Page 209 of Red Rooster

He sucked in a panicked breath through his nose.

“Easy,” Dr. Talbot repeated. “Your jaw was broken and we had to wire it shut.”

A high, distressed whine rose in the back of Jake’s throat.

“You have to settle down,” Talbot said reasonably. “Thinking about it will only make it worse.” He brought the cup forward. “Here, try to drink a little water, that might help.”

He wrapped his lips clumsily around the straw and managed uneven suction. He sipped water through his teeth, just enough to wet his tongue and throat. He almost choked, but managed to swallow it down.

“The good news is that, thanks to your regular injections, the healing is going much quicker than it would under normal circumstances, so we should have you back to normal in no time at all.” Dr. Talbot offered a kindly smile as he sat back down, closer this time, so Jake wouldn’t have to turn his head to see him. “Better.”

Jake managed to waggle his fingers in a gesture that caused Dr. Talbot to smile and nod.

He hadso manyquestions.

Dr. Talbot’s smile melted into a more professional façade. “At this point, after all you’ve been through, I think it’s become apparent that you’ll need to stay on with us if you hope to maintain gainful employment.”

That…

Oh.

Jake’s thought spun slow, but not so slow that he didn’t catch the underlying meaning in the doctor’s words: if he walked away from the Institute now, knowing what he did about the place, they would make sure he never worked again. It was either stay with them, or go hungry. Or, he thought, maybe even wind up at the bottom of a ditch, brakes mysteriously cut.

“Do we understand one another?”

He gave another little finger wave.

“Good. Then I can tell you that Prince Valerian was apprehended and is back in custody. The others, though, I’m afraid.” He sighed. “We’ve lost Sasha, and LC-5, and our security forces suffered a terrible blow.”

He pulled off his glasses and massage his eyes a moment, looking tired and despairing in a way Jake had never seen before. When he slipped his glasses back on, he studied Jake a moment, and then nodded. “I want to show you something.”

A flat-screen TV was set up on the dressing table across from the bed, and Dr. Talbot picked up the remote to turn it on. He shifted from the satellite feed to some kind of internal computer system, tapped through files, and then pressed Play.

A video started up, time-stamped in the corner five years ago. A facility very much like the one downstairs, brightly-lit, a sequence of three steel tables. On each one: a redheaded girl in a white gown…her feet up in gynecological stirrups. The camera didn’t show what happened below the waist, the filming done from their heads, but two doctors moved down the line, speculums flashing silver, examining each girl thoroughly.

Jake felt his gorge rise and swallowed it down.

The shot changed, now showing a sequence of boys in a white room, their hands held out in front of them, brows knit in concentration, as little tiny curls of flames sputtered and then failed in their palms.

“The idea,” Dr. Talbot began, as the video played silently on the screen, “was to manufacture supernaturally strong soldiers for the war that’s to come. It began with breeding the mages: LC stands for Liam’s Children. They are all his, his and his wife’s. Purebred mages raised and honed for battle. The one who calls herself Ruby Russell was the only one with any promise, and she escaped five years ago. Breeding mages, it turns out, is much trickier than it looks.

“We experimented with the blood serum after that. It was Valerian’s, and it didn’t always work. Some people itburned. It wasn’t until we had Vlad awake, had his blood, had perfected the medicine, that we were able to give it to you, and Adela, and the rest of your team.

“But even that is not a perfect solution,” he said, smile rueful as he watched the screen. “The old way, it seems, is still the best: a vampire warrior with his Familiars. I know that what we’re doing is morally unsound. But when you consider the threat we’re facing…”

He stopped the video, exited it, and pulled up another. This one showed the same desert landscape from the still photos Jake had been shown, the footage shaky and handheld, most likely from a cellphone. There was a scream. The shot bounced around, and then an image became clear: a man held another man by the head…and waseating his face.

Jake tried to sit up higher, and grunted in pain.

Dr. Talbot paused the video and turned to him, fear shining in his eyes. “We don’t understand it fully, yet, but Vlad calls it The Absence. His Uncle’s legacy. It consumes, and it spreads. And it serves its master: Romulus.

“The first King of Rome is trying to wake up,” he said. “He will destroyeverythingas we understand it. Vlad put him in the ground before, and he’s our only hope of stopping him now.

“If Nikita Baskin, and Sasha Kashnikov, and Ruby Russell refuse to help us? Fine. We’ll find others who will.” His mouth became a tight, firm line. “I still hold up stupid hope that Vlad might be able to bring his brother to heel, because we’re going to need all hands on deck for this, Major.”

He stared at Jake. “So. Will you help?”

And what choice did he have?

Jake lifted his hand up and down once, a kind of nod. Inwardly, panic gripped his insides like a vise.

Dr. Talbot smiled. “Very good. Get some rest. You’ll need it.”

He switched the TV back to the satellite feed. It was on TCM, an old black-and-white movie.

It took Jake a moment to recognize it, but when he did, the bottom dropped out of his stomach.

Dracula.