Rise of the Legion: Book 2 of The Cure

Cal

I opened my eyes to the stuffy darkness of the mines. My throat was dry, but not with the agonising burn that I had become accustomed to. Water. I wanted water.

I threw out my hand and a cup clattered to the ground. At once a match sparked in the darkness and a flame sprang up. By its flickering light I recognised Theo. He lit a lamp and set it down beside him. He had been sitting or lying on a makeshift bed of blankets, and I realised from the hardness underneath me that I must be lying on the same. He looked paler and thinner than I remembered. And he was pointing a gun at my head.

He refilled the cup, taking care not to get too close to me. Slowly I swallowed a few sips of water, my survival training kicking in automatically, and then waited for it to settle before taking a few more.

'How are you?' he asked. His voice was hoarse, as if he had been crying. But Theo never cried. Not even when we were children.

'Thirsty. Cold.'

'I mean... How are you - what are you?'

I frowned, confused. 'I'm me, Theo.' I tried a smile. 'Did you get me more of the control drug?'

He shook his head, but he put down the gun. 'It's not the drug. You're cured.'

'Cured?' Hope and joy leapt in my heart. If I was cured, then Thane and I... Where was she? I looked around, but there was no-one else in the patch of lamplight.

Theo was watching my face. I didn't know what he was expecting to see, but he didn't find it. He shook his head and lowered it into his hands.

'What is it?' I asked. 'What's the matter?'

He lifted his head and his eyes were full of pain. 'You're cured, Cal,' he said, as if it should mean something more to me.

'But that's good! Isn't it? That's what we wanted!' I was stopped by the tears that suddenly swam in his eyes.

'You're cured...' He paused. His face was unreadable. 'You were cured by innocent blood.'

His meaning suddenly hit me like a freight train, and I almost fell back onto the rough bed. If I had taken innocent blood, then...

'Whose?' I whispered, almost afraid to ask.

He looked directly into my eyes. 'Thane's. You took Thane's blood and infected her.'

Horror filled my mind. 'Is she...?'

'Dead? No.'

Relief and guilt flooded through me in equal measure and if I hadn't already been sitting I would have sunk under the intensity of it. But if she wasn't here with us then... 'Where is she?'

'Where is she?' he repeated.

I could only nod. He swallowed back more tears, and then forced the last words I wanted to hear out through his constricted throat.

'Jack has her.'

CHAPTER 1

Cal

I threw myself back in the chair in disgust. Nik chose to ignore me as usual and kept on talking. I stole a look at the other faces around the room.

Theo looked haggard. In the three weeks since we'd lost Thane he had hardly slept. I knew this because we kept each other company through the long stretches of darkness, endless now that it was fully winter. That reminded me that I was on patrol in half an hour and I glanced at Cassie, who had volunteered to be my partner. She still wore a sling around the shoulder that had been shot, but nothing like that was going to stop her grilling me endlessly about Thane and Jack. Right now she looked as dissatisfied as I felt.

Dan caught my eye and deliberately looked away. He was very pale. The wounds he had sustained from Jos's attack were healing slowly and he was still very weak. He was lucky to be alive. Lucky that Theo had had the presence of mind to stick Jos with the control drug in time. But I knew he blamed himself for Thane almost as much as he blamed me. And Jack Marksin’s promotion to Major was a blow to all of us.

Saffie, sitting next to him, looked worried more than anything, but since that was her habitual expression these days I decided not to read anything new into it.

And that was us. A rag-tag bunch of leaders for a damaged and scattered bunch of frightened and homeless refugees.

Nik looked expectantly at me, and I realised I had missed a question.

'Sorry?' I said, sounding insolent even to my ears. I sighed, too low for him to hear.

Nik's mouth tightened for a second, but he swallowed it down and repeated, 'When can you get more blood for Jos and the kids?'

I rolled my eyes. This was my punishment for being cured, I guess - Nik had delegated the role of blood-collector - and sometimes donor - to me.

Saffie shot me a glance. She was unofficially in charge of the two teenage girls and the three children who had been infected with the vamp virus, as they were calling it. And that was why she looked perpetually worried. With no control drugs and no way to make any, the five were kept almost permanently in a state of light sedation and replete with blood under the old army training bunker where General Marksin struggled to keep them hidden. This was the safest place for them until we found a new base. But we had to get the blood to them.

Jos was a different matter. Taller than me and ten times stronger since I had been cured, his madness would have wiped us out in minutes if he were loose. And though I knew he had agreed to be chained in the basement of the concrete block we currently occupied, we couldn't keep him there forever.

It was not so long ago that I had been chained up myself. Somewhere in my mind I remembered how it felt, because it came back to me in fragmented nightmares that disturbed the little sleep I could manage.

