Family

Chapter 13

We set down a few minutes later at the Directorate after what could only be described as an uneven ride. We bumped on the final touchdown and I heard the engines throttle down, the rotors coming to a slow stop as several loud, clunking noises came from the rear of the craft. Smoke had been belching out of it the whole way home, but Reed’s wind had blown that clear of us and we only knew about it because of the pilot’s occasional warnings.

I breathed a little sigh of relief when I felt that last shudder of the aircraft’s weight being taken up by the earth, and I closed my eyes for a beat before I opened them to look out the door. Ariadne was waiting, as was Dr. Perugini, Dr. Zollers, a couple of people I’d seen Perugini use before as orderlies, and my most favoritest person in the world, Michael Mormont. Eve lurked behind them, looking around as if searching for the ambush that was sure to fall on us at any moment. A couple of agents were visible in the distance, but I couldn’t see their faces from where they stood outside the field of spotlights that illuminated the helicopter pad.

The orderlies rushed up along with Perugini, and Kurt went onto a gurney, swearing as they moved him. He’d gotten cut up pretty well by the vamps, but not as bad as the agent whose name I hadn’t known – he was dead. Total redshirt. Parks got off a minute later with help from Scott, but he had a hobble as he walked, following in the wake of Perugini and the orderlies.

I felt a tug and realized Zack was undoing my safety harness. “Hey,” he said, taking care to move it from around my shoulders. “We’re here.”

“Okay,” I said as I shrugged out of the other side. I stepped toward the door and onto the concrete below, as Ariadne waited for me with Zollers and Mormont. Zack followed, and as I stepped out I noticed Reed leaning heavily against the open door, his head back against the hard metal and his eyes closed.

“What happened?” Ariadne asked as she looked at my bloody hands and arms. “What did you run across?”

“Vampires,” I said, and let out the breath I hadn’t even realized I’d been holding. “Nobody told me there were vampires.”

Ariadne stared at me blankly. “I…I didn’t know there WERE vampires. Are you sure that’s what you saw?”

I held my arms up and she balked at the sight of the puncture wounds, the blood. “Pretty sure.”

“Are you all right?” Zollers asked me, his eyes rimmed with concern.

“I’ll heal,” I said. “But I would like to know why Omega has vampires and we didn’t know about it.”

“Add it to the list of things Omega has sucker-punched us with,” Zack said. “It’s getting to be a pretty long one.”

“I knew they had vampires,” Reed said at last, and his every word sounded like it was being dragged from his lips with a winch and chain. “I didn’t know that’s what they looked like, or that they were even in the U.S., but I knew they had them. Sorry; I guess I should have figured they’d have brought in the blood hunters.”

“Blood hunters?” This from Mormont, who I can only assume took affront at the vamps stealing his hard-earned title.

Reed opened his eyes and tried to push himself off the door to a standing position, but after wavering and looking like he would fall, let himself lean back onto the door and slid down to the ground, eyes shut again. I would have helped him, but frankly I doubted my ability to stand up straight without him weighing me down, let alone with. “That’s what they are. They hunt blood, like a bloodhound. They get a rush from consuming it, like a natural high. They can smell it, seek it out.”

“They seemed pretty close to invulnerable to me,” Zack said. “Like the legends, I guess. But do you really need a stake to kill them, or sunlight?”

“Myth, legend…you know how it goes,” Reed said from the ground. “Exaggerated. They have a hell of a bone structure, though, stronger than a normal person’s or even a normal meta’s, so it’s really damned hard to land a damaging blow on them. They don’t feel pain like us, can ignore it and keep coming. You saw – that one had a belly open to the air and he was about to come at Sienna again. They’re nocturnal, can see in the dark like it’s day, have nearly unbreakable bones, heal super fast – faster than even most metas – and all that makes them hard to kill and terrific hunters when you’re looking to track someone down.” He took another breath. “Never had seen one of them until tonight, and I wouldn’t have recognized them for what they were if Sienna hadn’t called it out.”

Heads swiveled to me, Ariadne’s and Mormont’s foremost among them. Zollers watched me too, but coolly, like it was no big deal. “How did you know what they were?” Mormont found the words to ask first.

“Voices in my head,” I said, drawing a surprised look from Ariadne, but not Zollers. Mormont’s eyes narrowed. “They practically had to scream to get me to hear,” I went on, “but the message got through.”

“I hate to interrupt this lovely conversation,” Zollers said, still heavy with sincerity and concern, “but could we adjourn to the medical unit? I’d like to insure that Sienna gets bandaged up.”

“What, these?” I held my forearms up, and watched a small shower of droplets hit the concrete below, looking almost like water droplets in the heavy floodlights. I took a deep breath through the nose and could have sworn I smelled the iron in the blood, which had mostly clotted by now. “No big deal.”

