Page 10 of Healer’s Reckoning (The Healer’s #3)

Ava

The next morning, I feel like death warmed over. I can barely drag myself out of bed. I manage to make it to the bathroom. When I look in the mirror, I’m a little shocked at how I look. My skin is paler than normal, and there’s a gauntness to my cheeks that wasn’t there before. Shaking my head, I climb in the shower. After showering and eating breakfast, I feel marginally better. They come for me after that, and we make our way over to the building.

After I come to from my session, they take me to see my brother. “Hey, Brandon,” I tell him softly. “Did you sleep well?” I carry on my one-sided conversation easily. I’m busy telling him about a memory from our childhood when an alarm starts shrieking. Because the enclosure is made of glass, I can see everything going on out in the main area. I watch as several people dressed in navy run over to one of the enclosures. Suddenly, the glass enclosure explodes. People fly across the room. I stare in shock and terror as a man steps out of the enclosure. I can see his red eyes from here, and I can see his bulging veins. Like he’s the Hulk or something, he begins picking up things and throwing them. People scramble to get out of his way. Those that don’t make it, he throws across the room like they’re rag dolls. I watch in growing horror. When he looks my way, I can’t move. Fear roots me to my spot. He starts in my direction and throws off everything in his way. I back up against the wall as my body screams at me to move. But there’s nowhere to run. He rips the door off Brandon’s enclosure and throws it. A scream bursts out of my mouth as terror rips through me. He steps into the room, and his eyes narrow in on me. There’s nothing but red in his eyes; it’s completely blocked out whatever color his eyes normally are.

“Healer.” His word is barely discernable, but it sends a shiver down my spine.

He takes a step towards me, and I scream in terror and back away. “Get away from me!” Suddenly, Brandon’s eyes fly open. In a move so fast, I can’t even track it, he flies off the bed and attacks the man. I crash into the wall behind me when one of them slams into me. The glass enclosure explodes around us, and I crouch and cover my face and head the best I can. And then as suddenly as it started, it’s all over. The scary guy crashes to the ground followed by my brother a moment later. The guy who brought me here stands over both of them looking calm and composed. He holds a syringe in each hand, and both of them falling suddenly makes sense. A vampire dressed in a suit comes over and stands next to him. This man is dressed in a suit and looks like he just stepped off the cover of a magazine.

“I thought you said you had it handled, Ajax,” the guy in the suit says to the man who brought me here.

I memorize the name. Ajax. I’m pretty sure I’ve heard his name mentioned before; I’m pretty sure he’s on the list of enemies of the Northwoods Pack. I try to get control of my breathing as I take this all in.

“I do have it handled,” Ajax says.

“What I see is two of our assets on the ground, having to have been brought down,” the newcomer says in a clipped voice.

“I had it handled,” Ajax says.

The newcomer turns to me. “Why is the healer here?”

“Her brother,” Ajax says, nodding towards my brother, who’s unconscious on the ground.

Seeing my chance to get some answers, I take it. “Why am I here? Why is my brother here?”

The vampire doesn’t spare me a glance. “Get it cleaned up and get this place back on track.”

“Why am I here?” I ask, stepping towards the vampire. It was a mistake. He turns his head towards me, and I feel the absolute predator that he is come out in full force.

“Did you see how these two dropped like rocks?”

I look down at my brother and the other scary guy. Since I’m not sure I can speak, I merely nod. “You did that.” I flinch. Before I can ask a question, he continues. “The blood we take from healers helps create our subjects. The healer blood makes the vampire serum that we inject into them stable. The energy we’ve been taking from you, combined with your blood is what makes the handy serum that just made these boys drop like lead.” I feel my face drain of color. Seeing it, he grins, flashing fangs. “Which part of that didn’t you know? That we were slowly draining you of blood and taking your life force from you or that we use healer blood to help create our subjects?” He looks back at Ajax. “Get this mission back on track.” He’s gone so fast, I don’t even see him disappear.

Ajax starts giving commands, and everybody around us hops to. “You.” I flinch when he turns to me. “Get back to the house.”

I find my tongue. “How are you taking my life force?”

He smirks at me. “You healers are good for something after all. After all the time and energy we’ve spent tracking the lot of you down, we finally figured out how it works.”

“How what works?”

He steps towards me, and I stand very still. “Every wolf I’ve ever encountered is drawn to you human girls with special powers. We’ve been after several of you over the years, only to have you taken away. Sometimes you were useful to us; sometimes not. But we figured out two things. One, only non-mated healers can help us create our subjects. Second, our most recent discovery, is that the blood of a healer combined with their actual life force is the antidote these creatures need when they get too hard for us to control. Now go.”

Sensing I’m not going to get anything else from him, I walk towards the exit. I glance at my brother before I leave. He's been transported to a new glass enclosure. I can’t tell much about him, except that he’s breathing. I can see his chest moving up and down. I want to thank him for saving me, but I don’t want to risk Ajax’s wrath. I leave the room behind, and one of the vampires shadows me all the way to the house.

