“Fine. I can always go for second helpings.” Gunnar bought the food and was soon back at the table.
“I don’t know where it is. The Facility, I mean,” Bryn began. “They drugged me so I was unconscious on the journey. Warden was there when I arrived and I saw him occasionally—I think he was checking on my progress—but he wasn’t there all the time.”
“He must have had you on his radar to work for him from the start.”
“Yeah, but I didn’t know that at the time. If I had to guess, I’d say the Facility was probably in the desert somewhere. It was definitely underground. There wereno windows and no natural daylight. Exercising was all done inside.”
“Sounds like a prison.”
“It was for me.” Bryn fiddled with his coffee cup. “My movements were monitored and restricted. There were other people coming through the place all the time for training but only short term. They avoided me, so I assume they’d been told not to interact.”
“Must have been lonely.”
“There was so much confusing crap going through my head I didn’t have much time to think about it. Never was much of a socializer.”
“Color me shocked.”
“Hey! I can people… When I have to. Okay, when someone makes me, but that’s so not the point. Let’s just say I had plenty of time with my own thoughts.”
“Okay, so who is this vamp dude you mentioned?”
Bryn sighed. “His name is Giles Delacourt, a British import. He came from some aristocratic family who relocated to the States for diplomatic work when he was a kid. He had his eighteenth birthday here and tested sanguine while he was at some private school in Washington State. That was twenty-five years ago and, lucky me, he never went home.”
“I gather you and he didn’t hit it off,” Gunnar said.
“You could say that. So, like a lot of vamps, Giles went into science. Psychology to be exact. I saw his résumé and he had a shitload of degrees, had research papers published in respected journals and he’d written a couple books… His main interest was modifying behavior. Getting his hands on me must have been a dream come true.”
“But your training must have been regulated, right?”
Bryn gave a short laugh. “That would be no. He was given free rein to turn me into a usable tool and that meant finding out exactly what I could do, what my limitations might be, the physical and psychological impacts, the effects of various stimuli and environments on my abilities. Alongside his research, there was a physical fitness program, diet control and education to degree level in law enforcement and criminology. Not that I ever graduated. The Facility isn’t an officially recognized educational establishment, so that’s something else they took away from me. I was supposed to go to Harvard.”
“Describe him. I want to get a picture of him in my head.”
“Not quite as tall as you, so about six feet. Dark, almost black hair with a bit of premature silver, very dark-brown eyes so they looked black in the right conditions. Pale skin. In fact, picture a charismatic vampire in an old movie and you’ve got him. He wasn’t at the mild end of the sanguine scale, let’s say. He’s the most vampire vamp I’ve ever heard of, right down to the pointy teeth.”
“Are you saying he could turn into a bat? Could you intimidate him with holy water and a cross?”
“Sadly not. Nor was he allergic to garlic. He did have a very strong fondness for blood and I’m not just talking about taking his steaks rare.”
“You mean he…” Gunnar made fang motions at Bryn’s neck.
“No, he did not bite me in the neck, Gunnar.” Bryn took off a glove then turned his arm over. “He did it here.” There was a scattering of marks across the inside of Bryn’s wrist.
“What the fuck!” Gunnar was full-on growling.
“Calm down, Wolfy. It was a trade-off. The occasional snack in exchange for books, DVDs or access to the news. It was consensual. He never forced me.”
“It’s still wrong. He was in a position of power.”
“Maybe, but he could have made me do it and he didn’t. He didn’t need the blood but said it was satisfying in a way raw meat and blood bags would never be.”
“How else was he more sanguine?”
“He could move much faster than a normal vamp—like a blur—and he could also merge with the background in a way that made him almost invisible.” Bryn paused. “He handled all my augur training himself and he had a sadistic streak he didn’t bother trying to hide.”
Gunnar’s growling got deeper. “One day I want to meet Mr. Delacourt.”
“I’m sure you and he would be best buds.”
