Dreams of a Dark Warrior

FOUR

Back at the facility, Declan signed over his unconscious prisoners to the warden, a stout, beady-eyed arsehole named Fegley.

The man hated Declan. The feeling was mutual.

Fegley was in charge of processing the inmates, removing their effects and any hidden weapons, formally ID’ing them, and collaring them. While he worked, a physician from the research arm would take biological samples for an initial workup, then the prisoner would be transferred to one of the three hundred cells spread out over two containment wards.

“Which cell are you putting the Valkyrie in?” Declan asked.

“Seventy.”

“Why there?” Two inmates already occupied that cell. Yes, the facility was overcrowded, and they’d been doubling up, but prisoners were usually placed with much forethought.

So why put the Valkyrie with a female fey assassin and a semi-catatonic male halfling?

“More prisoners came in while you were gone.” Fegley shrugged. “Webb ordered her into that one. And I don’t question orders,” he said pointedly.

Stifling his long-denied urge to strike the man, Declan turned toward the research ward and his own suite of rooms.

Though he didn’t understand Webb’s reasoning at times, it wasn’t his place to question an order either. Or to question anything. Even when he itched to know how Webb acquired new information about their foes. Or how this island was kept hidden from their detrus soothsayers and oracles. …

When Declan reached his suite, he unlocked the executive office he used as a reception area. From that room, two corridors branched off behind concealed panels. One led to a storage warehouse—with an emergency escape tunnel—the other to his private quarters. There he had a sizable multilevel space with a gym, a kitchen, a work and sleep area, and an adjoining bath.

The only home he’d known for nearly a decade.

Inside his inner chamber, he removed his gloves and jacket. There were only two places in the world he felt comfortable enough to shed the layer of clothes that kept his ruined skin hidden: here within this sanctum, and out in the desolate forests on the island.

Releasing a weary exhalation, he sank into the chair at his control console. Above the curved desk and computer keyboard stretched a ninety-six-inch LCD screen. Across that extended monitor, he could pull up multiple broadcast feeds from the facility’s cameras.

With the click of a button, he could view—and hear—the occupants in any of the holding cells, could deploy security measures against them.

From this console he could run the entire base. In fact, he often did.

This military installation had once been used only to secure and interrogate prisoners. Now the facility also housed a research arm in a dedicated ward. A team of scientists lived on-site, investigating the immortals’ innate defenses, their physical strengths—and especially their weaknesses.

Webb had turned over control of the base to Declan a decade ago. Since then, Declan’s life had fallen into a routine: work out in the morning to deaden his abnormal strength, oversee operations, interrogate some of the higher-priority captives.

Now he reviewed several backlogged cases as he mindlessly ate a military MRE—and awaited a doctor’s house call.

After finishing his meal, he pulled up the feed from cell seventy to front and center on the monitor. Fegley and a guard were just tossing the Valkyrie to the floor inside. She was still unconscious with her head bagged.

“New roommate, fey,” the warden said to the female assassin already in the cell. “She’s a Valkyrie. Maybe this prisoner will actually talk to you.”

The fey didn’t move to assist her, merely stared at Regin with cold indifference.

Odd. From what he understood, the fey and Valkyrie were ancient allies. Of course, the assassin wasn’t completely fey.

The other inmate—a teenaged halfling—continued banging his head against the wall. The boy hadn’t known he was a detrus, hadn’t known they’d existed, until he’d been dispatched here by one of the four other magisters. Apparently, he’d committed no crime other than setting his sights on the wrong girl—a magister’s daughter.

Upon arriving here and seeing living, breathing monsters, the boy had gone nearly catatonic.

Declan hadn’t even been eighteen when he’d faced these beings for the first time. He had survived the encounter.

But not intact. …

For long moments, Declan watched the even rise and fall of the Valkyrie’s chest. Her T-shirt was hiked up, revealing her flat belly and her wound. The skin there had already closed.

Typical immortal resilience. How many times had he cursed it? With their ability to regenerate, they were nightmare adversaries.

Not to mention when they possessed other powers. Like the vampires’ and demons’ teleporting or the witches’ spellcasting. Without the Order controlling their number, there’d be no stopping them.

He drummed his fingers on his desk. The Valkyrie was fresh from ten murders, and still he was curious about her, wanting to know more than the limited details in her file.

What is wrong with me? Of all the immortals he’d been sent to capture, Declan might hate her the most—for flaunting what she was, for being proud to have offed his men.

And Declan wasn’t supposed to be curious; he was simply supposed to act—under orders. For nearly twenty years, he’d followed commands, had been the weapon the Order wielded.

He wasn’t content in his life, but at least his sense of purpose warred with the strain. He owed everything to Webb—his life, his career, whatever sanity he still possessed.

