The Birth of Vengeance (Vampire Formula #1) (6 page)

“I better get home,” I answered, not wanting to argue about it anymore.

Jill sighed knowing it was a lost cause.

“Let me run you home at least,” she said.

“Thank you, that would be great,” I answered, got up and checked my pockets for my house keys.

I couldn’t find them. I frantically padded every pocket and turned out their contents onto the table but they were gone.

“My keys have gone. I must have lost them or they were taken,” I said.

“What about your Dad?” Jill asked.

“He will have some; can you drop me off at his workplace instead?” I asked, knowing that he wouldn’t leave work early.

“Of course,” she answered.

The three of us got into Jill’s black Mini Cooper. Scarlett and I sat in the back holding hands while I gave directions and Jill drove.

We arrived at the research facility, a large grey concrete structure with a barrier across the entrance and exit, and army guards in a cabin at the side of the barrier. All around the centre a high barbed wired electric fence ringed it. This wasn’t the sort of place you just walked into. I kissed Scarlett goodbye and clambered out of the car, being careful not to hit my bruises. The guards watched suspiciously, as I hobbled over to the cabin, taking in the bruises and blood on my clothes and face. They quickly came to the door of the cabin. I asked to talk with Mr Clarence Watson, my Dad, and they called through without complaint. I explained briefly what had happened, and he quickly came to fetch me. He wore his white lab coat with ID badge attached, black trousers, black shoes and his small rounded spectacles. He spoke briefly to Scarlett and Jill, as he crouched down at the window of the Mini Cooper, and thanked them for taking care of me. I waved goodbye to them, and Scarlett blew me a kiss as a single tear rolled down her face. The car reversed around and drove back off down the road.

Dad ushered me inside the building out of the cold. We walked through the white marbled floored lobby, around an enclosed receptionist desk and down the endless empty white corridors straight ahead. Offices and other corridors shot off the sides of the main corridor as we walked. The building lay empty, it being late at night and most people had already gone home. The corridors got shorter and the offices smaller as we carried on and Dad asked me what had happened. I relayed the whole story to him, as we passed through the increasingly secure doors further into the centre of the building. He sighed and mumbled something about the youth of today, until we finally reached a lift. He swiped his card again and placed his eye against a reader on the side panel. The lift door opened and we entered. He pressed “B,” for basement I guessed, and we descended into the depths of the building.

“I will sort out some arrangements to get you home,” he said, “I have to work all night.”

“I know Dad,” I responded.

The lift stopped, and we walked along the single corridor past a couple of rooms and then into his lab. The smell of new paint lingered in the air and a single bare bulb illuminated the room. As we entered, I noticed two needles filled with a red substance sat on the side. Dad quickly walked over to them and shoved them in a drawer in the hope I hadn’t noticed, which I wouldn’t have but for him hiding them away.

“Sit here and don’t touch anything, I am going to make some phone calls”.

He sat me down in his chair in front of his computer by the side of a large tinted mirror. He looked at the repair work on my face, and then walked into the office next door to make his calls; he needed a fixed line phone this deep underground.

In the mirror, my reflection revealed the beating I had taken. My black eye had swollen and my nose bruised and bloodied but the majority of pain came from the rest of my body. My legs and back hurt like hell as they had absorbed the majority of the kicks. I shuffled in the chair and tried to find a way of sitting that didn’t hurt. I brushed at the dirt, blood, snot, tears and spit that stained my clothes. I quickly brushed my hair and straightened my clothes as I viewed my reflection, trying to get some dignity back. Yet again, I stared into my own eyes wondering how I had gotten into this mess and what the future held.

Adjacent to the mirror, a control panel with various black buttons ran down the side. The rest of the room contained clinical white cupboards perched along the walls and black work surfaces with drawers and cupboards underneath for equipment, where the needles had been placed. Equipment sat on top of the work surfaces; Microscope, spinning things, folders, books and the cupboards full of scientific kit. I looked back into the mirror and my reflection disgusted me. I was a loser. I felt angry that I couldn’t stop them.

