The Vault

Book 3: A Farm Novel

by Emily McKay

Genres: Contemporary Fantasy; Paranormal; Horror

Synopsis

There is no rest for the damned in this thrilling follow-up to Emily McKay's The Lair and The Farm, in a series New York Times bestselling author Chloe Neill calls, "Equal parts Resident Evil and Hunger Games."

In a world where vampires rule and teenaged humans are quarantined as a food source, there is only one choice—resist or die. But fighting the vampires comes at a terrible cost to twin sisters Mel and Lily and their best friend Carter . . .

With Lily exposed to the vampire virus and lying in a coma, it’s up to Mel and Carter to search for the cure. Time is not on their side. With every passing heartbeat, Mel is becoming more and more purely vampire.

Desperate, Carter and Mel decide to split up. Carter will recruit human rebels from the Farm in San Angelo to infiltrate the guarded kingdom of the vampire Sabrina and steal the cure. Mel will go back to her mentor, her friend, her betrayer, Sebastian, who is the only one who can access an underground vault that may house the secret to the cure.

That is, if he’s still alive after she staked him to the ground. Now her worst enemy may be their best hope for curing Lily—and saving the human race.

Release date: December 2, 2014

Publisher: Berkley

Print pages: 384

Sample

 

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CARTER

Texas hadn’t fared well in the apocalypse.

Some parts of the country had fallen by inches. Places where the virus spread slowly and the human population held their own against the Ticks and against the fear for at least a little while. Those places lost their battles incrementally. Not Texas. In just a few short weeks, Texas went from being the second-most-populated state to being the least. Texas fell in a blaze of blood and gunfire.

It wasn’t just the genetically mutated monsters that did Texas in. It was the Texans. We turned on one another.

I’d told myself over and over again that I wouldn’t make the same mistake. That if it had been me, if I’d been the one with my finger on the trigger, staring down a friend or a relative, I would do things differently. I would have a little faith in humanity.

Turns out, I was wrong.

There in the basement of Genexome Corporation—the company that engineered EN371, the virus that created the Ticks—I finally got it. When the life of someone you love is on the line, trust is almost impossible. Under the right circumstances, anyone will crack. Yeah. I admit it. I cracked.

The deserted hallway with flickering lights and spooky cobwebs creeped me out. I got that hairs-up-on-the-back-of-the-neck sensation that I wasn’t alone. And, oh yeah, the pile of dead bodies that I’d had to haul out of the way to clear a path down the hall? Those didn’t help.

Which is why I pulled a gun on Mel when she crept up behind me. One second I was staring at the LCD panel for the storage facility’s security system. Tech stuff, wasn’t really my thing, but I was trying. That’s when I heard it, the faintest scuff of a shoe behind me. Too subtle to be an animal or a Tick. Too soft to be someone who wasn’t trying to sneak.

Somewhere down the hall, someone was coming up behind me and whoever it was didn’t want to be heard. I deliberately kept my breathing steady as I slipped my hand into the coat pocket where I kept my Glock. I wrapped my hand around the grip and pulled it out, spinning as I thumbed off the safety.

My finger was already on the trigger when I realized it wasn’t some unknown enemy sneaking up behind me. It was Mel.

My girlfriend’s twin sister. My friend.

I pulled the gun up, finger off the trigger, and held up my other hand. But she was faster than I was. My aggression provoked something in her. The instant she saw the gun, she dashed down the hall and rammed into me. The force of the impact knocked me off my feet. I tried to roll into the fall, but ended up just getting slammed to the floor with her on top of me. My hand hit the floor again and I instinctively let go of the gun. It skittered away from me. Agony flared out through my back and chest. Damn, she moved fast.

Mel bounced back up and landed in a crouch maybe five feet away, hands curled into claws, fangs bared and gleaming in the fluorescent lights.

I got my hands under me and tried to sit, but my whole body pulsed with pain and it was all I could do not to groan. My neck throbbed. When I brought my hand up to the spot, my fingers came away sticky and damp with blood.

