Evil Red (4 page)

“What are you doing?” Valerie demanded.

No one answered her. The chains jangled obnoxiously
until the prisoner was completely free of his metal bindings.

“You may leave now,”
Melcher said.

The guards nodded and pivoted in unison, marching
toward the door in single file. Valerie didn’t see the door close
behind them. She only heard it. Her eyes were zeroed in on the man
they’d freed. He seemed harmless, but so had the last guy.

Very carefully, Valerie reached her hand toward her
back pocket and the knife she’d stuffed there.

The guy locked eyes with Valerie.

“Stay away from me!” he yelled suddenly.

Valerie’
s hand
stilled.

Melcher
sighed.
“Don’t make me do this the hard way, Roger.”

“I’m not biting her. Not for all the blood in the
world.”

Valerie bristled at that. Now this guy was starting
to offend her.

She snapped her head toward Melcher. “Are we done
here yet?”

Melcher turned to his partner. “We’ll have to use the
needle.”

“
Needle
…”
Valerie started to say then was cut short when Crist extracted a
needle from her coat pocket.

The woman took two large steps over to Valerie and
said, “Give me your arm.”

Valerie pulled her arms against her body. “Why?”

“I need to take your blood.”

Roger’s eyes expanded. “No.” He took a step back in
the direction of the door.

“What are you doing?” Valerie demanded.

Melcher jutted his chin out. “
Since Roger won
’t bite you we’re going to
take your blood, instead, and inject it into his blood stream. This
way you’ll still be able to see the effect it has on him.”

“And then we’ll be done?” Valerie asked.

Melcher
nodded.
“
Then
we
’ll be done for today.”

“Fine.” Valerie stuck her arm out at Crist, throwing
in a snotty look while she was at it.

Crist returned her dirty look with one of her own.
Without preamble, she grabbed Valerie’s arm roughly, squeezing
hard.

Valerie glared at the woman. “Mind relaxing your
hold? Last time I checked I wasn’t one of the prisoners.”

Crist merely scowled and gripped her tighter. Valerie
was about to shake the bitch off when Roger startled them all by
saying, “
Wait.
”

His lips formed a grim line.

“Fine, I’ll bite her. I want a bag of blood warmed to
thirty-eight degrees Celsius after I recover.”

Crist looked at
Melcher. Melcher nodded. Valerie
’s arm was released and
Crist stepped away, joining Melcher several paces from the wall to
the right of the door.

“Let’s make this quick,”
Roger said.

It took Valerie a moment to realize he was addressing
her. He approached with slow, cautious steps, his body hanging back
even as it moved forward, leaning away from her.

It was only slightly comforting that he was afraid of
her.

Valerie straightened up, preparing to defend herself.
The motion startled Roger enough to stop in his tracks.

“Go on,” Melcher said. When Roger made no move
Melcher sighed. Good to know Valerie’s predicament bored him.

“The sooner you get this done, the sooner we all get
out of here.” He looked at Valerie.

Was Mr. Stake-Up-His-Ass seriously addressing her?
She folded her arms.

Roger dragged his feet toward her. When he was two
feet away, Valerie stuck a hand out. “Don’t get any closer,
buddy.”

The guy grimaced. “You think I want to get close to
your type.”

“My type?” Valerie said with indignation. “What about
you? According to these agents you’re some kind of blood sucking
vampire.”

Valerie waited for the guy to deny the agents’
claims. Instead, he lifted his nose in the air and said, “Yeah,
well, better a vampire than a vampire hunter.”

Valerie folded her arms tighter. “There’s no such
thing as vampires. You’re all messed up. All of you,” she added,
looking pointedly at Agents Crist and Melcher.

Roger chuckled suddenly. “Where did you find this
one?” he asked the agents.

The jagged edges of his teeth caught Valerie’s eyes
as he spoke.

Everything inside her froze. Fear, her least favorite
of all emotions, crept up her spine and left goose bumps over her
flesh.

Roger
smiled
—every tooth filed into a sharp point.

Valerie’s breath hitched. She tried reaching for her
back pocket, but Roger was even quicker than Crist. He yanked
Valerie forward. She shrieked in surprise followed by dismay when
he lifted her wrist to his mouth.