I thought about Giles and the fact we had saved him initially from what I had just been through. He never thanked me for getting his mum and saving him. He just blamed me for not being beaten up with him, for looking the other way and walking on. After moving all this way to avoid troubles at home, I had still ended up bruised, battered, hurt and even more scared than before. I feared I lost Scarlett’s respect along with my phone, money and dignity. I had no reason to believe Scarlett would leave me because of this but I wasn’t thinking straight. She was too good for me, and I had always known this to be true. Eventually someone older, braver and cooler would take an interest, and it would be the end. That night others had noticed her and were jealous enough to attack me to push me away. My anger boiled inside. Why did all these dreadful things happen to me? What had I ever done to the world that everything kept being snatched away? From the very day I had been born, Mum died and Dad resented me for the death of his wife and curtailing his work. Bullied at school from the very first day, the car accident with Giles’ mum, and the O’Keefes harassing me. Then being mugged in London, when I had finally started a new life for myself. I jumped off the chair and kicked it to the floor, then punched one of the cupboards.
Ouch
. I held my hand gently as the bruised knuckles throbbed with pain.

“Bllloooood and rage, how sweet,” a soft feminine voice smoothly interrupted my self-loathing.

The voice sounded strange, the accent weird, it seemed to start off eastern European and finish in French.

“Hello!” I answered back looking around the room and down the corridor. I couldn’t hear anyone else except my Dad talking in the office next door.

“Hello,” I said again nervously re-entering the room.

“Thhhrough the mirror,” the voice replied.

I hadn’t imagined it. The voice contained a strange mixture of harsh eastern tones finishing in a sexy French voice. It then dawned on me that the voice sounded just in my head.

Hello, I thought instead of speaking and the image of the panel adjacent to the mirror appeared in my mind. Curious, I walked straight over and pressed the button it showed.

The tinted mirror cleared to glass showing a small room on the other side. The walls and ceiling painted a bright white, and embedded into the ceiling a series of strip lights that overly illuminated the room. A single bed with tatty unmade sheets tucked into the far right corner, and in the middle of the room a young woman in her late twenties, with her head leant forward, dropping her eyes to the floor. She walked back and forth across the room, passing either side of a bare wooden chair facing the mirror. As she walked, her boot heels tapped across the exposed wooden floorboards. Her long tousled raven hair bounced up and down on the shoulder straps of her white vest top. Light flashed off her thighs on either leg from her tight, black, shiny combat trousers, as she walked like a captive animal slowly wearing a groove in the ground. Her body held perfect form with ample curves across her tall athletic frame. Her clothes hugged her figure, pulling in and pushing out her flesh and muscles in the desired places. She was unbelievably attractive. I stood stunned to the spot as I looked at my fantasy woman and an instant blaze of desire swept through me.

“Hi,” I said, and waved pathetically to her unsure what else to do.

She stopped and looked up at me. She looked sad, her face ashen and drooped, and her shoulders slumped forward. As our eyes met, her body straightened and pushed upright and firm and her face came alive. Her bright sky blue eyes sparkled and a small smiled appeared that lifted her face. Her features appeared flawless and well defined, creating perfect symmetry. Her gaze penetrated straight through the glass and burned into my eyes, and into my soul. I became instantly transfixed as I stared at her without embarrassment. The noises around me faded away, and my vision of everything else blackened. My sight could only cope with the vision of her, as her presence dominated everything else, pushing it to the edges of my senses. Her raven hair began to flow gently backwards as if it had a life of its own. Her lips turned a deep bloodied red, and her cheeks became flushed with colour. She emitted a brooding intensity that poured out as a mist, which swirled around in the air filling up the space between us, and then building up against the glass and pushing against it trying to find a way through. The glass bulged and the mist seeped through the invisible spaces in the atoms of the glass, and cascaded like a waterfall forming a pool lapping around my feet. It poured into the lab from the other room, slowly building and getting higher, encircling and enveloping my whole body. The hairs across my body rose up as the hot mist formed ghostly tentacles, which grasped my torso, arms and legs. The tentacles ran across my body and stroked it gently. Sending small shivers firing like sparks up my back and into the pleasure sensors in my mind. The mist twisted its way as small spires into my nose, and its smell triggered a lustful chemical reaction that engulfed my body. I abandoned myself entirely and desire swept through my body. I burned up with pleasure and a desire to embrace her no matter the consequences.

