A Shade of Vampire 28: A Touch of Truth (14 page)

“Thank you,” I said, even as I felt another twinge of guilt. After all the trouble I’d caused, it felt like the last thing I ought to be doing was causing more potential trouble for my father.

We didn’t have to wait long for Lucas and Kailyn to return. They finished chasing off the mutants quickly and hurtled back up toward us.

“Hello,” Lucas said, eyeing me. He reached out a hand and mussed my already thoroughly mussed and matted hair. “You look like you’ve been having fun.”

I coughed out a dry half-laugh. “Yeah,” I managed weakly.

“Lucas,” my father said, turning to my great-uncle, “I’m not finished here yet. I need to go down to search that large building—a crematorium. There are two young people I need to look for. Will you come with me?”

He shrugged. “Yeah, all right. Which two young people?”

“More on that in a minute,” my father replied. He faced Kailyn and addressed her. “I need you to return Grace to The Shade right now. God knows what injuries she’s sustained while she’s been here. Take her to the hospital and have her seen immediately.”

“Right,” Kailyn said, her jaw setting. My father transferred me to Kailyn’s open arms, and I clung on to her like a monkey.

I cast one last glance at my father.

“Thank you, Dad,” I said. “And please, be careful.”

He nodded, offering me a small smile, before turning to Lucas to continue conversing with him.

Then Kailyn drew us away from the two and began hurtling away with me, back toward the heart of the city. She traveled with such speed that I struggled to keep my eyes open. Which wasn’t a bad thing. I closed my eyes on the dead city and all its horrors slipping away beneath us, and nestled my forehead against the crook of Kailyn’s neck.

Home.

I’m going home.

A
fter witnessing
Atticus’ conversation in his office, we discovered the river running right by the IBSI’s compound. From there, we began soaring over the ruined city, scouring the roads for signs of the hunters’ presence. The hunters were like bloodhounds. I figured that it wouldn’t take them long to locate Grace, and heading in the direction they were heading seemed like the best strategy.

The majority of hunter activity had appeared to be along the coast. We traveled there and continued searching until explosions caught our attention further up the shore, and we were pulled in that direction immediately. Then I heard Grace yelling. And I found my baby girl.

Truth be told, I didn’t need a lot of convincing from my daughter to venture down to the crematorium. Ever since I’d glimpsed Atticus’ laptop screen, those eight words had been etched at the back of my mind.

“Fight for Open Education on the Bloodless Antidote.”

What, exactly, did that mean? Now that we had found Grace, she was safe with Kailyn, and I knew that she would soon reach The Shade, my mind had room to mull over this question thoroughly.

Besides, we had come all this way, and now that I was here, I wanted to sniff around a bit more and try to piece together some clues.

Lucas and I thinned ourselves and then descended on the giant crematorium. Passing the smoking chimneys, we needed to decide from which direction to first enter the building. Lucas figured that the front was as good as any place to start, and so we dipped down to the parking lot, which was still blazing. We moved through the heavy metal entrance—above which was fixed an old, rickety sign, “Lakeside Crematorium”—and emerged in the interior of the building.

The entrance chamber was an oblong, stark white room lit by fluorescent ceiling strips. It contained not a single piece of furniture; its only purpose seemed to be to lead to the next room, which was guarded by a steel door that looked as sturdy as the main entrance.

Passing through this one and arriving on the other side, Lucas and I stopped short. We gaped.

This… this wasn’t a crematorium. Perhaps the building had once been used as such, but now… it was some kind of colossal, multi-layered laboratory. It was built like an atrium, with a concave ceiling that extended high overhead. Including the ground floor that sprawled out in front of us, I counted ten levels altogether. Countless hunters dressed in black uniforms milled about the aisles, and each level was jam-packed with rows of stainless-steel tables and filled with chemistry apparatus—except the top two floors. Those platforms appeared to consist of… cages. At least, based on what we could see of them from here.

Lucas and I moved upward and landed on the ninth level. We found ourselves gazing around at a maze of cages filled with Bloodless. I had no idea what the cages were made of, but they must have been strong to withstand the way many of them were ripping at the bars.

There were only a few hunters we could spot up here, moving among the rows of cells.

“I wonder why on earth they’re keeping them caged up in here,” Lucas muttered beneath his breath. “There are more than enough of these things outside.”

We continued scoping out the floor until we came full circle on ourselves. We barely spotted a single one of the hundreds of cages that did not contain a Bloodless.

“Let’s check the floor above us,” I whispered.