Nik made a small impatient sound, and I realised that they were waiting for my answer. I calculated quickly. 'Later tonight,' I said.

He nodded and turned to speak to Saffie. I sighed. Automatically my mind planned the route to the civilian hospital where we had planted a nurse. I knew she was working tonight because she had given me her schedule last week, and I knew she took a break at the goods entrance at the same time every evening in case I should happen by. And of course that was the closest entrance to the blood bank. I felt guilty that we had to steal blood from the hospital for the vamps - after all, we were still at war - but there weren't enough of us willing to donate blood anymore. In fact, some of our bunch of bandits thought we should just let the vamps die.

But Nik was still in charge by sheer force of will, it felt like. Anger drove him – anger and the desire to revenge himself on Jack Marksin for destroying his headquarters and all he had built there. Including the makeshift lab where the rebels had briefly duplicated the control drug that Jos needed to keep him sane, and all the equipment that might have helped us find a chemical cure for the virus.

Saffie still had the data – when the explosions had come she had slipped the memory stick into her pocket, and luckily it was still there when Nik found her hiding in the woods three days later.

Those three days were a hole in my memory that nothing could completely fill, even though Theo had tried. He told me how I had bitten Thane and taken her blood before the sedatives that Jack’s men shot into me took effect. As soon as I began to stagger, he said, I dropped Thane and ran back into the mine. I suppose I have Jack to thank for that – otherwise I might have killed her. My heart lurched as it always did when I came to this conclusion. That was the one act that I could never have survived. If I had wakened to find her dead… I tried to focus on what Nik was saying to drive away the too familiar pain.

‘… and we expect a full report from the labs by tomorrow morning. Right Theo?’

Theo sighed. ‘I’ve arranged to meet my contact near the hospital just after blackout. I’ll leave with Cal, if that’s all right?’

He looked at me for permission and I nodded. Despite everything he was still my best friend – almost my brother.

Nik finished up. ‘So we’ll reconvene after breakfast tomorrow. We should have enough info by then to make some real decisions. Everyone stay safe tonight.’

There was a general reluctance to leave the room Nik had designated as his. There was a makeshift desk and a sleeping bag beside it, but that was it. There wasn’t room for much else and we few, sitting on the floor, filled all the available space.

Saffie was the first to move and I followed her into the main room that took up most of the ground floor. The rebels were used to living in close proximity to each other, so there was some order in the rows of blankets and sleeping bags that were spread out on one side. The room was partitioned by a heavy curtain that ran along a rail in the ceiling – something left over from the days when this building had been a clinic – and the remaining space was used as a general common room with various small rooms leading off it. The building and the small town it was in had been abandoned close to the beginning of the war, when civilians had been evacuated to the cities. So it was closer to the front that we would have liked, but also meant that we were less likely to be discovered. Nik had set it up as a safe house almost a year ago, so there was oil for the generator and stocks of food and some medical supplies in the basement when we arrived. But it wasn’t a permanent base and we all knew it.

Saffie turned to me. ‘Get as much blood as you can tonight. We’re going to need it when we move them.’

I nodded grimly. But. ‘Do you really believe they’ll be better off away from the bunker?’

She tilted her head and examined me critically. ‘Jack Marksin will know by now that we had infected kids with us. And even though General Scotson kept them safe when the bunker was searched we can’t risk Jack going back there and finding them. Besides, they’re our responsibility.’ She shook her head. ‘And we don’t have any other choice. We need to take them with us when we go.’

‘So we really are moving?’ This had been discussed long into the night several times.

‘We can’t stay here, can we? We need somewhere secure where we can hold the vamps who escape - and their victims. And we need a lab of our own to work on a cure. Because you can be sure of one thing,’ she looked straight into my eyes, ‘Major Marksin is creating more.’

CHAPTER 2

Thane

Thane had dreams. Bad dreams. Her senses flowed like liquid and everything was tinged with red. The world rolled towards her and rolled away, leaving her limbs as heavy as if they were tied down. Bright beings made of pulsing tributaries of blood tormented her by never coming quite close enough to her mouth for her to bite and she craved the gush and throb of that blood with a searing thirst that grew and grew until it exploded into white-hot rage. And then everything plunged into darkness.

And then, sometime later, she woke up. Sometimes she woke up in her cell in the lab, with Cara and Jack beside her, or sometimes just Jack. And sometimes, like today, she was in her own room in Jack's quarters - the place he referred to as her home. It wasn't as if she didn't know about the tainted blood in her veins, or that Jack was experimenting on her; but it was true that she didn't care.

The scar on her cheek itched and she lifted her hand to rub it. It was already fading to silver. One of the benefits of being infected was that she healed far more quickly than normal people. And really, she was lucky that the soldier holding the rifle had missed his mark. Jack denied that he had given the order to shoot her, and she had to believe him. After all, she was his wife.

