Abducted: Reconnaissance Team (Texas Rangers: Special Ops Book 1) (31 page)

She nodded.

"I'll have someone escort you there."

Desire to go with her shot to the surface with the heat of a volcano. I pictured white skin, full breasts, and blond hair between perfect thighs. I forced my breathing to remain even, and the swelling in my shorts abated. I'd never experienced such sudden, intense lust. If I escorted her back to her room I would drink her blood—and God only knew what I would do to her afterward. My pulse jumped with the thought of her warm blood flowing past my tongue down my throat… and her tight walls closing around me as I entered her.

"I have to complete my measurements before the day shift," she said. I jarred from the erotic thought. "There's not enough equipment to go around," she added.

I nodded. "Of course."

Clipped footsteps sounded almost noiselessly on the linoleum floor of the hallway and I recognized McHenry's walk two seconds before Dr. Nichols's eyes shifted over my shoulder.

"Pierce."

I glanced back to see him standing in the open doorway.

"The general wants to talk to you."

A measure of sanity reasserted itself. I had to get away from her,
now
. "Could you escort Dr. Nichols back to the lab?"

His expression lightened. "No problem." He stepped aside and motioned toward the door with an open hand. "Dr. Nichols."

She cast me a farewell glance and headed toward the door. I tried tearing my eyes from the gentle sway of hips as she walked past, but couldn't, and felt the heat swell to the surface again. I had to find one of the small rodents whose blood I drank to keep my thirst for human blood at bay, or go back to Heinrick and hope the congealed blood in his decaying body would make me forget the craving. Rising desire twisted my insides and I feared even Heinrick's dead blood wouldn't work against the warm, pulsing blood of Dr. Nichols.

I waited until their footsteps receded down the hall, then started forward. My gaze caught on Fermi's portable chalkboard on wheels, and I stopped. Equations filled the board that would have looked like Greek to me in my former life. Now, they sparked a story in my mind. Differentials, integrals, and algebra flowed in an almost perfect melody. The first time I saw calculus after becoming infected with this disease, I stared, fascinated. After flipping through a text on advanced mathematics I found in the small but well stocked CP-1 library, I could visualize the differential as rates of change, the integrals as sums, and functions as shapes and movement.

I stared at the puzzle of Fermi's equations, one side of my brain working the numbers, the other side stuck on the murder. Heinrick's eye had been stabbed in a careful, deliberate manner to inflict maximum pain
without
killing. Yet no one had reported the screams, which must have penetrated his office walls. Why? Like the equations on the board, the evidence didn't fit. Except, equations could be fixed. Heinrick would be dead forever.

I stepped up to the chalkboard, picked up a stick of chalk, and tapped down the chalkboard alongside the offending column of calculations. Halfway down, I fixed an exponent and turned a minus sign to a plus, then fixed the equation below, which didn't equal zero as Fermi had written. I circled the answer and connected the derivation on the right hand side of the board to the bottom equation on the left, which now equaled each other. I stood back. Harmony now flowed between the equations. I didn't know what they represented, but they were now correct.

The first time I stood in front of this chalkboard and recognized a mistake, I had walked away. If anyone discovered my abilities, I would be consigned to hell in some biological laboratory I dared not contemplate beyond the knowledge of its existence. Later that night, I found a communiqué on my desk from General Groves reporting ninety-eight men had died, including Rear Admiral Daniel Judson Callaghan and Captain Cassin, when the USS San Francisco sank during the battle of Guadalcanal. Groves had handwritten a single sentence on the Teletype page:
This is why we're doing this
. I had rushed back to write my solution, but found Fermi had erased everything. Since then, I didn't chance leaving Fermi's mistakes uncorrected.

I set the chalk back in the tray and brushed my hands on my trousers. As for my personal problem, even if I found a cure for the need to drink blood, I would still never be the same after this war, no one would. Yet, whatever I was, I would still be alive. Many men wouldn't be.

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T. C. Archer is comprised of award winning authors Evan Trevane and Shawn M. Casey. They live in the Northeast. Evan has a Ph.D. in electrical engineering, and Shawn is a small business owner. Their collaboration began on a lark with the post WWII film noir story
The Pickle My Little Friend
, and has evolved into nearly a dozen works, which includes their new series
The Phenom League
, and the Daphne Du Maurier winner, romantic thriller
For His Eyes Only
.