Page 43

“Not ten times. Maybe eight or nine,” he says with a grin.

“Really, I’m okay. I just… it’s been a day, you know?

Or a few days… I don’t even know how many days it’s been.

It’s been a while. And I’m absolutely exhausted, as well as tired of feeling like I’m a huge fuckup.

Why would I have ever trusted Grady? Was I so desperate to have someone feel the same way as me that I was willing to just…

do everything they wanted? Why would I ever create something so powerful and not keep it to myself?

Whatever. As long as he doesn’t end up in Abel’s hands, it’ll be okay. ”

I really don’t know what to say.

“I can make you feel better, Mads,” Finn declares. “If Marcus wasn’t driving, I would have him read you a bedtime story like he did to make Rylee feel better because hot damn, it was… uh… really good. He should be an actor.”

Marcus slowly looks over at the man he loves. “Funny.”

Finn’s grinning now. “I could let you play with my robot arm like Rylee does.”

“I’m not going to lie… I would love to examine you and see how it works. And this whole thing about your blood has piqued my interest. When we’re done chasing this asshole around, I would like to see what I can figure out. I’m intelligent like ten percent of the time.”

“You figured out how to make it so you can walk in the sun with how young you are. I think you’re intelligent enough,” I say.

“What?” Claude asks as his head snaps around. “That’s right. What the fuck are you doing walking around in the sun?”

Mads waves it off like it’s no big deal and not something that could change the lives of so many vampires. “Ha… it’s simple, really.”

“Simple?” Marcus asks. “You think something scientists have tried to perfect for at least a hundred years is simple?”

“You don’t even have sunglasses on,” Alexei realizes.

“Yeah… if I don’t die, I will tell you. If I do die, I wrote it down in a notebook in my apartment in London. It’s the red notebook. Don’t look in the blue one.”

“Is the blue one porn?” Finn asks.

“Full-on porn,” Mads teases.

“I tried to find Marcus’s porn, but he’s so good at hiding it, I’m pretty sure I’m never going to find it. Woe is me.”

“I don’t need any with you around.”

“Aww, you’re so cute. I would like to say the same, but I read some porny books sometimes, man. There are things… that happen in those books… that… let’s just say they’d make even you blush, Marcus, but I’m still not going to stop.”

Marcus slowly nods, evidently agreeing with that statement. “I… have made the mistake of opening them. I learned things that even hundreds of years of experience didn’t teach me.”

“Right? You liked it, didn’t you?” Finn asks.

“Claude has stacks of porn,” Alexei announces.

Claude gasps. “I do not! They’re magazines of underwear models, Alexei! Underwear!”

“What about the ones with no underwear on?”

“They’re sock models! With them nude, nothing can distract from the finesse of a fine sock.”

Finn seems reasonably confused by this. “They think their clothes are more distracting than a dick?”

“Have you met Claude?” Marcus teases.

“I’m going to teach you how to dress one of these days,” Claude threatens.

Finn turns in his seat to focus on me for some reason. “What about you, Ender? You just strike me as someone who has a sex dungeon. Mads, have you seen it?”

“Noooo, I have not. Ender, why did you take me into the middle of the forest with a madman instead of this fancy sex dungeon of yours?”

“I took you to a dungeon. I just forgot the ‘sex’ part of it.”

“No. I very much didn’t enjoy that one. That dungeon wasn’t very fun at all!” Mads says as he rubs his stomach where he’d been stabbed.

“I keep forgetting you’re not much older than me,” Finn says to Mads. “I just… it’s like you being a vampire automatically makes me think you’re an old fucker like Marcus.”

“My life before all of this was quite boring. I taught secondary school for about five years before switching to university and that’s it. Fun, eh? This one time… I didn’t eat in my classroom, I ate in the teacher’s lounge. Wild of me, eh?”

“You seriously would pass up an opportunity to talk nonstop?” I ask in disbelief.

“But I was talking all day to my students, so I liked my quiet lunch break,” he explains.

“Did you see that?” Marcus asks, drawing our attention back to the transport. There’s a police car in front of it and another behind it with us bringing up the rear, so we’re not as close to the transport vehicle as I wish we were.

