Vertigo Vampire: a Supernatural Thriller (The Specials Book 2) Page 9

  What if they turned out to be dangerous to me, also?

  ~~~~~

  When our shift ended at three a.m., I waved goodbye to Elliott before ducking into my room and changing clothes. In twenty minutes I was ready to leave.

  The hotel had other plans.

  I staggered as the door that I’d been in the act of reaching for suddenly jerked sideways. Then it juddered forward and back. I moved away from it, gritting my teeth against nausea, as the shifting took over the wall.

  The Architect appeared seconds later.

  He looked me over with grim, green eyes. “You need to stop interfering.”

  I couldn’t laugh, even though I was incredulous. “You’re joking.”

  “Once again, Arrow, you’re forcing yourself into the middle of something that doesn’t concern you.”

  I hated the excitement that raced through my body. Part of me wanted to fight him. Part of me…didn’t.

  “I’m trying to find out why you lied to me,” I shot back.

  “What did I lie to you about?”

  “Peerage didn’t kill Dr. Day, but you had us go after him anyway. Why? To help you clean house?”

  “Yes.”

  His flat acknowledgement threw me off course for a second. I’d expected him to deny it.

  Something dark moved through his eyes. “Deep down, Arrow, some men harbor hatred and just need a little nudge to act upon it.”

  “A nudge as in one of Tower’s gases, designed to provoke a killing rage?”

  A muscle jumped in Nathaniel’s jaw. “That had been the plan. But Tower wasn’t given the chance to implement it.”

  “Because that thing got to Day first.” I was disgusted that Nathaniel and Tower had planned to use one man to kill another. I needed to hear justification for it, otherwise I was going to meddle the roof down on top of us. “Why did you invite Day and Peerage here in the first place? Was the whole plan to kill them off?”

  “That wasn’t the whole plan, no. The results, though, aren’t something I’m too upset with.” Reading my expression, Nathaniel sighed impatiently. “Day was one of the experts who told the media that my father was responsible for the ice melt and the freeing of the demons. He looked out into the world and he lied to their faces while painting my father as the enemy of humanity.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  “For power. Acclaim. Those who cooperated, who pushed the government’s narrative, were rewarded with contracts, laboratories—anything a scientist could want.”

  “So you lured him here with the promise of VIP treatment and then Tower was supposed to use a gas on Peerage to encourage Peerage to kill him?”

  “No. We invited them here to make an exchange. Peerage was Day’s assistant in the lab. They both worked on various biological weapons projects, as well as something called Project Veil.”

  I nodded, holding my breath for more.

  “I won’t go into the details now, but the gist of it is they were working on developing supernaturals that would survive specific environmental conditions.”

  “What conditions?”

  “Microbial attacks that would affect the flora and fauna, the soil. Also, alterations to the atmosphere.”

  I frowned. “In case of future warfare? You’re talking apocalyptic scenarios?”

  “Something like that. Dr. Day and Peerage, along with three other scientists and occasionally my father, developed these creatures. The majority of them were put down for one reason or another.”

  “The majority,” I echoed, feeling my gut churn. “So some survived.”

  “We’ve been hunting them down, Tower and I, but our methods are inefficient. There are too many subjects, scattered all across the city. So I tried to bargain with Dr. Day: portions of my father’s work that no one else has seen in exchange for a list of locations where the experimental subjects are located. But Day thought he would be clever. He brought one of the subjects along with him into the hotel, perhaps hoping it would attack me. Once in the Sinistera, though, it turned on him. You and Elliott saw the results of that.”

  Hearing that the thing I’d seen in the video was a result of the war scientist’s numerous experiments chilled me. This was nothing like the biologicals that Juju claimed had leaked onto the streets. The thing I’d seen was frighteningly advanced. It could mimic a human. It could reduce the size of its matter. It could claw through a man’s face and it could bite like a vampire.

