Ash (10 page)

“Yeah, I’m sore but okay,”
Jayden answered, tilting his head back, the low lights shining across his perfect,
dark skin. “Word got around that we were attacked and somehow survived. It’s
raised the odds on us, moved us toward the end of the culling schedule. So of
course every ash and their dick have decided to take me out early.”

I sat a little
straighter. “I should be training with you. You need me in your corner.” As
little use as I might be, I could watch his back. “Fucking Ryder has me doing
some stupid five step movement. I need weapons training. I need to know how to
rip an ash’s arm off and beat him to death with it. No five steps are going to
help with that.”

Jayden’s dark eyes
flashed as he opened his eyelids, and then he was laughing – throw-back-his-head-until-his
stomach-ached kind of laughing. “Girl, I could not have asked for a better
roomie.” It took him a few moments to compose himself. He even had me joining
in his laughter; it was contagious. He finally pulled it together. “You should
be grateful. Ryder is the shit. He is a scary mother and there is no one in
here who would take him on. Whatever he is teaching you, you learn it until
your brain bleeds. It will most probably save your life.”

As if his words had
conjured up the man himself, I sensed a dark gaze on me, and as I twisted to
the side, my eyes clashed with a set which were looking quite silver at the
moment. There was something between us, a spark. A moment happened then that
was hard for me to describe, but all I knew was that I couldn’t tear my gaze
away from him. If he’d have beckoned me right then, I’d have gotten off my
chair and hightailed it over to him. Which was not a feeling I had ever
experienced before.

“Ever noticed that you
and Ryder both have eyes which are a hell of a lot more vampire than ash?”
Jayden was watching our exchange, and the boy was pretty much fanning himself
as he grinned.

Ryder broke the spell,
turning to one of the sexy six, and I was finally able to catch my breath.
Wait! What had Jayden said?

“Vampire eyes?” I asked,
letting my confusion release. “I have ash eyes. Only a little more intense.”

Jayden nodded. “You do,
even though your silver is a lot more defined than the others – and sometimes
when your emotions are charged they get very silver, with this splash of green.
It’s almost … alive.”

I was guessing right now they
were very silver, as he put it.

“I’ve seen the same thing
with Ryder. It’s almost as if the pair of you hold a little more of the virus
in your DNA than the rest of us.”

Was that possible? I
wasn’t sure what Jayden was talking about. They had tested my blood and I was
an ash … right? I couldn’t actually remember if they had given me those results
or if it was just assumed because, well, what the hell else could I be?

I took an extended sip of
my blood, and almost against my will my eyes flicked back to where Ryder had
been. He was gone. Some of the other enforcers lingered around the wide, wooden
bar, but no tall, dark, and broody to be seen.

I noticed that a group of
ash, all wearing jumpsuits, had just walked into the room. A few of them
exchanged looks before strolling across to where Jayden and I sat.

“Something tells me there
are a few alliances going on before the culling,” I murmured, sitting forward
in my seat, the bottle of blood forgotten as I prepared myself. Surely they
wouldn’t start something here in a room filled with ash and vampires.

Jayden straightened also,
and without saying a word both of us jumped to our feet. We would not be taken
sitting down. The three male ash, two brunettes and a rather scrawny
dirty-blond, paused about eight feet from us. A sense of hesitation came across
them, and they exchanged another glance before turning and fading off into the
crowd.

“Hell yeah,” I said,
“seems our reputation has gotten around.”

A hand landed on my shoulder,
and I suddenly knew that it wasn’t our reputations which had sent those ash
fleeing. I swung my head around, only to be visually assaulted by a very
sharp-set of fangs. Lucas towered over me, his white trench glowing softly
under the lights in this dim atmosphere.

“I need you to come with
me, Charlie. Something has happened.”

My immediate panicked
thought was of my mom, but I was pretty sure that no one in the Hive cared or
monitored the loved ones left out in the human world. It had to be something else.
I’d just seen Ryder … so who else was there?

I took a step toward Lucas,
before stopping and flicking my head back to Jayden. “Hey, are you going to be
okay? I don’t want anyone to jump you while I’m gone.”

He just gave me that
cheeky grin and waved me on. “I’ll be fine, you go and do your thing. I’ll see
you back in our room.” The smile faltered a little as his eyes shifted across
to the vampire at my side. Jayden was pretty up on the politics in the Hive and
he knew Lucas was a big deal. All of the Quorum members were. This was not a
request I could refuse, but he was worried for me all the same.

I wondered if I should be
a little more worried myself. For someone who did not trust easily, who used to
genuinely have a hate for anything to do with the Hive, I had come around
awfully quick. But something about Ryder and Lucas gave me a sense of security.
Like I knew they would not deliberately screw with me. Jayden was the same, and
I was going to go with my gut on these three.

Lucas was silent as he led me through the
corridors and into the lower levels again. As we stepped off the elevator, I
recognized the zone. I was back in the whitewashed hospital wing, which was
apparently on level two. I hadn’t paid attention to the level the last time I
was here.
Shit
… what was I doing here? My heart rate increased again.

“Mom?” I gasped. Even if
it was not a logical worry, I still had to ask. Lucas didn’t answer immediately.
I breathed deeply, trying to slow the rapid pulse of my blood, before grabbing
at his trench coat. I was prepared to make him tell me what the hell was going
on.

The vampire halted,
surprise lighting up his eyes as I pulled him closer to me. We locked gazes for
an extended moment, and just as I was about to shake him for information, he
leaned closer to me.

“Your friend is right, your
eyes are very silver when you feel strong emotions.”

Clearly he had been
stalking me even before those ash had approached us.

