Chapter 7
Nick found he was really quite glad to find himself with ready fangs and talons that quickly began to ache for tender human flesh to mark. He made a low sound of threat, like an animal protecting its den. He supposed that was exactly what he was doing. His den and his mate.
He wasn’t going to let them touch her. He’d rip them apart first.
“We’ll be taking blood and the usual vital statistics,” Raul announced. “I’m to ask if you wish to remain together or to be separated.”
“Together,” they chorused.
“Hmm,” was all Raul had to say about that. “Behave, or you will be heavily tranquilized.” On cue, Asshole #1, the one who had fondled Amara in the lab, produced the remote to the implanted behavior modification devices.
Nick’s hands clenched into fists as Raul cautiously approached, and Amara gently covered one of his hands with one of hers, knowing he was puncturing his own palms with his nails. The medic began to prepare the tubes on his tray, and his sharp eyes spied the fresh wound on Nick’s neck.
“Would you say the climax you experienced with her bite was any different than the others? Stronger, perhaps?”
“Why, you miserable little fuck!”
Nick launched off the bed and grabbed Raul around his throat, slamming him hard against the wall even as he tore his nails across the throat of the twin with the remote and wrenched his head off his spine with a single-handed snap.
The remote went skidding under the bed as Nick let the body of the first twin fall.
Then he snarled viciously at the second one, who was fumbling for his own remote and all of a sudden looked ready to piss his pants.
“Leave it or he’s dead,” Nick spat in warning to the other man, making certain he could see the rivulets of blood oozing down Raul’s throat.
“I owed him for touching her,” he noted, pointing to the dead orderly.
“I’ll let you both walk out of here with the blood and vitals you want, but you’re not going to ask any more questions.
Got it? You want answers, you just keep spying on us like the slimy little pervert bastards you are.
If you don’t figure it out that way, then you can fuck with your own genes and find out for yourselves.
We’re done with answering your stupid surveys.
Oh”—Nick flashed fierce fangs for a smile—“and we’d like some fresh bedding and clothes so we don’t freeze our asses off anymore. We clear?”
Raul nodded and so did the other orderly.
Nick wasn’t certain they would comply once he let go, but he didn’t have much choice.
He was certain reinforcements were already on their way.
It probably hadn’t been wise to react as he had, but he hadn’t been able to help himself.
He’d seen red at what he had perceived as an insult to Amara, not to mention the bald fury at Raul’s blasé admission that they had been watching everything they did.
He had suspected, of course, but to know for certain was intrusive and painful.
Especially for Amara, he figured.
He looked back at her as he let go of Raul, suddenly worried about how she would react to the way he had so easily and coldly dispatched another human being. Even he was a little shaken by it. It was true, the crimes being committed against them warranted severity of punishment, but death?
For touching Amara, death was too good for him.
“Agent Gregory.”
Nick turned sharply at the familiar voice near the door.
There stood that same smooth doctor with the very same air of superiority he’d seen on him nearly a month ago.
Of course he could afford to feel superior.
He stood with three rather beefy-looking orderlies at his back.
At the clear threat, Nick felt his entire being bristle in defense.
Every hair on his body seemed to stand on end and he didn’t check the low warning growl rolling out of his throat.
“Relax, Agent. No one is here to harm you. You are much more valuable to us alive. I thought you might like to know that.” Paulson glanced over at Amara, his eyes lingering on her much too long for Nick’s peace of mind.
“I see we’ve made you an excellent match,” he noted with a leering sort of self-satisfied smile.
“It doesn’t always work out so well. Some resist and sulk.
Others just savagely feed and then pick separate corners.
Too often, the male kills his intended mate.
Haven’t figured out why. You might like to know you are the exception and not the rule.
This compatibility is what fascinates me.
You don’t even know each other, yet suddenly you are as familiar as old lovers.
Now, I can observe from now until doomsday, as you well know, but I can’t learn what I want to know without asking you some questions. ”
“Then you’re fucked, because we aren’t answering.”
“You will answer, or you will be separated. If you continue to be disagreeable, Agent Gregory, I will force you to watch while I lock her in another room with a newly turned male.”
“You can’t do that!” Amara cried. “Another male would kill me!”
“Why?” the doctor demanded. “How are you so certain of that?”
“Because she is mine!” Nick roared with fury, everything inside of him screaming to attack this threat before him.
But before that imperative was the demand to protect his mate at all costs.
He could do nothing that would risk what Paulson was threatening him with.
Amara was right. Now that she was marked as Nick’s mate, she would be in danger with any other males.
Oh, another male would certainly want her …
but he wouldn’t take her unless he could kill the male who had marked her first. Until he killed Nick.
How did he know this?
He just did. Just as Amara did. Instinctually. To the bone. It was an imperative written deeply into their altered DNA.
“She is mine,” Nick repeated, trying to keep his head clear of rage so he could focus and protect them both. “Another male would know that. Resent it.”
“Hmm. No man likes another man’s leavings,” Dr. Paulson sniffed.
“But I sense more. Instinct. Scent marking? Dominance? We’ve never had so large a group turned before.
In a day or two, we are going to turn you all loose in the common areas.
Morphates and regular humans all together. It will be quite a show, I imagine.”
“Morphates?” Amara asked hoarsely, her knuckles white as she clenched the blanket around her.
“You aren’t vampires, my dear. We call your breed Morphates.
Humans, or rather, primates, morphed into a better breed.
Everything about you is enhanced. Senses, strength, sexuality, reflexes, and, obviously, animal instinct.
We revived what has been so deeply repressed.
Think of it, Agent Gregory. You have undergone a dramatic physical change on a cellular level that allows you to heal and regenerate at a phenomenal rate of speed.
