Fangtastic (16 page)

14

I
lost myself for a little while, strapped down to an autopsy table while Burly Boy went back and forth poking me with needles and hooking me up to all kinds of things from a third cart they wheeled in. It looked like a mobile Frankenstein's lab, with bags, tubing, tools, and—most chillingly—a machine about the size of an old-school hatbox, like the one I'd kept all my curlers and scrunchies in back home. Eric's energy transference device? I looked over to see him strapped to the table beside me, his nutty-professor hair going every which way. He was awake and alert again, taking it all in with a mix of horror and fascination on his face.

“We're screwed,” he said when Burly Boy left, apparently for the final time.

I couldn't help but agree. It wasn't like me to wallow. But
Bobby
… those wicked blue eyes dancing with mischief as he'd whipped my towel off back at headquarters, the way his lips tasted, the scent of him all good enough to eat …

Gina.
I could almost hear his voice in my head, calling my name.

Gina, I'm here. Marcy and Brent got to me in time.

My mind was playing tricks on me.

Bobby?
I asked, afraid to hope.
Is that really you?

Next time, pull out the stake.

I laughed, and Eric looked at me like I was nuts, but if crazy meant Bobby was still alive, I'd take it.

I love you,
I said without thinking.
Don't you dare let there be a next time.

I'd surprised him. Don't ask me how I knew, I just did. It was one of those mind-speak things.

I love you too,
he said back.
Always.

If my heart didn't restart then, it never would. I loved him. So much it was stupid. Enough to feel alive again and then some. We were getting out of this, and I was going to kick killer-kid booty for them scaring me like that.

Where are you?
he asked. He was getting fainter, fading away. This had to be a lot for him after everything he'd been through tonight.

Don't know.
I tried to mentally send him everything I had, from the loading doors to the layout, but it wasn't much. No street names, nothing.

We'll find you
,
he promised.

I wasn't going to count on it, but at this point, just knowing that Bobby was okay was enough. I could save myself. Hell, I could save us all. Maybe. Probably. I hoped.

I turned to Eric. “We're getting out of this.”

“It's all my fault,” he answered, even though I couldn't see what one thing had to do with the other.

“Huh?”

“I never thought about how the technology could be used. I developed it to give the wounded enough strength to hang on until they could get help or reach the top of a transplant list. Not …
this
.”
He nodded, and my gaze followed his to the hatbox-sized gizmo, the one they had me hooked to.

“What are they doing to me?”

“At a guess, draining both your blood and your strength. That's my energy transference machine. But they've modified it somehow.”

“So your machines really do work … ” I started, before I could help myself.

“Well,
of course
they work.” He was getting fired up at my very suggestion. “Why do you think Nelson's friends wanted them so badly? They came back for this machine at the pawnshop, didn't they? But I never considered they'd use it on
vampires
.”
He glared at me accusingly. “You and your people are like rechargeable batteries. You can keep going and going. Anyone in possession of my work can keep draining and draining, transferring your energy. If you live forever, they can too.”

“So it's basically an eternity machine?!” I didn't mean it to come out quite so forcefully. I mean, Eric already felt responsible enough, but
damn
that was a lot to answer for.

“I didn't
know
.”

I closed my eyes and tried to think. If Bobby and I were right, it was Eric's power—his belief in a machine—that made it work. Upside: the killer kids couldn't possibly mass produce the gizmos without Eric's support. Downside: they didn't have to. If they wanted to live forever, grow up to rule the world, well, they were off to a strong start right now. And with no other Eric to go around, they had the market cornered on his technology. Plus, they now had him for handy blood donations to recharge the battery—aka
me
.
Were Terrence and the girl he'd talked about being hooked up like a medical experiment in the same boat? Captive donors? Had Nelson, or whoever was walking around in his skin, figured out some way to have his cake and eat it too? Eternity
and
tanning options? And where was the real Nelson? Presumably with the fangs, trapped in the body of the vamp who'd stolen his.

“Where is Nelson now?” I asked.

“
Right here
,” a voice answered. Right body, wrong brain.

Nasty-Nelson must have come in through a doorway out of my line of sight. “I came to check on my own personal fountain of youth,” he added, appearing at the side of my autopsy table and picking up something from down to my left. I was no science geek, but I knew there was a name for the glass … thingy … he lifted to eye level. Bigger than a vial, smaller than a bread box.
Beaker
,
that was it.

And in it … with all the fuss, I'd expected something flashy, I guess—shiny, like with little shooting stars or maybe bubbly like champagne—but the liquid in the beaker didn't even look like blood. They'd distilled it into something purer and more complex—blood plus drained-off energy, courtesy of Eric's invention, like some kind of super serum. It truly looked like nothing so much as water. Pure, filtered water, sure, with a hint of soap-bubble iridescence to it, but still … maybe it sparkled in the sun.

He held the glass to his nose and sniffed its contents like wine, closing his eyes to savor the scent. Then, without monologuing even for a second, he lifted the beaker, tilted his head back, and drank its contents down.