  “The body was poisoned,” I pointed out.

  Nathaniel nodded. “Contamination from the subject. Its entire mass is a poison.”

  “This is getting better and better.” I rubbed at my forehead. “And why is the Count so determined to hurt you?”

  “He blames my father for a failed experiment run by Dr. Day. My father actually had no involvement with the vampirism aspect, but the Count doesn’t want to hear it. He blames all the scientists employed at the time. His wrath knows no reason.”

  “I’m not so sure about that,” I argued. Though the encounter with the Count had been terrifying, I’d found myself able to sympathize with the vampire. His rage and pain had been genuine. I doubted vampires could lie or practice deceit that way. Whatever the scientists did to him had been awful. “I’ve yet to hear of anything good coming from the scientists’ involvement during the war. In fact, they all sound like evil bastards. I’m having a hard time believing that your father was the one innocent man in the bunch.”

  “If my father was fully complicit in their crimes, why would the government publicly blame him and condemn him for everything? Why him, when all the other scientists continue to enjoy generous contracts to this day?”

  I had no counter to that.

  “Because he fought them,” Nathaniel ground out. “He called them out and threatened to expose their work. For that, he was made to be the sacrificial lamb.”

  I believed him. Yes, Dr. Febrero could have lost his mind and decided to destroy the world, but why protect his son? Why save his work in the hopes that it could eventually be shared? Those weren’t the acts of a man who wanted to destroy everything as the government had claimed.

  I hesitated, telling myself I was an idiot to ask, but I did it anyway. “Whose idea was all this? With Day and Peerage and the gas?”

  “Tower’s,” Nathaniel said reluctantly, looking away and missing my slump of relief. Maybe he thought he lacked the determination that Tower did by not having come up with the plan himself, but it was important to me that he hadn’t. Tower’s plan had been coldly calculating. It showed me how far he was willing to go to protect Dr. Febrero and Nathaniel: disturbingly far.

  There were no good guys and bad guys here. I held no illusions about that any longer. Everyone in the Sinistera was a gradient, darkening and lightening with every action they took. But I feared that the majority of the Specials and their masters leaned more toward darkness than I was comfortable with. I didn’t condone awful acts. My goal had never been about revenge; it was about justice. To me, there was a difference. However, I was beginning to think I might be alone in that thinking. The Specials weren’t all victims or innocent.

  “I’m sorry.”

  I jerked out of my dark thoughts, lips parting in surprise.

  Nathaniel held my gaze, unflinching. “I’m sorry that you’re seeing this part of me, and that you’ve been forced to doubt my motives. Conflict between you and me wasn’t what I predicted would happen, all those years ago.”

  “You mean when you first saw me and felt sorry for me.” After a hesitation, I reached out. He met me halfway this time, his hand warm around mine. “You thought you’d be my knight in shining armor, righting all the wrongs inflicted on a little girl.”

  “I’m not sure my motives were that selfless,” he muttered as he studied the way my hand fit into his. “I had a lot that I needed to see done, too.”

  “But you waited until I was old enough to join you. You wanted me by your side.”

  It was bold of me, and a p
revious version of me, pre-Sinistera, would have been mortified. But I didn’t flinch or blush when he raised his eyes to me. In fact, it was he who seemed discomfited, though he didn’t release my hand.

  “Is it true that your father’s work is here?” I asked.

  “Yes. It’s stored in the basement.”

  That explained the reason for the statuary guard placed there.

  “What about the experiment on the Count?”

  “I told you. My father didn’t work on that. It was Day’s project.”

  “The Count doesn’t buy it, and he’s coming after you. How can we convince him to back off?”

  “We can’t. A vampire can be obsessively single-minded. He needs to be stopped, because he won’t do it on his own.”

  All I could think of in response to that dark assessment was Elliott’s reaction.

  “What about this experimental subject?” I pressed. “What if it thinks the same way the Count does and resents you and your father?”