Someone buzzed his inner chambers. Only three people would dare: Calder Vincente, a former Ranger and his right-hand man, Webb on his infrequent visits, and Dr. Kelli Dixon, the physician in charge of prisoner research.

He glanced at the video of the outer hallway. Dixon, with a familiar metal case in hand.

Though he wanted only to observe the Valkyrie—to relish her reaction when she awakened and comprehended her position—he had business with the doctor. He donned his gloves, then buzzed her in.

She entered, her smile fawning. Which he despised. Sometimes Dixon acted like a schoolgirl fan of his. He knew she was attracted to him, but then for some reason women usually were. The more coldly he treated them, the more they seemed to desire him.

Yet even if there were any aspect about Dixon to tempt him—her looks were forgettable, her figure boardlike—she of all people should know why anything more was impossible.

She waited for him to ask her to sit. Since the only place in this corner of his chambers was his bed, he didn’t.

“How was your trip?”

“The hunting was plentiful.”

“That’s what we’ve heard.” She pushed her large glasses up on her nose, casting him an MD’s assessing glance. “You look exhausted. Were you able to sleep?”

“I’ll catch up over the next week.” Normally, he slept just four hours a night, yet that got shaved down to two on these hunts. And he’d been gone for two weeks, completing lengthy preparations for his three captures.

“How was your heart rate? Any palpitations? Any adverse effects of the medicine?” Dixon had been supplying him with his injections for more than a decade—ever since she’d begun giving Declan his yearly physicals.

She’d been keeping his secrets and keeping him dosed for all that time.

“No adverse effects. I’ve decided I need to double up.”

She set the case on his console. Inside, he’d find two weeks’ worth of vials and syringes, a convenient doping kit. “Chase, what you’re injecting should knock out a horse. It’s going to start affecting your mind, with potentially permanent complications.”

He’d long suspected that at some point, she’d begun to add an opiate to the mix, increasing it gradually. Now he felt certain of it. “Then I must be building up a tolerance, because it’s not working.”

When capturing the vampire and even the Valkyrie, he’d suffered that familiar rage, and with it had come the customary physical symptoms.

Thought left his brain, while his heart felt like it would explode. His muscles twitched and swelled as if they couldn’t handle all the blood pumping to them. He would experience a marked surge in strength and speed, yet afterward, he would be nearly feeble with exhaustion.

Dixon squinted behind her glasses. “If I hadn’t tested you myself, I’d swear you were one of them.”

“I am no bloody detrus.”

She flinched at the coarse term.

“And you did test me, finding nothing,” he reminded her. Though he did heal faster than most, his cells were still vulnerable to contagion and death. His skin scarred. His broken bones mended with calcium remodeling; an immortal’s bone would set as if never broken.

Of course, he’d felt no need to tell her that he possessed animal-like senses, could see in the dark or hear a whisper from half a klick away. “Dixon, you’re the one who came to me with the idea of injections. Now you’re pulling back?”

“I need to do new workups on you, run more tests,” she said. “Then we could finally get to the bottom of this.”

His attention was back on the Valkyrie. “No more tests. You’ve subjects enough.” Besides, he feared he knew why his strength was burgeoning.

Blood that wasn’t my own …

“If we could find the root cause,” she said, “then we wouldn’t have to systemically suppress everything.”

They’d gone over this before. In addition to deadening his abilities, his doses suppressed his emotions and any appetites, whether for food—or for sex.

She couldn’t seem to believe that he was ecstatic about that particular side effect.

“Chase, we have been friends for a decade.”

Of a sort. I use you. She was his source, his dealer, providing him a bimonthly stash.

From one drug to the next. Just a couple of quid’s worth, I’m beggin’. He shoved away the stray thought.

She leaned against the console—in front of the screen. “You’re a male in your prime. Don’t you … miss it?”

No. No, he didn’t. Even if he didn’t suffer that punishing anxiety with each sexual encounter, his body had been ruined.

“Listen, Chase, there’s something I need to discuss with you.”

“Can it not wait until tomorrow?” Had the Valkyrie stirred?

“It will only take a second. It’s important to me. To us,” she added significantly.

To us? He cast her a menacing look, the message clear—you do not want to fuck with me tonight.

She blanched. “We c-can talk later, then, of course. I’ll let you get some rest.” She almost laid her hand on his shoulder, but a chilling glare made her recoil, backing to the door. “And I’ll have additional vials prepped for now, if you want to start doubling up. Just till I can formulate the stronger doses for you.”

Be quick about it. “Very good, Doctor.”

As the door closed behind her, he realized Dixon would not be easily dissuaded. The daft bitch thought she was in love with him. How could she want a man she innately feared?

He exhaled with irritation. Damn it, he just wanted to watch his monitor, to see his new capture—

The Valkyrie was rousing.

Because her deadly cell mate was kicking her.