The White Blood Trilogy - Complete Box Set Books 1-3 Page 7

  “Jenny,” I said out loud, snapping back the boat and my father staring at me with worry on his face.

  “What’s wrong Ben? Where did you just go?”

  “We have to go back,” I said, shaking my head. “I think Jenny is in trouble.”

  “Are you sure this is the answer? You can’t help her if you just get thrown right back into the Facility again.”

  “I don’t know how, but I’m going to get her out of there. I’ll have the boat drop me off on the coast somewhere, and then you can take it back out and I can meet you there eventually.”

  “As much as I appreciate the gesture,” he said, knocking back a swig of beer before continuing, “I’m not letting you do this alone. If you go back, so do I.”

  I stood up and moved to go inside. “I’ll go tell the captain.”

  “Son?”

  “Yeah, dad?” I paused halfway through the door.

  “Why don’t you see if you can find something stronger than this beer while you’re in there? I’m not sure if I can even get drunk nowadays, but if we’re about to do something this crazy, that doesn’t mean I can’t try.”

  I laughed and ducked into the cabin to inform the Captain of our change of course. My dad was right, this was a crazy idea, but I couldn’t leave her there alone. There was no option but to try to get her out of whatever hell hole they’d dumped her into.

  I closed my eyes and tried to reach out to her the same way I had been doing over the past few weeks... “I will never leave you Jen...”

  The End

  BOOK 2

  WHITE BLOOD

  REDEMPTION

  Prologue

  24 Hours Earlier

  Exercise “Yard”, Facility 47, Florida

  As much as it pained me to have to ask Jen to skip the whiteblood injection, I knew it was the only way I was ever going to get out of the Facility with my father. The plan had originally involved a more complicated version of me trying to use my powers on her in order to make her think she’d given me the injection when really she’d just faked it, but that was before I’d felt just how weakening the whiteblood really was. I hadn’t anticipated being quite so powerless or helpless.

  Now I had much more strength in my vampire abilities than I ever could have hoped for. Instead of just being able to stay off the whiteblood for a week like I’d first planned, I had the surge of power that comes from feeding after a long hunger. Rather than wait out the week, I knew we had to go right then, and so I warned my father that it was time to make our escape.

  Although we were given limited free time outside of our cells, there was a two hour period every evening where they’d let us out into what they called the yard. It was just an old prison term for an exercise area, since our “yard” was nothing more than a large room like an airplane hangar with concrete floors, a few weight benches and sports equipment, and a couple of basketball nets that served as a court on one side of the room. There were also a handful of games, and my father and I had established a regular routine of playing chess by one particular end of the yard.

  Of course, no one there knew he was my father. Luckily for us, we weren’t the kind of father and son who looked exactly alike, since we were both about the same age by outward appearances. He’d been turned when he was almost exactly the age I was now, and it was a little eerie looking at a father who could have been my brother. If there was that much of a resemblance, no one seemed to know or care, which was all the better for us.

  “If it isn’t misters Silver and Gold playing their usual games,” said Trevor King standing above us.

  I glanced at the clock over his shoulder and saw that we were only five minutes away form the end of our exercise period. Jenny’s blood surged through my veins and I felt strong enough to tear King’s head clean off. “What do you want, Trevor?”

  “Well now, that don’t sound none too polite considering we’re about to go into business together.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” asked George.

  “In precisely four minutes, you two are going to escape from here. I don’t know how you managed it, probably that whore up in the infirmary, but I can smell the blood on you, boy. You’re taking me with you and your dad or no one is going at all.”

  “What makes you think you can stop us?” I said, rising from my chair to face him down. I didn’t bother asking how he knew George was my father. It didn’t matter at this point.

  “Y’all know how friendly I am with old Billy James the head guard over there. Well I was just telling him I had some real juicy information that might make his life a lot easier, and that I’d tell him in about… oh, three minutes now.”

  “I will tear your heart out right here if you—”

  Trevor King put his hands up with palms facing outwards and made a show of having hurt feelings. “No need for fussin’ and fightin’, boys. A prison yard brawl will bring down more heat than you care to have on you in this particular moment, at least, that’s what I’m guessing. That sound about right Benjamin Silver?”

  “Fine,” I said through gritted teeth. “It’s happening now, so just sit down and shut up while I deal with everything.”

  I saw the look my father flashed me, but I had no choice but to ignore it. We were so close, and I didn’t think I’d ever have this chance again. If taking Trevor King out with us was the price I had to pay, then that was what would happen. Besides, I thought to myself in the last seconds before the exercise period ended, if I couldn’t end King’s miserable existence now, that didn’t mean I couldn’t do it once we were outside the Facility.

  My father and I continued our game of chess. I couldn’t have told you who was winning, as I was just placing pieces randomly and trying to stay calm during the last seconds before our escape. Having Trevor King sitting next to us wasn’t helping at all either. By the time the warning buzzer sounded to end our exercise block, I was wound up tight with the anticipation of what would come next. I’d only been a vampire for a few months, and these men were trained to resist what I was about to attempt.