“I don’t know. Maybe? It was really fast,” Finn says.

The first car in the lineup goes flying.

It’s flung to the side as a vampire slams into it, causing it to flip, which gives the driver of the transport no option but to slam on their brakes.

Even so, the transport vehicle rams into the flipped car, shoving it back as sparks fly before they both finally come to a stop.

Vampires rush from the trees, moving toward the transport as Marcus stops the car so we can get out, but there are so many of them.

“This is really fucking risky. Even with the antidote…” Finn says.

“We can’t let the information get into the wrong hands,” Marcus states as he reaches for the door handle.

“Wait,” Mads says, sounding quite calm when he must be aware of what’s about to happen.

“Wait for what? We don’t have time to wait. We have to?—”

The explosion hits so hard our vehicle shakes. Debris rains down on the car, hitting the windshield and pinging off the hood. Dust and smoke cloud up in front of us a moment before I see fire cut through it.

“What the fuck just happened?” Finn asks as he slowly sits up from where he’d crouched down when a large piece of debris had struck our vehicle.

I manage to tear my eyes away from the flames and look over at Mads who comments, “I take it Soup works.”

“Soup?” I ask before remembering back in the lab when I’d asked if he was making soup after he told me he was letting it “simmer.” I look back at the destruction. “Uh… Soup really worked quite well.”

“Thank you,” Mads says.

Finn twists around in his seat. “You did that?”

Mads grimaces. “I cannot express how important it is that this drug does not get out. The explosion shouldn’t have been able to kill the vampires driving the transport vehicle.

I did verify that they were all vampires before I placed the bomb so I wouldn’t kill an innocent bystander.

And I set it so it’d only go off if there was enough friction and heat from the wheels because the vehicle stopped suddenly. ”

“Huh,” Marcus says as he eyes the destruction. “Looks like I did dress for the occasion.”

“Looks… like you did…” Finn mutters.

“Like… do we get out?” Alexei asks.

“I think everyone’s confused about what to do,” I say as I see Abel’s vampires just…

standing there. It’s apparent no human would have lived through that, so they’re not quite sure what to do since the person they came to retrieve is no longer alive.

I can see many of them fading back into the trees.

Marcus pushes the SUV door open and storms out.

“Guess we’re getting out,” Finn says.

The rest of us get out as Marcus charges toward Abel’s crew. Many are not pleased to see him, and I notice a few back up, but I can’t tell whether it’s because they’ve caught sight of me or him.

“You are under arrest,” he snarls. “Get on the ground now .”

Some run, some don’t move, and about five just drop right to the ground.

“You cannot tell us what to do,” a woman says, standing her ground as her eyes challenge Marcus.

“You are not part of the council,” Marcus counters. “You have no control here. I have the control.”

She rushes forward, like she’s going to attack, but before she can even get close to Marcus, I grab her and slam her to the ground.

She lets out a growl of irritation as she tries to twist from my grip, but there’s no way she’s getting up.

A man dashes forward to help her, but I keep her down with a mere foot as I grab him by the throat and throw him.

“Anyone else like to challenge my authority?” Marcus asks as Finn hurries over and snaps unbreakable handcuffs on the woman spitting profanities at me like that’ll help the situation.

“The council will hear about this,” she shrieks. “You can take us, but it solves nothing. It merely wastes our time and yours.”

Another tries to sneak up on Claude who is toward the back, but I have the man down before he can even get close.

They really are idiots to even think that they’d get away with any of this.

The only thing helping us is that without Grady to take, most of them aren’t even interested in the fight.

They know there’s a better time and place to start this fight, and they disappear into the trees where they’d come from.

Once Alexei has the man cuffed, I head over to the burning vehicle and tear the driver’s door off before pulling the vampire out.

The flames lick my arm, but I heal from it quite quickly.

I drop him far enough from the vehicle that he can heal as Mads checks the other man, but he’s gotten out and is already healing.

After I verify anyone caught up in the explosion is fine, I join Mads who is standing near the back door.

“Was this wrong of me?” Mads asks as he eyes the carnage. “Clearly you two could have handled a fight.”

