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“H-h-how did you get in here,” the man stammered.
Blade smiled and did nothing to hide his fangs. And what do you know, his victim’s wide stare locked on them.
“You have bigger problems than my entry.” Blade inhaled again, and leaned in so close, they were practically kissing. “And speaking of penetration, pity I don’t have more time. I’d enjoy getting to know you. Inside and out.”
Whimpering now, the sound high-pitched and repetitive. Like the squeaky toy of a dog.
“Unfortunately, time’s ticking,” Blade continued. “Oh, and don’t be complimented, by the way. I have very low standards. I’m positively indiscriminate about who I’ll fuck.”
Moaning. A weaving on the man’s feet, as if the hyperventilating and the inefficient pump ofhis cardiac muscle were causing him to pass out. “Where did you come from…?”
Blade stared into the black holes of the man’s pupils. “Hell.”
With a jab of his fist, he gored into the abdominal cavity with his gold knife, feeling the organs give way like fabric, the energy created by the contraction of his shoulder and arm muscles transferring down the hilt, through the blade, and into the loose bundles of the digestive system.
The gasp was right by Blade’s ear, like a lover coming, intimate and just for the two of them.
“Look at me,” he whispered as he eased back while leaving the knife in place. “Dr. Randall Hertz, look at me—that’s it. That’s right. Now, listen carefully. Your legal address is One-Oh-Nine Prescott Lane in Charleston, South Carolina. You have a wife, Susan. You have two children, Martin, who goes by Marty and is named after your father, and the other one is Mary. The idea to go withMnames was your wife’s.”
Those eyes got wider as that face got even paler.
“If you give me the codes to the cages in the experimentation unit, I won’t leave here and go directly to your house and slaughter the three of them wherever I find them.”
“Please,” the man breathed. “Please, don’t hurt my—”
“You have tortured and killed males and femaleshere. You have taken them from their families. You have injected them with drugs and subjected them to experiments for the last ten years. You have left this fucking shithole and gone home to your fucking mate and your young while they have suffered. You’ve slept like a fucking baby in your goddamn bed, and filled your belly, and enjoyed all the creature comforts during your breaks—while those in the steel cages with the wires and the IVs and the motherfuckingimplants and electrodes suffered. So considering all that, I’m presenting you with an opportunity to save your family that you do not deserve. Give me the codes.”
It was, of course, all bullshit.
The first thing Blade had done when he’d come up behind the man, spun him around, and submitted him against the corridor’s wall? Burrowed into that brain and retrieved the codes.
But that was the difference between vampires andsymphaths. A vampire would have gotten what he needed, slit the throat, and gone along his way. Asymphath? This emotional exchange was a feeding that was necessary. He consumed the surges of emotion, lived for the flares along the grid, hungered for that priceless instant before death rendered this man nothing but a wind-down of biological functions.
“Give me the codes,” he prompted.
“S-s-s-seven-twenty-two-nineteen-eighty-one. T-there’s only o-o-one.”
Blade smiled. “Your birth date. How cute. But not very safe. You should have gone with something more unusual, and used a few of them. What if someone infiltrated this facility with an eye toward destroying what you’ve worked so hard for.”
Down at the gold knife, Blade’s hand was getting coated in warm, fresh blood, the tide lazy because of a lack of pressure and the erratic heart rate. It was almost like he’d come inside the man, his ejaculate making a reappearance.
Abruptly, he had to steady the scientist by wrapping an arm around the small of his back. As if they were waltzing. “Randy, let me ask you something.”
Moaning. Fluttering of the eyes. Like the dying man was in ecstasy.
Blade gave him a little shake. “Randy, did you honestly think one of us wasn’t going to come for you? After all these years, and all the different sites, did you really not think that, sooner or later, we were going to find you?”
With that, Blade twisted the knife.
Then he snapped off the hilt.
As the body dropped to his feet, and that ruby red stain instantly doubled in size, Blade dropped what he had gripped onto the chest. The black wrap of boxing tape made him think of how long it had taken him to attend to the weapon’s grip, and he smiled, wondering what humans would make of such a dagger.
Except they weren’t going to find it. When he was done here, there wasn’t going to be anything bigger than the diameter of a quarter left, and more to the point, the lab’s owners were going to be so busy hiding the remains of the site, no kinds of forensic investigation would be performed.
Such a shame. At over sixteen hundred dollars an ounce, there was a pretty penny in the weapon, and at least if it spooked some human, he’d get some value out of its abandonment. And he would have taken both parts back with him, but he preferred to leave something of himself behind in his victims.
With grim intent, Blade stepped over his prey and kept going.