“Revenge, revenge,” she whispered into my mind over and over again.

I watched transfixed, my mind utterly lost in a deep trance absorbing every wave of pleasure. I ached to hold her tight and delight in her perfect body. Her hand stretched out and she beckoned me towards her. The misty tentacles of her desire pulled me towards the glass and towards her. My hands braced myself against the glass. My exhaled breath hot and the glass misted up, as I absorbed the vision in the other room.

“Revenge, revenge, my darling.”

She glided towards the glass and lowered both straps on her vest top, revealing her bare shoulders. Another image flashed into my head of the two needles I had seen earlier. Suddenly, I shook violently but my eyes kept transfixed on the goddess before me, as she pulled down the rest of her top to her waist. Her body coated in a warm inviting light layer of moisture

The next thing I remember, strong ultraviolet lights turned on in the ceiling. Her flesh burnt immediately and smoke rose from the affected areas. She screamed aloud and dived across the room trying to hide under the blanket on the bed. My thoughts became my own again as I had been released from her possession. I rocked backwards and shook my head to break the rest of the spell. The lights went back to normal again, and my Dad released a button from the control panel. The mist disappeared in the lab and the other room. I looked back into the room just in time to see the woman spring out of the blanket and fling herself against the glass. It shuddered but withheld the battering. I bolted backwards and fell into the chair behind me as she snarled and screamed into the glass. Her face contorted and muscles jutted out, as they spasmed and flexed increasing in proportion. Her eyes transformed from bright sky blue to blood red, with cat-like black slits in the middle. Her hair widely jutted out as it stood on its ends. Her whole skin drained from flushed red cheeks and seduction red lips to an aggressive sick grey. She snarled again, opened her mouth, and I saw the clinching point, a set of fangs dripping with saliva. My own colour drained away, and my heartbeat pounded in my ears. I gazed glued to the glass as her hot snarling breath misted it up, and time slowed down as I feared the glass would capitulate to her rage.

 
Eventually, she stopped and her face began to change slowly back to normal. She became the sad and lonely women I saw when I first looked through the glass. Fangs retracted and blood red eyes flashed back to her sky bright eyes of before but they looked sad and defeated. Her shoulders slumped, face ashen and drooped. She turned, pulled up her vest top and walked back to the bed where she laid down, with her back facing us, and her burns healed in an instant.

“What the hell was that,” I said pointing a finger at her.

My Dad pressed another button, and the glass reverted to a mirror.

“I said don’t touch anything,” he shouted back at me.

“It looks like a vampire.”

“Never mind what it is. It was a mistake to bring you down here,” he replied.

Two security guards dressed in grey combat overalls and black boots burst into the room with guns pointed at us.

My Dad put his hands in the air, “It’s okay, no problems; she has been subdued.”

He ushered them out the door back into the corridor. At that moment, the image of the two needles flashed across my mind again. She was trying to tell me something, just like she did with the button on the control panel. I didn’t have time to think it through, and I realised I stood with my back to the drawer my Dad had placed them in earlier. I stayed facing the guards and reached behind me with one hand and eased open the drawer. I reached in, grabbed both needles and secreted them up the sleeve of my coat.

Dad turned around.

“Let’s get you home before you cause more damage,” he said.

“Is it a vampire?” I asked again.

“You didn’t see anything. DO YOU UNDERSTAND?” he shouted, grabbing my shoulders and shoving me backwards into the drawers.

“Okay, okay,” I replied not wanting any more bruises.

We made most of the journey back to the gate in silence. Neither of us looked at one another, both of us unsure what to say. I guess out of remorse for shouting at me or desire to tell someone, my Dad started speaking.

“Vampire, I guess is the right word,” he said out of the blue.

I looked up at him waiting to hear more.

“We are studying her, developing genetic formulas that could benefit humankind.”