  “You idiots didn’t hear the buzzer? Time to get back to your cells, fangers.” Said Billy James, walking towards them and swinging his cattle prod stun baton.

  “Yeah, just one more move, boss,” I said, gesturing at the board. “I’ve almost got him beat for the first time. Give me one minute?”

  “I don’t care if this is the world fucking chess tournament. Your time is up. Get moving before I gas you fucks and shove this prod right into your balls.”

  “Woah woah.” I stood up and held my hands in the air to show him that I meant him no harm. I made direct eye contact and kept my voice low and calm. “That doesn’t sound necessary. We just want to finish our game, and then we’re going to go right back to our cells.”

  “Well I guess that sounds fair,” said Billy James, his voice flat and emotionless.

  All the anger had gone out of him, and I knew he was under my power. The other guards had already cleared the yard, and we were the only ones left here now.

  “It’s time for you to get back to your patrol Billy James.”

  “It’s time for me to get back to my patrol,” he repeated.

  “You did a real good job getting us out of here. Such a good job, in fact, that you don’t ever need to think about it again.”

  “I did a real good job,” he intoned.

  “Now why don’t you go on out of here and turn off the lights before you leave.”

  The guard turned and walked away, flipping the switches on the large bank of lights in the secured guard area before leaving and locking them inside the exercise area.

  “Neatly done,” said King. “Now how do you propose to get us out of here?”

  “Through there,” I said, pointing to an air vent in the ceiling forty feet above our heads.

  Levitating wasn’t nearly as easy as it seemed. Even with Jen’s vibrant blood powering me, I had to focus hard to get myself up to the roof where I worked away at t
he vent screws with a piece of metal I’d procured for just this reason. The screws were fairly easy to remove, since I guess they thought they’d notice if anyone floated up there to fiddle with them, and a minute later I was able to haul myself up into the ventilation system.

  The really hard part was getting Trevor and my father up here with me. It took every bit of my vampire abilities to levitate them up one after the other, and by the time they were both in the vent with me, I was exhausted and feeling completely hollow. Trevor was clever in insisting I take him up there before my father. He was clearly going to be hard to get rid of. Controlling Trevor was going to be nearly impossible now, but I knew I still had to try.

  Escaping from there was relatively simple. I’d done my research and through a serious of criminal connections I’d made over the months before getting myself locked up in Facility 47, I’d managed to get access to the blueprints for the building. I knew exactly which turns to take that would lead us to the surface instead of one of the giant fans or heating areas that would shred us to pieces or burn us beyond any vampire healing ability.

  “What are we going to do about him,” whispered my dad as we worked to free the last bolt from the grate that separated us from the outside world.

  I looked over my shoulder. Trevor King was just climbing up out of the last connector vent. “We’ll have to kill him. Now would be best.”

  The bolt clanged to the ground and I slipped my fingers into the metal weave of the grate, lowering it gently to the ground. My plan was to go for Trevor’s throat when he joined us at the opening, but in my weakened state I was surprised at how powerful and fast he was when he finally had his chance to escape.

  Trevor King crawled past us in a furious blur, his arms and legs moving at superhuman speed, throwing my dad and I to the ground outside the vent when he plowed through. So caught off guard was I, that I didn’t even see him disappear.

  “This is bad. We have to go after him,” I said.

  “No, Ben.” My father looked me in the eye and grasped my shoulders. “What’s done is done, and I don’t like it anymore than you do, but we have to go now or risk going back to that terrible place. I won’t have your sacrifices made in vain, do you hear me? We have to go now.”

  Carefully propping the vent grate back in place, I looked off in the direction I’d seen King disappear in, and shook my head. My father was right. We had to go, and we had to go immediately.

  Chapter1

  Twelve Mile Penitentiary, Stillwater, Florida

  My cell wasn’t made of glass, but it was a cell nonetheless. After several years of working in a prison facility, I found myself on the opposite side of the law, as an inmate instead of an employee. There was no question about it, my helping Ben escape was what had landed me here.

  The only real blessing so far was that I was given a cell to myself. After breaking down my door and grabbing me from my apartment, they’d thrown me in the back of a van and driven me straight here. I’d been given a bright orange prison jumpsuit, told to strip and shower, and then been shown to my new home. They’d refused me a phone call, and it didn’t seem like I was going to trial, but as of yet, no one had spoken to me about anything other than prison rules and regulations. Under normal circumstances, I might have fought harder for the right to a trial or even an explanation, but working for a top secret government facility had made me quite familiar with the way things went if you crossed the powers that be. They could keep me here for the rest of my life if they wanted to, and there was nothing I could do about it.

  When they finally pulled me into an interrogation room, I was shackled to the table across from a stern looking man in a black suit and tie that made him look like he’d just stepped out of a movie. He had a tablet in his hand and was scrolling through some information I couldn’t see, but I assumed it was a complete dossier on me. This man was a pro, and this definitely wasn’t the first time he’d been in a room with someone he wanted information from. No one knew I was here, and I knew he was going to use that against me.

