Another scream, closer this time. Then the sounds of struggle. Something crashing.
"Stay here," Elena says, standing quickly.
"Like hell."
I follow her out of the sitting room and down a corridor I haven't explored yet. The screaming gets louder, more desperate. Other sounds join it, snarling, the crash of furniture breaking, voices shouting commands.
We round a corner and nearly collide with Marcellus. He's moving fast, his expression grim.
"Get back to the medical facility," he orders me. "Now."
"What's happening?"
"One of the contaminated vampires is going feral. We need to contain him before…"
Another crash. A door somewhere ahead bursts open, and a figure stumbles into the hallway.
It's a vampire, male, maybe twenty when he was turned. His eyes are wild, unfocused. Black veins cover every visible inch of his skin, pulsing with poison. He's breathing hard, saliva dripping from exposed fangs.
Feral.
He sees us and lunges.
Marcellus moves to intercept, but I'm faster. My body reacts on instinct, eight months of vampire reflexes combined with years of fighter training. I sidestep the lunge, grab his arm, and use his momentum to throw him into the wall.
He hits hard and goes down, but he's up again in seconds. No pain response. No tactical thinking. Just pure rage and hunger.
He comes at me again, and this time I don't hold back. I'm not trying to kill him, just subdue him. Control the threat.
But he's strong. Stronger than he should be. The feral state has stripped away everything except the predator, and predators are dangerous.
We grapple, slamming into walls, his teeth snapping inches from my throat. I manage to get behind him, arm around his neck in a chokehold, not that vampires need to breathe, but the pressure point still works.
"Little help here!" I grunt.
Marcellus is suddenly there with a syringe. He jabs it into the feral vampire's neck and depresses the plunger.
The effect is almost immediate. The vampire's struggles weaken, then stop. He goes limp in my arms, unconscious.
I lower him to the floor carefully and step back, breathing hard despite not needing oxygen.
"What the hell was that?" I demand.
Marcellus is staring at me with something that might be respect. "Sedative. Should keep him under for a few hours."
"That's not what I meant. What happened to him?"
Elena appears with two other vampires, security, by the look of them. They lift the unconscious feral vampire and carry him back toward wherever he escaped from.
"Contaminated blood," Marcellus says. "He's been deteriorating for days. Tonight, he finally went completely feral."
"And you keep him here?"
"Where else would we keep him?" Marcellus's voice is sharp. "Throw him out to attack humans? Kill him when there might still be a chance to reverse the damage? This is what Maximus does. He tries to save the ones who can be saved."
I look down the hallway where they carried the feral vampire. "Can he be saved?"
"Unknown. We're still researching treatments. But if we don't try, he's definitely lost."
