Page 143 of The Diary of the Vam'pir Jacques

“Oh yes,” Warner warmed to her subject. “If we could transfer vampiric powers to a human, then we would have the ideal soldier. We were injecting diseases that would kill a human into the test subjects and monitored how they reacted.

“The results were amazing, virtually nothing can hurt you except a loss of blood. Our next step was to experiment with how long you could survive without blood.”

Warner’s self-satisfaction swamped her and blinded her to her wrongdoing. Once I had pulled all the information from her, I gave her a quick death and turned to the guard. His name was Jarvis, and he stared at me venomously before looking at a spot on the wall.

“Who else knows about vampires?” I demanded.

Jarvis refused to answer.

“How about your wife and kids? I will keep you alive when I go after them, and I’ll torture and kill them in front of you.” I took a punt in the dark.

The lucky guess that paid off.

Jarvis began to talk at once.

Apparently, Jarvis was the commander of these men, so we’d been fortunate to not kill him. He was part of an elite group that had been posted here about a year ago. They had been briefed onthe experiments and Jarvis had held a great deal of derision until their first vampire.

Jarvis could not believe what he was seeing until the vampire got free and murdered one of men. Excited, Jarvis killed the vampire himself. The asshole admitted thinking of us as animals and not as people and said that made his job easier.

Jarvis had witnessed much of what happened and had helped the scientist’s piece together our lore. He’d also helped hunt and capture those held here. After torture and not being fed, several of the vampires spilt stories they had seen what they believed to be the firstborn. The Vam’pirs.

These tales intrigued Rainer and sent crews out to find them. They had caught Julius six months ago and held him hostage. Slowly, they trapped the others who had come to the rescue. Rainer left the captives in an unshielded room, where they weakly called for help.

One by one, Vam’pirs fell into the trap. James had been allowed to call an SOS to entrap Amelia or any other vampire that might answer the call. They’d underestimated those coming being alert to a trap. Amusingly, the rest of the Vam’pirs had blindly walked in, banking on their strength.

Arrogance was their undoing.

Jarvis, the fool, was proud of his men and of how they had handled the situation. But I’d been an unexpected element. Jarvis had believed that I followed the others down, but I hadn’t.

The idiot thought I was a suitable opponent and tipped his hat to me. But my gut told me Jarvis was hiding something. The sensation made me push Jarvis, and eventually, I discovered that he had snuck blood to those held hostage. Whether we were animals or sentient beings, Jarvis did not believe in what the scientists were doing.

Julius nodded his head, as did James. They remembered Jarvis sneaking rats or cats and dogs into them so they couldhave something to eat. Jarvis regretted his involvement but stated he’d repeat his actions. Those were his orders, and he’d followed them. It was part of his job, and although the torture was a part that he did not like, Jarvis did it.

I sat in silence asking the occasional question and thinking what he said over. The others chipped in with little comments. He remained stoic but stayed firm and ignored the threat of death against him. Finally, I’d had enough.

“Who else knows?”

The commander rattled off several names that held me still in amazement.

“Who else?” I asked, probing his mind.

“That’s it,” Jarvis answered wearily.

“The Prime Minister, or his staff know of us?”

“No, we are part of an elite group. We operate outside normal procedure, so few know of our existence.”

Jarvis told the truth.

“A kind of secret service,” Amelia said.

“Yes.”

“Is the data solely stored here for the tests, or are there additional backup systems?” I asked.

“The chief maintained complete files on all events here. He was planning to hold everyone until there was a war. Then we would’ve used your blood to make invincible soldiers. No country would have been able to stop us,” Jarvis replied.

“Wrong. You would have used it to become world dominators. Our blood would not have been used in defence of this country. Those super soldiers, the government would have used to subdue other countries that refused to do what Britain demanded,” Seti said.

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