Ash(53)

“Hello, Charlene, we require your presence in the medical wing,” one of them told me with a gritty voice. It took me a second, but I realized that I knew his distinct voice. This was the vampire who had spoken with Ryder outside of the medical wing when I was first brought in, who told him I would be treated like every other ash and join in the culling. He was tall, with slicked black hair and a bent hooked nose. He must have been an ugly mofo before the virus, because even with all the smoothing out he was still fugly as hell.

I acted dumb. “Okay. What’s this about?”

“Just a routine blood test.”

Damn liar.

Where was Lucas? There were – I quickly counted in my head – nine of the members here, but no Lucas. “Wow, the entire Quorum accompanying me to a routine blood test. I must be pretty important,” I mused out loud. I couldn’t act too dumb.

I stepped out and they closed rank behind me, boxing me in.

Ugly sneered at me as we walked together. “We just want to see with our own eyes that the test is done properly. Your… talents … don’t seem to line up with your lineage.”

I tried to slow my heart rate, knowing they could sense it. “Whatever.” I shrugged. I was getting good at feigning disinterest. But in my head I was all fuck-fuck-fuck. My damn unicorn blood better not shoot rainbows when they looked at it, or I had a feeling I was a dead woman.

I was led to a medical room, where a male doctor I had never seen was waiting in a lab coat with a needle kit before him.

“How many doctors does the Hive need? You guys heal,” I said in the sweetest voice I could muster.

One of the Quorum members smiled, a woman with reddish hair. “She’s bright.”

Another Quorum member scowled at me. “They aren’t just doctors, they’re also scientists. The humans allow a small number of vampires to be privately educated. We have a highly contagious virus that the humans aren’t keen to catch. Now sit down.”

I sat down in the red leather padded chair and hoped that my resting bitch face was on. These people were really starting to annoy me. No more words were spoken at the scientist pinned my arm down and jabbed it with a needle. I had forgotten the affect my blood had on them until the aroma hit the air and they all stiffened.

“Why do you think her blood is so tempting?” one of them asked as his fangs extended onto his lower lip.

The scientist holding the tube of my blood shook his head as if to clear his own lusting thoughts. “I don’t know, but I’m about to find out.”

“Maybe because she is the first female ash,” another Quorum member offered.

The ugly one shook his head, that crooked nose looking even more bent in the fluorescent lighting down here. “No, I think there is more to it. When will the results be ready?”

The scientist placed the tube into a glass cylinder compartment inside a machine.

“About eight hours.”

Ugly turned his dark, silver eyes on me. “You may go. Don’t leave your apartment today. All right?”

House arrest. Awesome.

I nodded. Would it kill them to get cable in the Hive? At least then I could at least spend the hours until my doom with some good TV viewing. I’d choose those badass brothers from Supernatural. The door opened and an ash was there to collect me.

What? No Quorum escort back to my room?

As I followed the ash wordlessly down the hall, the severity of the situation began to press down on me. What if it didn’t work? What would happen when my blood showed that my father was an Original? Would they kill me? I needed to talk to Ryder, he would know what to expect from this.

The ash dumped me at my door and left without a word. I’ll bet that he thought the Quorum warning was more than enough to keep me from wandering during the next eight hours. Little did he know, I was most probably going to be running for my life, and a little rule breaking would be the least of my worries.

I crashed into my apartment, closing the door tightly behind me. I scented that Jayden was here, but Ryder’s spiciness was missing.

Jayden strode out of his bedroom, bottle of blood in hand. “Girl! What the actual fuck is going on? They had your shit searched while you were gone. You need to tell me everything and you need to do it now.”

He drained his bottle before throwing it in the trash and basically kicking my ass across to our couch. I interrupted his next little hissy fit.

“Where’s Ryder? I’m pretty sure I’m in a crap-ton of trouble and I have no idea what the hell I’m supposed to do now.”

I was not sitting around waiting for them to kill me. No freakin’ way. Still, there weren’t many options for me. I might never have wanted to be an ash and live in the Hive, but there was no life left for me in the human world. They feared my kind, and I would be hunted by the government. If these tests went badly, I was going to end up with nowhere to escape.