Ultraviolet (30 page)

Fine.

He still had a few surprises for her.

Daxus found the gaze of the head of his Praetorian Guard and nodded curtly at him. “Why don’t you and your men go out there and see what’s going on,” he suggested. His voice was mild but the man was smart enough to read between the lines. Daxus was pleased to see that just below the line of the leader’s diamond-black helmet, a cruel smile flashed briefly across the craggy face. Without making a sound, the leader made a series of sharp gestures in the air; his men snapped to action—no doubt each hand movement meant something well beyond Daxus’s understanding. They moved together like a precision machine, streaming out the door in eerie, deadly silence and leaving Daxus alone in the lab.

Well, not quite.

There was the body of the boy.

With one ear following the sounds outside, Daxus moved over to stand next to the cold granite slab and stared down at Six’s corpse. All this fuss, and for what? A cadaver. What the hell did Violet plan to do with the kid’s body when—
if
—she got it, anyway? The antigen served no purpose for her, and she had to realize that whatever was in the child could be recultured. It might take time, but there was no deadline.

No limitations, either.

Daxus smiled as he heard the whine of small machinery on the other side of the lab door. Experimental? Oh, no . . . the Gravity Shifters had been operational for months.

Just ask Violet.

The last corridor.

The last of the soldiers . . . she hoped.

These men were . . . different, silent and clearly more cunning. They didn’t scare her, but they did make her more wary—you never knew what kinds of tricks Daxus had up his sleeve, what was next in the nastiness that might come out of that man’s brain. There were only eight of them, dressed completely in black and surrounding her without a sound, measuring her movements, assessing her strength. That was all right—others had tried the same thing and failed.

She drew her sword but the fancy spin-work of previous times was gone forever, lost with the two fingers. The wound on her hand throbbed in time to her rapid heartbeat, giving her an ugly jolt with every pulse. That was all right, too—the pain helped keep her head clear when the loss of blood might have made her sluggish or slowed her reflexes. There was nothing like a couple of bundles of raw nerve endings to make you sit up and take notice of the situation around you, to keep you aware of your own painful flesh.

They circled her warily and she let them, moving in one-half time to their steps, gaze flicking back and forth. She was ready to dive in, ready for blood, when a hand signal from the one who was apparently the commander made them all move at once—

Onto the walls and ceilings.

Gravity Shifters.

Damn it!

She crouched in the midst of them, feeling like a fly caught in the middle of a three-dimensional spiderweb filled with black widows. The soldiers scuttled over her head, around and behind her back, everywhere . . . but at least they were smart enough to know that guns were a danger here; they would end up as easily shooting one another as they would her. Swords were smarter, and so each man wielded at least one, a few others, those more proficient, had a weapon for each hand. The metal edges sparkled overhead, bouncing light back and forth and making it difficult for Violet to keep track of who was where—it was like trying to monitor the stars sparkling in a lightening sky.

Violet ground her teeth and waited. She should have anticipated this—if the Hemophages had Gravity Shifters, it stood to reason that the humans did, too. They were always a little behind in technology because they didn’t have desperation fueling them like the vampires, but they eventually caught up. Hemophages had gotten the Gravity Shifters operational months ago, so it was certainly about time. But damn it . . . it wasn’t
fair.
She’d had so little to her advantage—yeah, speed and strength—but she was outnumbered by the hundreds and with a shortened life span to boot. There should be
something
to even the damned odds. It just wasn’t fucking
fair.

But it wasn’t going to make a damned bit of difference.

“You’re all going to die,” she said flatly, and went to work to prove it.

TWENTY-SIX

Daxus had heard it all.

The screams, the gunfire, the silence.

More screams, the clash of swords, the second silence.

Daxus was alone now in the Mortal Sciences Lab—well, except for the body of the kid who had started all of this. When it was finally quiet, he had some time, about twenty seconds actually, to let his imagination go to work. It was amazing how quickly the mind could function, and his brain managed to cover both ends of the spectrum; in the first circumstance, the last two or three of his brave and strong Praetorian Guard triumphantly pushed open the door, hauled Violet’s dead body into the lab, and tossed it at his feet. Daxus looked down at it and prodded it disdainfully with one foot, then lifted his chin and gave it a little dismissive wave of his hand—the signal for his soldiers to drag it away and get it out of his life for good. He went back to dissecting the boy’s body, culturing the antigen and, essentially, becoming the most important man in the entire world.