Panicked adrenaline shot through me and I scampered back. Yeah. I know. Scampering isn’t exactly manly, but trust me, when your neck is bleeding and a hungry vampire is crouching five feet away from you, you do anything you can to get away. Even when it probably won’t make a difference.

Heart pounding, I pressed myself against a concrete support beam in the hallway. I didn’t have any weapons. My gun—even if it wasn’t closer to her than to me—would barely faze her. I didn’t have anything handy that would actually stop her. No stake. No blade.

Besides, it was Mel.

There was no way I was going to hurt her, let alone stake her and chop off her head. Which was a moot point, anyway, because if she wanted to kill me she would have done it already.

Pressing one hand to my neck to stanch the flow of blood, I held my other out in supplication. “Mel,” I said slowly, persuasively. “Calm down. It’s me. Carter.”

Jesus, I hoped this would work.

Theoretically, I was an abductura. Which meant I had the power to superimpose my own emotions over hers. Theoretically.

Problem was, I didn’t know jack about how to actually use my powers. At least not consciously. So either this would work, or I’d end up as a midnight snack.

God, I just love the apocalypse.

CHAPTER TWO

MEL

Blood lust—the uncontrollable need to consume the food before you—isn’t my favorite thing ever.

In the Before—when I was a human girl—I clung to my control. Even though I was autistic, even though I sometimes spiraled out of control, I somehow always held on to the thread of myself. I was always able to pull myself out.

My vampire’s blood lust is new to me. It’s not only about hunger, but about need. The need to dominate. To protect myself. To feed. Its embrace is violent and jagged and I’m not myself when I’m in its grasp.

But this blood is all wrong.

Its sweetness sours my stomach. I nearly retch. Instead, I spit it out, then wipe off my mouth with hands clenched in feral claws. A false peace floods over me, washing away my fear and need. I stand, blinking away the blood lust.

That’s when I see Carter crouched against the wall, like a scorpion backed into a corner. He’s fierce and deadly, even though I could squash him like a bug.

“Calm down, Mel. Just . . . calm down.”

The words seem to echo in my brain. Like he’s been saying them over and over again and I’m only now hearing them.

Only then do I see the way he’s holding his neck.

I run my tongue over the fronts of my teeth, my mind racing.

I was walking up behind him, hungry, yes, but in control. Then I felt this burst of fear. He whirled around. I saw the gun and then . . .

What?

My mind was blank. Blood lust. That’s what.

Carter must sense that his efforts to calm me are working. That I’m more myself, because he changes the script.

“Are you are okay, Mel?” he asks, his eyebrows slightly raised. “You good?”

“Yes,” I say shortly. “I’m fine.”

I turn away from him. My mind still racing, because I know I’m not fine.

Carter is Lily’s boyfriend. Her love. Her savior. They are meant to be together.

And I almost ate him.

I swish my spit around in my mouth, using my tongue to scrub the last of the blood off my incisors, and then I spit out the mixture of blood and saliva.

I exhale a deep breath and try to bring my mind back into focus. My vision clears a little. I blink again and make myself look at the hall around me.

This is it. What we’re here for: the underground vault of Genexome Corporation. The storage facility where we will find the cure to the Tick virus. The cure we need to save my sister’s life.

But I’m still struggling to make sense of what I see.

There’s a door. Thick steel set straight into the concrete. An LCD panel in the wall beside it bigger than most people’s computer screens. Somehow our presence in the hall has triggered it, because it’s alive with swirling colors. There’s a digital keypad on one side and a rectangle about the size of a handprint on the other. Then to the left of the whole panel, there’s a retinal scanner.

And there, on the floor in a pile on either side of the door, are dead bodies. I do a quick head count—literally counting heads because the arms and legs and torsos are so jumbled I can’t count the bodies any other way. There are sixteen people. They all look similar, so I focus on one. He’s got the bulky look of hired muscle. He hasn’t been dead that long and it’s cool enough, here underground, that his body hasn’t started to rot, but my nose and stomach are more sensitive to that kind of thing than they used to be and their stench makes my stomach churn. It’s all I can do to focus my attention away from him.