“All the same,” Zollers said, “let me bandage you up.” He held out an arm in invitation, sweeping it to indicate that we should walk toward the headquarters building.

“Why?” I asked, almost uncaring. “It’ll heal by tomorrow anyway.”

“Consider it a courtesy to those of us who don’t like to see you bleed.” His eyes were warm, and I felt my resistance and uncaring fade, and I started along meekly.

“Don’t mind me,” Reed said from behind me, still seated by the helicopter. “I’m just going to sleep here.”

“Zack,” Ariadne said, “please help Mr. Treston to his room, will you?” She looked down to Reed. “We’ll talk about your conversation with your headquarters tomorrow, unless you have anything desperately urgent to tell us now?”

I watched Reed open an eye. “Nothing catastrophically revealing – I’m allowed to help you. And one other thing – you’ve got a traitor in your organization.”

“Well yeah,” I said after a minute, “we’ve known that since Andromeda told us before, remember?”

“Yeah,” Reed said with a shake of his head. “Some detail, though – they’re highly placed. Our sources inside Omega say your traitor has access to nearly everything.” He blinked. “Which might explain to you how they managed to set a trap to ambush my helicopter. They even knew the flight path we were taking and put those vamps in our way with a guided missile to take me down.”

“But why?” Ariadne asked. “Why bother, when you didn’t really have anything to tell us?”

“Because,” Reed said with a tired smile, “the worst thing for Omega would be the joining of their worst enemy – us – with the most powerful meta force in North America. It’s the unholy union of old-world knowledge of metahumans with the new school of technology and science.” He shrugged, but it was a weary sort of sad one. “Looks like they mean to wipe you out in the next few moves, and I think they worry we might be an impediment to that.”

“Why?” Ariadne said, and she actually stooped to look at Reed when she said it. “We’ve had no run-ins with them, really.” She paused, gave it a thought, and went on. “Other than over—”

“Her,” Reed said with a nod to me.

“I’m sorry, what?” I blinked and looked around at the circle of faces that had turned to me. “Me? You told me before they were after my mom, that they were using me to get to her.”

“Sienna’s why they’re attacking you,” Reed said. “All along they’ve been after her, since the day they sent Wolfe to retrieve her. They’ve got a mean-on for her for some reason, and no one knows what it is. And I’m starting to think it might not have anything to do with her mother at all; they’ve been more or less ignoring Sierra, after all.”

“What about you?” I asked. “You’ve been after me nearly as long.”

“Because Wolfe was after you,” Reed said, eyes on mine, but a veil over his, where I couldn’t quite tell what he was thinking but could see there was something more to it. “I got the word he was on your trail and I tried to get there first.” He looked to Ariadne, who was still next to me. “What about you? How did you know to go for her?”

Ariadne hesitated. “I don’t know,” she said, and I remembered long ago when I’d had a conversation with her in a confining room when I’d first awakened at the Directorate. “The Director handed me her address and flagged her to be brought in immediately, highest priority—”

“Interesting,” I said, a little smug. “That’s not what you told me when you brought me in.”

“And if you’d asked the Director,” she said, flicking a cool look back at me that contained more than a grain of discomfort at having to admit her lie, “do you think he would have told you if he didn’t want to?”

“I guess we’ll find out,” I said solemnly. “Where is he?”

“Texas,” Ariadne said as Zack helped Reed to his feet. “He’s at our campus down there trying to help them get back on their feet.” She looked at Reed almost apologetically, and he raised an eyebrow as he leaned most of his weight on Zack. “Metaphorically speaking. You’re more than welcome to ask him when he gets back, but it could be several days, as he’s somewhat busy helping them deal with the massacre of almost ninety percent of their agents by Omega.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, turning to Reed, who was already beginning to hobble away with Zack’s help. He didn’t turn back to me, though Zack turned to look. “Are you suggesting that this whole war with Omega is because of…of…” I floundered for a moment. “Because of me?”

Zack stopped, and after a moment Reed turned with him, a slow circle Zack walked while keeping Reed in roughly the same place. “I’m sorry,” Reed said. “I didn’t mean to suggest it.” I took a breath until he spoke again and it all came out in a gasp. “I meant to say it flat out.” His eyes were laden with sympathy for me. “You are the flashpoint, the reason that Omega is at war with the Directorate. It’s because they wanted you and were thwarted twice, losing two of their most powerful operatives. That’s not the sort of threat to their influence and reputation in the meta world that they could tolerate.” He blinked. “So they came at your support mechanism, seeing weakness there.” He smiled again. “After all, with the Directorate gone, who’s going to protect you?”