4. How Much Do You Know About Strangers?
FOUR
HOW MUCH DO YOU KNOW ABOUT STRANGERS?
Jack
I felt like I’d mainlined five bottles of tequila and run a marathon.
“That was some strong shit you dosed me with yesterday,” I mumbled to Dean when she appeared in my room.
She ignored me. “Baxter wants to see you again today,” she said brusquely, jerking her head towards the door. With a groan, I stood, following her out.
“This isn’t the way,” I slurred, rubbing my lips together. Pins and needles in my lips … that was a weird fucking sensation.
“We’re going a different way today,” Dean replied. “No more cutting through the mess hall. Some … stuff went down yesterday after you left, and Baxter doesn’t want any chances taken … not after …”
The drugs might have smashed me, but not enough that I didn’t realize Dean had just said more than she was probably supposed to. She stiffened, pressed her lips tight, and increased her pace down never-ending, maze-like corridors. They all looked the same. How she even knew where she was going, I had no fucking clue.
What happened yesterday? Did something happen to HER?
Fuck off!
I shook my head, hoping to dislodge that insistent voice, to find a bit more focus. I needed my wits about me to face Baxter and whatever he wanted me to do for him.
Just think about getting out of here. Think about making sure Blaire is safe and well. Think about your scholarship. You can still have that if you just do what he asks. If you just do these little jobs and get the magic drugs he’s promising, you can find a new normal out of this bullshit.
Don’t trust him, the voice warned.
I don’t have a choice.
Dean reached a door and pressed a buzzer to the side.
“I’ve got him, Agent Baxter,” she said into the intercom. It crackled.
“Send him in.”
The door clicked open, and Dean moved aside. Swallowing back every feeling I had about this, I stepped inside the room.
The restraints he’d used on me yesterday were gone, replaced with an upholstered chair that looked so corporate CEO’s office I almost laughed. Baxter was behind his desk, messing around with a tablet.
“Sit, Jack.”
I wanted to stand, just to show him that I didn’t have to follow his fucking orders. But I thought about Blaire … wherever she was … and Daphne. And Mom and Dad … well, the guy who had raised me, anyway.
I did have to follow his fucking orders. So I sat. But I didn’t have to like it.
“You gonna tell me what you want me to do?” I asked, folding my arms over my chest and glaring at him. He glanced up, a tight smile and those dead eyes fixed on me.
“How much do you know about Strangers, Jack?”
I screwed up my face. “Strangers?”
Baxter waved a hand. “Immortal beings. Drinkers and Shifters. Vampires and Werebeasts. Whatever legend you want to refer to them by. What do you know?”
I sneered at him incredulously. “I thought I made it clear the other day—I know nothing.”
Baxter smiled at me like I was a toddler having a tantrum. “I just assumed that maybe you’d come across a small number of them in those last days on Greenrock? That perhaps you’d learned some of their … lore … of their history. Something that would help you understand why what we’re doing here at Operation Stranger is so critical to the survival of humankind.”
I shrugged, not trusting my voice. What the fuck did he mean, the survival of humankind?
“Well, let me give you a condensed version. So that when I brief you on the task we have for you, you’ll understand why I need to send you along.”
My stomach dropped.
“Where are you sending me?”
Baxter watched me, one finger tapping on the surface of his desk.
“Strangers—both species of them—are as old as humanity,” he continued as if I hadn’t even asked a question. “We don’t truly know their origin, only that there are stories of them that can be traced back to all ancient civilizations.”
“Most of the legends surrounding them are utter nonsense, mind you. Drinkers are not nightwalkers. That myth came about because they only actively … hunt, after dark. Humans consoled themselves that the vampires of their myths couldn’t come out in the day. But Drinkers walk about in daylight and pass as human beings.
I closed my eyes briefly. Didn’t I know it. Roman had done just that, had just seemed a good-looking human male when he caught Blaire’s eye long before he admitted what he was. Long before she realized what she was.
“Similarly, Shifters don’t only turn at the full moon. They can shift any time. Some make full shifts into animals. Some partially shift, growing wings or fish tails. Angel and mermaid myths came about because of Shifters. Most Shifters have one beast form, and most can change part, or all, of their body at will. But there are some very rare Shifters, who can turn themselves into whatever … or whoever, they choose.”
The one that had tricked Blaire. The one she’d screamed about in the clearing. The one that had used Roman’s likeness to …
I wanted to throw up. What had he done to her? Her top had been torn and bloody when I’d caught a brief glimpse of her in that clearing.
“Where is Blaire?” I interrupted.
Baxter’s smile was icy. “Blaire is very safe right now. The creature that captured her is dead. Now, while Shifters don’t require the full moon for a shift, they do like to get together for … rituals … at that time of the month. As I think you discovered, last full moon on Greenrock.”
My teeth ground together, phantom pains from the beating I’d taken that night jarred me. He knew far more about what had gone down on Greenrock than I felt comfortable about.
