Darker After Midnight (Midnight Breed 10)

He gently closed the door and walked toward her, syringe held fast in his hand. His smile had gone from chilling to menacing. Tavia's skin began to crawl, getting warm and tight. Her teeth ached, and she could feel her vision sharpening, narrowing in on him as if he were prey caught in her sights.

Dr. Lewis cocked his head and gave a soft cluck of his tongue. "Bad girl. Someone hasn't told the whole truth about where she's been or what she's been doing."

Tavia moved opposite him as he came around the foot of the bed. "The one who hasn't been telling the truth is you." As she spoke, she felt the scrape of her fangs against her tongue. "What the hell have you been giving me all these years? What have you done to me?"

"Tavia? Dr. Lewis?" Aunt Sarah's voice sounded on the other side of the closed door. "Is everything all right in there?"

"Aunt Sarah, stay out!" Tavia screamed. "Please don't come in!"

Her concern for her aunt was genuine, but there was a part of her that couldn't bear to let the older woman see her in this state. She didn't want to lose her aunt's love if she were to discover the girl she'd raised was, in fact, a monster.

"Tavia, what's going on - "

"It's not safe," she shouted. "Call for help, but don't come in. Dr. Lewis - "

"The girl has been compromised," he interrupted, speaking over her with unnerving calm. "The process has been activated."

The process? What the hell did that mean? Just what had Dr. Lewis been doing to her all these years? Tavia didn't get much chance to guess about it.

Dr. Lewis lunged for her. The long needle of the syringe started to come down toward her face in a swift, deadly arc. Tavia leapt out of its path, muscles and limbs moving in perfect concert, as effortless as breathing. One instant she was in front of her attacker, the next she was behind him, crouched and ready to spring.

No time to wonder if he realized he couldn't win against her. He came at her again, and she looked at him as though seeing him for the first time now. How had she missed the dull glint of his eyes before? Like a shark's eyes. Dead and cold. Soulless.

It was her new, clearer vision that let her see this, and she knew that her irises were amber bright by the faint glow that bathed Dr. Lewis's murderous face as he charged toward her, wielding his syringe like a weapon.

Tavia came up off the balls of her feet and took him down to the floor. As he fell, his head knocked into the edge of the bed frame. A bloodied gash opened up on his grayed scalp, spilling bitter copper red cells. Even with her newly attuned senses, she could smell a foul taint on him. He was human, and yet ... not.

And he wasn't about to give up easily. He tried to stick her with the needle, but Tavia grabbed his wrist. Wrenched it until it snapped. He only grunted, even though the pain must have been excruciating. With a snarl boiling up her throat, Tavia twisted his broken limb and jammed the syringe into the old man's chest, plunging the contents.

Immediately he started to wheeze and cough. He sputtered a thick foam, eyes nearly popping out of his skull as his jaw went slack and spittle crept down onto his chin. The medicine was poison, at least to him. He convulsed into death, his last breath leaving on a choked rattle. Tavia leapt up and bolted for the hallway, frantic. She had to find Aunt Sarah and get them both out of there.

The older woman was on the phone in the kitchen. She spoke in a rush, her voice lowered to a careful whisper, unaware of Tavia's approach or the fact that Tavia could hear her as plainly as anything in this powerful new form that had overtaken her.

" - process has been activated. Yes, Master. Lewis is in with her now. Of course. I understand, Master."

Tavia's legs felt a bit unstable beneath her as she listened to her aunt speak. Strange words. An odd, flat intonation. Servile and unfeeling. Tavia had to work to find her voice. "Aunt Sarah?"

She abruptly hung up and wheeled around. "Tavia! Are you all right? What on Earth was going on in there? Where is Dr. Lewis?"

Tavia didn't even blink. Aunt Sarah's concern felt altogether false now. As false as Dr. Lewis's had proven to be. Sad with a sick, dawning comprehension, she said, "I killed him." "You - you what?"

"Aunt Sarah, who was that on the phone?"

She busied her hand over her cheery Christmas apron, brushing at nonexistent wrinkles. "It was, ah, Dr. Lewis's office. The way things sounded in there a moment ago, I thought I'd better call ... to see about ... having them ... send ..."

The lie died on her lips. Her face relaxed into a strange kind of calm. Emotionless.

Tavia shook her head, noting that Sarah's eyes had taken on the same flat luster that Dr. Lewis's had. She could see it now, her vision clearer than it had ever been. No more medicines to mute this preternaturally powerful part of her that had been living inside her, probably all her life.

Sarah moved back into the kitchen, away from Tavia. She pivoted to return the phone to its cradle.

"You betrayed me," Tavia said to the rounded bulk of her grandmotherly back. "All this time. You and Dr. Lewis both. You've lied to me.">The bastard had to have created her in one of his labs, playing God with genetics - something the Breed had long decried as the worst kind of blasphemy within the race. Babies were sacred, not science. Everyone knew that. Everyone within the Breed subscribed to that simple tenet. But not Dragos.

His secret breeding labs had produced a Gen One army of homegrown assassins, so why not this?

But what was his intention with her? It seemed obvious now that Tavia had been unaware that she was anything other than human. Her true nature, and its physical manifestations, had been somehow suppressed. By medications? Was her professed "sickness" actually her body struggling to deny the part of her that was Breed?

"Jesus Christ," he hissed, making a quick cleanup of himself and the basin. The Order needed to be informed ASAP.