Voltana & the Rogue Vamps (The Voltana Adventures Book 1) Read online

  She set her papers down on a nearby counter, opening her purse and carefully removing the small container that contained the lozenge. It kind of looked like one of those magic beans from that show Once Upon A Time. It was small and clear, and shaped pretty much like an actual bean.

  She placed the lozenge carefully into a glass beaker, then stared at the reactor for a moment. It was going to require an incredible amount of energy to activate the lozenge, and some of the chemicals in it were volatile. The outcome was unforeseen. There was an extreme margin for error. She’d planned everything down to the last detail, but she was fully aware that it could all go horribly wrong.

  She shook these thoughts away, opening the door to the reactor. She didn’t have the luxury of being afraid. She couldn’t chicken out now. Logan needed her – and she couldn’t let her down.

  She set the beaker on the pedestal behind the reactor door, then closed the machine. It took her a few minutes to program the keypad, entering in the complicated formula that would deliver the proper surge of energy to the lozenge. Her finger hovered over the red START button for a long moment while she hesitated.

  No, she thought stalwartly. Remember Logan.

  She took a deep breath – then pressed the button.

  The reactor hummed to life, like a huge refrigerator kicking on. The light inside the machine came on, and she stared at the lozenge. If this went the way she meant it to, in about five minutes, that tiny little bean would have the power to wake someone from a coma.

  The reactor grew louder as it created the energy it would deliver to the lozenge. Blake’s eyes widened as she stared at the reactor door, waiting on pins and needles.

  There was a loud noise and a deep vibration as the reactor surged with energy. The light beyond the door grew brighter, and the lozenge glowed white.

  Blake was suddenly startled by the blaring of the alarm. The vibrations grew deeper, and the floor buckled as if there were an earthquake. The reactor was so loud, it was practically screaming, and Blake backed away from it slowly.

  But it was too late. The unstable reactor began to shake, the bolts loosening on the metal door. Without warning, the door blasted off its hinges, and Blake narrowly avoided being struck with it.

  Yet she couldn’t avoid the power surge that erupted from the open doorway. Her body was immediately filled with violent nuclear electricity. Her eyes snapped open wide, her teeth ground together, and her feet were rooted to the floor. She couldn’t move an inch. It was like being struck by lightning.

  If the reactor hadn’t suddenly failed, powering off on its own and falling dark and silent, she would have died. But the power surge only lasted for about ten seconds, and then was over, the world having somehow returned to normal. And somehow – somehow – she wasn’t dead.

  She fell to her knees on the floor, coughing forcefully. She felt as if she might lose a lung. But after a minute or two it stopped, and she rose shakily to her feet, walking towards the reactor. She looked at the pedestal through the doorway, and her heart sank. Both the beaker and the lozenge had been obliterated. There was nothing left but foul-smelling smoke.

  This, however, was only a single consequence of that fateful night.

  ***

  Back in the present moment, Blake stood pensive in front of her office windows, looking down on the swarming city. Somewhere out there was a cold-blooded killer. A ruthless vampire with no regard for their people’s laws.

  She was distracted from this bitter reverie by a knock on her open office door. She’d forgotten to close it after Julius left.

  She turned away from the windows to see her secretary standing there, holding a clipboard. He was a very small man, a bit mousy-looking, with longish brown hair and a quivering lip. Yet his performance had never given Blake any reason at all to question his professional abilities.

  “Miss Turner?” he said. “May I come in? Mr. Duggan asked me to have you s – s –”

  The poor boy didn’t seem to be able to get the word “sign” out, so he simply said, “Would you approve the release, Miss Turner? So that he and the others can continue with the project?”

  “Of course, Chad,” Blake replied, gesturing him politely into the room. “I haven’t had a chance to inspect the model as closely as I’d like, but it seems to be in line with what Frank and I discussed. He knows what he’s doing. Let me sign the form.”