No way was this freak biting her with those revolting
teeth.

Using the full force of her arm, Valerie pulled away.
She stumbled back. Unfortunately, Roger stumbled forward, still
attached to her wrist. Before she could plan her next move, he
smashed his head straight into her, teeth snatching the skin below
her fingers.

Valerie screamed, furious to be under attack so soon
after the first one.

It was too late. Roger’s razor teeth pierced through
her skin, no trouble at all. It was sickening.

Too distraught to go for the knife, Valerie beat at
his head with her free hand, shrieking obscenities the whole while.
Roger made a sucking sound deep in the back of his throat that made
her smack him harder.

He released her hand suddenly and stepped back.

Maybe she should have kept her eyes on him, but
Valerie was more concerned with her wrist. The skin was punctured
with angry red marks. Blood oozed out of the holes he’d made in her
skin with his disgusting teeth.

“Look at my wrist,” Valerie cried, holding it up in
the agents’ direction. “That’
s
sick. You
’re all sick. I probably need a tetanus shot now. I
want to talk to a lawyer. I’m suing all y’all. The DA is going to
love this. You’re going down. You messed with the wrong girl, you
psychopaths.”

The agents didn’t seem to be listening to a word she
said. In fact, they weren’t looking at her at all. They were
looking at Roger.

Valerie followed their gaze to where he stood moving
his jaw back and forth. She didn’t understand why everyone looked
so mystified. What did they expect would happen? Was he supposed to
suddenly combust with a drop of her blood?

Whatever had happened made Roger smile again with
those horrific Parana teeth. Someone ought to knock them out of his
mouth. Valerie had half a mind to do it if it didn’t mean having to
touch the disgusting things.

“Didn’t work,” Roger said with a smug smile. “How
I’ve missed the sweet taste of untainted blood.”

He leapt forward.

This time Valerie was quicker. She snatched the knife
from her back pocket and jabbed it forward, unsure where she’d
struck him, only knowing she had found flesh.

Roger screamed.

“Who’s screaming now?” Valerie yelled, taking a step
back, knife gripped in her right palm and ready if she needed to
use it again.

“How’d she get that knife?” Crist asked in alarm.

Roger groaned,
muffling Melcher
’
s
answer.

The sharp-toothed freak clutched his stomach. He took
a step back, lips curling.

“You’re evil,” he snarled at Valerie.

Valerie tossed her hair back. “I’m your worst
nightmare, asshole.” She glanced at the agents quickly. Even with
Roger wounded she wasn’t taking her eyes off him for more than a
split second. “Want me to finish him off?”

Roger’s head, which had bent as he cradled his
mid-section, suddenly lifted, eyes round as gumballs. “
No! You can
’t let her. You promised
me blood if I bit her. I bit her. I’m not one of the others. My
brain works fine. You can’t kill me. You need me. You said you
needed me.”

Melcher, who’d been standing aside being as useful as
a mannequin in a men’s department store, finally cleared his throat
and stepped forward. “Calm down, Roger. No one else is getting
killed today.”

“Really?” Valerie asked. “Because I was just getting
warmed up.”

Still clutching his stomach, Roger glared at her.
With his lips pulled back in disdain he looked more hideous than
before. “Has anyone ever told you what a bitch you are?”

“All the time,” Valerie said, as though being
complimented. “Has anyone ever told you what an ugly son of a bitch
you are?”

Roger’s nostrils flared. He took a sudden step
forward then winced.

Valerie immediately lifted her knife. “You want more
of this, Roger? Huh? How about I stab you through the heart this
time?”

“Crist, get the guards,”
Melcher said.

Agent Crist walked to the door swiftly and pounded on
it with her knuckle. A moment later the two young military men from
before entered. One of them approached Roger with handcuffs.

“Don’t bother,”
Melcher said.
“Get him to the infirmary.”

One of the guards glanced at Valerie quickly. She
rewarded him with a flirtatious smile, one he didn’t return. Fine.
Not like men in jungle suits attracted her.

