The Bottom Rung Page 7

  Hesse’s former chief scientist was the only human associated with his Institute to chose to live in the Quarter. He’d apparently, ‘gone native’, deciding to study us in situ rather than in a clinical setting. Word on the street was this was rare. Hesse tended to keep his former personnel close, finding other employment opportunities in the city, if performing tests on children got too much for them or they had too much fun with it.

  He looked up when we walked into his workshop, his flat amber eyes taking us in as if he would place us amongst the thousands of kids he’d done his delightful little experiments on. He reached out a hand for me, I looked at the boys and then took the long thin fingers and he drew me towards him, simply staring.

  His face was too smooth. Dax had been with Hesse since the beginning and had the same unlined face that he would’ve had when he first began, a young research fellow, straight out of the University of Meridian. The fine light brown hair had no grey, his grip was still strong. It was the eyes, strange golden eyes, almost pale enough to be deemed problematic, that gave him away. He looked at me and through me without blinking for an interminable amount of time. Then, with no warning, he smiled and he let me go.

  “Have a seat,” he said. “What do you need?”

  “Lethe’s been fitted with a compliance tracer,” Marley answered for me. I think he knew what I was going to say and it wouldn't have been polite.

  This earned me another vague smile, but Dax pulled a small pen torch out of his pocket and gestured to my shoulder. The correct one. I peeled the collar away gingerly. I could see now that a huge black bruise had formed, red veins radiating out from the centre.

  “What have you done to earn this?”

  “I’ve been off the gear for years. They found out.”

  “You demonstrated…your power for them?”

  He drew back, perched on his stool, pen torch clicked off and left on the bench in front of him. He almost seemed to fold in on himself, contract into the tightest possible arrangement of his limbs.

  “Just a little light show, nothing special,” Marley said evenly.

  Dax’s gaze snapped over to focus briefly on Marley before he abruptly burst out laughing. “The reasonable tone is very effective, much less messy than an obvious attempt at persuasion.”

  “Hey!” Marley feigned innocence but we'd all felt the subtle sneak of his power

  “I’m sorry,” he said, “It’s just been so long since I’ve had someone try that on me. It was almost refreshing. I developed the first repellent, I virtually bathed in it initially to prove its efficacy. I created them all, until recently, so no, that won’t work on me. Now you…” he turned to me and held out his hand, “Demonstrate your ‘light show’.” I shoved my sleeves up, not sure how to make the mosaicism that swirled up my arm light up just by willing it. I spent so much time trying not to.

  “Ah, one of the hybrids,” he said, the penlight back in hand as he shone it on my forearm, twisting my arm to and fro to see where the lines disappeared. It turned out I needn’t have worried; he didn’t need to see what I could do. After a perfunctory look, he moved away to scan the many spines of his notebooks, neatly filling a full-length bookshelf. He pulled one out, flipping through the pages quickly before settling on one page. “Of course, you were one of the later ones.” He dug through a drawer in his workbench before pulling out an antique-looking scanner. He stretched my hand out flat on the bench before scanning the skin, the purple light revealing my serial number. “That’s what I thought, one of the 256 series.”

  “Hybrid? Series?” I said.

  “So, you’ve been non-medicated for several years, with no side effects?” he said, peering at me as if I hadn’t spoken.

  “None apart from the usual,” I said.

  “Fascinating. And you’ve got a 7-day tracer. Can’t have you blowing up, such a waste, a terrible waste. Let me do a little research, see what I can come up with.”

  He turned from us, went to his computer and brought up his database, flicking from page to page. We could see the many different papers he looked at on the array of monitors he had surrounding him. He jumped from one to the next at a ridiculous speed, I couldn’t see how he could be doing anything other than giving each more than a moment’s glance. I looked across to the guys who were beginning to draw closer to the scientist, looming over the screens.

  “Dax, are you coming back…?”

  The girl stood in the doorway in an oversized t-shirt and nothing else. She was white, her long blonde hair straggled over her shoulders and down her back. He didn’t pay her any mind at all, instead, he pulled out a tall leather seat with restraints running up and down it. “Let’s take a look,” he said, patting the seat.