This means you will be forever young and always perfectly healthy.
The savagery you exhibit, granted, is a poor side effect, but we will perfect this one day.
Watching how you have maintained and regained control over yourself tells us how close we are coming to exactly that.
Now we will turn you loose on each other and see what happens. ”
Paulson glanced over Nick’s naked form.
“Clothe them. Fresh bedding. Bring them some food.”
The doctor exited and kept his head attached only because Amara reached for Nick’s hand and drew him back toward her.
“Please. I’m frightened.”
Nick understood she meant to ask him not to do anything that would separate them.
He wouldn’t. He couldn’t. God, what would have happened to Amara had he not desired her?
Nick wondered. What would he have done to her?
Clearly, these men of medicine didn’t want to intervene, preferring instead to observe as their creations ripped each other to shreds.
The very idea of it made Nick sick to his stomach.
He turned and wrapped his arms around Amara, holding her tightly against himself as they watched the orderlies carry out their orders in the cramped room.
With shaking hands, Raul took the blood he needed, beating a hasty retreat when Nick curled an aggressive lip back from his distended fangs.
As soon as the door hissed closed on its pneumatics, Nick grabbed for the pile of smaller clothing and quickly helped her into the sweats and tee.
He snagged sweats for himself and then sat down on the new mattress.
He drew Amara down onto his lap and into the protective circle of his embrace.
She hooked an arm around his neck and he could feel the burn of her cheek against his and knew she was struggling with emotion.
“Morphates,” she rasped. “Well, at least it wasn’t random. At least they were looking to produce something specific.”
“Yeah,” he agreed stiffly.
“What is it?” she asked, immediately picking up on his tension.
Nick’s gut feeling, again, was to protect her, but he was also aware that she had a right to know everything since it was her fate as well as his.
“He told us too much,” he whispered softly against the curve of her ear.
“It means they are never going to let us go, Amara. They are never going to allow us to tell anyone what happened to us. They’re going to kill us when they’re done with us.
Obviously we aren’t the first generation of these Morphates.
We’re just the latest and the greatest. Once they develop a better batch … ”
“We’ll be obsolete.”
“Yes,” he sighed softly, squeezing her in comfort when she shuddered with fear and revulsion toward their captors.
“Nick. Nick, I’m afraid of how I feel. I watched you kill that man and I was so satisfied, so proud of you for it.
I can manage that. I can understand what made me feel that way.
But when that doctor was in here … I wanted to sink my teeth in his throat and rip it out.
Half of me wanted to feast on his blood, the other just wanted to rip him to shreds.
If he hadn’t left just then, I would have. I haven’t killed anyone …”
“I know, honey.” He tried to soothe her softly.
“… since I was sixteen.”
That made Nick go really quite still in shock. Strange. He had seen just about everything from killer grannies to drug-pusher babies. Why would it so surprise him to realize the quiet woman in his lap was a murderer?
“Excuse me?” he said, figuring he’d heard her wrong in spite of his acutely improved hearing.
“I grew up on the streets of Dark Chicago, Nick. My mother was a junkie selling herself from fix to fix. I used dirty old syringes to play darts, learned to run fast and hide in small unreachable places, and stole everything I ate for years. The first person I killed was a gang boy when I was thirteen. He tried to steal from me.”
She meant he had tried to rape her. Nick could see it from the way she turned her eyes down and away.
Her clenched fists told him she didn’t regret what she had done, that she would do it again in the same circumstances.
But Nick couldn’t hold that against her.
She’d been all alone, fending for herself in the worst Dark City there was …
tied only with Dark Manhattan. The so-called Dark Cities were the abandoned sections of the cities where gangs had overrun even the police forces.
They’d been walled away, fenced up high, and ignored as best they could be by ignorant people who hoped they would stay put.
The Dark Cities grew larger with every passing year, though.
Some of them, like Chicago and Manhattan, were completely infested. Los Angeles was third runner-up.
“You don’t have to account to me for how you survived that kind of life,” he told her quietly.
“But don’t you see? I got out of it. As soon as I was able to work legitimately I left the city and worked my way into a workhouse.
It was always cold and always dismal, but it was safe.
I could sleep at night without being afraid.
I could put away those bestial instincts I’d become grown with.
I have no idea how I even knew how to be anything other than a savage. TV, I think. But …”
Nick watched with an ache in his breast as tears stung wetly into her tough copper eyes. She swallowed them back, though, clearly too proud or too stubborn to show the weakness of them.
“They’ve turned me back into one,” she whispered. “Don’t you see how easily I am adjusting to this? God, I think I am even enjoying it. Relishing it!”
“Hey, no more or less than I am,” he said sharply.
“I had the good life compared to you, but it wasn’t easy from my perspective.
I was always angry. Always violent. My mother swore I had been born mad at the world.
Thing is, I hate injustice, and this world is so full of it, it makes me choke.
When I was young I was impotent. Our society doesn’t give kids ways of helping make things better.
When I was seventeen, my father bought me a low-level commission in the Corps.
He knew if I wasn’t tempered, I’d be in jail before I was twenty because my rage would have gotten me into trouble.
” He reached to brush gentle lips against her temple.
“Thank God he did. I learned control there. I learned empowerment.”
“You learned how to make a difference. I’ve never made a difference. I’ve just survived.”
“That isn’t anything to be ashamed of. Right now, that’s all I want. I want us to survive. We have to figure out how to do that, and frankly I am glad you have all that killer survival instinct in you. When the time comes, it’s going to be really handy.”
“I never wanted to be like that again,” she said sadly, resting her cheek on his shoulder.
“Let’s just be glad we finally have a choice.”