Know Thine Enemy (21 page)

Ryker wasn
't the sort of guy to ride out remorse, but somehow Izzie had thrown everything he knew into question. Perhaps it was being strong when others would be weak, or knowing what she needed and taking it, even if she hated the need in the first place.

His fangs itched, but he wouldn
't let them out. Not now. He'd already taken too much.

"
You still feel hot?" he asked.

Izzie shivered and hid her face against his shoulder.
"It's wearing off," she murmured. "I just feel . . . I don't know."

"
I'm sorry."

"
I asked for it."

"
No, you didn't. You didn't ask for any of this."

She trembled and shook her head. His skin felt damp and he had the horrible suspicion she was crying again.

She was so much stronger than she gave herself credit for.

Would she hate him if he bit her? Hell, would she even know what it meant? So much of his kind
's mythology was bastardized by Hollywood, she might not know the transition between human and immortality took but three bites from the same vampire. What could Wright have known about the transformation, if anything? What would he have shared?

"
Ryker?"

"
Hmmm?"

"
I'm not a whore."

His heart twisted.
"I know."

"
I feel like one."

"
Liking sex doesn't make you a whore."

"
I don't like it, though. I mean—I like what you do, but I hate
this
. I hate it so much. You're the only thing making it okay."

"
Izzie—"

The room blazed with light without warning and something in him snapped. The hint of what was to come
—the parade of labcoats and their fucking tests. Mucking with his body was one thing, but Briggs and friends had put all else on the line, and he knew then, without a doubt, despite whatever they'd been told, their captors had watched the whole thing.

All of it. Izzie begging him to touch her. Izzie crying. Izzie thinking she was anything but what she was.

And it was too much. The girl belonged to him.

A snarl tore through his throat as his fangs descended. Ryker ignored everything
—the gasp from the girl curled at his chest and the cries of protest from Briggs and his cadets. She wouldn't cry anymore because of him.

Not like this.In the end the choice was easy. Ryker rolled her over and buried his face in the crook of her neck, and before anyone could think to stop him, he sliced his fangs into her skin and drank deep.

Chapter Twelve

As a child, Izzie would hide in the pews at church and play with her favorite stuffed dog while Harrison took confession. It wasn
't a frequent occurrence, and became a dead practice when she was nine or ten. Still, she clearly remembered Harrison snapping at her when she inched near the confessional, telling her what was being said inside was between the sinner and God.

Whatever happened with Ryker fell under the same classification. Something had changed. She felt it with every step she took, every breath that pressed against her lungs, every heartbeat. The fire she
'd felt earlier had faded, erasing the effects of whatever Briggs had slipped into her food. The instant Ryker's fangs found her throat something inside her chest had exploded, breathing into her nervous energy unlike anything she'd ever felt.

Izzie wasn
't an idiot. The girl that lived outside these walls understood the dangerous implications of allowing a vampire to sample her blood. It actually gave her a measure of perverse comfort imagining Wright's fury. How he'd sit her down and go on a two hour rant on the dangers of letting the enemy close. People died when they became addicted to a vampire's bite—damn, she'd known that just from running into junkies on the street. Men and women alike who couldn't get enough of the rush.
It's out of this freakin' world, man. I'm tellin' yah.

The very notion she could see herself outside, remember what that girl felt like, and imagine slipping right back into her shoes and taking back the night provided an even hand of relief and anxiety. That life was all she knew. She might have been prepared to leave it, but emerging from a hellhole like this into the big bad world without so much as a compass was enough to scare the piss out of anyone.

She also feared the drug Briggs had given her—the one that had burned her from the inside out and prompted her to spread her legs so easily for Ryker—was nothing more than her repressed sexuality finally making an appearance. Harrison had beaten any inkling of womanly desire out of her before she'd had her first period, and the only thing that had provoked her to address her virginity before was the knowledge if it had to happen, better with someone she knew and trusted. Physical pleasure hadn't mattered a damn that night with Wright, which said nothing about his skill as a lover and everything about her attitude toward sex. Sex was evil. Sex was dirty. Sex was what got her mother killed. Sex was what ruined Harrison's life.

Therefore the thought of begging for a fuck from a vamp she barely knew struck Izzie as wild and completely out of character. That wasn
't her. Not
her.

Neither were these feelings
—this sense of need. This want for another.

But damn if the feelings weren
't there.

Whatever else, Ryker
's bite had gone a long way in helping her see clearly for the first time in days. Upon awakening to find herself here, a part of her had regressed to a person that should have died alongside Harrison. A frightened child trapped in a woman's body—a woman just now developing a sense of understanding for the world around her. And even more than that, Izzie felt energized—
alive.
She felt she could break walls with her fists and tear down her cell door with nothing more than a sturdy kick.

She felt indestructible. Perhaps that had something to do with the bite, as well.

Somehow she knew she had already stayed her last night in this strange version of Hell.

When Briggs entered her cell with her evening meal, he didn
't seem notice the change in her. He smiled and chirped a bright, "Hello!"

Izzie nodded but made no move to get up. Since returning to her cell, she had taken seat against back wall, her arms propped on her legs.

"Remarkable performance today," Briggs said, taking long strides toward the table. "A true pleasure to watch."