  “I’ll fight it,” he said simply. “Nothing will stop me.”

  I couldn’t hide my admiration. “I believe you.”

  He smiled, and nothing could have prevented me from smiling back. “I knew you’d be like this,” he said excitedly. “I knew it would be wise to wait for you.”

  Everything I’d fought through and everything I was going to face in the future, was worth it to experience this moment—when Nathaniel’s eyes crinkled at the corners and his cheeks bunched from a smile that was genuine with pleasure. Pleasure to be with me, to see me, to talk to me. To risk everything with me.

  This is what I’ve always wanted, I thought. Someone who understands that there’s a war to fight, and who wants to do so at my side.

  “We’re going to win, Arrow.” He stated this firmly, with a confidence that I absorbed and made my own. “Truth and honesty will prevail because you and I are going to ensure it does. No matter what it takes, no matter how hard we have to fight, you and I will endure and succeed because there’s no other option. We give everything with no regrets. We never stop fighting, even when we think we can’t.”

  My chest swelled as though a balloon filled it. I felt lifted onto my toes by his certainty, energized by his determination. I believed in fighting. In some ways I enjoyed the struggle and the obstacles, because so far I’d succeeded in conquering them. The challenge was addicting, and I was thrilled that Nathaniel knew how I felt, that he shared in my passion.

  This was how demagogues gained their followers and their power, but I couldn’t bring myself to see him in a negative light. If anything, he shone brighter, a beacon to guide me, to focus me. To make me stronger.

  Nathaniel shifted, his form juddering to reappear three feet away, his head bent over his ledger. Now he was on the floor, legs stretched out, the ledger in his lap. Two more shifts and he disappeared for good, and the room went still. I experienced a sense of loss, but it wasn’t acute. He and I had a connection. We’d find each other again.

  I just had to make sure I avoided the creature that had taken root in the hotel.

  I stood still, listening, half-convinced I could hear the soft rustle of something moving outside my door. Then I shook my head, chiding myself. The other Specials had rooms nearby, and I’d often overheard them talking in the hall.

  “Nothing like being more paranoid than usual, Arrow,” I mumbled. I glanced at the gap between the bottom of it and the carpet, just in case a shadow broke the sliver of light cast by the hallway lights.

  Three small fingers slid beneath the door into my room.

  Chapter 8

  A scream rolled up my throat but I clamped down on it and kept it inside as I watched the fingers slowly retract.

  I was terrified. I couldn’t pretend otherwise. Fear of the unknown was the greatest fear of all, because there were no limits to what could exist. My imagination could conjure up exactly what it needed to to drive me insane.

  But lots of people had faced fear during the war. I refused to be less than they were, or less than Nathaniel, who just moments ago had declared his intention to fight through any adversity. It didn’t matter that this thing was apparently hunting me. I grabbed my guns and flung open the door.

  The hallway outside was empty. Something was running toward the elevator.

  And it was giggling.

  A shudder of revulsion tore through me but I took off after the sound. I had to contain the thing before it attacked anyone else or found a way to get to Nathaniel.

  The only upside to this situation was that we were on the mezzanine level. Only Sinistera employees had rooms on this floor. The last thing I needed was another attack on a guest.

  I began to draw closer to the soft thud of footsteps. Did this thing even need to run on two feet or was it using the sound to pull me toward it? It didn’t matter if it rolled like a wheel; I had to chase it, but it would be handy to understand how the thing’s thought processes worked. Up ahead, the elevator chimed brightly.

  “No,” I breathed, sprinting harder. I couldn’t afford for it to escape to another floor.

  But I skidded in front of the elevator banks just in time to watch the doors close on one of them. I stared up with dismay as the floor indicator began to light up above the doors as the car rose up through the shaft.

  “Damnit.”