The silver ring on her finger gleamed dully in the late afternoon light. Now that it was winter it would be dark in less than an hour and Jack would be home before then. He seemed to believe that the control drug was that kept her near-human was less effective after dark, and he always gave her an extra booster shot as soon as he came home. Her left bicep was bruised from the shots she had been given during the last experiment, and her wrists and ankles were still slightly raw from the restraints. The thought of yet another needle made her nauseous, and she turned over on her side and curled up, cocooning her fragile stomach.

She knew Jack thought she ought to be grateful – after all, he had saved her life. Such as it was. She remembered waking up that first time, tied to the bed in the holding cell in the lab with Cara looking on through the window, but Jack at her side. Her whole body ached as if someone had taken her apart and put her back together the wrong way with some parts missing. Mostly her heart. Jack had been wary. When he went to touch her she had screamed and Cara had called out to him to sedate her. But it was pain and loss that had suddenly overwhelmed her, not rage. Jack had gazed at her compassionately and explained to her how he had personally shot Cal in the head to save her life. Because she was important to him. Because he loved her. And only he could save her. And then, he went on, he had ordered his men to hunt down the rebels and kill them all.

The pain of losing Cal lanced though her, a physical pain that left her breathless and sick. And Theo… Had Jack known Theo was with the rebels? Was her brother dead, too – or on the run with Nik? And Dan, who had saved her life several times over. Had he even survived Jos’s attack?

So many things that she needed to know. So many questions that could drive her mad. She was still dressed in the close-fitting top and shorts that Jack liked her to wear to the lab. There were smears of blood on the white fabric and she could tell from the smell that it wasn’t hers. She knew she ought to get up and shower, try make herself at least look human. That was what Jack wanted, after all. To pretend that she was normal outside the labs. And there was a chance that he would cut down the booster shots if he thought she was responding. But it was so difficult when all she wanted to do was disappear into her own head.

But before she could pull herself together enough to get up, the front door opened and she knew she had left it too late.

‘Thane?’ He came into the bedroom first, as he always did. He looked impatient for just a moment. Then he pasted on a bright smile. ‘Come on, let’s give you your shot and get you up.’

‘Jack, I don’t think I need it. I’m in control, I swear.’

He shook his head. ‘I know you think you are, Thane, but the research says different.’

‘Please…’

He pointed his finger at her as if she were a naughty child. ‘It’s only a quick jab. And it’s not like you have a choice anyway, is it?’

She knew he would have prepared the dose in the lab, and sure enough he pulled out a prepped syringe and squeezed a single drop from the tip.

‘Maybe not all of it? Please?’

He regarded her as if she had suddenly become interesting. ‘I suppose you have been responding…’

He depressed the plunger and some of the clear pinkish liquid spurted from the needle. Then as she watched the drops sink into the carpet he stabbed the needle into her thigh.

She drew in a sharp, explosive breath through her teeth. ‘That hurts, Jack,’ she complained.

He rolled his eyes as if she were still being childish. ‘A bullet would hurt more. Now get up and shower, OK? Or would you like me to help you?’

His eyes gleamed and she looked away. He had cleaned her up several times in the last three weeks. But now she had begun to care.

‘I’ll manage.’

‘If you’re sure…’

She nodded weakly and forced herself up. Even with the control drug she knew she ought to be stronger. ‘Jack, is there something new in the control drug?’

‘Why do you ask?’ he said nonchalantly.

‘I’m just so weak all the time. When we gave it to the others they were still strong.’

Jack’s face hardened. She knew he hated it when she referred to her time with the rebels. Except when he wanted information. ‘We’ve managed to add a tranquiliser to the drug without affecting the virus, we think. You’re the first one we’ve tried it on. And so far, my love, it seems to be working.’

‘Too well,’ she muttered. Standing brought a rush of blood to her head and she staggered. Jack caught her and held her until her head cleared.

‘I think I do need to supervise your shower,’ he said. ‘I don’t want you falling over in there.’

It was so unfair that she had to lose everything to get the virus that should have made her invincible, and yet Jack had found a way to control her. He half-carried her through the hall to his bedroom, where the shower was. The en-suite was small but functional, and he stripped her clothes in a practiced way that made her feel almost ashamed. He turned on the water and pushed her into the cubicle.

She stood under the hot water and closed her eyes, glad to feel it wash away all vestiges of the lab and the last set of experiments. She tipped back her head, wetting what was left of her hair. Her long dark hair had been clipped short like a soldier’s, and although Jack said he liked it she secretly blamed Cara for the idea. The flow of the water changed and she opened her eyes to see Jack standing in front of her, his naked body dewed by the spray.

‘I decided to help you after all,’ he said.

CHAPTER 3

Cal

Cassie found me