L J C Fynn [Fynn - Teeka

TEEKA

International Bestselling Author

LJC FYNN

Copyright 2019 by LJC FYNN//Crazy Ink

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, without prior written permission.

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Publishers Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the authors imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.

Book Layout 2019 Crazy Ink

Editing by Erin Wolf

Dedications

Teeka has been such a fun write, and a genre I swore I would never do. I ended up falling in love with her and her world. Thank you to my husband who selflessly does the laundry as I get lost in my words. Thank you to my kids for enjoying easy dinners during deadline crunch time. Thank you to Erin and all of Crazy Ink for publishing and supporting my wordsno matter how crazy they seem. I will always appreciate my parents and my sister who listen, hours on end, as I work out a plot. And, finally, thank you Karen for your unquestionable supportyou mean the world to me.

Part One:

Born Human

Chapter One

I have seen death.

I have caused death.

I survived the apocalypse, bloodied and battered. I came out alivefor the most part.

I looked down at our interlaced hands, his fingers dwarfed mine. He used those massive hands for art, even in time of death. His hands were clean. Mine were covered in blood. Even though my hands werent designed as a weapon of war, they were the deadliest around.

My hands may not have started this war, but they will end it.

***

Ten Years Ago

There was limited sound as the three of us made our way down to the medical offices. At any given time, this building was filled with the voice of the humans. When we were on missions, the only sounds were of us breathing. Today, however, even our breath was on mute.

I heard, as clear as the voices of our fighters, boots running in our direction. I reached for the small pencil blade hiding in the sheath behind my belt. The kid never saw it coming. One second, he was running toward us and, in the next, I had him pinned against the wall with my blade to his neck.

I could see his veins pulse wildly as his heart rate accelerated. How long have you been trainingboy?

The boy looked at the ceiling and the two doctors behind me. He never once looked me directly in the eye. One week, sir.

Dont run up to me ever again. I pulled my knife away from his throat so fast, the boy fell to the ground.

Alexia told to me find Captain and tell him three potentials have passed. The boy rubbed his neck and did not bother getting off the floor to tell me this. He could stay there for all I cared.

I turned and made my way to the secluded wing.

***

My infected wife, bless her blood-sucking soul, hated the darkness before the virus took her from me. I always thrived in it. My vision was almost as good as an infected in limited darkness. I was surprised when I stepped into the test hall, the lights were turned off. It was high noon outside, but I couldnt tell what time of day it was by how dark this room was.

I sat down in the empty chair by Alexia. I watched her profile, as she watched the three patients laying in the hospital beds through the two-way mirror in the experiment roomwe could see in but they couldnt see out.

You see the dark-haired girl in the center?

Two males, roughly the same age as the girl, laid on a bed on each side of the girl. Their chest artificially lifting as the machines filled their lungs with air. The girl, who couldnt be a day over fifteen, had straps across her chest and metal cuffs on her wrists and legs. Effectively strapping her down to the bed. She had one wire monitoring her heartbeat. Other than those devices, the girl was not medically monitored like the two males.

Why is she strapped down? For the life of me, I couldnt figure out why someone so tiny would need to be strapped down. Her heart monitor was beeping loudly, indicating she was human.

Her eyes popped open. Even though there was limited light in the room, her red vampire-like eyes glowed. Her canines were pronounced, bigger than any infected with the vampire virus I have seen to date. The only sound in the two rooms were of her hissing and moaning in pain. Despite all of this, her heart monitor was still beeping strong.

I stood up and slowly made my way to the glass. I watched as two male techs, three times the size of her, calmly walk toward her bed as if they have been here many times before. Even though her body was held still by the straps, one male held on to a single wrist. The other male pulled out two syringes. One had red fluid and the other was yellow.

I couldnt stop watching when they emptied both fluids in her veins. After a few more struggles, her breathing calmed down. Her large fangs retracted to normal size teeth. The young girls eyes were what got me. She was surrounded by long dark hair, accentuating pale green eyes. If I didnt know any better, I would say she was looking at mestraight through the two-way glass.

Sometime during the girls struggle, Alexia moved to stand beside me. She cant see you.

I couldnt take my eyes off of her, even though she was asleep now. How can this young girl handle both the virus and the cure in her body? We tried this before, and scrapped the project when the combination was a hundred percent kill rate. You were there, you know this. Yet, her little body is handling what our strongest men couldnt?

Do you know Thomas Michaud?

Confused, I broke my attention from the girl to Alexia. The janitor?

I watched Alexias profile in the low light. She was not from a medical field, instead I found her in engineering. She was a child genius and was still incredibly young for someone who has achieved so much Before InfectionB.I. After Infection, A.I., she designed half of New Paris. What she did out of memory, volunteer workers and recycled metals was brilliant. In a short matter of years, New Paris, Virginia, looked similar to what was once Paris, France. After the infected organized, the only original building Alexia designed left standing was the replica of the Eiffel Tower. They destroyed everything else, and rebuilt their own version of New Paris.

Between the infected and us, they were the most powerful in both strength and in numbers. They slowed down turning more humans like them. Lately, we have become nothing more than cattle for them. When the outbreak began, the CDC collapsed under the pressure. I created and headed up Center for Controlling the Infected, CCI. I have a research and development department, an education department, but most importantly, I used my B.I. military background to train some of the best vampire assassins in New Paris. For the better part of three years, the CCI has stayed underground. If this girl was capable of what I was thinking, then the possibilities were endless. The pendulum might finally have swung my way.

What about the janitor? I asked Alexia, as she stared at the unconscious girl.

Alexias lips turned slightly, not quite big enough for a smile but the look slightly softened her face. His daughter was sickshe was on deathbed sick. He did everything he could for her, but she wasnt healing. By the time he transported her over, her kidneys were failing. We almost did a blood transfusion, which would have killed her. I stopped them when her blood dropped on the floor. It dripped thick, like honey. Her own body was killing itself, because the blood was too thick to flow through the veins. I found some old manuals, ran some tests, and, low and behold, she has Vel-negative blood. Ever hear of it?