Whatever’s beyond this door is what we came for. Of course, whatever’s beyond that door is being protected by a security system strong enough to kill the sixteen people who got here before us.

“This is it,” I say softly. Sebastian—the vampire that made me and mentored Carter—told us that the cure to the Tick virus was here, at Genexome Corporation, in the company’s underground storage facility.

“You think these are Sabrina’s people?” Carter asks.

The corpse is dressed in full SWAT gear, but they aren’t police or even military. I point to the emblem stitched on the front of the jacket. “That looks like the Smart Com logo to me.”

“I don’t suppose when Sebastian told you about the cure, he mentioned how to get past all this security.”

“No, he didn’t.” Of course, I’d just staked him through the heart in a fit of vampire rage, so neither one of us was feeling super communicative at the time.

Carter walks up behind me. Slowly and loudly. Like he’s waiting for me to freak again.

He studies the setup, shaking his head, his hand still pressed to his neck.

“This is a dead end.”

That’s when I see the seam in the wall about three feet back from the doorway. I run my fingers along the seam on one side and then the other. On the ceiling, the seam bulges out slightly. On the other three sides, the seam is indented. Guide tracks for a door. But it’s the vents in the ceiling above the LCD display that make me nervous.

Carter clearly sees everything I do. Maybe more, since he knows a lot about this kind of thing. “I’m guessing if you trigger the security system, a door drops down, trapping you in.” He points to the pair of vents. “And then you get gassed.”

“I could probably live through it,” I point out. There’s not much that can kill me.

“You don’t know that. Sabrina threw a lot of people at this and none of them made it.”

“None of them were vampires.” I glance at him, looking pointedly at his neck. “How bad is it?”

“Not bad.” He pulls his hand away and glances at it. There’s a smear of blood on his fingers, but it’s already clotting and the smell of it is repulsive to me. He wipes his fingers on the sleeve of his coat and then presses the back of his other sleeve to his neck to wipe off the last of the blood there. Then, as if he hasn’t just been cleaning up the wound I gave him, he says, “The point is, we need a plan B.”

“No. Sebastian must have thought we could get in. He wouldn’t have sent us here otherwise.” I look at Carter’s neck again. “I’m, um . . . sorry. About that, I mean.”

“Don’t worry about it.” He shrugs, still studying the security system. He holds out his palm, maybe five inches from the LCD screen, like he’s sizing it up. “What do you think? That look about the size of my palm?” Then he shakes his head, muttering a curse. “We need Sebastian.”

My heart gives a strange little thud. “He could be dead by now.”

Carter shoots me an odd look that I have no trouble interpreting.

Carter and I talked about this. When we left Sebastian with a stake through his heart, pinned to the ground on the green in the middle of El Corazon, we hadn’t really killed him. The only way to be sure a vampire is dead is to chop off his head. No, Sebastian is most likely still alive. Either he is clinging to life or he’s already freed himself. Somehow I know this. Sebastian is stronger than death.

He is the vampire who made me, who trained me, who manipulated and lied to me. He lied to everyone.

Suddenly a horrible thought occurs to me. “What if there is no cure?”

Carter doesn’t even look at me this time, but I know he heard me because his entire body goes tense. “There is a cure.”

“He lied about everything,” I say. “What if he lied about this, too? What if—”

Carter whirls to face me. “There is a cure.”

“You don’t know—”

“Yes, I do know. You know how I know? Because if there is no cure, then that means Lily is lost. Maybe forever. I’m not willing to believe that.”

“But what—”

“We just need a new plan. That’s all.” He takes in a breath and I sense him struggling with his own doubts and fears. “Here’s what we’re going to do. We’ll split up. You go back to El Corazon and find Sebastian. If the cure is still here, he’s the one who can get us in.”

The idea of going back there sends panic skittering along my nerves. But I will do it. I have no choice, because it’s like Carter said, the alternative is to give up hope. “What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to Sabrina’s. If the cure isn’t here, then she has it.”

“We don’t know that for sure,” I tell him.

“What did you see in the rest of the lab? Did you see any sign of a cure? Any sign Sabrina got there first, too?”

“Yes.”