The second version, however, was not so kind to his psyche. His mind gave him the disturbing image of Violet storming through the lab door and gunning him down in his tracks, before he even had a chance to say a word or defend himself. He felt each imaginary bullet rip through his skin and put liquid trails of fire into his body, felt his ribs shatter and his sternum explode, experienced the sensation of his own heartbeat stuttering and slowing until a terrifying, inescapable blackness overwhelmed him.

Neither one happened, but the second illusion was a whole lot closer to the truth.

She’d had enough surprises for one day, so Violet pushed the door to the Mortal Sciences Lab open carefully, standing off to the side and letting the metal-reinforced wall be her shield. Everything about her body was in high gear and silently screaming—her pulse was racing, her blood was singing, her nerve endings were throbbing, especially the ugly remaining nubs on her sword hand. She had so much adrenaline in her system right now that she had a constant, high-pitched whine in her ears. She still had plenty of guns in her flat-space holsters, but for now she was going to hang on to her sword—funny, but that long, sharp blade had always turned out to be the best backup that a girl had.

She snapped a quick look past the threshold and yanked herself backward again, but that glance had given Violet the comfort zone she needed. Still being cautious, she inched around the edge of the door and finally stepped into the room. Lo and behold, there was Daxus, and all by his lonesome, too. Wouldn’t you know it—he’d run out of guards. Apparently she’d worked her way through his entire inventory.

Her mouth twisted. “Is that all you’ve got, you son of a bitch?”

Daxus opened his mouth to answer, but for a long moment he couldn’t—he was literally trembling so much that his lips didn’t want to work. Finally he managed to swallow, then speak. “For God’s sake, Violet—the child’s
dead.
”

She could hear the desperation in his voice, the puzzlement. But Violet only sneered back at him. “You obviously don’t have a clear grasp of what ‘dead’ really is.” She took a step in his direction and pulled her lips back in a sinister smile. “Allow me to demonstrate.”

Daxus scrambled backward, knocking aside a cart covered in medical implements. It crashed to the floor, but he didn’t notice, even when his feet nearly tangled in the metal pieces. “Violet, for God’s sake!” he said again. “I’m unarmed!”

But she only gave him another hideously dark grin and stared pointedly at each of his arms. “No,” she said mockingly. She’d switched her weapon to her other hand, and a jerk of her uninjured wrist made her sword blade vibrate in the air between them. “Not yet, you’re not.”

“Wait!” Daxus held up a hand, then hastily yanked it back and shoved it behind him, trying to steady himself. He looked at her with naked curiosity. He just
had
to ask. “What happened?”

She gazed back at him and knew exactly what he meant. “I found a way back,” she said simply. He stared at her but it was clear he didn’t understand. That was all right, because neither did she, and she certainly wasn’t going to tell him about Garth. In fact, she didn’t care to tell him about anything else at all.

But before she could move, Daxus’s hand snapped forward again, and this time it held a flame-throwing pistol, one of those unpleasant little surprises that Violet had tried her best to avoid by coming into this lab so cautiously. Clearly she hadn’t been careful
enough.

“Oh, no,” Daxus said when she started to step to the side. He smiled, quite pleased with himself and the way things had shifted in his favor. He waggled it in the air between them, always making sure its barrel was aimed at her face.

She shrugged, then suddenly flicked her injured hand at him. With an almost slow-motion beauty, she—and Daxus—watched a thin spray of blood droplets sail across the distance separating them, flowing like a small crimson shower. He opened his mouth to scream, then gasped and reeled backward instead, scrubbing frantically at his face with his left hand. “Blood!” he cried. “You got your
blood
on me!” Rage suffused his face, making his skin go purple. The flame pistol’s muzzle had wandered upward, and now he jerked it back in Violet’s direction and squeezed the trigger—

—but Violet was faster.