We floated upward, landing on yet another level filled with cages. But these were not filled with Bloodless. These were occupied by pale, sickly-looking people. My immediate instinct was to label them as half-bloods, but I wasn’t so sure. Somehow, they looked more ill than the conventional half-blood—like River used to look.

Although their heads were mostly shaven, their hair was very thin, with barely enough body to cover the white of their scalps. Their skin was so thin it showed an unhealthy number of veins. And they were very, very pale.

What are these hunters playing at?

“Look over there… the back of this row,” Lucas whispered.

Having been looking down the row to our left, I turned and looked to our right, and saw it. About twenty of the same type of pale humans, all lined up in a row next to each other. They sat upright, their backs against the wall. Surrounding them was a scattering of brown fabric bags and a trio of hunters. The reason for the hostages’ rigidness became clear. The hunters were armed and were aiming their guns threateningly at them.

Lucas and I froze and watched as one of the IBSI members stooped down and grabbed the arm of one of the men—a middle-aged man with a harsh, triangular jaw and scars marring almost every inch of his face.

“You’ll be coming with me,” the hunter said in a low voice.

He pulled the man up and stood him against one of the cages. Then he returned to the cluster and picked out another person—a woman this time, perhaps in her late twenties. I reminded myself of the reason I was down here in the first place—to reclaim Grace’s friends—and became immediately alert to verify that the woman was not Maura. It seemed that she wasn’t. This woman was tall, I estimated about five foot ten. Besides, she had light hair, not dark like Maura was supposed to have.

The hunter then stooped for a third person—another middle-aged man. Once he had them all lined up in a row, he nudged their backs, indicating that they move forward… toward us.

Even though we had thinned ourselves, we backed up anyway and let them pass. The hunters remaining withdrew syringes from a bag hanging on the outside of one of the cages before they began forcibly sedating each one of the crowd. The drug was practically instantaneous. Only seconds after the needle had sunk through their flesh, their heads lolled and they slid into a lying position on the floor.

We waited for the two hunters to leave the group of unconscious people before approaching. I examined each of them carefully. Then, right at the back of the group, I spotted a young man with a bloody, injured shoulder. There was a large man in front of him who must’ve been blocking my view of him before now.

This youth fit the description. He had to be Orlando.

I quickly looked around us to verify that there were no more hunters nearby. On spotting none, I addressed my uncle. “Okay, this is one of them. Now let’s search the rest of this level to see if we can find his sister.”

I double-checked that I hadn’t missed Maura among this cluster of bodies, and on seeing that I hadn’t, we began moving strategically along the rows of cells in search of the girl. We didn’t spot her in any of them. We came across a few shortish women, but none of them looked even remotely similar to Orlando.

If Maura wasn’t up here, among the other people of her kind, I couldn’t think where she would be. Perhaps she hadn’t been brought to this so-called crematorium after all and Grace had been mistaken.

We headed back to Orlando.

“So it looks like we’re going to have to forget about the girl,” I whispered to Lucas. “She doesn’t seem to be in here. At least we found this guy… Now we need to think about the best way to get him out.”

“Well,” Lucas replied, “we’ll just make a run for it. Scoop him up and head to the exit—we’ll be out before any of them realize what happened.”

“Right,” I agreed.

Lucas and I solidified ourselves and swiftly picked Orlando up. We dashed toward the edge of the floor, but just before we dove over the edge, bone-chilling screaming made us stop short in our tracks. It was the screaming of a man.

“What the…” Lucas breathed.

It sounded like it was coming from directly beneath us, an estimation that seemed to be confirmed when a second noise pierced through the atrium. Screeching. The screeching of Bloodless.
What is going on?

I shifted Orlando’s weight to Lucas. “Take Orlando and get out of here. I’m going to thin myself and check out what the heck is going on down there.”

I was glad when Lucas didn’t argue—I’d thought he might want to come with me too. Juggling Orlando’s full weight, which frankly wasn’t much due to his light build, Lucas bolted with Orlando over the floor’s barrier and hurtled toward the exit. As Lucas had predicted, by the time the hunters had been alerted to his and Orlando’s forms darting through the air, he had already reached the first exit. Satisfied that Lucas needed no help from me, I reassumed my subtle form and lowered myself to the level beneath—the Bloodless’ level.

The hunters who’d left the upper level were standing outside one of the cages in a corner. I moved closer and witnessed the source of the scream and the screech. The scar-faced man had been locked inside the cage. He was crammed up against its wall on the floor while a Bloodless crawled over him and tore into his neck. I zoomed closer, barely even breathing as I gaped.

