Blood Moons (12 page)

"Damn waste is what it is," Switch added, nearly salivating. It was a well-known fact that Sinclair didn't exactly share with the little guy. Instead, Switch got the leftovers.

Apparently that was more than enough for him.

Tristan stayed firmly out of his mind, refusing to catch even a glimpse of his memories. "Sounds like you've had some experience in that area." Not missing a beat on the eye twitch the rodent had suddenly developed, he addressed Sinclair. "I'll tell you what," he said, disengaging himself from the sack of lard and his horny hamster. "When I get tired of her, I might give her the option of striking out on her own.

But you should know she's getting a little addicted to me."

Sinclair waved that away easily. "Not to worry; I have ways of curing those pesky little addictions to pleasure."

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If Tristan had hackles, they'd be standing on end now.

"First come, first serve, Sinclair," he said, trying to rein in his temper. "She was given to me—to
my cell
. And nobody is touching her until I am through." Then he smiled, though it felt more predatory than pleasant. "We are all civilized human beings, after all, not wild animals."
Not yet.

Sinclair nodded in complete agreement. "If we don't have class, we don't have anything."

Said the man who ate his victims alive, with expensive silverware.

"Gentlemen, always a pleasure. Enjoy your movie."

He took his time leaving, taking controlled breaths in hopes that it would keep him from changing outwardly.

Instead of calming him, the ritual merely served to expand his lungs until he thought his chest would burst. The sudden flood of oxygen made his nostrils flare and his eyesight sharpen even more. His jaw ached even though he wasn't clenching his teeth. A bad sign. It was, he found, a precursor to fangs.

Just a few more feet. Just a little longer.

He was almost at the elevator when his speedy escape was thwarted.

"Tristan?"

Great. What now? He didn't slow down. If he could just make it into the elevator, he'd be fine. But he had to get there first.

Amelia hurried to catch up with him. "Let's talk, shall we?"

"Not in the mood. Some other time."

"Now."

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Surprised by the sudden assertion of authority, Tristan stopped in his tracks. What was this? A backbone? The cutting comment died before he could utter it. He glanced at the elevator in indecision but ultimately nodded, following her to one of the observation rooms. The experiments never ceased. Prisoners were under the microscope at all times, even if they weren't doing anything except watching TV.

"What's this about, Doc?"

She took off her glasses to polish the lenses, a sure sign she was upset. "Why don't you tell me?" she countered.

"Sensors in your cell sink recorded traces of blood two nights ago and there was no record in the database of a fight."

"I cut myself shaving."

The mechanism didn't work that way and they both knew it. No sharp blades of any kind were allowed anywhere near the prisoners. That meant no cuts.

Apparently Amelia decided to humor him. "Then why are you wearing at least three days' worth of beard now?"

He shrugged a shoulder carelessly.

"If you don't tell me what's wrong, I can't help you."

Tristan didn't say anything.

Amelia took a breath, as if she was losing patience with him. "Let me put this another way. You can tell
me
voluntarily, or you can tell someone else under duress. But one way or another, they will find out. In your place, I'd at least try to minimize the cost."

"It was a paper cut," he said, impatient to get out of there.

He had Dara's scent in his nostrils as if he was hunting without having realized it. His muscles ached to move; ached 108

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to run as fast as he could and feel the freedom of it. He needed that sense of abandon now if he hoped to get out of this situation without killing someone.

His conversation with Sinclair and the rodent refused to leave his mind as quickly as so many others before had. This one had hit far too close to a sensitive subject and for the first time he could actually believe Sinclair would do exactly as he pleased, whether Tristan agreed or not. But if it came to a showdown between the two of them, there was no doubt in Tristan's mind that he would win. He couldn't allow that sludge bucket to get anywhere near Dara.

This little chat with Amelia was slowing him down and that would not do.

"I have never seen you read a book. And the amount of blood was indicative of a much larger injury."

If she didn't release him soon, he'd turn on her. The thought made him fight harder for control. Amelia was a friend, probably the only one he'd ever had here. He didn't want to hurt her. He looked at the floor, searching with his enhanced vision for patterns that weren't there.
Take your
mind off things. Breathe. Dara is safe inside the cell, probably
with her nose buried in a book.
His lungs contracted somewhat, allowing him to take slow breaths and calm down.

Even his jaw stopped aching.

Amelia shoved her hands into her coat pockets. "Come on, Tristan, this isn't a joking matter. Tell me what happened."

Tristan frowned, finally calm enough to pick up on emotional cues. "It almost sounds like you're worried about me, Doc."

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Her eyes lost some of the impatience, but now they looked haunted. "One of
my
subjects starts bleeding without apparent reason? Yeah, I'm worried."

Her mind was a slide show of images she'd internally classified as "Sach's Study". One after the other, she was mentally flipping through them with incredible speed and yet each image was painfully clear. Head shots of people who had bled out of their eyes and noses. Countless others who had bruised and bled internally until their skin had burst. Internal scans of subjects showing absolutely no distinction between organs. The images sickened him.

Something Dr. Sach was testing was killing the prisoners.

Amelia was worried because she and Sach sometimes shared subjects without informing each other. And Sach no more knew what was causing the "life cessations" than he did how to fix it. Hell, they didn't even know if it was contagious.

"Nothing to worry about," Tristan assured her. "There was a cause. I just don't particularly feel like sharing it." There was nothing deathly wrong with him; it was just unnerving. If anything, he was having symptoms completely opposite those her mind had stored away. His body didn't refuse to heal; rather, it healed more rapidly.

