The vampire had just sat there with his hand in her fur. He looked so weak but he wasn’t taking any chances. Jared was having them both brought in under heavy guard.
“Don’t hurt her and don’t touch the collar,” he had whispered before any of Jared’s men came rushing through the gate.
He looked at the shifter then the vampire. Then it hit him, this was the bastard at Lydia’s house. Petro, that was his name. The god damn vampire trying to hurt Lydia.
Petro didn’t care anymore. As long as they didn’t hurt the shifter that had fought so hard to save his life. The Mistress would be taken down. As long as this one was protected and The Mistress was destroyed all would be ok.
“Don’t hurt her and don’t touch the collars” he whispered again before he fell into unconsciousness.
The two were escorted into the labs. The mess outside was cleaned up. They had taken the shifter he knocked unconscious and the vampire that hadn’t been killed.
Petro had said not to touch the collars. Both shifters had them on as well as the vampire. Why should he listen to a vampire and what the hell was going on here? He wanted answers god damn it all.
He knew something was wrong earlier in the day. Lydia had become restless. She was pacing inside the control room and she kept trying to convey some message to him. It was killing him to keep her shifted but she had to wait the phasing period out. He had gone in that morning. Like he always did, teaching her. Talking to her, giving her news of her kids, things to smell so she could use it to add to her arsenal of control. It was amazing how fast she learned.
He had gone in and she was pacing. Agitated. He didn’t know what was wrong. She had walked up to him and sat. She had made a sound he hadn’t recognized. She had pushed her nose against his hand. He stood there not sure about what to do.. She dug her nose into his hand again. Pushing her head along his hand until it rested on her head between her ears. He dug into the soft fur for the first time in almost four weeks. It felt just as good as he had remembered it had. But something else was there now, something he just couldn’t pick up on.
He looked down at her and she stalked off. He shook his head and had no idea what it meant. But not five seconds later he had gotten the call that there was a shifter running for the base along with the vampires and other shifters following close behind.
He headed towards where they had Petro locked down. He entered the room and the vampire was strapped down with the special bonds they had made after examining the others they held. But he was still unconscious.
“Kind of like a vampire coma it seems,” Carnope told him. “I’m not sure what’s wrong. He’s cool to the touch but our sensors show he’s raging with some fever. If he wasn’t dead already that would have killed him.”
He had walked out still as confused as he was before. Following Carnope he went into the shifters room where she was being held. It was large and reinforced with the same material that the Control Room was made of. Just smaller. She was pacing in there. Snapping and snarling at anything that came near. And that collar was still on.
“We can’t seem to get close enough to finish examining it. When we had first brought her in, we hooked her up to an IV to feed her. She was dangerously close to death. Not more than an hour later she was up and being surly. We haven’t been able to do anything since then,” Carnope chuckled.
“We put in some more food, which she ate very quickly. She seems to eat like Lydia does. Ravenous. And like Lydia she is refusing to cooperate,” Carnope continued. “From what we gathered, the collar, if removed without the proper key or whatever it needs, will detonate.”
“A bomb?” Jared said incredulously.
“Sort of, it isn’t going to do much other than take the head off and maybe destroy some of the surrounding things within a five foot radius,” he said. “The vampire and the other shifter have one as well.”
More mysteries. If that vampire didn’t wake up soon he was going to have to try to reason with this one. And god if she didn’t act like Lydia. The other burly vampire had been no help. The head had been severed but until burned or the brain was damaged they still live. Well not live, but go on or whatever. They had the head in a clear box in the same room as the body but the body was in a cage. One that was designed to keep vampires in. He had tried to question it but it remained impassive. The head merely stared at him with blank eyes and the body just stood in the middle of the room.
God what the hell was going on. He remembered the visit to the shifter they had caught. It looked almost rabid. It actually didn’t even smell like a shifter, smelled more like just the animal rather than the actual shifter. It was going insane inside the room they put it in. It was ramming itself against the bars, over and over until it was becoming bloody. They had to fill it full of sedatives to knock it out. And that’s how it’s been since then.
Just what the hell was going on? Shifters have never attacked other shifters. Humans sometimes, but never each other. Then there was one defending a vampire. And the vampire determined to keep the shifter safe. God he felt like he was in the middle of one big joke he didn’t get.
“Jared come to room 16A stat,” he heard his com crackling. It was one of the doctors and 16A was the room Petro was in. He turned out of the unconscious shifters room and walked as fast as he could down the corridor. He met Carnope on the way.
They walked in and Petro was staring at the ceiling.
“What the hell is going on?” Jared demanded.
“Don’t touch the collars,” Petro said softly. God it hurt to talk.
“Yeah we figured that out. Explosives, did you think you could get in here and blow up Lydia with those somehow?” He was trying to remain calm.
Petro chuckled, “You have no idea what’s going on do you. Look there is something bigger than your shifter that we were after.” He concentrated on the tiles. The pain wasn’t nearly half as bad as the torture he endured under The Mistress, but it wasn’t very comfortable either.
