Aurora Sky: Vampire Hunter (7 page)

Right, ’cause that’s what vampires were all about. Biting
people. It definitely concerned me that people like Melcher and Crist had
access to automatic weapons.

No wonder Melcher was always smiling. He had a lot of funny
ideas in his head. It made me smile, too.

“So are we talking storybook vampires with fangs and claws,
only come out in the night, hold the garlic, please?” I asked with a smirk.

“Not exactly,” Melcher answered, missing my sarcasm. “They
have every appearance of being human, but they’re not. They’re infected by
disease and they feed on healthy humans.”

“Ohhhh,” I said, thinking I finally got it. “You mean sick
people who have escaped quarantine. You’ve made me immune so I can hunt them
down and bring them back in?”

Crist huffed. “No, he means vampires!”

Melcher continued speaking as though there’d been no
interruption. “What you need to understand about the undead is that their
disease is what keeps them in their reanimated state. Disease is the trigger.
Rabies, plague, porphyria—we can trace plague vampires all the way back to
outbreaks in sixteenth century Italy.”

“Are you saying that people who caught the plague never
died?”

Sounded more like zombies than vampires to me.

Melcher sucked in a breath and released it quickly. “No,
thank goodness. Only individuals with type AB negative blood are at risk.”

I shot up in my chair. “I’m type AB negative! And you
injected me with a virus.”

Shit, oh shit, oh shit, oh shit.
Why hadn’t I been
able to see myself clearly in the mirror since the accident? And why was everything
so loud? I swear I’d developed a heightened sense of hearing. But I felt cold,
chilled. Vampires loved the cold. I hated the cold. I was panicking. That’s
all. This was all just a hazing.

I took a calming breath, determined to play along and not get
laughed at when Melcher admitted it was all a ruse and they’d been observing my
reactions from the very start.

“So now I’m a vampire?”

I should have earned points for asking with a straight face.

“We have an antidote to prevent that from happening,”
Melcher said. “That’s what your monthly injection is for.”

A smile tugged at my lips. “And you’re saying that if I
don’t take the
antidote
every month I’ll turn into a vampire?”

Melcher frowned for the first time. “If you stop taking the
antidote, you’ll die and there will be no heaven to welcome you on the other
side.”

I matched his frown. Maybe it was just me, but I didn’t like
people telling me I was going to hell.

“Are there any side effects to having ‘vampire blood’?” I
asked, thinking about the distortion in the mirror. At least I had a
reflection, even if it wasn’t clear. That was a good sign, right?

Melcher looked me up and down. “You might notice some
sensitivity at first, but your injections will eventually take care of any…discomforts
you may experience. Do you have any specific concerns?”

I pressed my lips together, not in the mood to share with
Mr. Self-Righteous.

Instead I asked, “Do you really expect me to believe this?”

Melcher looked at Crist. She nodded, and they stood in
unison. I turned my head to follow their movements to the door.

“We understand your denial,” Melcher said. “In fact, every
new operative goes through it. That’s why we’ve found it best to follow up this
introduction with a live demonstration. Follow me.”

Right then, getting out of that room sounded good.

I followed the agents out the double doors and back down the
way we’d come.

We entered the lobby and turned down another hall leading to
the back of the complex, away from freedom. I wondered if the woman at the
front desk would come to my aid if I called out for help.

Melcher placed a hand on my back as though sensing my
hesitation and pushed me gently forward. I walked faster just to get his hand
off me.

When we reached the end of the hall, Crist led us through a
set of swinging double doors into a second, shorter hallway. Midway down the
hall, she used her key card to unlock a metal door. She held it open, and I
followed Melcher into a small, stark room. A long metal table faced a two-way
mirror overlooking a brightly lit room.

I peered through the glass, expecting to see whatever
creature or thing the agents wanted to show me, but the room was empty except
for a metal table in the center.

Maybe they meant to stick me in there and interrogate me.

Crist stood against the door, propping it open. I followed
Melcher back into the hall where he stopped in front of room number two and
swiped his keycard. A metallic click unlocked the door. Melcher held it open.

He sounded way too serious when he next spoke. “You are
about to meet your first vampire, Aurora. I’ll warn you, he’s no Edward Cullen.
I wish there was a way to make this easier on you, but the first experience is
always traumatic. To see how your blood infects the creature you will need to
let him feed on you. Let me stress that it will come as a shock, but there’s
nothing to fear. Your blood will protect you.”

I didn’t realize my feet were making a run for it until
Crist grabbed me by the arm. “This way, Aurora.”

She released my arm long enough to shove me forward.

I spun around in time to see the door close, trapping me
inside. It was the same brightly lit room I’d seen through the window. When I
looked at the glass, the other room was gone, replaced by a featureless
reflection.

 6

There was an electronic crackle, and a voice filled the
room. “Welcome to initiation, Aurora. This test will last as long as you want”

I
wanted
out of this insane asylum. I rushed to the
door and tried yanking down the silver handle, but it didn’t budge.

I turned and my eyes raced over every square inch of the
enclosed room. There was a metal table in the very center. I walked up to it
and looked down at the weapons laid on top: a handgun, crossbow, hunting knife,
ax, and wooden stake.