I gasped, and Nelson shuddered all over, his jaw dropping with the power of it. His hand spasmed open and the beaker fell to the floor, shattering into a million pieces, but he didn't even notice. And
that
was when the light show started. Tiny pinpricks of light, like dust motes caught by the sun, danced all along his flesh, giving him a glow like something out of a Biblical movie. For a second he looked like an angel fallen to earth, as pure and perfect and blissful as a man with a monobrow can manage. Then the effect faded, except that when he opened his eyes, the light was still there, shining through.

He turned that glowing gaze on Eric, who stared at him with shock.

“I never meant—” Eric started, then stopped as he seemed to decide that it didn't matter. I could almost watch him deflate as the fight seeped out of him … as he gave up.

“For it to be distilled?” Nelson finished for him. But Eric's eyelids did no more than flicker. “Well, you see,
uncle
,
I've made a few tweaks to your design. All we needed was you—and then
poof
,
you walked right into our hands. Your machine was so limited. Energy in, energy out. Both donor and donee had to be present. Sadly, not very practical. But if you distill the energy, mix in a little blood, and bottle it like a tonic, then you've got
control
and mobility.
More than that, you have a miracle drug. The ultimate addiction. Extended life, health, vitality—all for a price.”

“Don't call me that,” Eric bit out, totally reacting to the wrong part of Nelson's whole horrifying speech.

“What—
uncle
?
But you are, in a manner of speaking. Your little machines have a curious quirk … they don't seem to work without you. But Nelson … oh, he figured it out.” It was totally eerie hearing Nelson talk about himself in the third person. “He was obsessed with my kind, you know. He wanted to prove useful, to cross over and live forever. That was why he brought us your first device. Why he brought us
you
.”

“Then it's true. You've swapped bodies. He's still alive … ”

“Oh, I'm quite sure my friends are keeping my body, ah, warm for me, and him in it. But I really think that model is obsolete, don't you? So much more to experience in this body. The sun on my face. The joys of a steak dinner.
Garlic butter sauce
—oh, I'd almost forgotten the taste. So much more convenient to be an energy vampire, yes? As long as we have the bodies to drain. Lucky me, I know just the ones.”

He kicked the glass shards from the beaker out of his way as he went for the door. “Keep up the good work,” he added, turning back to us briefly. “I'll send in the others one by one as you recharge. In just a few hours, we should have everything we need to take on the others. All thanks to you, dear
uncle
.”

Nelson disappeared, leaving behind silence except for Eric's repeated lifting of his head only to let it fall again to the table. But he didn't have enough height to dash his brains out, and I couldn't imagine he was doing better than giving himself … and me … a headache.

“Stop it!” I ordered. “We have to find a way out of this before he gets what he needs.” Because if I understood nasty-Nelson correctly, he wasn't just in this for himself. He planned to use my essence or whatever to bolster up a whole human army to go after the vamps. If he got control of the local vampires, he could make tons of his tonic. Enough for a private army or a thriving drug trade. Horror flooded me at the thought of the highest bidders. I could easily imagine entire armies of super soldiers, eternal dictators. And to sustain the vamps, feed the supply line, he'd need to kidnap more and more human donors.

Were Eric's inventions what the Feds had been after when they'd started their whole investigation? When the Swinter murders hit the fan, had they already been looking at Nelson as a way to get to Eric? Eric and his machines and their
possibilities?
His patent attempts and follow-up letters could easily have drawn down federal scrutiny. It was no wonder the Feds might want to nose around even the chance of a working mind-swap or energy transference machine. But did they want to stop, or control, the technology?

Bobby was way more the conspiracy theorist than me, but I didn't see any way that the government having the secrets to eternal life and strength would be a good thing. They might have a more focused agenda than the killer kids, so the serum probably wouldn't end up on the black market, but neither would it go to the underprivileged, like starving or abused kids. No, the drugs would be reserved for the high and mighty … backroom deals, political dynasties. All battery powered. Oh hell no.

“We're both strapped to tables. What way out?” Eric asked hopelessly, cutting through my thoughts.

“I don't know. You're the genius. Figure it out. Think of your nephew. If you ever want to see him alive again and back in his real body, you'll come up with something.”

I strained at my restraints, looking for some of that super-vamp strength I was supposed to have, but nasty-Nelson was draining it out of me as fast as the blood was resupplying. Or faster. Right now, Care Bears could probably wrestle me into submission. But Bobby was still alive. My brain was still working. That had to count for something.

It was still working … or trying to … when Kelly came in for her drought. She drank it down with a smirk, staring at me the whole time, challenging me to do something about it. She gave me a venti-sized pinch on her way out that would've left me with a respectable bruise if I weren't a vamp and beyond all that petty crap. Still, I would get even. Not so much for me as for her family. How on earth could someone murder their own family? Or leave their sister scarred and orphaned? How did any rational person decide they wanted into a club that demanded permanently cutting ties as part of the initiation? Not just permanently—
fatally
.
As in, once you're in, you're implicated. Guilty. No one and nowhere to go back to. Terrence had tried.

It wasn't until Elise's visit for her dose of my distilled energy that I got an idea. She'd have kicked her own butt if she knew she'd given it to me. Unlike Kelly, Elise didn't give a damn about me. She didn't have eyes for anything but the beaker. She swirled the contents around for a second, watching it slosh, and then drank it down in one gulp. Her face transformed almost instantly, and her eyes widened with wonder as she caught the glow coming off her skin. “I don't freakin' believe it,” she said in a hush.