Summoned to Die Read online

  He banged on the door and the bolt slid open. I counted how long it took for the bolt to slide and for the door to open. My mental map of the escape options grew.

  “I think I will get answers out of you, yes.”

  He backed out of the room, still staring at me, until the door began closing. Before it slammed shut he put out his hand and poked his head back in.

  “The answer is yes,” he said. “I have your friends. I didn’t want you to freak out prematurely, but if you insist on knowing.”

  I held the red rage inside me in check and nodded. “Thank you,” I said.

  He slammed the door shut and the metal bolt on the far side slid into place.

  I wanted to scream and fight, to tear down the walls and kill everyone there. They had them, whatever that meant. They could be in the cells to either side of me and I had no way of helping them.

  Not yet, anyway.

  “I’m coming,” I whispered to myself, closing my eyes and breathing deep to try and calm down.

  Chapter 3

  “My name is Doctor Keith,” the man with the clipboard said as they wheeled me out of my room. “I didn’t get a chance to tell you earlier.”

  “I don’t care,” I growled.

  I wasn’t happy. Two men had come into my room with some kind of shock batons. I suggested they should leave before I hurt someone and they’d taken it as their cue to electrocute me. When I woke up I was strapped to a gurney and Keith was standing over me.

  We traveled quickly along bare, white, uniform corridors. It was as bright in the corridors as the other two rooms I’d seen, like they were afraid of the dark and all the things hiding in it. Which made sense, given what the doctor had told me.

  Erindis was waiting in the observation room when they wheeled me in. She stood against the wall with the large window near the top. She didn’t look happy either, but she wasn’t strapped to a moving table about to be experimented on, so I didn’t care.

  The room was large, taking up two or three floors in the building. The top half of one wall was a large window with a dark room beyond. I imagined men in suits watching me and felt the urge to hurt someone.

  “We’re going to run a few tests,” Keith said. “Simple things, just to confirm some of the stuff we’ve been told.”

  I was left in the middle of the room by the two guys with the batons. Men in white lab coats wheeled some machinery over and positioned it above me, then brought over a metal table on wheels, with the tools they’d be using.

  He called what they were doing testing, but it looked a lot like someone was planning on a torture session. There were needles and knives, saws and hammers, all the things you’d want to bring along if you planned on making someone scream.

  “You’re going to regret doing this,” I said, trying to keep myself calm. I wasn’t scared, though I suspected I would be in a little while. I was angry, angrier than I had been, anyway.

  “I sure hope not,” he said, leaning over me and smiling. He was excited again, bouncing around like he was about to get his heart’s desire. “That would be disappointing.”

  “Tell them, Erindis,” I said. “Tell them what happens to people who mess with me.”

  “She mentioned it,” Keith said. “She’s told us all sorts of things. And I believe her, in case you’re wondering, but I’ve got bosses and they need to see it for themselves.”

  “Then I’ll have to remember to flay them alive as well.”

  “Such angry talk,” he replied. “Such bravado. You’re a big man and we all respect how scary you are. Please open your mouth.”

  I didn’t, but he hadn’t really expected me to. He waved Erindis over and she pushed away from the wall to join us in the center of the room.

  “Open your mouth,” she said. Whether I wanted to or not I had to follow her orders. I opened my mouth.

  “Good boy,” Keith said, distracted by the plastic stick in his hand. “This won’t hurt, promise.”

  He scraped it along the top of my mouth as he shined a light to see what he was doing. When he was done he pushed my mouth closed and bottled the plastic thing.

  “Now we’re going to take some blood, alright?”

  He wasn’t asking my permission. It was more habit for him to speak the way he was and I knew it, but I still felt the urge to tell him no.

  The other men took the blood, inserting needles into four places around my body; my arm, my neck, my leg, and my crotch. When they were done they took the vials of blood to a table near the door, loaded with more arcane equipment. The baton guys were standing there, I saw, their shock-sticks in hand in case I started fighting. They also had guns on their belts that looked like they’d be more effective.

  They continued. Keith took skin samples by scraping my arm and he cut a few locks of my hair. He poked around in my mouth again, taking pictures with a small camera on a stick.

  I pulled against the restraints and felt them give a little. If I put some effort into it I thought I might be able to break them and get up. I’d have to deal with the men at the door, though, and I wasn’t going to be that much faster than they were.

  I let him run his tests, wondering what he hoped to get out of it. My unique situation was magical and his machines weren’t going to tell him anything. He couldn’t test the dormant tattoos and they wouldn’t glow for him unless they gave me powerful blood to absorb the life-force from. And if they did that I wouldn’t have to worry about the guys at the door anymore.

  “Alright,” Keith said, standing beside me and looking up at the glass. “Are we good to go?”

  The hidden people gave him some signal and he grinned at them, nodding.

  “Erindis, if you could?”

  She looked down at me and made sure I was focusing on her when she spoke. I had wondered if she looked scared before, or anxious. I saw now that she looked impatient, maybe even bored. She knew what was coming and it didn’t affect her at all.

  “Don’t move,” she said. “Don’t fight. Don’t try to stop this from happening.”