  "You don't need to put me in that."

  "Need?" he cocked an eyebrow and then smiled. "Perhaps not, but I do like the look of your kind in it. The black leather looks quite beautiful against your pale skin...” he trailed off before he realised I hadn't moved towards the chair.

  “You’re not putting her in that, you fucking freak,” Gavin said.

  Dax shrugged, “She’ll need to be incredibly still whilst I hurt her quite a bit. I can't see how she’d be able to do that un-medicated and unbound. One little slip and everyone in the pub is dead.”

  "C'mon Lethe, it's not like we haven't done it before," Marley said, eyes flicking from the chair to me and back again.

  I shook my head. This is not fucking happening. I walked to the seat and sat down. Dax moved around me, tightening the straps across my feet, legs, abdomen, chest and neck. With each strap, my breathing grew more and more shallow, little lightheaded pants.

  “There’s those lights,” Dax said, shoving my sleeves back. “Now I remember.”

  Bennett dropped down beside me, taking my hand in his. Dax paused and smiled when he saw me gasping for breath before pulling the gag across my mouth, forcing it between my lips and tightening it. My chest burned, I fought to suck air in through my nose in the tiny gaps between the gag and my mouth. Oh, gods no. Nononononononono. Dax just smiled. "Quite fetching," he said and sat down to start.

  My head snapped back and my mouth opened to scream but the strap there stopped it from being anything other than a gurgle. The pain! Everything else this night had been a mere shadow. Is he actually operating on my shoulder or is this a memory? I smelt burning hair and some kind of sweet chemical stench. Fuck! I couldn't afford to get lost in some kind of flashback, not now.

  I was too vulnerable. I fought the rising tide of panic, forced my breathing to slow despite the light headedness and heavy feeling of oxygen deprivation in my chest. I forced my heart rate to slow whilst everything in me screamed to suck in breath around the gag. I could feel it now, my shoulder. It was cold and heavy and numb. He'd used anaesthetic, I couldn't believe it. All I could feel was the light tugs as he looked at the tracer, hear the clink of tools as he placed them on the tray.

  “Hmm… the light show is very pretty, but quite useless, unfortunately,” he said as he undid the straps. I gasped now, taking great shuddering breaths before getting shakily to my feet. Bennett held my good arm, helping me to stay upright.

  "I can't defuse it," Dax said, settling back into his chair. "If I try anything else, I'm as likely to blow your head off. I've been out of the game too long. I’d hoped it was one of the older models I'd worked on but Hesse deliberately didn't share information about the newer tracers with me before I left. I'm sorry."

  “Fine,” I said. "Thanks for trying." I jerked my jacket back on and buttoned it close around me despite the wash of sweat on my face. “C’mon,” I said to the boys, making for the door but they just stood there, staring, as if they couldn't possibly believe what Dax had said. "Guys!" I snapped.

  "I could twist them, the compliance officers," Marley said, but even he didn't sound confident. Dax just shook his head. "I could!" Marley snarled. "Push them hard, make them think they have someone else. Or that she's been on her meds."

  "Yo
u can twist perception, but not reality," Dax said quietly. "The tests will come back. They will trigger an automatic eradication order. She'll be dead within a week."

  “That’s not possible,” Gavin said, hand straying to the gun at his hip. “You need to do something.”

  “What?” Dax said with a brittle smile. “Any ideas? What’s in her is resistant to magic, blood, drugs and is effectively a bomb compressed into a very small space. You’re going to kill me if I don’t help her? If I try anything else, I’ll be dead next anyway. If you can bring me the updated schematics for the new tracers, I’d happily work on her shoulder for you, but the combined fortunes of the vampire Horde wouldn’t be enough to get it for you. You get your contraband on the black market here, sure, but none of it is serious tech. Smuggling in drugs, guns, phones, whatever, is all gravy. It puts money in the pockets of honest humans and keeps you killing and medicating each other into submission. Hesse hasn’t had an episode of industrial espionage in two hundred years. I’m the only one who’s ever walked away with information,” he said, gesturing to the books, “and that was largely because he hadn’t found a way to remove it from my mind without killing me. He didn’t need to, he updates and stays ahead of the pack, ruthlessly. There’s nothing you can do but live out the week and say your goodbyes. She’s a dead girl walking.”