“And your mother is
perfectly fine. We just need to run a few more tests. The first ones were
inconclusive, and without the results I cannot ascertain your lineage. It is
needed for the culling. I would like to do this quietly before the rest of the
Quorum get wind of it.”

My lineage? As in who my
father was? I knew his name, but for some reason instinct kept me silent on
that. I realized then how close we were, my hands still tangled in his coat. I
could see every facet in his silver eyes, which seemed to be swirling and
pulsing in the fluorescent light. My grip loosened on his trench coat, and as I
stepped back he smoothed down the creases I’d created. He seemed a little
shaken, almost mesmerized in a manner, but before I noticed anything further he
was back to normal.

“Come,” he said,
continuing along the path.

I tried not to breathe
too deeply as I followed. Something about the disinfectant smell in the air of
hospitals turned my stomach. And with developed ash senses, it was a hundred
times worse. I hadn’t noticed it as much the last time I was here – probably
because I was too freaked out with the whole “your-mom-banged-a-vampire”
revelation. This time though I was seeing everything. Why the hell were there
so many rooms on this level? Was it really necessary? Surely, with our advanced
healing, hospitals were only needed for those occasional ash who popped up out
of the woodwork.

“Hey, what happens when a
human receives the virus?” If my question startled Lucas, he didn’t show it.
“How come some take a really long time to turn, and isn’t it illegal? How are
new vampires still being made?” The longer I spent in the Hive, the more I
wished I’d taken the classes on vamps in school.

Lucas paused outside of a
door, one of the few that didn’t have a massive viewing window. “It is illegal
to make new vampires without Quorum permission. If you want to turn someone,
you must apply. We grant very few of these. We must monitor our populations
growth, and keep from starting another war with the humans.”

Right, they didn’t want
to outgrow their food source or the Hive. I shuddered. I also knew there was a
special branch of the human military devoted strictly to keeping vampire and
ash at bay. We lived only because the humans allowed it. Nothing could stop
them if they wanted to drop a nuke on the Hive in the middle of the night. On
every Hive in the world. The vampire rights groups were the only thing keeping
the fragile peace between our two races right now.

Lucas continued to answer
my questions, and I had a brief thought of why he was so forthcoming with
information. Probably this was all common knowledge for anybody who had
actually attended the Virus 101 classes.

“The virus is generally
fast acting, but we have known of some cases where it was dormant for years.”

“And ash…” I prompted.

“Strictly forbidden, but
we understand that sometimes things are outside of the humans’ control.” Ugh,
was he talking about rape? “So we allow a small number of ash to survive each
year.”

Yeah, they were regular
saints. The culling was their way of taking care of the problem without
actually getting their hands dirty. It really didn’t seem fair that the
majority of vampires were allowed to live, but ash were culled like freaking animals.

I tried to dial down some
of the simmering anger which was always close to the surface. “Why are there no
female ash?” Lucas’ eyes lingered on me for a few long moments. “I mean besides
me.”

“The virus destroys much
of our reproductive system. Female vampires are unable to have children. No
eggs remain intact. For the males, only the sperm which carry the Y chromosome
survive. Which makes your existence all the more unusual.”

He was telling me that
even science dictated that my existence was impossible. So how the hell was I
an ash?

Apparently question and
answer time was over. He opened the door and gestured for me to step through
first. There were two vampires dressed in lab coats waiting for me on the other
side. They stood on either side of a chair, each holding a stack of charts.

“Please have a seat,
Charlene,” said the very blond female. She was all sharp angles and pointy nose,
interesting to look at, but not beautiful. There was more variation in vampires
than in ash. Vampires were turned from humans, so they still retained much of
their human looks, just all smoothed out. Ash were actually grown from mutated
sperm, so it was ingrained into their DNA. Therefore, they were sexier.

I didn’t like being
surrounded or towered over, but in a room of three vampires I was not going to
be able to fight myself out. Might as well do what they wanted. Lucas gave me a
small smile, as if he’d heard my inner thoughts. I realized that the second
vampire, the male with rows of black braids tightly woven to his head, was
talking to me.

“…initial DNA test was
inconclusive. Something must have tainted the sample, so we will need another
one.”

“What do you have to do?”
I asked, suspicious. Mom always said my college major should have been
investigating, not marketing.

“Cheek swab, hair sample,
and we will also need some blood. We need a detailed DNA sequence to find your
ancestry and place you in the proper house of ten.”

I swallowed, but forced
myself not to react. “Sure, poke away,” I finally said.

I wasn’t sure I quite
believed their story, but I did not have a choice here. At no point had any of
them asked my permission, so I knew this was part of the Hive protocol. Or
maybe just for me because I was a special girl-ash.

The doctors were fast –
benefits of the vampire virus. After swabbing my cheek and taking some hair,
they pricked my finger. The moment my red blood beaded at the tip, the blond
vampire inhaled deeply and hissed, her fangs extending.

An unusual scent slammed
into me, and I realized it was my blood. What the hell was up with its potency?
Shit, I almost wanted to bite myself. Lucas frowned and grabbed the woman’s arm.
I scanned each one of them as their eyes pulsed silver, green, silver, green.

I quickly wiped my
bleeding finger on the test strip and placed it in my mouth. An odd taste
washed across my tongue, but my finger healed before I could really sense why
it was strange. Lucas led the female out of the room, and returned alone. He
was staring at me like I was a complicated chess game. What Jayden had said
about the allure of my blood was true, even for vamps.

Mental note: Don’t. Bleed.
Ever.

The male vampire with
braids cleared his throat and bagged the specimen. “We will send across the
results. Lucas, you’ll be able to plan your culling schedule and make sure she’s
training in her specialty areas.”