  “That’s ominous,” Keith said. He put his hand on my arm and looked down at me. “This next part might sting, but we’re going to take this slowly. There’s no risk to you, I promise.”

  “Just get it over with,” I said. Erindis had done well with her orders. They were clear and simple, with little room for ambiguity.

  Keith brought out a long metallic rod with a pointed end. He placed the point against my ribs, took a breath, and inserted it.

  I felt it burrow through me, tearing flesh and organs until it had traveled through my chest and settled against the ribs on the far side. It felt cold and somehow restrictive, like I was now being restrained internally as well.

  “See,” Keith said. “That wasn’t so bad.”

  “I’m going to stick this thing your head,” I said. “You can tell me what it feels like.”

  “Yes, yes, we all know how much of a big man you are.”

  I really didn’t like Doctor Keith, and I was going to show him how much I disliked him at the earliest opportunity.

  When some pre-agreed period of time had passed he removed the rod and set one of the machines to monitor the hole he’d made. He brought up a display at the foot of my bed and I saw as blood slowly dripped from the hole.

  “What is this meant to prove?” I said. “That I bleed?”

  “No, of course not. We knew that already.” He pointed to the door. “We took blood, remember?”

  “That was a poor attempt at sarcasm,” I said. “Allow me to rephrase: What the hell are you trying to see?”

  “Well, the young lady here has suggested that you can heal very quickly, in addition to all the other things she’s said you can do. This is the first phase in that testing.”

  “First phase?” I said.

  “Yes, Agmundr. My apologies, but there will be many phases of varying degrees of comfort for you.”

  “This is taking too long,” Erindis said. She looked uncomfortabl
e, but it didn’t seem to have anything to do with me. She just looked like she had somewhere else to be.

  “Patience.” Keith adjusted the machine and the image on the screen rocked. “This is going to take some time.”

  “It doesn’t have to,” she said. “He isn’t going to heal faster. Not this way.”

  “If you give me a small amount of vampire blood, however,” I said.

  Erindis started to object and Keith laughed. I hadn’t thought they’d be that stupid, but I could hope.

  “What do you propose, then?” Keith asked Erindis.

  “Use that pointy stick and poke out an eye.”

  I knew she didn’t like me. I understood why and I’d heard her side of the story a few times. But her words still surprised me. If Bec had said them I’d have understood; she had no emotions and relied on pure rationality for most of her decisions.

  But Erindis was a normal woman, immortality notwithstanding. For her to suggest something like that meant she felt less than nothing for me. She actively wanted to punish me.

  It put a new spin on my intentions toward her, which hurt me more than the tests ever could.

  “I think we’ll take this slow, alright?”

  “Fine,” Erindis said. She stomped off toward the door and waited for one of the guards there to open it for her.

  Before anyone knew what was happening she was back at the table and Keith had his hands raised to ward her off. She pointed a pistol at my stomach and fired before anyone could stop her.

  The tattoos were dormant and I had to rely on my own stamina to deal with the pain. I yelled at her, straining against the straps holding me down, desperately trying to get to her. The pain was intense, like an explosion in my stomach. Which I guess is what had happened.

  “Take her away,” Keith said, grabbing some white cloths and a bottle of foul-smelling liquid to try and staunch the blood loss before he lost his test subject.

  “Just watch the wound,” Erindis said as she was dragged away. “Don’t waste this opportunity. What the wound.”

  Doctor Keith listened to her, raising his hand to get the men to let her go. She approached the table again and I didn’t have the strength to try and kill her.

  “The bleeding is stopping,” he said, dragging his camera device over to observe the damage. “But he isn’t healing as you have suggested.”

  “It won’t be quick, not the way he is now. And he may be delaying it somehow. But it’ll be quicker than a normal man, I guarantee.”

  They stood around the table and stared at me, as though watching it would make it happen any faster. I was in agony and there was nothing I could do about it; without the tattoos I was mostly human. She was right, though, I would heal faster, but not on a scale they could watch happening.

  Surely she knew that? If she thought I could heal fast enough to deal with a bullet in the gut then she was mistaken, and it told me something about the nature of her immortality that she had come to that conclusion.

  I tried not to squirm or groan, but there was no way I was going to keep still. Fire was spreading through my body and it took all my strength not to scream just to let some of the heat out.

  “This is taking too long,” Keith said. “Are you sure he can heal faster than this?”

  “I am,” Erindis said, not sounding sure at all.

  “You had better hope so.”

  “Trust me.”

  They left me alone after an hour, leaving the room to fight about what she’d done to me. They left the lights on so I couldn’t even escape that.

  I lay on the gurney, shaking, sweating, and in agony. And I was sure I was still being observed, not just by the machine but by someone behind the glass too. It was just a feeling, but it was a strong one.

  I wanted to try and be strong before my captors, but eventually I lost consciousness, falling into glorious darkness.

  Chapter 4

  I awoke when they came for me. They jostled the gurney when they unlocked the wheels, and I was dragged back into a universe of pain.

