“I bet you don’t regenerate either.”
“Ma’am,” a voice bellowed, muffled but alarmingly close. “Step back, and put your hands where I can see them.”
Ignore it, the wolf cajoled. Finish him.
I squeezed, and he let out a bubbling moan, a thin foam of blood seeping from his lips.
“Ma’am, put your hands up, or I will shoot.”
Shoot?
I looked up and was staring down the barrel of a rifle, the matte-black gun aimed right at my head.
Security, I thought, my chance to finish the job vanishing before my eyes. I took a good look at the man holding the gun, his blue-black Kevlar armor and the helmet he wore. Then I saw the eight other men in identical uniforms standing around the room, their guns leveled on me. One turned away from me, sending a signal into the hall with his fingers, but I saw the back of his armor.
Big yellow letters against the dark blue material.
FBI.
“What the fuck?” I asked, and the shock went right through me into The Doctor before I slumped off him, unconscious.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Heaven looked like a hospital room.
Or maybe that was a sure sign I was in hell.
I was dressed in a thin blue hospital gown, and my broken arm was propped over my stomach with a new, proper sling holding it in place. My good hand had returned to normal, no sign of hair or claws, just chipped nails in bad need of some polish.
The overhead lights were dimmed but still bright enough to make me uncomfortable.
Several tubes were connected to the crook of my elbow and the back of my hand, tethering me to a bank of whirring, beeping machines beside my bed.
The first sign I wasn’t dead was the headache I became almost instantly aware of. That coupled with the resurgence of nausea made me certain I hadn’t been introduced to Saint Peter and the pearly gates.
“Bloody hell,” I grumbled. My whole body felt like one giant bruise. It didn’t hold a candle to the pain of the previous week, but I wasn’t about to get up and run a marathon. Or hug anyone. I think a hug might have killed me.
One of the needles I’d been stuck with was feeding me blood, which wasn’t quite the same thing as feeding me blood, but it seemed to be helping. The aches and pains aside, my skin had some color back—as much as I was ever going to have anyway—and I couldn’t see the outlines of my bones anymore.
But, still, I was in a hospital, and there was no way that was a good thing. I’d never been to a hospital as a patient before because the risk of my blood showing up as abnormal was too high.
The blue curtain surrounding my bed rattled on its metal hoops and was pushed partially aside. At the sight of a nurse I recoiled, growling, “Get away from me.”
She stopped, color draining from her face until she was almost as pale as I was. “You’re awake.”
“Sorry to put a damper on whatever psycho tests you wanted to run.” I started to tug out my tubes, apparently finding the one attached to my heart rate monitor first. One of the machines screamed at me, and before I had a chance to get anything else pulled free, three more nurses and a doctor were around me, the curtain pushed all the way back.
I stopped what I was doing and stared past them. Open hallways, other beds with patients in them, but no sign of locked doors or cells. The doctor who leaned over me was a doctor. He wore a white lab coat and had a stethoscope around his neck. In the pocket of his coat were several pens, ones he didn’t seem concerned about having in grabbing distance.
“Where am I?” I tried to swat away their meddling hands, but I was overwhelmed. I only had one functional hand, and between the lot of them they had ten. Unfair advantage.
“Ms. McQueen, my name is Dr. Bernal. You’re at a military compound about an hour south of Sacramento. Can you tell me the last thing you remember?”
“Guns.”
“Can you be more specific?”
One of the nurses reattached the heart rate monitor, and the screaming machine got a hold of itself.
“I was trying to rip someone’s heart out, and the guy with the gun stopped me. I think they were FBI? My collar—” My good hand flew up to my neck, groping for the black plastic time bomb I’d been wearing. All I felt was skin, smooth and unadorned.
I might never wear a necklace again.
“We were able to remove the device without much difficulty. It was about a ten-thousand volt charge rigged to zap you.”
“Fuck, shit, bitch, cunt, asshole, fucker.” Once I was done, I laughed. I laughed loudly and for far longer than any sane woman should have, especially since I hadn’t said anything funny, and neither had he. “Did I kill him?” I asked, once I stopped cackling.
“No. If anything the shock to his heart restored it after you’d squeezed it.” He checked my lines, flicking a bag of fluid to ensure it was still dripping. “I’m sorry.”
I was sorry. Why should he be sorry I hadn’t murdered someone?
“Do you know what he did to me?”
The doctor stopped toying with my equipment and turned to the nurses. “You can go. I’ve got this under control. Tell the agents she’s awake, please.”
Before speaking again, he pulled my blanket up higher and placed a hand on my knee. I jerked away. I wasn’t trying to be rude, and it wasn’t that I didn’t appreciate the kindness of his gesture, but I suspected it was going to be a very long time before I felt okay letting a stranger put their hands on me.
The sympathy and pity in his expression told me everything. “It’s going to take us quite awhile before we’re able to go through Dr. Kesteral’s files. Possibly years, and that’s if the FBI is willing to put even half the time and effort into it as they should. But to answer your question, yes, I do know what he did to you. Your file was new, but it was…extensive.” Dr. Bernal tried to smile—I think he wanted me to feel better—but his lips only managed a grimace. “I’m very sorry, Ms. McQueen.”
“So you’ve read his notes.”
“Yes.”
“And you know what I am?”
He looked confused. “Of course.”
“But you’re not…surprised.”
This time he did smile. “Ah. You think because I’m human I should be running from the room in a panic, waving my arms and screaming to the masses about monsters. Is that it?”
The way he phrased it made me feel guilty for thinking it, but… “Yes.”
“Your kind isn’t nearly as clever as you’ve led yourselves to believe. You think after thousands of years coexisting with vampires we haven’t figured it out?” He lifted his hand as if he was going to touch me again, then thought better of it, putting both hands in his pockets. “There will be plenty of time to discuss it, and perhaps the agents might be better able to answer some questions, but I don’t want you talking to them for long. You need rest.”
He started pulling the curtain closed, but a question came to me that couldn’t wait. “Dr. Bernal?”
“Yes?”
“Were there other survivors?”
He stopped tugging on the curtain. “At the time of the infiltration there were twenty-two other captives on-site. We were able to retrieve eighteen. Six wolves, ten vampires and two CUOs.”
“CUOs?”
“Creatures of unknown origin.”
The curtain was almost closed when I asked, “One of the vampires…was his name Holden?”
“Your friend is fine. He’s being a rather distracting pain in the ass and has been asking for you since we brought him in, but aside from some weakness and other symptoms associated with vampire starvation, he’s doing well.”