His answer didn't seem to reassure her. She kept looking at him as if she could read the truth in his expression.

Tristan narrowed his eyes. "There is something else bothering you. What is it?"

Amelia shook her head, her gaze briefly touching on the monitoring strips in a silent message:
not here.

"So can I go now?"

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"In a moment," she said, pulling out her digital chart.

"Your vitals are a little out of the ordinary, but nothing that would concern me. Have you been having any psychological problems?"

He raised an eyebrow. "You mean, am I going crazy? You think I'd tell you if I was?"

"Nightmares. Anxiety. Restlessness, depression, that sort of thing."

"Yes."

"Which one?"

He snorted. "Doc, I'm in a prison. I've had all of them at one point or another."

She glared at him over the frames of her glasses. "Fine.

You can go. I can see you're not about to cooperate any time soon."

He nodded and turned to leave. But he paused at the door.

"Doc?"

"Yes?"

"That DNA recombination study you tried on me last year

... did you ever find out why it didn't work?"

"You mean why you never actually took on animal traits?"

Amelia shrugged. "On a scientific level, it was impossible from the beginning. Forgetting the fact that in order to make it work we'd have to have changed every cell of your body individually—"

"You had that solved, didn't you? Don't tell me you didn't consider viral studies for this. Get a virus aggressive enough and you can reengineer it to deliver any mutations you choose. The government's been doing that for years."

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Amelia sighed and nodded in agreement. "They have been.

And they've only seen a five percent success rate, and even that was among young children on chemotherapy." She gave him an arch look. "That means fewer cells, most of which are being killed off by the chemo."

Her mind was an open book. She didn't approve of those studies, even if there were consent forms that the parents always signed with the full knowledge of what would happen to their children. To her, a child was not a lab rat, period.

"But you did use the virus on me, right?"

"Yes. The final results showed that it had spread successfully to the majority of your body, but the mutation didn't take."
Thank God.

Once again, a slide show of images assaulted him, these of patients only slightly better-looking than the previous ones.

These were dead for reasons he couldn't tell. Several of them had distorted faces, with flat noses and a split upper lip, the beginnings of a snout. They were those who'd been on the verge of changing shape and their bodies could not deal with the stress to the tissues. When he saw a woman who had brain matter dripping out of her nose and ears, he firmly shut it all out.

Amelia was talking again. "The two DNA strands were incompatible with each other and chromosome treatments only managed to suppress one or the other in earlier trials.

You were lucky you didn't sustain any damage."

Tristan was hearing two voices despite the shields he put up. His telepathy was slipping in a way it had never done before.
It might have been brought to a dormant stage, but it
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will be in his genes forever now,
Amelia was thinking and he knew what she meant. The first viral load had been too stressful for his body to take so they'd had to abort the experiment early. They'd had no idea how far it had truly spread because subsequent treatments for the side effects had hidden the virus's progress.

Dormant?
Not a fucking chance.

"I truly don't know why it didn't take," she told him with a shrug. "Although I did have this theory once that what was missing was the right catalyst. Emotional change triggers the strongest physiological reactions in all humans; I thought perhaps this might work the same. I guess I was wrong."

Wouldn't be the first time.

Whatever the trigger was, it had worked its magic. Tristan felt different not only physically but psychologically as well. It was as if his personality was split in two and only half of it was human. His base instincts were gaining strength and becoming an entity of their own. There was a beast growing inside him, and though it was still
him
, it had a mind of its own, without reason, functioning on the simplest of principles:
guard what's mine.

At the moment, it was biding its time, stirring occasionally and raising its head to growl without fighting for control, but Tristan feared that someday soon it would take him over and he had no idea what would happen when it did.

"Are you sure you're okay?" Amelia asked and he realized he was frowning.

"Fine," he said, eager to get out of there. Chances were good that Sinclair wouldn't move from his seat for a good 113

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long while, since it took so much effort to stand, but Tristan wanted to be back in his cell anyway. He had to find a way to control this, and do it so no one found out. For that, he might need Dara's help.

That'll go over well,
he thought. He could just see her reaction when he told her that not only was he a telepath, he was an engineered mutant with super strength and heightened senses who, on top of it all, had the ability to change his shape. Sure. Why not? Women dealt with things like that every day.

"Thanks, Doc, I truly enjoy our little chats."

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8th day of the 4th Blood Moon, 3028

Dara stared at the bunk above her, mouth hanging open.

"You're pulling my chain, aren't you?"
Animal DNA? Viral experiments? What? This wasn't some sci-fi movie with mad scientists ... Although, admittedly, there seemed to be plenty of those around.

"Then why is my story so difficult for you to believe?"
he challenged.

"Are you kidding me? You mean there are experiments
being done on the prisoners here, and one of them was
meant to change you into an animal?"

"No, it was meant to give me the ability to change into one
at will,"
he told her in a tone that said he was losing his patience.
"An animal wouldn't do them any good. But a
shape-shifter? Think of the possibilities."

"Even if I buy into this whole thing, which I don't, where is
your proof? You think that just because you had a nightmare
that you can change your shape now?"
Was he finally losing it? Hell, he'd been here long enough for it. Dara herself was already feeling edgy and claustrophobic in this prison, and she hadn't been here all that long.

She heard him heave a sigh and shift, and then he leaned over the edge of his bed to look down at her and show her his hand. Raising an eyebrow, she sat up. "What am I supposed to be seeing, exactly?"

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