Chapter 4: Chapter Four

Fitz had me in his arms as he hit a button on the panel. He moved to the glass and the pink-haired girl flinched. She went to the back wall as the glass opened up.

“In ya go, little hybrid,” Fitz said as he tossed me.

I landed on my ass, wincing in pain. As quickly as I could, I got up and launched myself at the door, trying to get through. It closed before I reached it. I banged on the glass and threw my body into it, though it didn’t budge. The side sunk into the walls.

“Sorry, Sugar.” Fitz grinned and crossed his arms. “That glass won’t give. Took a decade, but our men perfected it.”

I kicked it anyway. “Where the hell am I?”

He sat in the chair across from me. “We don’t really have a name, but even if we did, I wouldn’t tell you.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “I’m going to kill you.”

“God, you’re cute. No, you’re not going to kill me. I doubt you could kill a ladybug. You should save your strength. You’ll need it.”

“For what?” I started stepping back.

“Our doctors need to take a look at you beforehand. Get a run down. They need to make sure you’re healthy enough for the testing.”

My eyes widened in fear.

“Fitz?” a woman said.

She came down the stairs and he turned to her. “Felix wants to see you. I’ll watch them.”

Felix. I’d read that name in Mom’s journals. He ordered my mother to let the monsters alter my DNA and risk my life so he could grow a super soldier.

Fitz seemed to catch something in my eye that made him pause. I thought he could see that I knew the name, but he didn’t linger. He walked up the stairs and left the three of us.

The woman took a seat, pulled a book from her pocket, flipped it open, and bent the front cover back around the spine. She couldn’t have been much older than me. She only looked to be in her early twenties, like Fitz. More of the Lost Ones, I guessed.

I sat down on my cot and pulled my legs to my chest. I rested my forehead against my knees and tried not to cry. My brother needed me to come find him, so I couldn’t be a coward.

Half of me hoped that my brother ended up somewhere safe, while the other half wanted to be rescued.

The bed shifted and I looked up to see the pink-haired girl looking at me. She had cut her hair into a long pixie cut and dyed it such a bright hot pink that it burned my eyes. Her round face had soft features and a pointed chin. I couldn’t tell if the girl had any other ethnicity but white because her skin was above mine in its paleness, making her look a healthy color. She had black eyes— not dark brown. Straight black. She looked so young; barely a teenager, and she couldn’t have been even five feet tall.

“Are you what I am?” she asked in a voice a little huskier than should have come out of a girl like her.

I blinked. “What are you?”

She looked behind her at the woman still reading her book. Then she turned to me. “They called me a demon when they took me. I was trying to find something to eat and then someone grabbed me. They put me in here and tried to get my name. I didn’t tell them.”

“You’re a demon?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know what I am. It’s what they call me because of what I do with my head, I think. I don’t know how they know, but I know that they know.” Her eyes widened.

“What can you do with your head?”

“Lotsa stuff. They didn’t believe me at home. My parents sent me away when I started figuring it out. I made stuff go away and they didn’t believe me. Even when I made those things come back, but they got stuck for a long time. My head felt heavy and I couldn’t stop screaming.”

“Your parents brought you here?”

She shook her head. “They took me to the nut house. I told them I wasn’t crazy. I know what I do is real. I’m not crazy!”

When the words left her, I heard a sniffing sound. Not from her. A little body popped up and out of her leather jacket. It looked like a baby chipmunk. He pressed his nose to her cheek.

She petted his head with one finger. “It’s okay, Twix. Mama’s fine.” He hopped out of the jacket and curled up into a ball on her thigh. She stared at him and rested her hand on his little body.

“I’m Willow,” I said.

“Pepper,” she replied. “I’m very, very fine and I do not need to be here. Who cares if I can make things go away and come back?” Shrugging, she said, “I’m normal.”

My breath hitched. “You are a demon. You have magic.”

That earned another shrug. “I don’t know. I know that it started happening when I was almost twelve. It happened a lot. I would be upset or angry and then something would go away. I felt it in my head until it came back out. I know how to do it now. I don’t know why I can do it.” She blinked. “Oh. Demon.”

“It’s all right.” I pulled my lips into a smile. “I’m one, too. Sorta. I’m also a vampire. I just found out a couple days ago.”

She eyed me curiously. “Vampire? You’re a vampire? Vampires aren’t real.”

“Neither are demons.”

She laughed. “We’re a couple of mythical creatures trapped in a big prison cell, waiting to get poked and prodded by a bunch of strangers?”

“I think so.”

The woman got up and put her book in her pocket. “Food will be brought to you shortly.” Then she went up the stairs and left us.

Pepper eyed the path she took. “Jerk,” she muttered. “Tried stealing Twix from me when I came in.”

“Pepper. How old are you?”

“Fourteen.”

“You said you were looking for food when they got you.”

“Yup,” she said, nodding. “Since I broke out of the bad place, I’ve been living on my own. I saw my face on TV and my parents were looking for me. I dyed my hair so people wouldn’t recognize me, and I could blend in with the crowd.” Pepper smiled with pride.

“You’ve been homeless for two years?”