She snapped her sword up in front of her and turned the blade so that the flat of it faced Daxus’s weapon. The stream of thickened petroleum fuel that shot out of the flame pistol’s barrel hit dead center on the blade, then sprayed harmlessly to either side.

Daxus growled in frustration and yanked the gun to eye level as he backed up—there, splattered over the pilot light on the ignition switch, was a dime-sized drop of Violet’s blood.

If he expected her to comment, he was going to wait a long time—she only looked calmly back at him. Furious, Daxus threw the weapon aside and with a murderous look in her direction, he dived to the other side of the cold granite slab holding Six’s covered body. Before Violet could go after him, he reappeared; held triumphantly—and expertly—in his right hand was a long and wickedly sharp Turkish sword.

Another one of Daxus’s ugly secrets, but that was okay—she was always up for a good sword fight. He lunged at her but Violet parried his attack easily, and each used the first few moments of swordplay to measure the skill of the other. Again and again, in and out, and as they circled the slab, Violet’s gaze flicked to something on his arm—blood. He was cut. A corner of her mouth lifted.

Daxus took a half second to follow her gaze, but he only shrugged. “Yes,” he agreed. “No doubt in a fair fight you would beat me.” He shook his head and gave her a tooth-filled grin. “But that’s not how I got where I am today.”

Before she could retort, he smacked the top of the diamond biohazard ring he wore on one hand with the hilt of his sword. Violet jerked as one by one the high windows around the top of the lab began to black out—that damned ring must have had a remote built into it. In only a few seconds, the room was plunged into darkness.

Damn.

Violet’s head snapped to the right as a sudden, faint whirring sound split the silence. She identified the noise instantly: Starlight Goggles adjusting to what little light there was in the room. The amount certainly wasn’t enough to do
her
any good but the goggles would amplify it to give the wearer—Daxus—a pretty damned clear picture of the interior of the room.

And whoever was in it.

“Can you see me, Violet?” Daxus’s voice was full of contempt and . . .
entertainment
. The bastard was actually having
fun.
“Because I can see
you.
Too bad you’re the freak who converted with only mild photokemia.”

He was right about that—her brethren were able to see in the dark much better than she. But answering would only give her position away that much sooner—at least if she was quiet she could try to hide, to duck down behind the body slab and work her way around it or under it. Desperately, Violet tried to build a mental picture that would remind her of what else was in the lab—if Daxus had been directly in front of her on the other side of the slab, the cart that he had overturned should be slightly to her left. She needed to try to avoid it, as well as the implements that had spilled on the floor. Not only were they sharp, they would be noisy against the tile floor and—

Violet spun in the darkness as she heard Daxus break into a run, but she couldn’t tell from which direction he was coming—

Until he put a long strip of fire along her left back shoulder blade.

Violet cried out and instinctively ducked away, then heard Daxus’s blade whistle over her head as she rolled on the floor—a second too late and she’d probably be dead. Something sharp and wrapped in plastic poked at the rear of her thighs—one of the scalpels that had hit the floor from the fallen cart. She snatched it up as she kept rolling, then crawling, trying to find her way around the granite slab that had suddenly become a barrier to the path of safety rather than something behind which she could hide.

Desperate to distract him, she tossed the scalpel into the darkness, hoping he would follow its sound. No such luck—he ignored it completely.

“Oooh,” Daxus said complacently. “Bet that stung.”

As much as she wanted to snipe back at him, Violet didn’t dare answer. Did he know where she was? Of course he did, but she still couldn’t see a damned thing. There was a hiss in the air, the unmistakable sound of a blade, and reflex made her jerk backward. Too late, and she gave another outraged cry as Daxus’s sword parted leather, fabric, and skin across her rib cage—if she hadn’t backed up, the bastard would have easily eviscerated her. She wasn’t doing so hot in this confrontation.

“Don’t worry,” Daxus said smugly. “I didn’t hit anything vital . . .
yet.
We’re saving that—” Instead of finishing his sentence, he managed to cut her again, this time catching her down the side of one leg. The pain was too much, unexpected, and Violet couldn’t stop another scream from escaping her lips.