  "Come on," I said, softer now. Finally, they came away and we walked out, back into the bar. I should’ve gone home, I should’ve gone to the great gardens where the witchbreed live and smelt the wild roses that grew there. I should’ve climbed up the royal spire and looked out over the whole of Meridian City and beyond. I should’ve gone to the barrier to Talos island and looked at the last place the gods’ feet touched the earth. Instead, we went to the bar and Gavin ordered shots and we knocked them down without a word. We found a table and the barmaid was told to keep ‘em coming along with several orders of fries for Marley.

  “Do you remember…” I said, feeling the slight haze of the alcohol in my system, “Ah, nah.”

  “What?” Bennett asked. “What do we remember?”

  “Do you remember that time we swapped out Mrs Alison’s coffee?”

  “With vinegar?” His face split into a grin. “Gods, her face! She always used to take those long, noisy slurps,” he picked up his glass and demonstrated, “and then she was all…” and he mimicked her expression, coughing and clawing at her throat, struggling to breathe. “She never came back after that, did she?”

  “Then there was Mr Marshall. Fucking creepy pedo,” Marley said. “Come sit here, Mr Quinn.” He shuddered in response.

  “Was Marshmallow after Alison?” Gavin said. “I thought it was Ms Kathryn.”

  “Not surprised you remember her,” Marley and I said at the same time and then cracked up. “She had it bad for you guys.”

  “Ms Kathryn was a bloody good teacher. At least she gave a shit,” Gavin spluttered.

  “Yeah, she did, about you two.” I launched myself at Gavin, taking a seat on his lap and tangling my fingers in his hair. “Mr McIntyre, your pro-nun-ciation is impeccable,” I said, imitating the teacher’s pouty inflexion.

  Gavin shifted under me, sinuous as a snake, “Well if she’d looked a bit more like you, I would’ve probably taken a bit more notice in class.”

  “She tried to get us to stay back and ‘clean her whiteboards’ for her. We were only thirteen at the time,” Bennett said with disgust. “Were all our teachers' fucking pervs?”

  “There were a few. It’s what they all think about the Quarter: the witches would be casting love spells, the vamps were sexy fucking machines, the albinos were getting fucked. The teachers always avoided the werewolf kids, thinking they were going to get bitten.”

  “Except for Mr Adam. Jackers said he found him in the showers, begging for the whole pack of hybrids ’to use him’. I think they flogged the shit out of him and tossed him to the soldiers.”

  “There were some good teachers. I loved Carson for history,” I said, pulling away from Gavin, ready to take back my seat. His hands went around my waist, looked into my eyes and shook his head slightly. His brown eyes burned into mine, dropping to my mouth, and then back again. Subtly, his hand dropped to my hip and he pulled me back so I could feel the hard ridge there. “Gavin…” I said.

  “Just stay, just this,” he murmured.

  “What about Archer,” Marley said, lighting the cigarette Bennett passed him. “I thought I was going to find out I was some kind of lost prince, or the son of a pirate when I got older. Those stories she told us.”

  “Remember when we went hunting for the hidden treasure of the House of Garnet? We must’ve scoured through half of the vamp quarter before Rohan’s foot soldiers found us. Scared the fucking shit out us,” Bennett said.

  “Also made us want to get turned when we were older,” Gavin said, tangling his fingers in my hair. “Those guys looked like the biggest badasses back then.”

  “Little did we know what a bunch of pussies half of them were. Can’t have been much, chasing kids out of derelict buildings,” Bennett said. He left his cigarette in the corner of his mouth and then reached down to pick up my feet, placing them in his lap. He started plucking at the laces of my ratty old sneakers.