“It’s not so bad. I always get a hold of a little money. Sometimes, I can even afford a motel. I got to sleep in a bed three whole nights in a row.”

Her smile broke my heart.

“Did they say why you were here?”

“Nope. What about you?”

I looked around the room as I spoke. “I don’t know a lot. Just that my parents were raised here and then they left when my mom got pregnant. They did a bunch of DNA mixing shit and it made me not human. They hunted me down and killed my parents.”

She looked troubled. “I’m sorry about that. Were they nice?”

“They were. I didn’t know how much until it was too late.”

Her head dipped. “I’m sorry about that, too.”

I looked around the empty prison and said, “What are we supposed to do?”

She picked up Twix and tucked him back into her jacket. “I plan on getting out of here. I don’t want to find out what they want with me.”

“Do you think they want to kill us?”

She shook her head, chewing on the inside of her cheek. “They want to find out what else we can do, I think. They’re gonna do tests on us.”

My blood felt cold. The journals and letter said that would be my life if they found me. Tests and experiments to find out why I had lived.

Why, after almost twenty years, had they stumbled on our little house? How had they even found out I had lived? They’d assumed I would survive because all signs looked positive, but there had been other women who’d made it to term to deliver stillborn children. It made sense to look for me for a little while, but after two decades?

***

I woke when the giant metal door opened and closed. I sat up to see a blurry body move closer to the glass.

“Sugar, you look adorable with your hair all messy.”

“Fuck you,” I said as I combed my hair with my fingers.

Pepper sat up, while Twix stayed on her pillow.

“Maybe later,” Fitz said as he stopped near the control panel for the wall. “Right now, you’ve got some things we need. Namely, blood.”

“Come and get it,” I challenged.

His eyebrow went up. “I will. Let me warn you, if you don’t come willingly, it will only make it worse for you.”

“You’re so kind for trying to help me out. Maybe if you wanted to actually be nice, you could let me go, so I can find my brother and punch the bitch who left me.”

He smiled, crossing his arms.

“Yeah,” Pepper added. “I’d like to go, too. Ya know, if you’re offering.”

“I’m not, pipsqueak—”

“Oh, well screw you double,” she said while he went on.

“You’re getting tested, too. Since you won’t tell us what we need to know, we’ll have to pull it from your veins.”

“I’m with her.” She pointed. She held her hands up in a false surrender. “Come and get it, motherfucker.”

“I plan on it.” Fitz hit a button and the glass panel opened up.

Pepper rested her hand over the chipmunk in her pocket. I hadn’t even seen him move. She whispered to him that mama would keep him safe. Pepper looked ready to fight. Fitz didn’t look worried. And why should he? A tiny fourteen-year-old and a scared hybrid who didn’t understand what she could do wouldn’t be a match for him.

“Ladies.” He gestured for us to come out.

I stood and adjusted the too-small shirt I wore. Fitz glanced at me and I thought about killing him for that. When I killed him— because I would kill him— I wanted it to be for a better reason.

Pepper and I stepped out of the little room and she grabbed my hand.

“Ya know, I don’t get my jollies from torturing kids,” Fitz said, maybe trying to encourage us to go quietly. “Believe it or not.”

“I’m not a kid,” I snapped.

“Sure.” Fitz went to grab us, but in my peripheral, I noticed something vanish. I looked to see a chair had gone missing. It appeared in Pepper’s hands, and with all the force her little body could muster, she hit Fitz in the chest with it. He coughed and wheezed as Pepper tried to run, calling after me to follow. Fitz righted himself as much as he could and went after her.

If only one of us could get out, I wanted it to be her. I hopped up on Fitz’s back and wrapped my arms around his neck. He groaned in annoyance and screamed for the guards. The door busted open and people poured into the room.

I tightened my hold on Fitz as the guards grabbed Pepper. She fought, but they overpowered her easily. As they dragged her away, I screamed her name.

While trying to breathe and pull my arms off him, Fitz said, “Really, fighting will only lead to trouble.”

“I’m fine with that.”

He took my arms and ripped them off him, then he swung me around and pressed me against the wall with my arms pinned to my sides.

“I told you. Come willingly, or the consequences will be far worse than this.”

“You’re already hurting me. Why should I be scared?”

“Because I won’t be the one choosing what happens to you next. And there are worse things than pain.” He said it as more of a warning than a threat.

I relaxed my body and said a silent prayer that what came next wouldn’t hurt me as much as I thought it would. Feeling helpless, I let a tear fall because I couldn’t stop it.

“Are you crying?” Fitz sighed. “Come on. Don’t do that. They’ll take a little blood, run it, and you’re back here with Pinky.”

When he turned me around, I looked up at him. “Are they going to hurt her?”

“Why do you care? You met her six hours ago.”

I looked into his hateful eyes and saw that he didn’t understand. “She’s a kid. She’s scared and she doesn’t know what she is.”

He had my wrists locked in his hands as he stared down at me. “Just because someone’s young doesn’t mean they get a free pass on hardship.”

“Tell me about it,” I said, quiet and toneless.

