A Shade of Vampire 30: A Game of Risk by Bella Forrest

lit up, I immediately sprang into action.
    I leapt to my feet and, backing away from the edge of the roof, approached Jez. We had very little time.
    I climbed onto his back and coaxed him into the air. We soared away from the compound and across the street parallel to it. I was looking for a Bloodless. Any Bloodless would do, but a smaller one would be preferable. I only had to wait until the third street to spot a group. Jez’s keen senses had noticed them too. As we took a dive, I tried to navigate him toward the smallest one, but his claws ended up grabbing the tallest. The Bloodless thrashed and writhed in Jez’s talons as we took to the air again, but the mutant held it expertly in its grasp—he had been trained to deal with these monsters since his birth. Jez kept it a safe distance away from me, quelling its attempts to lash out at me. I guided Jez immediately back to the lab.
    We soared over the roof of the large building and the second we arrived over the front yard where the man was still smoking, I nudged the mutant’s back legs with the edges of my boots, causing him to drop the Bloodless. It went hurtling to the ground and landed five feet in front of the shellshocked man.
    I instantly pulled Jez back. We touched down on the roof so that we wouldn’t be spotted while the Bloodless took a few seconds to recover from the fall and realize it stood before a meal of fresh, pumping hot blood. It lurched forward and pinned the man to the ground before he could even yell. Its fangs sank deep into the man’s neck. He let out a stifled cry, causing hunters to rush out from the building. The atmosphere erupted in shouts, curses and commands, even as bullets exploded. They fired at the Bloodless relentlessly until it became so battered it was forced to withdraw from the man.
    It rose and staggered back, even as hunters continued to pound it with bullets. Then a bizarre-looking machine—a flying spinning wheel, spiked with blades—came zooming out of the main doors and attacked the Bloodless. It sliced it to shreds in a matter of seconds.
    “Holy hell!” one of the hunters yelled. “How did that thing get in here?”
    Their faces panned to the sky, as if suspecting that it must’ve dropped from the clouds. Jez and I kept hidden before they refocused their attention quickly on the matter at hand.
    “Come on!” a woman hissed. “Fetch a syringe! We need to freeze the turning.”
    More hunters came hurrying out, and then one jabbed a needle into the man’s neck. Then they picked him up and carried him into the laboratory, out of sight.
    Freeze the turning .
    The words inspired hope in my heart. If they could freeze the turning, surely they could cure it too. Perhaps freezing was the first step in treating it.
    I had been holding out hope that I would hear them talk of a cure specifically—perhaps even administer it outside within my view—but this was better than nothing.
    But I was still left with the same damn question: what is the cure? It was aggravating to think that they might be whipping up the antidote right now, inside. There were no windows in this building. And of course, I couldn’t go in without blowing my cover.
    I launched with Jez away from the roof of the lab to somewhere more secluded—the top of a skyscraper. Sliding off him, I sat down on the edge of the roof and stared out toward the crematorium in the distance, as well as the lake beyond.
    Slowly, another idea trickled through my mind. An idea that I was sure was the most insane I’d ever had.

Lawrence
    I need to get bitten myself.
    That’s the only way I can witness the antidote firsthand .
    If they would administer the “freezing” and then the cure to that scientist, I was sure that they would administer it to me to save my life. If my father was around, would he object? Would he rather me turn than know of its existence? He had no reason to suspect that I was a threat to its secrecy, like my mother was. But maybe he would fear