“The collar’s stop the shifters from changing back. They also double as torture devices. Much like you humans use as shock collars for your pets,” he stopped and closed his eyes for a moment. Good god he would not pass out in front of these humans again.
“Without the proper key, if tampered or removed it will detonate,” he sighed, “it was a safe guard against rebellion.” He paused, god where to start? So much to say and so little time.
“Why is the shifter you came in with different than the one we had to knock out?” Jared didn’t even know where to start with the questions.
Petro’s eyes widened, “You have a mindless here?”
"A what?” Jared was confused.
“Shifter’s that have been broken and tortured into mindless zombies I guess you could describe them as,” he paused, “The Mistress has dozens of them. Her army searches for them. It takes a while to break them thou. Shifters are strong. Some have certain abilities she wants. Like that one I was sent to get.” He looked at Jared. “But I wasn’t expecting you to show up.”
“You are god damn lucky I did,” he snarled back. He had a sinking feeling at the pit of his stomach.
Petro laughed softly, “No that Shifter was lucky. You don’t understand. Shifters are broken before they are made into pets. They undergo brutal torture. Only the strongest survive and even then, they aren’t… well right.”
“Why did you run away?” Jared asked. Surely there was some other motive. He had to know why.
“You have to understand. Some of us don’t want to serve her. We don’t want to do the mindless and brutal acts she makes us do. But we have no choice. The liquid you encountered before, she found it centuries ago. We are injected with it now. Those of us that used to fight against her.” Petro felt the pain ripping at his chest. It was where his heart once beat. He wasn’t sure why he felt it. Maybe it was a side effect of the liquid he was forced to take.
“But we have no choice. Just like I had no choice when she told me to go collect the shifter that day. She wanted her because of her unique abilities.” Petro looked at Jared again. “That shifter you caught, not the one I was with, the other. Put it down, kill it, and put it out of its misery.”
“I will not it’s one of my kind and I will find a way to save him,” Jared gritted his teeth. God a mess.
"You don’t understand. Take its collar off. It won’t ever shift back. Ever. It’s like that now permanently. She has others like that. Without collars. They serve her now without disobedience. The collars come off because she knows they are broken beyond repair. Hers to serve her. Hers to do with as she pleases,” Petro frowned thinking about all of the pain and torture he was forced to just stand by and idly watch. So much destruction.
“How did you two get away?” Jared needed to know as much as he could.
Petro grimaced at the memory.
“When I had returned without the shifter I was sent to get, I was punished. Severely. Tortured until not even I recognized my screams anymore. The Mistress likes to torture. She’s very good at it,” he closed his eyes. “The pain I was under must have lessened the effect of the liquid somehow.” He blinked thinking about it. “Anyway ….”
“She liked the way I screamed, it makes her, well it gets her off I suppose. So she had me hauled off until I woke up so she could start all over. I don’t know how the other shifter got there. I had convinced her to escape with me through a secret tunnel. I told her that if we did not make it here, we would be safe nowhere.” Petro shivered at the thought.
“We had run for weeks, stopping to feed on the random farm animals we came across. I had to ride on her because I was so weak from that god damn liquid. I guided her to here. Kept her going. But they followed us relentlessly. We had finally reached your compound when they caught us and well. You know the rest.”
Jared was stunned. Other shifters just like that rabid one. God Lydia could have been turned into one of those.
“What about those other massive god damn vampires,” Jared asked.
“God those are almost worse than the Mindless Ones. She scoured the world for the right ones. Huge, massive men she could turn then inject with that liquid. But she didn’t turn them right away. That stuff, it makes her, almost godly. Nothing can hurt her. Skin as hard as steel. Harder in fact. It makes her psychic ability one hundred times stronger.” Again he paused thinking about all those times he would scream in his head to stop it. All those times he listened to the men and woman beg for death. Hearing it and feeling the ripping it did to his soul to stand there and do nothing, because he just couldn’t.
But he loved her too. It was a weird love hate relationship. He wasn’t sure why but a few weeks after being injected with that crap he had started loving her. Deep, devoted love…
“She brutally tortured them until they begged for death,” his voice was quiet now his eyes still closed. “She would have them locked away, fed like kings. Treated like royalty until they thought life was good. And then she’d start all over. Every day was one big question for them. Until they broke. They just, broke. You could stare into their eyes and nothing was there. Nothing, it was gone, life was gone. Then she’d turn them then.”
He continued, “By then they were nothing less than hollowed out bodies to fill with her suggestions. Anything she wanted them to be they were. Like you saw today. One directive she gives them, and that’s all they focus on. No thought for anything else. Even if something else is killing them.”
“I hope,” Petro paused, he knew they would refuse him,” I hope you give me the chance to tell the shifter that saved my life how grateful I am. I owe her at least that much.” He closed his eyes and fell into unconsciousness again.