “I told you never to call me that in public, you stupid cow. Run another magic panel,” Lux commanded, his voice razor-sharp.
“I said she needs to rest,” Donna stated in a powerful voice, finding her courage despite her earlier hesitation. The tremor was still there, still in the undercurrent of her tone, but I could almost see the faceless woman lifting her head, eyes trained to the bastard near her, ready to fight should she need to.
I didn’t know what to make out of this weird sibling situation, where one was clearly evil and the other was…conflicted? But what I did know was it meant there was a vulnerability there that I could exploit. I might be able to appeal to Donna’s affection for my mother and guilt over getting her killed. It could get me out of this shithole.
Lux tutted Donna, his voice dropping so deep it was nearly a growl. “Did I ask for your opinion? That’s an order. Run another test and call me when its finished. I have to put out a few fires, so I don’t have time to deal with another one of your existential crises, Donna. We need to access her power. Now. Whether you go home to your family or not lies solely with us being able to do so.”
It’d take someone incredibly ignorant not to read between the lines of Lux’s ominous statement. If she didn’t do what she was told, Donna was as good as dead. And maybe her family, too. Quite frankly, it was startling to think that Lux would even sell out his own sister to get what he wanted. His own blood.
Donna’s information might’ve been what led the Organization to kill my parents, but it was painfully clear she hadn’t expected it to end that way. She likely didn’t have any other choice but to do what they said. She was as much a prisoner to this place as the rest of us. I couldn’t hate her for it, even as she continued to take blood from my arm.
This was the Organization Phillip often described—out for themselves and willing to do whatever it took. It reaffirmed my desire to take them down and burn it all to the fucking ground. We were simply a means to further their agenda, and our lives were obsolete the second we stopped doing as we were told.
For a moment, I thought about Grams, hoping she was still out there kicking ass and we’d one day be reunited; that one day I’d get to wrap my arms around her and tell the wily old fox how much I loved her. But until then, I’d fight for all I was worth. That was how she’d want it.
I was vindictive, and I’d get out of here if it was the last fucking thing I did.
The sound of footsteps receding from beside me stole me away from my internal rally, and then Lux was calling out from farther away, “Once we have what we need, you’ll be the one to kill her. If you don’t, Donna, God help you, it’ll be the last time you ever defy me. I’m done giving you chances.”
So they had a way to kill me. Or at least they thought they did. Just another reason to work my ass off to get out of here.
The eerie threat lingered in the air as the room door clanked shut, and then it was just the two of us. The silence went on for nearly ten minutes before I felt Donna’s hand touch my arm, the trembling caress shocking to my hypersensitive senses.
Then Donna was whispering, so faintly it would’ve been inaudible to human ears. “I know you’re awake, and I know you haven’t any reason to trust me…” As if her words summoned my mobility, my fingers moved and I could finally take a deep, powerful breath. “Don’t move. Don’t breathe,” she whispered urgently. “I’m not talking to you with my voice. I’m reaching out to you through your mind. They’ll be watching, so try not to move at all.”
I froze, no longer breathing.
Her hands worked on my arm for a second, a few things coming loose, then her voice was in my head again like before. “Your mother and I were best friends a long time ago, and my mistake led to her death. I told my brother something I shouldn’t have, and I haven’t any right to ask you for forgiveness. I deserve whatever fate comes to me after this. But if you could just…” Her soft, barely-there voice in my head trailed off. “If you could just get my family to safety once you’ve escaped, that would mean the world to me.”
My heart ached for her. The resignation in her voice was in every word. Whatever she planned to do, she knew she wouldn’t come out of it alive. And I wanted to tell her that she didn’t need to sacrifice herself, but I was afraid of interrupting.
When she didn’t immediately talk inside my head again, an anxious coil started in my stomach, but then my body felt lighter, less drugged. I sensed the power within flutter and move, alert and flickering anxiously to life. I slowed my heart and smothered the urge to breathe in relief. My entire escape rested on my ability to control my body’s reactions, and I focused all my attention on that while Donna’s voice continued like a faraway melody in my head.
I tuned into it, listening intently to every soft word.
“After you hear me leave this room, wait three minutes. I’ll cause a distraction. Leave through the door and take a right. I have an extra keycard, weapons, and equipment in my office. Use them. The code is 42768. Take a right out of my office and follow the hall all the way down. Use my keycard to get through the double doors, and watch out for Hunters. There will be a small, keycard-access-only door when you walk through. Go in and take the elevator to the top. It’s a back access for this facility, and one only myself and a few others can use.”
Her voice was wispy and hurried, but I listened carefully, missing nothing, and repeated the code she told me over and over in my head.
“Lux is gone for now, probably in an attempt to keep the other leaders off his scent, so it’s only I think eight other Hunters and about a dozen scientists who run this underground lab. The scientists are all here involuntarily, blackmailed to work on this project in secret for Lux, so they won’t fight you. They’re scared and don’t have any choice but to be here.”
Scared, like Donna was. Hostage, like Donna was. Left with no other choice, like Donna was. And it hurt to think that she was cornered, forced to be here, threatened to do things she didn’t agree with. It was all there in the way she fought back, in the grief-stricken voice when my mother’s death was blamed on her. A victim of a shitty-ass fate manufactured by the Organization the same way mine was.
I wanted to see the woman who was saving my life, knowing my mother had once called her a friend, but I wouldn’t risk it.
“I’m going to unbind you. I can’t fight like you can, or do more than this, but I can make sure they don’t know you’re gone right away.” I heard her take a small, anguished breath, and I knew right away she was crying again. “You look so much like your mother. Mariam would be so proud of the woman you’ve become. ”
Donna’s hand touched mine, and the warmth was so powerful I nearly reacted. “There are far more of us behind you than you realize. You’ve given us hope, so much hope, V, and I’m so grateful to you. I wished you weren’t forced to do any of this, you’re so young…much like your mother was.” Her voice cut out, and I heard her swallow another sob. “But you’re never alone. Simply ask ‘Do you speak of flames and games?’ and if they respond ‘Only flames,’ then you know they are one of us. Most importantly, if I die here today, I stand with you, with all that you are. We all do. Never forget that we’ll come if you call us, whenever, wherever. We’ll give our lives to fight back the minute you ask.”
My throat was suddenly seized with emotion.
She’d given me hope that I hadn’t realized was wavering. Knowing I wasn’t alone, knowing I could find others, knowing that I had allies, it was more than I could’ve ever hoped for. I’d get the fuck out of here, and if I had anything to do with it, I’d save Donna and her loved ones when I did.
I sent out my thoughts, hoping they’d reach her mind the same way hers did mine. “Thank you. I don’t blame you. Whatever your reasons, it’s the Organization who’s done this, not you. And I’m going to get us both out of this, Donna. I don’t leave people behind.”
She made a little sound in her throat and sniffled before I heard her shuffle across the floor quickly. The door creaked and then thudded shut. As instructed, I counted the minutes until I could escape this hellhole, or burn it down to the ground trying.
It’s time for the vindictive bitch, V, to show these bastards who they’re messing with…