  Frank Duggan was the head of Blake’s team of scientists. He was the only person she’d ever met whose knowledge of cell and molecular biology rivaled her own. They also shared a vision of what they wanted these implants to be: what they wanted them to look like, to feel like; what they wanted them to accomplish. Since Biotech began to expand, running the company itself occupied the majority of Blake’s time, and she could no longer spare the countless hours it would require to create quality products in the lab. So Duggan became her right-hand man. No pun intended.

  Chad held out the clipboard with the form attached, and she signed off on it. His hand shook slightly as he drew the clipboard back. He was a nervous young man, and his stutter seemed to have been getting worse lately. But when Blake asked him if everything was all right, he simply shrugged it off and replied that he was quite well.

  Now he inclined his head respectfully, then scampered out of the room. He was an odd fellow, no doubt, but he had proved invaluable over the past few years of the company’s expansion. He was, without doubt, the most capable secretary Blake had ever had.

  After Chad had gone, Blake turned back to the windows and resumed her inspection of the city. She thought again of the rogue vampire killer. They had to be stopped – and it had to be done quickly.

  And Blake was just the person to do it. Because, well, the other consequences of that night in the lab three years ago – one of them was that she had turned into a superhero. She never would have called herself a superhero, but that’s what the people of Shadow City called her. She just called herself Voltana.

  Shortly after the incident with the reactor, she began experiencing strange side effects. Vomiting, dizziness, things like that. But those didn’t last long. One day, while she was getting dressed, she felt a shock in both her hands – and the shirt she was holding went up in flames. Just like that.

  Episodes like this grew more frequent. One day, when she was looking especially hard at something, visible red laser beams shot out of her eyes and disintegrated the object she’d been scrutinizing. (In this case, it was a model of a new prosthetic, and fortunately not a person who’d been annoying her.)

  When she was running late for the office one morning, walking along the sidewalk at a brisk pace, she increased to a jog – and suddenly found that she was zooming through the streets at practically the speed of light. She was so fast, no one could even see her as she passed by.

  And, the total kicker. Just after one of her most generous sponsors pulled their funding, she was at home in her living room having a drink, growing more angry by the second. Suddenly, lightning flashed outside the windows, and thunder crashed in the sky over the house. There was no rain, just a strange electrical storm that seemed to be steadily increasing in severity.

  Lightning flashed again, this time striking a tree in the backyard and setting it on fire. As Blake’s anxiety worsened, so did the storm – until she finally began to piece the truth together. She thought of the burning shirt; the lasers from her eyes; her new super-speed.

  She was causing this weird electrical storm. Her emotions were making it worse. She closed her eyes for a moment, breathing deeply, taking a sip of her drink. Gradually, the storm abated, leaving nothing in its wake but the smell of burning wood. She called the fire department, and they managed to put out the flames. Luckily nothing else had been hit.

  She had a hard time navigating this new world of strange abilities, but soon, she began to find ways to control it, ways to make it work to her advantage.

  She was walking home from work one night when she heard sounds of distress from a ne
arby alleyway. Normally, she would have just called the police, but something told her that there wasn’t time. So she entered the alley, looking around warily in the dim light from the distant streetlamps, scouting for signs of danger.

  She saw a young woman on the ground, surrounded by four boys in their late teens. They were kicking her, tearing at her clothes, obviously intending to violate her. Blake’s fury rose, and lightning streaked through the sky over the alley. Thunder boomed, and the young men looked up in alarm.

  Blake raced towards them, driving them away from the young woman effortlessly, plowing them down the alleyway. With a supreme burst of strength, she threw them two by two into a nearby dumpster, then used the heat from her hands to weld the lid so they couldn’t escape. She called 911 immediately, then rushed back to the young woman on the ground, who was gazing at her in absolute terror.

  “It’s all right,” Blake told her. “You’re safe now. Here, let me help you –”

  But when she held her hand out to the other woman, she leapt up from the ground, trying to pull her clothes back on. “Stay away from me!” she cried, backing away quickly.