Sebastian had brought me to meet her, just before he’d sent me to El Corazon. But vampires are territorial and it had been a risky move on his part. She could have killed us both. Instead, he’d bought our freedom with information about the location of the cure.

The same information he’d given Carter and me after the battle at El Corazon.

When we’d first arrived at Genexome, Carter and I had split up. He’d gone to search for the underground storage. I’d searched the rest of the industrial compound. I was faster than Carter and could cover more ground in less time, so it had made sense.

“I found the labs. It looked like someone or something came through there recently just like here.” I reach into the pocket of my jeans and pull out a glass vial. I hold it out to him carefully. “I did find this.”

He takes it and rolls it over to read the white label imprinted with the code EN371.

“Jesus, this is the virus?”

“Just like he said it would be,” I say. “But that only proves they created it here. It doesn’t mean—”

“What is it you want me to do? Just give up?” That’s when Carter turns to face me head-on. No longer cocky. Just determined. “Humans are losing this fight against the Ticks. If this cure doesn’t work, then Lily will finish her transformation. Maybe you’re right. Maybe the chance is slim that Sebastian is telling the truth. Maybe there is no cure. But the alternative is to just accept that Lily is going to be a Tick. Are you really ready to do that? Because I’m not.”

With Carter here, pinning me with his glare, coaxing me with his resolve, I realize that no, I’m not ready to give up.

But I still have doubts. Can Sebastian be trusted? Can Sabrina? Can any vampire be trusted? Even me?

I want to believe that there might be good in Sebastian. That maybe there is a reason he created the Tick virus. Something I don’t yet understand. Something beyond his seething need to exact revenge on Roberto. I want to believe there is goodness in him and that that goodness drove him to create a cure. Because if he might be redeemed, then there is hope for me, too.

I want to believe, but it’s hard.

“Any chance you have a plan C?”

He ignores my sarcasm. “Yeah. You and I go to the Farm, where your father took her. We bring her out of the medically induced coma and you bite her.”

“What?”

“Just like Sebastian did for you when you were dying, after you’d been attacked by that Tick. You bite Lily. You save her life.”

“If I bite Lily, she becomes a vampire. Like me.”

“Exactly.”

“No!” Every cell in my body, every functioning brain cell, recoils from this idea. “No! I’m not turning my sister into a vampire! You don’t know what you’re asking me to do!” Because the thought of turning my sister into a vampire—into a thing like me—it’s repulsive. It’s like a poison in my blood. “You’re asking me to do this to her—to turn her into a monster—without her consent.”

“If it saves her life, then yes.”

“No!” That’s what was done to me. In a darkened parking lot, after a horrible attack by Ticks, I sacrificed my life to save my sister, and she repaid me by begging Sebastian to turn me into a vampire. And Carter strong-armed him into it. I’d had zero say in the matter. I’d died a hero and woken up a monster.

“You don’t know what you’re asking me to do,” I say again. “She wouldn’t be Lily anymore. She’d be . . .” There are simply no words to describe the transformation she would go through. All I can come up with is “something else.”

“She would be alive.”

“She would want to eat you.”

“She would fight the urge,” he insists.

“It’s not an urge. The need to kill isn’t like a craving for Taco Bell. It’s not just something you fight.”

“You fought it,” he says, gesturing toward his neck. “You didn’t kill me just now.”

“It would be months, maybe years, before she could actually be with you. Longer before she could be comfortable around you.”

“You think I wouldn’t wait?” he asks. “You think I want Lily now and only now? You think I’m going to lose interest if this takes too long? I’m not,” he says fiercely. “I am in this for her. I don’t want her just when it’s easy or convenient. I love her. Forever. No matter what.”

My heart twists itself into a knot, because I almost believe him. What would it feel like to be loved like that? To love like that? Unconditionally. Forever.

My family loved me like that. When I was human. But no guy has ever felt that way about me. And now? Now that I’m this monster? I couldn’t even be with a guy without wanting to eat him. Not quite the all-consuming love of girlish fantasies.

I can’t contain the jealousy that slices through me. Lily always seemed to have it all compared to me. I hadn’t minded. I’d had order and music and power I didn’t even understand. I had never wanted what she had. And now I do.