“Not if they all moved in to attack us,” I say.

“Most fled when it was obvious Grady was dead. There’s absolutely no way the group of us would have come out unscathed against—hell, thirty vampires?

There might have been more. Grady didn’t deserve his life.

He was too fixated on removing it. But do you realize the risk this now puts you in?

I’m glad Abel isn’t here to direct them to take you instead.

” I watch him for a moment as I realize that Abel is going to do whatever it takes to capture him, and I’m not quite sure I can stop him.

“I want to head out now,” I announce to the others. “Mads isn’t safe here. As soon as this group realizes that Mads is their only option for this, we’re fucked… unless…” I turn to Mads, “you have more Soup.”

“I don’t have more Soup. I only had enough to make one, but I can make more.”

“I’m beginning to think that you might be as dangerous as the rest of the vampires but for a whole different reason,” Finn observes.

“Thank you… I think?” Mads says as I push him toward the SUV.

We don’t have to wait long for more members of the VRC to show up and take over in removing the vampires we’ve apprehended. As soon as they do, the others retreat to the vehicle and we start driving.

“We’ve been directed to a safe house for the time being. Orin said that there are plenty of safety measures, and there’s no record of it… so does he own it? How have I never heard about this?” Finn asks thoughtfully.

“Maybe it’s his swinger’s pad?” Marcus asks.

“Ew, no… although… hmm… No! Marcus, why did you do this to me? I don’t want to think about any of that.”

Marcus is pleased with himself as he drives.

Finn slowly turns around in his seat. “So, Mads.”

“…Yeah?” Mads asks, sounding a bit uncertain.

“When were you going to tell us you planted a bomb on a government vehicle with officials inside of it? At least for now, they weirdly think the vampires that ambushed them did it.”

“Well… if the car hadn’t braked hard, you never would have known.”

“What if they’d braked hard for like a cat?” I ask.

“Well… uh… I hope the cat would have survived?” Mads says with a grimace. “It’s fine. Grady got what he deserved… I hope.”

“He did,” Marcus assures him. “He was the reason many innocent people died. Before the attack at the concert, there’d been fantastic progress in vampire and human relations.

But after the attack, we’ve seen a rise in fear and prejudices.

It’s hard to dismiss their fear when the vampires were forced to attack people.

Can you imagine the pain of being forced to attack someone you cared about?

He made me attack Finn, and I…” He grips the steering wheel so tight that I’m surprised it survives.

Finn reaches out and squeezes his arm, making Marcus relax. “At that time you really didn’t even like me! You probably munched on me because it looked like fun! It worked out well in the end because I used it as blackmail to get him to date me. Isn’t that a cute story?”

“So… are you still dating because of blackmail? And will you teach me your ways?” Mads asks as he eyes me.

“You are not blackmailing me into shit,” I growl.

“Surely there are better men out there,” Alexei says. “Literally any man is better.”

Claude, who is seated next to Alexei, bumps him with his shoulder. “I forgive Ender… because I was involved in shit that resulted in horrible things. I had no idea I was involved, but how would he have known?”

“He could have fucking asked,” Alexei says.

“Someone could ask if you were a vampire hunter, my dear, and would you tell them the truth?”

Alexei looks away. “I don’t forgive him.”

“I don’t need you to forgive me. You can hate me until the day I die,” I say. “But I am sorry that I hurt you so badly, Claude. Being with Abel for so long has made it hard for me to control myself at times.”

“What did Abel make you do?” Finn asks.

“Kill. He created me to kill vampires. I was torn from my life with my family so I could create this ideal world for him that held only the vampires he created in it. I was forced to do many horrible things and deserve your hatred and deserve death, but first, I have to kill Abel. Then you can do whatever the fuck you want with me.”

The car falls silent.

“I killed many vampires who didn’t deserve it as well,” Alexei says quietly. “Wouldn’t it be delightful to erase our past?”

“You are who you are today,” Mads tells me earnestly. “People change, views change, life changes around you. What happened in the past doesn’t have to destroy the rest of your life.”

And I find that I really hope that’s true.