The tall female vamp is in the kitchen when I get there. I walk past her and sit in the chair and take a moment to think through everything I learned today. “Was that you that caused all the ruckus over there?”

I shake my head. “One of the...” I falter. “Guys broke out of his glass thing and started causing all sorts of problems.”

She nods, unsurprised. “They get that way.”

I turn to her and study her for more than a passing minute. She’s young, younger than I initially noticed. With long blond hair, she looks almost like a regular human...that is until she opens her mouth and exposes her fangs. “Why are you here?” I ask.

If she’s surprised by my directness, she doesn’t show it. “I’m here to make sure you don’t escape.”

“Besides that,” I push. “Why are you here in this place?”

She shrugs. “Where else would I go? There’s not many of us left. The few of us left have scattered. There weren’t many places to go after the war. Rizo offered me a place here, and I took it.”

“Rizo is the guy in charge?” I ask. She nods. I don’t know how to feel right now. I’ve hated the vampires for what they did to me; I hate them for what they’re doing to my brother. But... “What’s your name?” I ask.

“Sherese.”

“I’m Ava,” I tell her, though I’m sure she already knows my name. I get up and walk over to the fridge and dig around, trying to find something that sounds good. I finally settle on a bowl of soup. While it’s heating, I lean against the counter. Sherese sits at the table, reading a romance book. It looks so normal; I don’t know what to do about it. The microwave dings, and I take my food to the table and sit across from her. “What are they doing to those people?” I ask, unsure if she will actually answer me.

She puts her book down and looks at me. “The subjects in the enclosures?” I nod. She studies me for a moment, and I don’t think she’s going to tell me. But she surprises me. “Those are shifters, shifters that they are injecting vampire serum into.”

I stare at her as her words sink in. “That’s terrible,” I say before thinking. She doesn’t say anything. “But that’s not...my brother isn’t a shifter.”

She cocks her head to the side and watches me; it feels very predatory and scares me to death. “No, he wasn’t.”

I still. “Wasn’t?” The word is a whisper.

“I guess I should say that most of the subjects are shifters, but a few of them are human. Most of the humans that they injected vampire serum into have died. So, the vampires shifted their focus to shifters. They’re much stronger and hardier and don’t die when injected with the serum. Your brother is one of the few humans left that hasn’t died from the serum. Ajax has always paid special attention to your brother; I didn’t know why until you came along. I guess he needed you, so he kept your brother alive.”

I feel like I’m going to be sick, but I keep going. I need as much information as I can get. “So do the shifters turn into vampires or are they still wolves?”

“That’s the question, isn’t it?” she says, completely relaxed. Meanwhile, I’m anything but.

“Because what I saw in there was...” I shake my head; I don’t have the words for it.

“Yeah. Between you and me, I don’t think even Rizo knows what they’re going to become. They’re almost like their own species, you know? A wolf shifter with vampire strength and speed?”

I sit back against my chair because how in the world do you defeat a shifter with vampire speed and strength? I feel like I’m going to be sick again. “They’re using me to help create them and keep them controlled. How do you even take somebody’s life force? Is that what they’re doing with the mask?” She nods. “I thought it was oxygen.” I should have known the vampires wouldn’t take care of me like that.

“All I know is somehow they’re able to take your healing power or energy from you.”

I laugh bitterly. “I don’t think they’re going to get enough from me for what they’re going to need.” I’d seen what that guy was like today. He could have taken out every single person in there if he hadn’t been brought down by the injection...of my blood and energy.

“You’re not the only one they’re going to use,” Sherese says. “They have other healers they’re after.”

The bottom of my stomach drops out. She must see the look on my face because she stands up and leaves the kitchen without another word. I sit back in my chair and try to focus on not throwing up the soup I just ate. My mind goes to the wolf packs. There is no way they could win if an army of these shifter/vampires were released. I close my eyes and put my head back. I’m at war with myself because I feel the need to get this information to the wolves to warn them, but I can’t leave my brother. Even if I could find a way to get him out of here, I don’t know that he can function. He’s not okay; that’s for sure. But what all he’s been dealing with, I don’t know. I don’t even know if I would be safe with him, or if he would rip me apart. He protected me today, but I don’t know if he even really knew what he was doing. “Ugh.” I run my hands through my hair in frustration. I feel so alone. For the first time since I got here, I allow myself to think of Bryce. Or rather to envision him coming to rescue me. Somehow, in my daydream, he gets me and Brandon out of here safely; and we get a long way from here. I reach up and wipe away the solitary tear that makes its way down my cheek. Sometimes I wonder what I did in my last life to cause myself so many hardships in this life. A weariness overcomes me, and I finally drag myself to my room.

All too soon, they come for me for my afternoon session and then my evening session. By the time I get back to my room that night, I can only collapse in bed. I feel something wet under my nose and wipe it. My fingers come away red. I pull my blankets over my body as bone-deep exhaustion fills me. I’m going to have to figure out a way to get Brandon and me out of here sooner than later, or I’m not going to be leaving here at all. I don’t know how much of my healing energy they can take without killing me, but I have a feeling they’re going to try to find out.