  “I want a lawyer before I answer any questions,” I said.

  “Jenny, surely you know that’s not going to happen.” He put the tablet down and smiled. “You were arrested under suspicion of helping an incarcerated vampire escape from a top secret prison. It should be easy to see how awkward it would be for this sort of thing to go to trial.”

  “What do you want from me?”

  “First, allow me to introduce myself. My name is Agent Colleridge, and I’m with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. My team has been tasked with bringing in the escapees, and in going through all the security footage from the days leading up to the break in, we’ve found some pretty interesting things involving you and Benjamin Silver… or rather, Ben Gold as you knew him.

  Agent Colleridge stared at me as though waiting for me to say something, but I sat silently, waiting for him to put his cards on the table. If they had evidence against me, it wasn’t likely I was ever going to get out of here. There was no way I was going to turn in Ben and his father just so we could all wind up in prison.

  “Were you in love with Ben?” he asked.

  “In love with him? Why would you ask that?”

  He picked up the tablet and tapped on the screen a few times. When he turned it around, I saw grainy black and white footage of Ben and I kissing passionately in the Facility 47 injection room. When it showed Ben pulling off my shirt and taking my breast in his mouth, I sighed and looked away.

  “It gets particularly spicy after that,” said Colleridge. He paused the video and looked at the screen with a grin. “My boys were pretty excited to find this clip, and as you can imagine, we had to watch it several times to check for clues as to your motivation for helping him.”

  My face was glowing red with embarrassment, and I wished I could have played it cool and not let him know how much he was getting to me. I’d had no idea there were cameras in the infirmary until now, and I couldn’t believe I’d been so stupid as to have sex with an inmate.

  “Helping a vampire escape is a serious offense, as I’m sure you know. After the Vampire Indictment Act was passed back in the seventies, we were given complete power to deal with vampires and those who aid them as we see fit. The Department of Homeland Security would be jealous of the scope of our abilities if they even knew the Act existed.”

  “What does this mean for me?” I finally asked. “I don’t know anything about Ben’s plan or what happened.”

  “Oh, I’m sure you don’t. You see, I’m willing to give you the complete benefit of the doubt.” The agent swiped the video file away and showed her a file with her name and photo at the top. “Your record is exemplary, and you’ve received nothing but the highest praise from General Edwards and your co-workers. The way I see it, this Ben Gold character was able to use his abilities to trick you into doing something you would never have done under normal circumstances.”

  It was hard to tell where he was going with this, so I stayed quiet and let him continue talking.

  “If that were the case, and—this is the big one—you can help us track the escaped vampires down, we could see fit to having you released without any charges at all. Doesn’t a clean slate sound much nicer than spending the rest of your life locked away in a black site?”

  “You mean I could just walk out of here?”

  “If you can tell us anything you remember, anything at all that will lead to their capture, then I can make this all go away. You’ll be a free woman again. Although, I’d probably recommend you seek employment outside law enforcement.”

  I thought about Ben and his father. They already had a head start and would probably have made it to safety by now. It seemed wrong to turn them in after everything I’d done, but did I really want to spend the rest of my life in a prison with no one knowing where I was? It looked like it was going to be them or me, and as much as I wanted Ben and his father to be able to have a life outside the Facility, at least they’d still have a chan
ce at being together even if they were caught. In the end, it was Trevor King that made me tell them what I knew. He should never have escaped with them, and I couldn’t live with that on my conscience.

  “He said something about having a boat waiting to take them to Bermuda. They needed to leave because they boat had already been arranged. He never told me where they were leaving from, I swear. That’s all I know.”

  “That’s good, Jenny. That’s real good.” He picked up the tablet and scrolled through something on his display. “My team informs me that this information clarifies something we’ve already been working on. If it’s correct, we’ll be able to move on them within the hour and have you walking out of here before the day is out.”

  “I never meant for that monster Trevor King to escape,” I said. I figured it was best to go along with what they were proposing, if only to help my own chances of getting out of there. “I can’t believe I fell for their tricks.”

  “Don’t blame yourself. These vampires have no morals and will stop at nothing to get what they want. You’re just lucky they needed you, or else they would have killed you and drained you dry.”

  “I know that now.” I shook my head and wondered if I should try to force a few tears. “I just feel so stupid for letting him use me like that.”

  Agent Colleridge stood up. “With your help, we’ll bring them back into custody and ensure that they never get another chance at escape. You should be proud of yourself for helping us now when it’s important. Your country thanks you, Mrs Hastings. If you’ll excuse me, I need to coordinate the raid on the marina where we’ve just confirmed a possible sighting of two men matching the descriptions of Ben and George Silver.”

  He left me alone then, chained to the table, and wondering if I’d made the right decision. My world had flipped upside down over the course of a single day, and I’d be lying if I said I was coping well with it. For the first few hours, I’d been able to do nothing more than sit in my cell staring at the door as though someone would come open it and explain the mistake at any moment. After that came the tears. I’d cried for hours before eventually passing out and sleeping for a while. When I’d woken up again and realized where I was, the tears started afresh.