They each grabbed an arm. Before they could turn
Roger around, he locked eyes with Valerie and said, “I can’t wait
until the day a vampire takes you down. I hope he drains you
slowly.”

Heat flooded Valerie’s head. It was true what they
say about redheads having tempers, and Valerie’s was about a
hundred degrees hotter than the average Reds.

She started toward Roger. She knew she wouldn’t be
able to get past his body guards, but she wanted to give him a
little start. It seemed to work. He flinched and released one hand
on his stomach to clutch at the nearest guard.

Valerie stopped and shot Roger her death glare. “You
make me bleed, I bleed you. And that goes for any other vampire who
tries to come after me. So next time you see your little fanged
friends, tell them to steer clear of Valerie Williams.”

“Get him out of here,”
Melcher said.

The guards dragged Roger out in seconds. Once gone,
Valerie placed her hand on her hip, knife in her other hand, at her
side. “Are we done now?”

Melcher
’s
shoulders sagged. “The toxin didn’t work.” He looked at Crist.
“Maybe it really won’t work on AB positive.”

“Or maybe it’s her,” Crist said.

Melcher blinked once and then looked at Valerie.
“Let’s go back to my office.”

As much as Valerie hated the torture cell, she wasn’t
going anywhere without answers.

“I tried your little experiment and it didn’t work,
which means you owe me a ticket home.”

“There are other ways you can be useful to us,”
Melcher said.
“We need
skilled informants, people who don’t scare easily. You’ll be
perfect for the job.”

“The hell I will. I want to go home!”

Melcher
sighed.
“Valerie, we already explained this to you. Everyone
back home thinks you’re dead and we have to keep it that way. You
are no longer Valerie Williams. Agent Crist has created a new
identity, new IDs for you. You are now Valerie Ward.”

“We let you keep your first name and last initial,”
Crist said as though they’d moved heaven and earth for her.

All they’d done is drag her into the pits of
hell.

No way. No how. They couldn’t hold Valerie against
her will. She still had the knife. She gripped it as though her
life depended on it.

“To hell with that. I’m going home!”

“Miss Ward…” Melcher said, stepping toward her
cautiously.

“Don’t call me that!”

“Put down the knife,” Melcher said in a cooing voice
that made Valerie want to stab him.

“I’ll get the guards,” Crist said.

While Crist went for the door, Valerie locked eyes
with Melcher. Somewhere deep down in the pit of consciousness she
knew—knew they’d snatched her and trapped her and there was no
getting out.

“I didn’t do anything wrong. You can’
t hold me here,
” Valerie said,
arguing until the bitter end, even as the guards stomped in and
closed in on her. “This isn’t La Femme Nikita.”

“We’ll send her to boot camp first thing,” Melcher
said to Crist, ignoring Valerie completely now that it was suddenly
her with uniformed escorts, grabbing the knife away and gripping
her arms as though she were one of those vicious creatures they’d
brought in earlier.

“No!”
Valerie
shrieked.
“
You
can
’
t make me.
”
She stomped on one of the guard’s boots, but it was as rock solid
as his grip on her arm. “I want to go home. You can’t do this to
me. You can’t!”

Her screams followed her into the hall.

FADE OUT.

FADE IN:

EXT. PLANE EN
ROUTE FROM OREGON DESERT TO ANCHORAGE
—DAY

Boot camp was no beauty school, but it did teach
Valerie how to defend herself and fight like a Charlie’s Angel. She
may have left the base screaming, but she arrived at the remote
desert camp calm as a cat. There were other recruits and
instructors watching her. An audience was an audience, no matter
what the scenario, and those tough ass agents and instructors
running the show needed to see that Valerie had the soul of a
tigress, unlike the sniveling new recruits who arrived around the
same time.

Some chicks weren’t cut out to be spies.

In addition to the physical part of training, Valerie
did more reading than she’d ever done in her life. Turned out the
subject matter, vampires, held a fascination over her. It was like
the world’s biggest secret and only Valerie and a few others were
in on it.

She pitied her sisters going about their mundane
lives in a world that held so many wonders. Good thing Val had been
the one born with AB positive blood. Her sisters couldn’t have
handled any of this.