  “It’s okay,” Blake tried to tell her, raising her hands innocently. “I’m not going to hurt you. The police are on their way, and they’ll bring you to the hospital.”

  But the young woman just continued to stare at her fearfully, tears streaming down her face. Then, she turned around and ran away from her, disappearing around the mouth of the alley. Blake didn’t think it was a good idea to go after her; that just would have terrified her even more.

  The cops came and took the young ruffians away, treating Blake with the utmost respect when they learned her identity. They couldn’t seem to understand how she’d landed four grown boys in the dumpster, and they had even less comprehension of how the lid had come to be welded shut, but they didn’t ask too many questions. People with vast amounts of money are never asked too many questions. They’re usually just allowed to do as they please. Blake didn’t know how she felt about this universal truth, but in this particular instance, it worked to her advantage.

  After this incident, she truly took stock of her inexplicable new abilities. If anyone found out about them, she could become the world’s next human lab rat – but, on the other hand, she couldn’t resist using them for the benefit of mankind. She’d saved that young woman from those beastly boys. Why couldn’t she keep doing things like that?

  She decided there was no reason why she couldn’t. She took to prowling the streets at night, keeping to the boundaries of the darkness and surveying the wicked underbelly of Shadow City. When she saw wrong being done, she tried to right it. When she saw someone being hurt, she tried to help them.

  And so Voltana was born.

  Chapter 4

  Blake left work early that evening to go and check on her new houseguest. She pulled into the driveway in her sleek black Audi at six o’clock, shut off the engine and stepped out of the car into the moist, sweltering city air. It smelled like salt and chemicals: salt from the nearby harbor, and that chemical odor from the numerous factories that littered the metropolis. But under all that, there was the pungent scent of wild roses that grew in the unruly garden beside the house.

  Blake walked to the front door, and just as he always did, Albert opened it before she even had a chance to announce her arrival. She wasn’t sure how he did it. He just always seemed to know when she’d arrived, despite the fact that the house was so large it would be difficult to hear the quiet sound of her car in the driveway. Just the same, this was a bright spot in her day, being welcomed home by her dear friend.

  “Good evening, Miss Turner,” Albert said with a slight inclination of his head. “I trust your day went well?”

  “That,” Blake returned, “is a bit of a complicated matter. I’ll fill you in on the details after dinner.”

  Albert was fully aware of Blake’s alter ego. He knew what she did on the city streets after dark.

  “Very well, Miss Turner,” he said. “Your young charge is already seated in the dining room. She seems rather fond of the minestrone.”

  Blake would have liked to shower and change, but she didn’t want to keep her houseguest waiting too long. The young woman had already been through enough, and she shouldn’t feel like she was being disrespected by her hostess.

  Of course, Blake was perfectly aware that Andrea De Luca was a member of a gang. A very dangerous gang that dealt illegal drugs, and had been implicated in more than a dozen murders in the city’s underbelly over the past few years.

  She wasn’t entirely sure how she felt about that. She certainly didn’t think she would ever be able to trust this woman – least of all to be left alone in the house with expensive and pawnable objects – but she was still determined to show her the respect that was due anyone who had just nearly been killed by a vampire.

  Blake went to the restroom to wash her hands, checking her reflection in the mirror. She looked mildly disheveled and tired, but she decided it would just have to do. After all, it wasn’t as if she were trying to impress the young woman. She simply wanted to be kind to her.

  ***

  At that moment, Andrea De Luca was sitting at one end of the long dining room table, noshing on a big bowl of Italian soup. She could tell it was homemade, and she’d never tasted anything so good. Most nights, she had a bowl of cereal for dinner. If this was just the first course, she couldn’t wait to see what came next.

  She was interrupted from the bliss of her soup, however, by the appearance of a woman. She came into the room quietly, and Andi didn’t even notice her until she’d come abreast with the end of the table. Andi looked up quickly, swallowing a mouthful of soup quickly and nearly choking on it.