The man was already beginning to shake and tremble—the first signs of turning into one of those dreaded creatures. One of the hunters was gripping a long, extendable syringe. As the man’s trembling intensified, the hunter dug the needle through the bars of the cage and caught his neck on the side that the Bloodless wasn’t occupying. The hunter pulled a small lever at the side of the spearlike syringe and drew out what looked like a couple hundred milliliters’ worth of blood. He pulled the syringe back through the bars and held it upright. After several minutes, the Bloodless voluntarily climbed off the man, who was now vibrating so violently his limbs lifted off the floor, like he was being jolted with volts of electricity. The Bloodless rose to its feet… and that was when it struck me how short it was.

I looked closer still, trying to make out the distinctive facial features this noseless monster had once had. It was incredibly difficult but… as my eyes lowered to its chest, I could make out an ever so slight bump of breasts. This indicated that the Bloodless was only newly turned, for after a while, Bloodless’ fat deposits wasted away completely and they tended to look androgynous.

I stopped breathing for a moment as a chilling thought crept into my mind.

Could this Bloodless be Maura?

Having never seen her, and only having Grace’s vague description to go by, there was no way I could say for certain. All I knew was that I hadn’t been able to find the girl even though Grace had suspected that she had been brought down here, this Bloodless was the right height, and she was clearly newly turned.

But whether she was or was not Maura, there was nothing I could do now. She was gone either way.

I shuddered internally, witnessing the Bloodless extend her tongue to lick away the streams of blood spilling from either side of her mouth.

And I once again questioned myself:

What are these hunters doing?

I
kept
my eyes closed for most of the journey back to The Shade. I didn’t want to open them again until we’d arrived, safe within the island.

Visions of that city still haunted me. Its darkness, its hopelessness. I could still practically feel its chill in my bones, even as we crossed the ocean toward warmer weather.

I kept thinking about Orlando and his sister. If they were still alive, I was sure that my father and great-uncle would find them. And then they would come back to The Shade, and I would have finally fulfilled my promise to them… even if they had failed to help me reach a phone in the end.

“Well, looks like we’re here,” Kailyn said cheerfully, causing my eyelids to shoot open. Gazing at the waves churning beneath us, I caught sight of the familiar rock formation outside The Shade’s boundary. We were nearing the island’s port.

Kailyn hovered with me over the invisible barrier and we moved closer to where she estimated the mainland was. Then we began yelling down for somebody to let us in. It was Corrine who emerged, Arwen following close behind her. I had never seen either of them look so relieved as they rushed toward us in the air.

Corrine wrapped her arms around me as I clung to Kailyn and pressed a deep kiss against my cheek.

“Thank God you’re all right, Grace. You wouldn’t believe the earful I’ve given Arwen for taking you to Hawaii. I mean, dammit, Grace, what were you thinking? You went venturing out to practically the exact spot where your father and aunt first got into trouble—”

I was spared from answering Corrine as Arwen rushed forward and hugged me tight.

“How are you?” she asked, her face stricken with guilt. “I’m so sorry.”

“It’s not your fault!” I exclaimed. Then I addressed Corrine. “It really wasn’t Arwen’s fault. She took me to Hawaii only because I requested it. She was doing me a huge favor.”

Before Corrine could respond, Kailyn said, “Ben said we need to take Grace to the hospital right away and check her out.”

My mind turned back to the wound in my leg, where the Bloodless had bitten me. It still tingled slightly, though it had stopped stinging. I hadn’t had the chance to look at it for ages. There had been far too many things going on and my injury had become the last thing on my mind.

Corrine performed her routine identity check, then allowed Kailyn and me through the barrier. Together we headed directly to the hospital. They took me to one of the long-stay rooms, equipped with a television which was playing some news channel in the background and even a small shelf of books. But the only thing I was interested in at this moment was the soft, warm bed. When they laid me down on it, I turned to Kailyn, about to request that she go inform my mother and the rest of my family that I was back, but the fae had already anticipated my request. “I’ll fetch your mom and everyone else now.”

She hurried off, leaving me with Arwen and Corrine.

“So,” Corrine began, standing at my bedside. “I won’t ask you to recount everything now, since you’ll only have to repeat it again when your mother arrives. You must tell me, however, any injuries you might have sustained, and how you’re feeling in general.”

I considered the latter question first.
How am I feeling?
It felt like a part of me was still shellshocked, to be honest. The last twenty-four hours especially had just been a blur of one insane, terrifying situation after the other.

I blew out a breath, and leaned back against my pillows. “I’m feeling… relieved. That’s all I’m feeling right now,” I replied.

“And are there no injuries you need me to look at? Nothing at all?” She raised her eyebrows, surprised.