It shouldn’t bother me. I don’t want it to bother me.

Carter is just looking at me. Waiting for a response.

I say the only thing I can think of. “I would never have chosen this for myself. This was forced on me. I won’t force it on her.”

“She’s been exposed to the Tick virus!” he yells, like I don’t understand. “Don’t you think she’d rather be a vampire than a Tick?”

“No,” I snarl back. “I think she’d rather be dead than a Tick.”

“Are you threatening to kill her?”

Suddenly Carter is right in my face, and now I have more to contend with than just his anger. The desperation. The fear. The love. It’s all right there, ready to shove my own will out of his way.

But what would it hurt, really? Would it be so bad? My sister as a vampire? As a murderer? My sister, who has always been so determined to do the right thing. To make the world a better place. To protect the weak.

It would kill my sister to become a vampire. To see humans as kine. To feed off the people she loves.

But maybe she’d be stronger than I am. And Carter would be with her. He could help her control herself. He could . . .

What he could actually do is force me to change my mind.

His determination is already swaying my will.

He is so dangerous and he doesn’t even seem to realize it.

I back away, slowly, palms raised. “No. But I won’t turn her. Not as long as we have any other options.”

“Okay then,” he says firmly. “Let’s go get those other options.”

I take another step back and another, because I can still feel it, tugging at my mind. Biting Lily is the only solution. The only way to guarantee her safety. And I know I need to get out of there before he’s convinced me.

“I get Sebastian, you go to Sabrina’s.” Suddenly, sending him far, far away from me doesn’t seem like such a bad idea.

Before Carter can say anything else, I turn and run. Not just from him and this strange power he holds over me, but from myself as well.

Because I know, deep inside, that it wasn’t my restraint that saved his life just now. It was something else. Not something within me, but something within him. I didn’t stop because I got control over myself. I stopped because his blood tasted wrong. Horribly repugnant. Deadly.

The truth is I was dangerously close to killing one of the few people I’ve ever really considered a friend. And he is Lily’s. He is her love. He may be the one person who can save her. Killing him would have risked her life and destroyed her happiness.

Those are things I didn’t even consider when his throat was in my mouth. They wouldn’t have stopped me. That is the kind of monster I am.

I can’t do this to her. Not as long as there’s another choice.

Out in the parking lot, far from Carter, I consider my options. There are plenty of cars, but I pick the one we came in. I only learned how to drive in the last three days. I need familiarity.

I don’t even know how to hot-wire a car, but we took this one from El Corazon and we have the keys, so I slide into the driver’s seat. Except—dang it—the dog is in the passenger seat. It’s nearly as large as a wolf, but fluffier. Chuy, Carter had called him. The dog of a friend.

I reach past the dog and open the passenger-side door. “Get out,” I tell him.

The dog just stares at me, his thick black tongue lolling out of his mouth.

“Get out,” I say again. I move to give him a push, but he just nuzzles my arm. “I don’t like dogs.”

He looks up at me from under his eyebrows and makes a little whining noise—like he wants to stay with me. Like he’s begging to do it. This is why I don’t like dogs. I have trouble believing the truthfulness of anyone who claims to want my company.

But even when I give the dog a shove, he just shifts his weight and then settles back into the seat. Finally, I snarl, “Fine.” I turn my attention back to the car. I start the engine and shift into drive before pushing my foot on the gas hard enough that the car lurches forward, momentum shutting the door on Chuy’s side of the car. Beside me, Chuy lowers his chin to his paws and lies down.

Carter has plenty of options left to choose from and I’ve seen him hot-wire cars before. He’ll be fine. Worst-case scenario, he has to stay at Genexome until I can return with Sebastian. That wouldn’t be a bad thing.

CHAPTER THREE

CARTER

Moving a lot slower than Mel’s vampire sprint, I followed her out to the Genexome parking lot, only to realize she’d stolen my ride. Which shouldn’t have surprised me. My suggestion that she bite Lily and turn her into a vampire had freaked her out. Hell, it freaked me out.

