The woman in the coat guided Sydney to a medical examining table.
“Sit here and roll back your sleeve. We’re just going to take some blood and a tissue sample.”
“T-tissue sample?” Sydney’s mind went straight to terrible things involving scalpels.
“Just a swab inside your cheek.” The woman patted her on the arm and smiled kindly. Aside from insisting on calling Sydney by a number and a letter instead of her real name, she seemed non-threatening, nice even. But Sydney shook the thought from her head. They were only being nice to try to gain her trust. Just as Jacob had. There was no reason to think people who would lock you in a cell and run experiments on you were “nice people”.
Sydney’s eyes went to the vein pulsing in the woman’s throat. At least she couldn’t hear the blood rushing through like a real vampire would have, or the heartbeat. It might have driven her to do something stupid. Thankfully she could only see the twitch of the vein.
“You’re hungry,” the woman said, conversationally.
Maybe if Sydney were a real vampire, that thought would have struck some fear in the technician, but instead she went for a cotton swab.
“Open.”
Sydney opened her mouth and the woman took a sample and put it into a plastic bag.
“I’ll tell you what,” she said, “I’ll take your blood, then I’ll give you some blood in return.”
Sydney felt the glow come to her eyes, and she nodded. Now that she was an adult, she preferred to drink from men. It wasn’t like that for all vampires. Some women preferred other women, and some men other men. It seemed tied directly into who they were attracted to, but she was too hungry right now to care much about that distinction.
She winced and bit her lip as the needle went into her arm and the woman drew a couple of vials of blood and put labels on them.
“There. That wasn’t so bad was it? It’s time to go back now.”
“But…” Were they lying to her already?
“Your food will be waiting for you when you return to your cell. You know the way. Don’t go exploring. We’ll know.” The woman pressed a button and the door to the room they were in opened. She went back to her clipboard jotting down notes.
Sydney wanted to run, but how? To where? And she was so very tired suddenly. She could sleep for a million years and yet, they’d just reached the night’s peak. Glowing arrows illuminating the glass guided her back to her cell.
When she reached the glass cube, the door opened and a perky robotic voice said: “Welcome home, 5857B.”
She winced. Home? Yeah right. This would never be home. It would end up being her coffin, if anything.
Inside the cube was a table with a few clear medical bags filled with red fluid. What the hell was this? Bagged blood? She couldn’t live on bagged blood. It was so weak, she’d probably die of malnourishment if she drank it—if such a thing was possible for a vampire.
She circled the bag a couple of times, a grimace on her face. This would be disgusting, like her mother’s stories of old ladies eating canned cat food.
She looked up to find the scary growly guy in the cube next to hers watching her intently. She wished he would stop that. It freaked her out.
She picked up one of the bags and turned away from him. There were glass cubes containing a preternatural on all four sides of her—if you didn’t count the hallway outside the door—as well as above and below her. It wasn’t as if she would get any feeding privacy here, but the way he watched her was too intense. The cubes were lined up and stacked on top of each other. She was on one of the higher floors as there seemed to be far more cubes below than above. It created an odd sense of vertigo, like somehow the glass would stop holding her and she’d just fall. But maybe that was the hunger talking.
She allowed the glow to come to her eyes and her fangs to descend, then she took a deep breath and bit into the bag. She was right. It was disgusting. It was cold and dead. There wasn’t even the smallest trace of an emotion in it. This would keep her going about as well as weeds in the backyard would keep a human going.
But she persisted and drank down the other two bags in quick succession, trying not to taste the terrible swill.
She turned to find a giant platter of raw meat had been placed inside the other guy’s cell. Then the mystery of what kind of therian he was, was solved. A reddish-brown and white wolf rolled and tumbled out of the plain white clothing they wore in the cubes, then he devoured the meat. He seemed to be enjoying his food much more than Sydney had enjoyed hers. Maybe it would divert his attention away from her.
After he’d cleaned the plate, he went to a corner and curled up and promptly fell asleep. Minutes later, some lab coats came in. One drew some of his blood into a vial much like had been done earlier with her, though she suspected this was for a different purpose.
If this place was run by magic users, the therians were having their blood stolen for use in magic. The second technician snipped some fur and put it into a plastic bag. Yes, they were using it for magic. Unless he was new, too, and they were running tests on his genetic makeup. But somehow Sydney thought they weren’t as interested in a run-of-the-mill werewolf as they were in her freakish self.
A couple of hours passed. Every now and then the wolf twitched like he was having a dream. During this time, another lab coat came in and took his old clothes away, replacing them with fresh folded clothes.
Sydney watched the preternaturals in the cubes below her. A lot of them paced. Some slept while lab techs took blood. Some were agitated. Others seemed resigned to their fates. How long had they all been in here? How long would she be in here?
When the wolf woke, he prowled the cube, pacing back and forth, watching her in wolf form for several minutes. Hadn’t the raw meat been enough to take the predatory edge off? She stayed in the far corner of her cube, trying to remain as far from him as possible, but somehow she knew he could smell her through the glass. And if she were any kind of proper vampire, she would have been able to smell him, too.
She should be more distressed by the general situation, but the anxiety over the wolf had been successfully distracting her over all the possible threats to her safety here. The magical humans were the real enemy. She knew that. But it was hard to keep that thought in the forefront of her mind when the wolf kept growling and watching her like she was a bone he wanted to gnaw on.
Finally, the tension eased and he shifted back to his far-too-gorgeous human form. This guy had to be working out somehow because nature didn’t just give somebody muscles like that. Jacob had spent hours in the compound’s gym every week, and yet even he hadn’t been this delicious-looking.
Sydney’s hand flew to her mouth when she realized her fangs had popped out. Did she want to sleep with him or have him for dinner?
Yes.
He wasn’t the only predator here. Too bad nature hadn’t given her anything to back that up with.
The werewolf noticed her gawking and came to the edge of his cube, the closest he could get to her. He stood in all his naked glory staring her down until she averted her eyes. God, Syd, what is wrong with you?
If the attraction were mutual, maybe he wouldn’t try to break through the glass and maul her, but the hard look in his eyes gave her little hope of that. She glanced surreptitiously through the veil of her blonde hair to watch him turn and move to his clothes in the center of his cube. She tried unsuccessfully not to ogle his back and his ass and the back of his thighs. Stop, Syd!