  My eyes didn’t want to open, but when they did I saw that I was covered in blood. I felt weak, weaker than I had felt in a long time. My head felt detached from body, as though it could float away on a breeze. I couldn’t feel anything lower than my stomach because the pain there was so intense it overloaded the rest of my nervous system

  They wheeled the gurney out of the room, making blood-red tracks on the tile floor that even I could see with my blurry vision. They bumped into the doorway on the way out and I screamed in agony.

  The room they took me to was only a few doors down, but it felt like we’d been traveling for hours. Every little movement, every accidental bump or purposeful turn, threatened to knock me out again as fire tore through my body. I wanted to die, but I wanted to kill even more.

  They put me in another of their white rooms, this one smaller, with one entire wall made of glass. On the other side of the glass was another room exactly the same. They tilted the gurney up so I was facing the window.

  I was still bleeding; I watched my faint reflection in the glass cough up enough to drown a man, though I didn’t realize I was doing it.

  “Agmundr,” Doctor Keith said as he walked quickly into the room. “I’ve been speaking with Erindis and she assures me that you should be healing faster than this. I am therefore forced to come to one of two conclusions. Either she is lying, in which case I have no use for either of you, or you are delaying your healing and putting up with a, quite frankly, ridiculous amount of pain.”

  “You don’t understand pain,” I managed to hiss through the clenched teeth and blood. “Not yet.”

  “A bully to the end,” he said, unamused. “Perhaps this will help speed things along.”

  A wheelchair entered the room opposite mine and was positioned so we faced each other. Bec sat in the chair, glaring at the two men on either side of her.

  “I believe you care about this young woman,” Keith said impatiently, stepping between us. “Confirm or deny the statement, please.”

  “I’m going to feed you your entrails.”

  “I’ll take that as an affirmative. Please pay attention to the scenario on the other side of the glass. If you do not speed up your healing or in some way prove your worth to me, I will kill the girl. Do you understand?”

  I roared, pulling on the restraints with all of my meager strength.

  “I’ll take that as an affirmative as well. Good boy.” He walked to the door and let me get a good look at Bec. “You have a minute to comply.”

  She looked well, except for being strapped in a wheelchair. I’d worried she might be dead but they were taking care of her. Whoever these people were, they knew what they were doing. They’d held onto her as a bargaining chip they might need in the future, even though she was just a normal human.

  I wondered where Roman was. Would they wheel him out next? Would I have to watch everyone I knew in this century die before they understood that I wasn’t controlling the wound?

  “I won’t die,” I said, trying to get his attention. “I will heal from this. But it won’t be quick. It can’t be, not anymore.”

  “What do you mean?” He was behind me, looking over my shoulder at Bec.

  “I need a power source or this is going to take weeks.”

  “What kind of power?” he asked.

  “Blood, like I said. Supernatural blood. A drop. A cup full, and I’ll do anything you want.”

  “But you’ll fight back then, won’t you? You’ll try to escape, or kill me.”

  “If you drop all of this now, then I promise I won’t seek revenge.” It was a hard thing for me to promise, but I meant it. I’d happily never see any of these people again, even if it meant they had to live.

  “Erindis tells me that would be a mistake.”

  “I have made a promise,” I said. I couldn’t get the seriousness of my words across through the blood in my mouth. I wanted to speak with authority, to bargain with confiden
ce, but I was passing out again and I didn’t have time.

  “I believe you,” he said. I sighed, relieved beyond measure. “But I’m not going to do it. You have five seconds.”

  I rocked on the gurney, trying to get it to fall over so I didn’t have to watch. One of the men took a syringe from his jacket pocket and placed the needle in her neck.

  She didn’t look scared, because she was Bec and as far as I knew there was only one time she’d ever been scared and that had been at my hand. She watched me watching her, somehow accepting of her fate.

  “Time’s up,” Keith said, and they injected her.

  She rocked in place for a time, frothing at the mouth as her muscles jerked randomly. It took a little while for the poison to kill her, but eventually she was still. They wheeled her out and turned me around to face Keith.

  “What am I to do with you?” he said.

  There was a rage in me that I had rarely felt. It almost blocked out the pain, almost made me think I actually could heal my wound faster if I tried. I pulled on the restraints, desperately trying to reach him, to bite him if I had to.

  “So she lied to me,” he said at last, when he had grown tired of watching me struggle. “This is very disappointing.”

  He walked out and closed the door behind him. I was left in the perpetual white light, screaming and struggling.

  Chapter 5

  Even as furious as I was, I didn’t have the strength to keep up my struggling for long. My movements had broken open some floodgate within and more blood was pouring from the wound in my stomach.

  I was going to die. Unless I got some medical attention, or the blood I’d asked for, I was helpless. I knew what would happen when I died though, because I’d seen it happen to Bannon when I killed him after he was tattooed; I’d be deconstructed and rebuilt near the locket, my vessel and my prison.

  Which gave me some options. I could keep enduring the agony and the insult of Doctor Keith watching me, or I could end it sooner. The risk with ending it sooner was that I’d be confirming what Erindis had told him, and making myself a better test subject. I’d never get out if I did that because they would never let down their defenses.