“And while blood is a requirement to maintain their immortality, neither species needs to drink human blood to survive … they just crave it. It’s like a drug to them,” Baxter explained, his gray eyes darkening to charcoal, his jaw tight.
He really fucking hated them … I mean, I’d known he wasn’t their biggest fan, but he really fucking loathed them … us …
But if he hated them … us, so much, why was he creating more? Why was he growing half-breed immortals in this weird place?
“For centuries, the two immortal species did whatever they wanted. They murdered with impunity, leaving drained human corpses in their wake. But our government, along with Britain and several European nations, shared intel and learned enough about them to fight back.
“This all began decades before I was born, mind you,” Baxter continued, leaning back in his chair, toying with a pen. “There is a secret war being waged between humankind and these immortals. But they can only be killed by beheading, and getting close enough to do so is … tricky. Humanity is destined to lose that war.”
“Right, so … what’s all this got to do with your army of half-breeds?” I asked tightly. “It’d be great if you got to the point.”
Baxter laughed. The sound made me want to shiver, but I held myself still and waited.
“My predecessors worked with Fortis’s right-hand man to pen a treaty. We’d stop hunting Strangers. We’d help them to fly under the radar. In return, the wholesale murder of humans would cease. The only place to legally drink from a human would be in designated clubs that were subject to a set of laws. Where humans volunteered, with informed consent. They knew what would happen to them, knew they would be drunk from, but the treaty stipulated that they wouldn’t be drained, or torn to pieces. They wouldn’t be killed.”
I couldn’t help my shudder then.
“So, you agreed to let them continue to drink from humans?” I asked in disgust.
Baxter shrugged. “Like I said, this was years before I was even born. But I assume that there needed to be … compromises made, in order for the treaty to succeed.”
I rolled my eyes. “So, we let them basically do whatever they want, as long as they don’t murder people in the streets?”
“Essentially, yes. It was a case of you leave us alone, we leave you alone. But Fortis decided, not long after the treaty was signed, that he didn’t feel like immortal beings needed to be beholden to humankind. He moved his entourage around, to smaller countries, mostly in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. Nations where governments were already corrupt or unstable. Places he thought he could breach the treaty and get away with it.
“He befriended presidents. He used his … abilities, to have them turn a blind eye as the most bloodthirsty of his kind raped and murdered and went on blood-drinking sprees. And the death toll was easily blamed on a coup, or civil war, or ethnic cleansing.”
“So, the treaty was a waste of fucking time, then,” I snarled. I was kind of beginning to understand why Baxter hated Strangers so much.
Baxter shook his head, but his eyes had this glint in them that scared the absolute shit out of me.
“No. The treaty has merit. But not with Fortis at the head of the Coalition.”
Realization dawned on me. “You’re building an army to take him down.”
Baxter smiled indulgently like I was a clever kindergartener who’d just read a difficult word for the first time.
Don’t trust him, the voice insisted.
I need HIM to trust ME.
“There are other Strangers who are disenchanted with a lot of Fortis’s practices, both regarding humans and within their own community. We’ve been working with a number of them to build up the hybrid population that you’ve seen in this facility. They’ve been trained from a very young age to fight. To know their enemy and to want to eradicate them.
“But we’re still a long way from having a big enough number to take a stand against him.”
I frowned. “Why are you telling me all of this? I’m not one of your recruits. I’m not …” A brainwashed lab rat.
Don’t anger him. Keep him talking. Get him to trust you.
Baxter steepled his fingers in front of his face. “Because, Jack, I think you can see that what I’m planning—what we here at Operation Stranger are planning—makes sense.”
I couldn’t deny that taking Fortis down, after everything I’d learned about him, from Baxter and from overhearing Farida, was the best option.
“But if you’re a long way away from the army being big enough, how much more damage will he be able to do before you’re ready?”
Baxter’s mouth tilted down. “That’s why we met with him at Greenrock. That’s why I showed my hand.”
I remembered the cage of pacing half-breeds, barely visible through the lines of Operation Agents. They’d looked more animal than human.
“What a pity I missed all of that. You know … because I got shot.” I couldn’t keep the venom from my voice. My fingertips and jaw started to tingle. The lasting numbness of the drugs they’d dosed me with yesterday couldn’t stand in the face of my emotions.
Interesting.
Baxter’s sheepish expression forced a low rumble from my chest. I coughed to hide it.
“Yes, we’re very sorry about that,” Baxter said. “Emotions were running high, my team was … anxious. But the upside of the whole event is that Fortis is scared. All our intel says he’s gone into hiding. And … that brings me to your first little task.”
I found myself straightening, the last vestiges of the drug draining from my system with the adrenaline that pulsed.
“What would that be?”
Baxter’s elbows landed on the desk. He leaned closer.
“We go clubbing in Copenhagen.”