  I holstered my guns and punched the button for the next elevator, all the while watching to see where the other elevator car stopped. There was a ding and a car appeared for me, so I thrust my foot between the doors to keep it in place while I strained backward to watch the lights on the other elevator. The car had stopped on four. I jumped in the car I held and pushed the button for that floor.

  What was on four? Guest rooms, of course, but something else. The pool. Was the thing eager to take a dip? Did it not care about the pool at all and was after a guest on that floor? If I didn’t stop this thing now, I’d better find out who all was currently staying in the hotel, just in case this thing was on a mission.

  I arrived on four in no time, and cautiously stepped out into the hallway. For a long time I didn’t move. I recalled acutely how easily the thing had changed its shape and size. Unbidden, something my grandmother had said popped into my head: He made so many, and all were from our nightmares. Especially the small one. Apparently, I’d gotten my confirmation that Dr. Day was the same black-eyed scientist she had warned me about. He had created this thing, which could shrink down to fit through a one inch gap.

  Somewhere out of sight, I heard the click of a door swinging shut.

  My guns were in my sweating hands as I crept in that direction. The carpet was a pumpkin orange, the walls shifting from brown to gold. Golden light on the walls still didn’t manage to warm me up as I neared the glass door of the pool room. Thankful for the transparency, I peered through the glass and into the blue-tinted room. Lounge chairs were stacked against one wall and four closed trunks that I assumed held chair pads and extra towels stood at the far end of the rectangularly shaped pool. Light danced silkily over the ceiling and walls because the water in the pool was moving, though I couldn’t tell why.

  “Someone went in there.”

  I jumped back, guns raised to the elderly man who stood behind me. He wore a dressing gown and his legs were bare. He clutched his chest with both hands.

  “You nearly gave me a heart attack,” he gasped.

  “Sorry.” I quickly lowered my weapons. “I didn’t mean to scare you, sir. I’m the Head of Security.”

  He nodded his bald head. “I know. I’ve seen you around.” He switched from clutching his chest to clutching the lapels of his gown. “Are you chasing whoever went in there?”

  I glanced at the pool door. “Did you see someone go in?”

  “Looked like a child, but this isn’t the place for a child.”

  “No,” I said slowly, “it isn’t.” This isn’t even a place for adults.

  “You’d better check that they don’t try to go swimming. That’s not t
he place for it.”

  The comment struck me as odd. “Why not? That’s where the pool is.”

  “But it’s—” He looked up and down the hall, his jaw clenching. “It’s the home of something else.”

  His paranoia began to seep into me. “The home of what?”

  “I’m afraid he’ll hear me say it.” He motioned with his head at the door. “Go in. You’ll figure it out. But if you do, be ready.” He nodded at my guns. “Not sure if those will be enough.”

  I thanked him, even though I wasn’t thrilled by his mysterious warning. I told him to return to his room and lock the door. Once I’d watched to make sure he’d obeyed, I reluctantly opened the pool room door and slowly stepped inside.

  The strong smell of chlorine that I’d expected was absent. Instead, the air smelled fresh and almost herbal, like a grassy yard after a rain. It was certainly strange in a pool room on the seventh floor of a hotel in the city. I couldn’t help dividing my attention between looking for the source of the smell and trying to locate the child-like thing that had run in here.

  But in the end, it wasn’t difficult to find the thing. It was sitting at the bottom of the deep end.

  I stood near the edge of the pool and stared down at it, trying to make out more details in the dark form. It was an exercise in futility because the water rippled continuously as the thing at the bottom periodically waved one arm. It’s third arm.

  There was no way I was diving into the pool to drag it out.

  “Where’s Calia when you need her?” I said sourly, though in truth I wouldn’t have wanted her involved. She would have found a way to kill a dozen guests on the floor in the process of getting this thing. I’d do it on my own.

  I holstered my guns and took stock of what I had to work with. The lounge chairs were metal. There were mats beside the stairs leading into the pool so guests wouldn’t slip. I dragged a chair over to the pool stairs and began moving molecules.