She feigned a smile.
"So much for privacy, huh?"

"
White lies never hurt anyone."

"
Yeah, fuck you very much."

He flashed her a nasty little smile.
"Not my job, I'm afraid."

"
Did you dose me with something, doc?"

Briggs placed the tray on the table, then looked at her, the picture of innocence.
"Dose?"

"
I didn't feel right in there."

"
It looked like he took care of that pretty quickly."

Izzie balled her hands into fists.
"You sick fuck."

"
No shame in enjoying the sessions."

"
You gave me something."

The doctor shrugged.
"We have some drugs we wanted to test, and while you did make a convenient subject, I'd hesitate before placing blame on being
under the influence.
This medication wouldn't alter your behavior—rather lower your inhibitions."

There wasn
't much difference, if her experience trolling bars had amounted to anything. Izzie pursed her lips but didn't respond, her gaze instead falling to her evening meal. Briggs had served her soup again, though he'd remembered to bring a plastic spoon this time. Perhaps he felt she'd earned a utensil with how compliant she'd been during their recent tests. Or maybe he just didn't give a damn.

Briggs
seemed different tonight, or perhaps this was something she was seeing for the first time. As she approached the table, his eyes roamed her naked body with unabashed interest. Izzie's skin crawled, but she did her best not to visibly react, instead focusing on the offering of food and the bizarre surge of energy strengthening her muscles.

"
I wonder," he said, "how your Mr. Ryker would react if we paired you with another."

Her chest tightened.
"It's Ryker again, is it? What happened to all that Subject 061 bullshit?"

"
When it's just you and me, Izzie, there's no need for formalities."

"
You're the one who imposed them."

"
And I'm taking them away." He swallowed and licked his lips when she was within reach, then ran his curled fingers down her arm. "You like what he does to you, don't you?"

Another surge of strength crashed through her, pressing a
t her skin in desperation of release. The feel of his flesh against hers had her stomach twisting. Eating wasn't an option. "I make the best," Izzie replied through her teeth, "of a bad situation."

"
Mmhmm." Briggs's gaze remained trained on her breasts, his hands twitching. "And if our tests were to include studying the lengths to which a vampire can become fixated on a potential mate by studying his reaction when forced to watch you with another, you would
make the best
out of that situation as well? You would scream and moan for him, too? Beg him for dick? You would—"

That was it. A proverbial
it
as no one else could define. Something inside her broke and shifted thought and action into autopilot. Her hand moved of its own volition, seizing the plastic, soup-bathed spoon and thrusting it with blind expertise into the soft tissue of Briggs's throat. It took a few delayed seconds for reality to catch up with the present, and by the time Izzie realized what she'd done the moment for reaction had passed. Blood pooled at the base of the wound and lazily trickled down his pasty torn flesh. Briggs's eyes wide in shock, his face ashen, his legs buckling. And then it was over—over before it started. His lips parted and he hissed something—a curse, a plea, a cry for help—but it came out nothing more than a whisper. Briggs toppled uselessly to the ground, and was gone the next second.

If she breathed any harder she would drown in oxygen.

"Holy motherfucking hell," Izzie sputtered, staring at her hands.

Briggs was dead. She
'd killed Briggs. Briggs was dead.

And she
'd killed him with a fucking spoon. A plastic one, at that. That wasn't possible.

Only he was dead, and there was no arguing with a dead man.

Izzie blinked and shook her head. She couldn't stand here and stare at his body all night—despite how perversely gratifying it was—nor could she allow herself a moment to stop and contemplate how it had happened. The bizarre, twisted energy pushing against her veins felt vindicated but not satisfied, and she'd be damned before she stopped without putting up a larger fight. In seconds she was moving again, tearing Briggs's pants down his legs and his shirt over his head. It would be a loose fit, but some clothes—even from a perverted fucksack—were better than none.

"
There," she muttered once she was clothed, kicking the dead man's side for good measure. "And, while I have you here, gotta say if it'd been up to me—on my terms—you would've died in a dirty alley with Harrison's knife up your ass. You're welcome for that."

After one last glance at Briggs
's body, she turned her attention to the cell door.

"
All right, Izzie. You've seen other girls do it."

It wasn
't much of a pep-talk, but it was the only one she had.

She inhaled deeply before splitting the air under the power of her scream that would put Jamie Lee Curtis to shame. From there, it didn
't take long. Someone must have been close.

"
Hello?" A man. Maybe one of the quiet, albeit willing assistants. "Dr. Briggs?"

"
Please!" Izzie said in a voice that wasn't hers. "I think he's had a heart attack!"

The door opened and revealed an unfamiliar face, one belonging to a guard rather than an assistant. A guard with a gun. At once she saw everything line up, as though watching herself from afar, and understood immediately luxuries like hesitation or second thoughts weren
't on the table. Izzie smashed her fist into the man's eye, her other hand wrestling the drawn firearm out of his grasp without anything resembling a fight. Were she the type to be concerned over something being too easy, warning bells would have sounded a long time ago. As it was, she barely felt winded.

Just revved. And pissed.

"All right, then," Izzie said, cocking the gun and thrusting the business end against the guard's sternum. "I'm here to see a man about a vamp. You wanna be that man?"