CHAPTER 13 #3
“Please don’t do this,” she pleaded with Nadine. “There are shortages across the city. If we can’t get her next vial of insulin—”
“I’m sure your prince has friends who can get it for you,” Nadine said smugly. “Now stop stalling.”
Heart sinking, Dani took out her phone to make the transfer.
“She’s going to be a problem,” Evan said as they hurried to the pickup point ten minutes later. “And we could very well be walking into a trap the moment we get home.”
“What was I supposed to do, not transfer the money?” They hurried around a car that had been set on fire. The riots were getting increasingly bad with every passing night. “We both know she would have called it in for sure.”
“No, you did the right thing. I just hate this.”
Sera stepped out from the shadows, dressed all in black with slim gloves. She nodded to them. “Ready?”
Dani held her breath as Sera ghosted them across the sector to the borderlands.
As soon as they resolidified, the shelling and gunfire, which were always audible in the distance, thundered overhead.
Evan grabbed her arm, pulling her behind a building that was so cratered with old missile strikes, it was a wonder it was still standing.
“Let’s go,” her sister shouted. “It’s this way.”
They hurried between buildings until eventually the sounds of bombs falling quieted.
“Who are we meeting with?” Dani called into the dark.
“We have reason to believe Cavalieri may be running illegal medical experiments at one of his facilities nearby.” Sera motioned her down the next alley. “Two women recently escaped. The resistance has been hiding them ever since.”
“Escaped from where?”
They made their way up to a building that was even more run down than the rest. There was no glass left in any of the windows. One entire wall had been blown off.
Sera led the way inside. “They aren’t sure.
They were picked up by a patrol after curfew, taken to an underground prison and drugged.
One of the girls heard a guard talking, saying how the Cavalieri trials were performing better in the second stages, and that only five percent of the vaccinated females had gotten pregnant after being dosed. ”
“They’re taking humans off the streets to run experiments on a new birth control injectable?” Dani frowned. “Why? There’s already an injection they use to prevent pregnancy. You gave it to me at the auction house. They don’t want vampire-human hybrids.”
“We’re still evaluating that part of what they reported back because you’re right, it’s a lot of trouble to go to for drugs that have been on the market for decades. It’s the second girl who escaped that we really need to talk to. And she only wants to talk to you.”
“Me?”
“I think she’s taken with the idea of a commoner marrying the prince,” Sera said. “She’s been watching some of the gossip shows as an escape. Just say you’ve come to check on her and wanted to see how she was doing. Unofficial royal visit sort of thing. We do them all the time.”
They entered what must have been someone’s kitchen back before the pandemics. Two armed guards stood in the shadows. At Evan’s nod, they rolled back a rug over the floor and lifted a metal grate. Beneath it was a ladder leading down into the dark.
“You can’t take us down?” Dani whispered to Sera.
“It’s warded,” Evan answered. “And you know Cinder practically climbs up the side of the building every night after hunting rats, right?”
“Yes, but that cat is possessed.” Taking a deep breath, Dani swung her foot over the edge and began to climb.
At the bottom of the ladder, they were met by a woman in fatigues.
Her eyes were rimmed with dark circles and her hair was pulled back in a no-nonsense braid.
Between the clothes and the dim lighting cast by a string of bulbs hung overhead, it took Dani a second to recognize her friend from the auction house.
“Giselle!” She grabbed her in a tight hug. “Oh, I’m so glad you weren’t hurt. When you disappeared, we all feared the worst.”
“I won’t lie. It’s been hard.” Giselle led them down the tunnel. “But I believe in what we’re fighting for. I’ll never give up on the idea of peace.” She nodded down a side passage. “Her name is Brigitte. She’s back here.”
The small alcove where the girl sat on a cot was packed to the ceiling with crates of food and water jugs. Dani couldn’t help but wonder how the resistance fighters kept from going stir crazy down here.
Seeing them, the girl’s eyes widened. “Oh my gosh. You really came. I didn’t believe you would.”
Dani took in her gaunt appearance, the worn clothes, and the hands that shook as she wrapped both arms around herself, and loathed Luciano Cavalieri all the more. Her thin shoulders stood out against the fabric of her sweater, and her red hair hung in unwashed strands around her face.
“How are you feeling, Brigitte?” She knelt beside her cot, taking care to give her enough space, not to come too close or try to touch her unless she reached out first.
“Getting better every day. I wish I could go home, but I understand why they’re saying it’s not safe yet. Not while they’re still looking for us.”
Dani nodded. “If there was anything you might have seen while you were there, please know that the resistance will keep you safe.”
“But for how long?” Tears filled Brigitte’s eyes. “I know they can’t hide me forever. They must be watching my family, if they haven’t been taken into custody already.”
“We’ll make sure your place here is secure,” Sera said from beside her. “But if you heard anything that could help us, we need to know. Time is critical.”
“They would take us out and inject us in groups.” She swiped beneath her eyes.
“Most of the time, we were kept drugged. Everyone who shared my cell was really out of it. The guards put whatever they gave us in the water so we had no choice but to drink it. But I’m a redhead.
I guess the drugs didn’t affect me the same. ”
Sera nodded. “That’s very common. So, you were the only one not completely knocked out by the water. What did you overhear?”
“Some of the guards liked to talk when they thought we were asleep. I couldn’t hear whole conversations. They had a heater on, I think. Something was always humming in the background. But I heard snippets. One of them said, ‘No one has any idea he’s sick. If it ever got out—’”
“Do you know who they were referring to?”
“They didn’t say, but the impression I got was that it was Luciano Cavalieri.”
Sera and Dani exchanged a look.
“What happened after that?”
“The other guard answered, ‘You think they can really get it to work?’ and the first one said, ‘They live forever. Their fucking blood has to be good for something.’ That was it. That was all I heard.”
Sera nodded. “You’ve been a great help.”
Dani rose. “I’m going to have my sister give you my number. If you ever need anything, please call me.”
They waited until they were at the top of the ladder and out of the tunnels to speak.
“If Luciano Cavalieri is sick, it would explain why he’s so desperate that he’d resort to kidnapping fae off the streets,” Evan said. “Can they actually synthesize a drug using fae blood?”
“It’s been tried,” Sera said grimly. “More than once, by biochemists and dark magic users alike, all willing to do anything immoral for a price. There are plenty of desperate people on the dark web willing to pay for such a thing, whether or not it’s effective.
To my knowledge, they’ve never been able to get it to work.
The fae are immortal in the sense that they don’t get sick, and they have enhanced healing abilities, just like vampires, but they can still be killed by conventional means.
Wolf shifters have the fastest regenerative abilities, but as far as I know, no one has been able to synthesize a drug from their blood that is therapeutic, but doesn’t also infect the patient with lycanthropy. ”
Sirens began to wail in the distance.
“Time to go,” Evan said grimly. “If the werewolves are advancing into the sector tonight, we don’t want to be around when they get here.”