  “I wouldn’t unleash those in polite company,” I said.

  “Yeah, no, not while I’m trying to eat,” Marley said. “Whenever we’re hungry and are all out, just grate off a little of Lethe’s heels and instant Parmesan cheese.”

  “Yes, because you smell like sweetness and light,” I said with a grin. “We share a bathroom.”

  “Much to my disgust, and seeing as I have the opportunity of using one without a plethora of girl stuff everywhere, I’m going to use the facilities,” Marley said, getting to his feet.

  “You OK?” I said, watching to see if he could do so safely.

  “Good food, good medication, good booze and good friends,” he said with a smile. “How could I be any better?”

  The boys watched him disappear and then Bennett turned to me. “Did he compel himself?”

  “Yeah, to be what I needed,” I said with a frown. “Seems that changes from moment to moment. This morning he was talking about a palliative dose, now it’s all ‘the gang is back together’.”

  Gavin tightened his grip on my hair, pulling it free of my neck and mumbled against my skin, “Come to the house with us.”

  “Tonight?” I said.

  “For the rest… Until the end,” Bennett said, sliding his hand under the cuff of my jeans, up my calf. “Bring Marley if that’s what it takes but just… don’t make us creep in the window like thieves. Not if…”

  “If the compulsion holds, it’ll be like it was, back in the Crèche,” Gavin said, sliding his hand up the back of my shirt. “Just the four of us.”

  “You want it to be exactly like it was,” I said, looking into his eyes, the dark pools sucking me under. His hand slid between my legs, the heel shoving down against the seam of my jeans forcing a flare of heat from my core and pushing me down on his dick. I took his hand in mine, twining my fingers with his, bending down close enough to see the fangs peeking behind his lips. “Just the three of us.”

  “It’ll be so good,” Bennett said, plucking my other hand from Gavin’s waist and running kisses up the sensitive inner flesh. “It’s so much more intense. Every movement, every touch… Sometimes it’s like being caught in this endless loop of pleasure that will never stop. Even after you feel like every bit of cum has been wrung out of you, someone moves and it all starts again. It’ll blow your mind, Lethe. We won’t get out of bed for a week.”

  I stilled in their grip, pulling back, forcing Gavin’s hand to loosen in my hair or pull it out by the roots. “Was that what made you do it?” I said, looking from one to the other. “We promised, you promised, it would only be us and then you went to Rohan.”

  “Lethe, we had to. We wanted to keep you safe.”

  “Because that’s what whites do?
Tie themselves to the much stronger vampires. Fuck and feed them to stop from being killed. I never wanted that life, I told you that. I was going to fight the whole world to stop from going down that path.”

  “Yeah,” Bennett said, “so why’d you let Macka have a taste?” He pushed my sleeve up and twisted my arm until the almost healed over incision on the inside of my armpit became visible. “You let some low life have a taste.”

  “I was broke, cold and starving and did what I needed to,” I said. “I suffered through the withdrawals afterwards, on my own. I would’ve walked over broken glass to get him to bite me again. It was almost worse than getting off yellow. And what were you two doing? Experiencing endless loops of pleasure, making your way through the king’s harem. Just how many albinos have you fucked, Gavin? Bennett? Did you pretend each one was me?”

  “It wasn’t safe for us to come back,” Gavin said, wrapping an arm around me to stop me from moving. “The bloodlust drove us mad initially. We killed at least three of the feeders in the first year.”

  “So, what was I supposed to do for those two years when you disappeared?” I said. “Wait for your call? I had to hear from someone on the street what you’d done, what you promised me, you would never do.”

  “We would’ve never made it this far if we didn’t. We have no magic ability and even if a wolf had been willing to turn us, we had a 10% chance of surviving it. The Quarter left us alone in the Crèche because we were kids, but as soon as we started fucking, we started making ourselves a commodity. Someone was going to pick us up and put us to use. This place allows no resource to remain idle. We had to transform, it was either be used or be the user.”