I showed her the finger I suspected was broken, and she healed it within a matter of minutes. Then I cleared my throat, and reached down to tug at my pants. “This leg,” I said, raising it tentatively. “You should take a look at this leg.” Even as I said the words, I was bracing myself for the witch’s reaction.

I’d predicted it precisely. Her mouth dropped open as she glimpsed the fang wounds. Her eyes shot to me, wide with horror.

“Grace,” she gasped. “What… You were
bitten
?”

I swallowed hard, and nodded.

“By a Bloodless?” Arwen asked, looking just as petrified as her mother.

I nodded again. “But I haven’t turned yet… obviously. And this happened like, over twenty-four hours ago now, I think. I think my being half fae has counteracted it. I-I’m still okay.”

Corrine fell silent. She and Arwen leaned over closer to my wounds to inspect them. Then Corrine looked me over from head to toe.

She straightened. “Right,” she said, letting out a breath. “We’re going to have to hope you’ll be fine, since as you well know, neither the witches nor the jinn of The Shade are able to counteract the venom.” A tense silence followed her words. “You… you haven’t experienced any symptoms at all?” she asked, almost disbelieving.

“No,” I replied quickly. “I mean, the wounds stung like hell at first, and they still tingle a bit, but they’re deep wounds that still haven’t fully healed over…”

“No trembling, shivering, etc?” she pressed.

I was about to blurt out, “No,” again, but it wasn’t exactly true that I hadn’t been shivering. I had felt cold a lot while I’d been in Chicago, but anyone would have. I’d been drenched to the bone in rainwater much of the time, for heaven’s sake. I realized that I did still feel rather cold even now, but my clothes were still damp, and this room was pretty chilly. “No,” I replied firmly. “Nothing.”

“Okay,” Corrine said. “Well, I’m going to examine you further, but the first thing you should do is take a shower and clean yourself up.”

“Agreed,” I said. I couldn’t nod vigorously enough.

The witches stripped me out of my filthy clothes and ushered me into the bathroom. Here I ran the shower, as hot as it would go, and stepped inside. I cherished the clean, steaming water like it was liquid gold as it beat down against my back. I rinsed all the muck off my body and washed my hair thoroughly, applying four rounds of conditioner just to get it free from tangles. The rash that had broken out on my skin from the contaminated river water had faded now.

By the time I stepped out of the bathroom, wearing a pair of fresh cotton pajamas I’d found in one of the closets, my heart leapt to see that my mother and family were already waiting for me in the bedroom.

My mother’s face lit up like fireworks. I leapt into her arms and held her tight, even as she kissed my cheeks over and over again. “Oh, Grace! You have
no idea
how worried I’ve been!”

“I know, Mom. And I’m sorry.”

My mom wouldn’t let me go for another five minutes. She held onto me like a mother bear. When I finally backed away, I moved to greet my grandmother, Sofia, who was next in line, then my grandfather, Derek, my other grandmother, Nadia, my aunts Rose, Lalia and Dafne, Uncle Caleb and Jamil, great-grandfather Aiden, great-aunt and uncle Vivienne and Xavier, and finally Victoria, Hazel and Benedict, who’d also come along to see me. Kailyn had returned, too.

I hugged the rest of my family one by one, curious to know what had been going on with everyone while I’d been away. Benedict was the last to embrace me. As I pulled away, he said with a grin, “I sure have missed you, Gracie…”

Taking in Benedict’s boyish face, I realized that I truly meant it when I replied, “And I missed you too, squirt.” Before my cousin could tack on a misplaced comment which I sensed was seconds from rolling off his tongue, I turned to my mother. “I’ve got a lot to tell you guys,” I said.

Corrine brought in some extra chairs for everyone to take a seat around my bed, while I sank into the mattress and leaned against the headboard.

“I want to see your wounds before anything else, Grace,” my mother said, anxiety washing over her relief. A part of me had been kind of hoping Corrine wouldn’t have mentioned them to my family yet. I’d wanted to give them at least a short breather from worrying about me. But of course Corrine would have clued them in.

My mother rolled up my pants to reveal my cleaned bite marks. Her breath hitched. Everyone crowded over my bed and stared down at them.

“You’ve really experienced no symptoms?” my mother asked.

“No,” I replied, feeling more confident in my answer this time. I felt warmer now after my hot shower. Perhaps Corrine had turned up the heat in this room, too. I instinctively clutched my blankets around me all the same, finding them comforting.

“I had wanted to do a full examination on her before you arrived,” Corrine explained to my mother, “but I suppose it was stupid of me to think I could fit it in before you guys came rushing in. And now you are here, I guess I have to wait until she’s finished telling her story… though I would much prefer to check her out now.”

