Chapter 14 #2
“I—I don’t know what to say.” She stands and grabs her notebook. “I’ll definitely take you up on that.” She hurries to the door.
“Astrid?” Evie calls.
“Yeah?”
“Did you come here for a reason?” she prompts.
“Oh.” Astrid gives her a sheepish smile. “Yes. I just wanted to let you know that um—” She scoots back to Evie, then drops her voice to a whisper I can barely hear. “My roommate is sleeping at her boyfriend’s tonight.” She goes back to the door, more of a sway in her hips than before.
“See you later, Astrid,” Evie calls, a wolfish smile on her lips.
“Bye.”
The moment the door closes, I give Evie a wry look. “You’re hooking up with the nerd?”
Evie tosses her blonde hair over her shoulder. “I’m a nerd, too, so it works perfectly.”
“Robbing the cradle, too. She’s what, thirty?”
She feigns a look of befuddlement. “Tell me, how old is Valen, exactly?”
My lips twitch. “Touché.”
“Next time, try not to insult her right off the bat. Ease her into it, eh?” She spins back to her computer.
“Ugh, that was kind of the worst. Got reacquainted with what my foot tastes like. Do not recommend.” I open the binder again and continue my search for the proteins I’ll need for the poison.
My thoughts keep going back to what Astrid said about experimenting on vampire prisoners, but then I get a flash of Whitbine’s house.
The dead women that lined his walls, the organs in jars.
Monstrous things. I give up on the catalog and sit back, rubbing the heels of my palms in my eyes.
“You okay?” Evie asks.
“Yeah. I think I’ll stretch my legs. Be back in a few.”
“Okay cool.”
I head out of the lab.
The soldier assigned to my door stiffens, pretending he hadn’t been leaning against the wall.
I roll my eyes at him and walk in the direction of the cafeteria, or where I think it is. The corridors down here are as much of a maze as the Dragonis Manor. I traded one underground labyrinth for another.
The soldier follows, annoying me at every turn.
“Ma’am,” he calls from behind me.
I stop in the middle of the hall as a few people pass by, all of them dressed in military gear. “What?” I call.
“You aren’t allowed to wander. I’ll have to ask you to return to the lab.”
I whirl and face him. “Are you even old enough to drink?”
His mouth drops open.
“I didn’t think so. I’m letting you be my shadow. That’s going to have to be enough for you. Don’t tell me where I can and can’t go.” I turn around and resume my pace.
“Ma’am, stop.” He puts a bit more force into his voice. “I have orders. Colonel Howard said—”
I groan. “Let me tell you something, Lieutenant Who-Gives-A-Shit, if I could shove my foot up Colonel Howard’s ass, I would.”
“Wow, pretty rough, Georgia.”
I look down the hall to my left, irritation making my eye twitch. I can’t seem to catch a break.
“Can we talk?” Gage jerks his chin at my shadow. “Take a break, soldier. Fifteen minutes.”
“Yes, sir.”
“No.” I keep walking.
“Hey, come on.” Gage matches my stride easily. “I just want to talk. Please.”
“Oh, you want to talk to ‘Valen’s human whore’ now? Or is this the time when you drag me to the cells? Or, wait, maybe it’s execution time? Are we going with firing squad or gallows? Tell me now so I can dress for the occasion.”
“Georgia, stop.” Gage’s exasperated tone rankles. “You know I’d never let that happen.”
“I don’t know shit about you.” I turn down another hallway. A dead end. Dammit.
He stands a few paces behind me, and when I turn, he has the gall to give me a penitent look. “Listen, I’m sorry about what happened earlier. I never called you Valen’s whore. The general was exaggerating about a lot of things, including the execution part.”
“Really?” I cross my arms over my stomach. “He didn’t strike me as the sort of man who overstates things.”
“What you said was true.” He steps closer, his voice quieter now, and I notice the bruises on his throat from Valen’s hold. “He’s out of his depth. He spent his life training to fight human militaries, not mythical creatures powerful enough to bring down an entire country, the whole world, really.”
“Tough shit, Gage. We’re all in uncharted waters. That doesn’t make genocide okay. Or experimentation on prisoners, for that matter.” I watch him for any reaction, but he gives nothing away. “What do you want, Gage?”
“I want you to be okay.”
I sigh. “No, that’s not it.”
“It is. Look, I regret every moment I failed to get you out of that prison. I’ll regret it for the rest of my life. I don’t want to make the same mistakes now that you’re here.”
“Then get rid of my guard, get the general off my ass, and let me do my work. We could be on the cusp of creating a vaccine.”
He puts his hands in his pockets. “I can’t do that. The guard stays, and the general is my superior.”
“Then you’re no good to me.” I take a wide path around him. “We’re done here.”
“I can still help you if you’ll let me.”
“I don’t need your sort of help, and you need to stay the hell away from me.” I head back the way I came.
“Because of him?” he asks, bitterness slicing through his tone. “He’s poisoned you against me, against your own kind.”
“Believe what you want.” I keep walking, leaving him behind. “I have work to do.”