  The woman was absolutely breathtaking. She wore a simple white button-down tucked into black slacks, and her honey-golden hair was pinned up behind her head. But it was her eyes that Andi noticed most. They were a clear, bright green, perfectly shaped and radiating a warm, kind glow. The woman smiled at Andi, taking a seat directly beside her.

  “My name is Blake Turner,” she said in a soft voice, gentle on Andi’s ears, but still tinged with a faint note of authority. “How are you feeling?”

  “I’m fine, thank you,” Andi answered. She couldn’t take her eyes off the woman’s face.

  The woman continued to smile. Hopefully she didn’t notice the way Andi was staring at her.

  In turn, though, the woman surveyed Andi minutely, her clothes most of all. “I like the outfit you chose,” she said. “It suits you.”

  Per Albert’s suggestion, Andi had gone out earlier to shop for new clothes. Presently, she was wearing a pair of form-fitting black jeans and a snug Pink Floyd T-shirt. She wasn’t a fancy dresser by any means (unless Iggy J was coming to buy coke, anyway), and she was most comfortable in simple clothing. Anything more than that, and she felt like people were looking at her, thinking that she was trying to be more than she really was. Which was, quite frankly, a street rat from the South End of Shadow City.

  Andi was about to thank the woman, when suddenly she remembered the acute loss of her dreads. Albert had told her that Blake Turner was the one who’d cut them off.

  “I would have appreciated it if you’d left my hair alone,” Andi said, her voice slightly stained with bitterness. “I know a woman who could have fixed it.”

  “It was matted with blood,” the other woman said patiently. “It couldn’t have been fixed.”

  “How would you know that?” Andi asked. “You don’t look as if you’ve ever had dreads.”

  “True,” Blake replied, nodding in concession, but still looking mildly irritated that Andi was arguing with her. “However – I think your hair is quite the least of your problems. You were just attacked by vampires, after all.”

  Andi swallowed hard, reaching up to touch the cauterized wounds on her throat. With them, she felt the death of her friends very keenly, and she fought to suppress the tears that tried to creep in
to her eyes.

  She didn’t want to appear weak in front of this woman. Well, it was her habit never to appear weak in front of anyone – but in this instance, she was particularly adamant about it. For one thing, this chick had a seriously authoritative air going on, and any show of vulnerability on Andi’s part would only reinforce that authority.

  “Look,” Andi said. “I’m grateful to you for putting me up and all – but you don’t need to remind me what I’ve been through. Trust me, I don’t have any trouble remembering it.”

  The woman’s face softened, and she sat back in her chair, looking sympathetic. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I can’t imagine how you must feel right now, and I was being insensitive. Please forgive me.”

  Andi didn’t know if she’d really expected this apology, but she appreciated it, anyway. And somehow, she found herself looking into the woman’s eyes again. Her own eyes roving as subtly as she could manage over her beautiful face. She was intrigued by her, and there was no getting around it.

  But then – the woman immediately said something that made her angry again.

  “You’re free to go wherever you please during the day,” she announced. “However, given recent events, I think it’s best if you remain in the house from dusk till morning. The city isn’t safe at night.”

  Andi looked at her in disbelief. Was she seriously trying to tell her when she could and couldn’t leave the house? Was she giving her a curfew?

  “Look,” Andi said, her voice rising in irritation, “I already thanked you for your hospitality – but in all honesty, I don’t even know what I’m doing here. I have no idea how I got here. So I’m sure you can see how it’s a little weird that now you’re trying to tell me what I can and can’t do.”

  “That’s not what I was trying to do,” the woman replied in that same patient voice. “I’m just trying to keep you safe, that’s all.”

  “Well,” Andi said, her voice even louder now, “that’s not your job. Actually, I’m not even sure why I stayed here. It was weird enough waking up without my hair – but then you show up and start barking orders at me? No, thanks. I’d rather just go home.”