The intercom crackled back to life.

 
“Once the subject has fed on your blood you will need to
choose a weapon and finish him off.”

“What? No! I’m not killing anyone. Melcher? Let me out of
here.”

“Now!” I screamed.

“Good luck, Aurora.”

I expected something horrible to occur after he signed off,
but nothing happened.

I circled the table and kept glancing at the door. Trapped
inside a windowless room with weapons that made my skin crawl. Fantastic. There
wasn’t even a clock to track the minutes dragging by. If they planned on
keeping me locked up for so long they could’ve at least put a chair inside.

I folded my arms over my chest and looked at the two-way
mirror.

“What’s the matter with Dracula? Can’t find his cape?” I
chuckled, but it sounded nervous.

I walked over to the far corner of the room and leaned my
back against the wall.

There was a hollow knock at the door across the room. It
pounded three times in succession, producing an eerie, drawn-out echo.

I wanted to crack a joke, but something didn’t feel right.
My heart pounded its way up to my throat and I’d barely swallowed when the door
flew open. A middle-aged man in flannel was thrown in. The door slammed shut
behind him. He nearly fell on the floor, but caught himself. Long greasy hair
covered his face as he bent forward. When he righted himself, I saw that his
cheeks were sunken, lips bared over yellow teeth. He snarled and spit leaked
out the corners of his mouth.

I stood up straight.

The motion caught his eye. He wheezed when he saw me. His
eyes were bloodshot. His clothes looked like they hadn’t been washed in months.

This was no vampire. This was a lunatic.

He crossed the room, passing the weapons laid out on the
table. At least he showed no interest in those.

I sprang to life, skirting the wall as I hustled to the exit
on the opposite side.

“Let me out of here!” I pounded on the door. “Let me out!” I
screamed so hard my new lungs felt ready to rupture.

The lunatic came snarling toward me. That’s what he was, not
a vampire, but a deranged madman who’d been locked in the room with me by
psychopaths. I was part of some kind of experiment. Maybe this was a test to
see how I handled stress. Maybe they wanted me as an altogether different type
of operative. They wanted to desensitize me by subjecting me to unimaginable
horrors.

Well, I didn’t care if I passed. I just wanted out—and not
just out of that room.

I kicked the door and walked over to the two-way mirror,
glaring so hard my temples throbbed. “Enjoying the show?”

I turned and began circling the room, always keeping the
table between me and the madman. He kept coming at me slowly, like a zombie in
a horror film. At least he’d shown no sudden bursts of locomotion.

We moved clockwise around the room. The space was so small
it made me dizzy, but still I moved, matching the maniac’s speed to keep him as
far from me as possible.

My neck soon ached from constantly craning it over my
shoulder to keep track of the lunatic’s location. I suppose I had my physical
therapist to thank for being able to walk for miles on end. Unfortunately, my
pursuant showed no signs of fatigue, either.

Round and round we went until my stomach began turning and
my vision blurred.

It took a while for the first feelings of exhaustion to
creep inside my consciousness. A snarling, slobbering loony will keep a girl on
her toes. But hours began to feel like days, and finally, I collapsed when
rounding a corner. I hit an elbow as I landed, sending a tingle up my arm. My
pursuer came toward me at the same creepy pace. His eyes opened wider and murky
irises burned inside.

I scrambled back to my feet and stumbled forward. I glared
into the two-way mirror.

“Why are you doing this to me?” I screamed.

I rushed to the table and picked up the revolver. Before
this moment I’d never even held a gun. I pointed it at the madman. His stared
back with vacant eyes, sunk inside a twisted face. “Stay where you are!”

He looked at me, not the gun, snarled, and kept coming.

I retreated and began sobbing when I re-entered the circle.

Make it end. Whatever it takes.

I turned suddenly and aimed the gun at the man’s leg with a
shaky hand. The last time I felt terror this all-consuming was right before
that SUV took me out. My heart seized inside my chest as I pulled back the
trigger.

Nothing happened.

“Shit!” I screamed.

I dropped the gun. It clattered over the floor as I sprinted
away and resumed my place circling directly across from the man.

Tears leaked down the corners of my eyes. It could have been
the middle of the night for all I knew. I could suddenly understand how people
went crazy. Maybe that’s what the agents were really up to—some sick experiment
to make a loon out of me.

I glanced over my shoulder. The last of my energy was
beginning to drain. I willed my feet to keep moving, but at some point they
stopped and I stood rooted in place. The maniac’s rasp was much too loud. It
sounded like hissing. It was disgusting. The fear in my heart had lessened due
to extreme fatigue, but as the foul being closed in on me, terror renewed
itself like a jolt of electricity to the brain.

I intended to shove him onto the floor. He didn’t look
sure-footed enough to handle much force. Bracing myself, I slammed both palms
against his chest, but instead of falling, the madman grabbed my arm in a
bruising crush and pulled me toward him with a deafening snarl.

At that point, my heart stopped beating. I opened my mouth,
but was unable to inhale or exhale.

A cold, sweaty hand gripped my face so hard it felt like my
jaw would break.