“I don’t have any other injuries,” I told the witch confidently. I’d been bashed about a lot—I had bruises and cuts aplenty, for sure—but I hadn’t noticed anything else very serious in the shower. “I’m okay,” I said, offering them a smile. “Really, the examination can wait. Now, I’d like to tell you everything.”

“First tell us where your father is,” my mother requested, nervous.

“He and Lucas should be arriving anytime now,” I explained. “They stayed back because, well, I made a couple of friends while I was in Chicago, and they were in trouble—I asked him to help them. Dad and Lucas are probably on their way back now, as we speak. Maybe even nearing the island. It’s been a while since we left them.”

“Okay,” my mother said, loosening up a little. She reached out and held my hand. “So start at the beginning.”

And so I did. I took my mind back to everything that had happened since my parents departed with the League for the ogres’ kingdom.

I told them about my investigation into Georgina’s background, my visit to her parents in the UK, how Arwen and I ended up in Hawaii, and then my eventual capture and escape into Bloodless territory. My father returned at this point in the story. He and Lucas hurried into the room, and to my delight, they were carrying Orlando.

I leapt off the bed and hurried to them.

“Is he okay?” I whispered, checking his pulse.

“Well, as you can see, he’s breathing,” my father replied.

“Hardly looks okay though, does he?” Lucas muttered.

As okay as a terminally ill person can be…

My gaze rose to my father. “And Maura?” I asked hopefully, even though I had already assumed they had not been able to find her.

My father shook his head darkly.

Ouch
. I couldn’t say that I would exactly miss the girl, but that would be a tough pill for Orlando to swallow when he woke up.

“Arwen,” Corrine said, “take this lad into one of the spare rooms and have someone look at him.”

Arwen obeyed her mother, approaching Orlando and vanishing the two of them from the spot.

I rose to my feet. My mother was already wrapped in my father’s arms, greeting him. I hugged Lucas in the meantime, thanking him, and then gave my father a proper greeting when my mother had stepped back.

Then I returned to my bed, Lucas and my father taking seats around me with the others.

Although I still hadn’t finished my story, and indeed, I would have to start again for my father and Lucas, I was too anxious to hear what my father had seen in the crematorium and where exactly he had found Orlando. I fired the questions at him in quick succession.

My father’s brow was furrowed, and I noticed for the first time how… distant he looked. Although he sat just feet away from me, his mind still seemed far away. He cleared his throat.

“Something very odd is going on with the IBSI,” he said finally. His voice was surprisingly hoarse. He locked eyes with my grandfather Derek, who raised his brows in question.

“What?” my grandfather asked.

My father stood and began pacing up and down by my bed. Then his gaze returned to me. “Grace, that
crematorium
was not a crematorium.”

“Huh?” I asked, wrinkling my nose in confusion.

“It was not a crematorium,” he repeated. “It was a massive laboratory, with whole floors containing cages of Bloodless and people like Orlando. They are using the Bloodless for something. We witnessed them feeding one of the sickly humans—a man—to a Bloodless in a cage who, uh, I have a suspicion was actually Maura.”

My jaw dropped. “W-What? Are you serious?”

“Of course I could be mistaken, but she was the right height…” He let his words linger in the air for several moments before continuing, “As they fed the man to the Bloodless, they withdrew blood from him as he was in the process of turning. They’re doing
some kind
of major experimentation, or major research… or… I don’t know what.” He exhaled in frustration, his expression growing more agitated.

“Ben,” my grandfather said, “you need to start from the beginning for the rest of us. We have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Yes, yes, I know,” my father said, still disconnected. He took a seat again and recounted the first part of his story that I also had not heard—how he’d left The Shade and managed to figure out that I was in Chicago.

“We scoured the Chicago HQ,” Ben explained, “and we managed to locate Atticus’s room. He was on the phone to someone, and he referred to Grace having leapt into the river before escaping into the other part of the city.” He stopped abruptly, his disturbed expression returning. “Dammit, they’re up to something. I caught sight of something on his computer screen.
Fight for open education on the Bloodless antidote
. But he slammed the laptop shut before I could read further, and then I needed to…”

I barely heard the rest of my father’s sentence. I almost choked on my tongue as the words trickled through my brain.

Fight for open education on the Bloodless antidote.

F for Fight… O for Open… E for…

“Oh, my God!”
I practically screamed, leaping from my bed like a Jack-in-the-Box and scaring the crap out of everyone. “FOEBA!” I stammered. “That’s what damn FOEBA must stand for! Fight for Open Education on the Bloodless Antidote!”

A silence descended on the room. Everyone stared at me.