He breathed out his nose and stood there for a few seconds. I could smell the subtle scent of him. Sunlight. He smelled like outside. Rainwater. But more like the earth when it stopped raining, and more pleasant than I wanted to admit.

“We need to go,” he said before he took me out of the room. I didn’t fight and I hated myself for being too scared to.

Fitz led me out of the room and I immediately looked around for Pepper. Nothing. The building felt smaller than my mother’s journal made it sound. She described it as a large maze, easy to get lost in.

She had described a hospital wing, bedrooms, kitchens, prisons, a school for the children she watched over.

Fitz took me through the maze of halls, and we moved downstairs. He had my hands behind my back, holding them with only one of his. The other gripped my shoulder as he steered me. We reached a hall of doors, each with a number on it. We went into seventeen.

The room stretched ahead, narrow as opposed to wide. A long counter sat across the left wall, filled with medical supplies. I didn’t know what any of them did.

The room had a few exam beds, propped up for people to sit on. A tall man in a white coat stared down at a clipboard. He had light brown hair that fell past his ears and thick, square glasses.

“Crane,” Fitz said. “Got her.”

He looked up from his clipboard. “Ah, so you do.” The man looked at me with a bright white smile. “Hello.” He held his hand out to shake mine.

Fitz let go of me, but I didn’t take the man’s hand. He dropped it, but his smile didn’t fade.

“Willow Warren. Nice to finally meet you. I’m glad you’ve come back to us.”

“Not my choice,” I hissed.

“I understand. But soon you’ll know that we don’t want to hurt you. We want to know what makes you tick.”

I squirmed.

“What are you planning?” I asked.

“We’re just taking a little blood,” he said casually. “Checking your heartbeat, other vitals. Basic stuff.”

Great.

“Can you sit down please?” he asked and gestured to the exam bed.

Fitz didn’t give me a chance to go on my own. He pushed me along and sat me down. The man called Crane turned back to me with a needle and a test tube. He went to stick it in my arm, and I flinched.

“If you fight, we have to sedate you,” Fitz warned. “Then the tests will be compromised, and we might need to do them again. Settle down.”

I gritted my teeth and did as he suggested, horrified at the thought of being unconscious around these people.

Crane looked pleased when I extended my arm and that made me furious. He stuck the needle in, and my blood started filling the tube. It looked like such a deep red it could be mistaken for black.

He filled the tube to the top, stood, and walked over to the counter. I watched him carefully as he stuck the tube in a little machine. It disappeared into the circular top and he hit a button on the side. The thing started spinning too fast for my eyes to follow. He let it go for two full minutes before it came to a whooshing stop.

Out from the sides, two smaller tubes popped out. One looked bright red, and the other a much deeper shade and mixed with violet. My blood had always been really dark, and I’d never thought too much of it. Mom’s had been similar.

“What the hell…” I breathed.

Crane turned half his body to me and said, “Testing your vampire to demon ratio. The notes on your mother said that her blood changed when she was pregnant. It was a little like this, but the purple is all you. Though, I can tell what I’m looking at,” he said as he gazed at the blood again. “Good news. No human.”

My breath hitched on a sigh. “Good? It’s good that I’m not human?”

He smiled again. “Yes,” he said as if talking to a child. “Humans are weak. We die so easily. You are a lucky ducky. Though your ratio is a little different than I thought,” he mumbled as he looked over the red and purple blood.

“What does that mean?” Fitz asked.

Crane turned again. “She’s more demon than vampire. The amount of DNA we put in Jemma should have made it even.”

Fitz tensed at my mother’s name. “Is that a bad thing?”

“No.” He shrugged. “It means that her vampirism hasn’t been triggered yet. Once it is, I imagine it will change substantially.”

“What the fuck does that mean? How is it triggered?” I asked.

Both men looked at me, offering no answers.

“Do I not get to know what I am? What I can do?”

Fitz leaned in. “You don’t need to know.”

“It’s my right to know.” I narrowed my eyes at him.

“You belong to us,” Fitz said as he stood. “You have no rights anymore.”

I never had. I had been a prisoner at home, and I would be one again.

Crane came over to me and reached for the buttons on my shirt.

“Hey!” I slapped his hand away.

He looked at me like I was stupid. “I need to listen to your heartbeat. I’m going to put the stethoscope against your skin. You can keep the shirt on, but if you don’t let me unbutton it, I’ll be forced to cut it off you. Your choice.”

I didn’t hit him when he started again. If I went along with it, then they wouldn’t hurt me.

When he pressed the cool metal against my skin, I flinched involuntarily. He let his skin touch mine and I felt so violated. He had undone my shirt more than he needed to, and both he and Fitz could see so much of my chest.

He pulled back, started scribbling on his clipboard, and asking medical questions that I reluctantly answered. That didn’t surprise him whatsoever. He asked me questions for an hour before allowing me to go back to my cell.

Fitz and I walked down the empty halls and back to the floor with my cell. He opened the metal door and marched me down the stairs. When I saw Pepper sitting up in her bed, I felt relieved. She looked fine as she fed Twix.

Fitz shoved me inside and quickly closed the door.

He took a look at me before he left the room.