As plan C’s went, it was crap, but it was all I had. I just hoped to God I wouldn’t have to use it.

Maybe, just maybe, plan B would be enough to save our asses. Plan B started with me going back to San Angelo, where a large chunk of the rebellion was trying to wrestle control of one of the Farms.

Hopefully, from the Farm in San Angelo, I could figure out where Lily’s dad had taken her. I knew they’d been headed to a nearby Farm, but I didn’t know which one. But the Farms had ways to communicate, and hopefully, once I reached San Angelo, I’d be able to figure out where the helicopter had gone. Once I knew where Lily was, I’d need to go get the cure from Sabrina. As much as I didn’t want to drag anyone else into this mess, I wasn’t stupid. I couldn’t take on Sabrina all by myself. Not when Lily’s fate and the fate of all humanity rested on my success. I needed backup.

I looked around, cursing. In the Before, Genexome had been a sizable company—not huge, but certainly one of the major employers in this South Texas town. Unfortunately, it was one of the epicenters of the outbreak. The company, the grounds, the town, had all been hit hard by the Ticks. The upside was there were a lot of cars left in the lot.

Yeah, I know that sounds callous as hell, but once you’ve seen what I’ve seen, and done what I’ve done, you can’t think about the people who are already gone. There’s only enough room in your head to worry about the people who are still here. The people you can still save.

When I looked out at the parking lot, I didn’t let myself think about the people who’d driven those cars. Instead it was: What can I hot-wire? What will have gas? What will get me to San Angelo? Fast.

At the far end of the parking lot was a long building so low to the ground I’d almost missed it. In this barren part of Texas, the featureless horizon and the dust have a way of messing with your perception. But that building, it almost looked like an airplane hangar. Or a private garage. Exactly the kind of place an eccentric vampire would store his collection of sports cars.

True, I didn’t know whether or not Sebastian had a collection of sports cars, but if I was rich as hell and couldn’t die, that’s how I’d spend my money.

I took off at a jog toward the hangar, glancing at my watch as I did. Fifteen minutes and a couple of miles later, I stopped, panting, in front of the hangar. It was farther away than it had looked and a lot bigger, about as big as a football field. All four sets of bay doors on the structure were locked from the inside, but when I circled around back, I found an open window. Because Alpine was ground zero, there hadn’t been enough humans around to loot it and Ticks didn’t care about anything they couldn’t eat.

I jumped up, caught the edge of the window, pulled myself through, and dropped down on the other side. Light drifted in from the windows on the bay doors and from skylights. Dust motes filled the air, giving each beam of sunlight tangible weight as it fell on the line of cars. There were seven in all, each looking fast and sleek. A Lotus. A Pontiac GTO. An Aston Martin. A couple I didn’t even recognize. Any one of them would get me to San Angelo a hell of a lot faster than the crossover SUV Mel had taken. Then, glancing into the shadows at the far end of the hangar, I saw something even better. A pair of planes.

I walked down to that end. I ignored the bigger plane—a passenger jet that was way out of my league—to focus on the smaller one. A little single-engine Cessna Skyhawk.

Strictly speaking, I hadn’t ever flown a plane. But I had spent two years at Elite Military Academy, which was owned and managed by Sebastian. We’d learned all kinds of crazy shit at Elite that probably should have tipped us off that it wasn’t just an ordinary school. We’d learned mixed martial arts and how to pick locks. We’d learned battle tactics and strategy. And, in our free time, we’d logged hours in the academy’s flight simulator.

Knowing what I knew now—that Sebastian had founded Elite because he was looking for an abductura and because he was building his own army—it seemed obvious that everything at the academy—every lesson, every course, every pastime—had been designed to equip the people in Sebastian’s empire with the skills to survive and to protect him during the apocalypse. And if need be, to fly him around.

Because the plane I’d learned to fly in that flight simulator was a Cessna Skyhawk. And now I’d get to fly one for real.

I did a quick run-through of the preflight maintenance, opened the bay doors, and climbed inside the Cessna. Despite my fears, my doubts, my anxiety—despite all that, adrenaline pumped