4. Kryptonite.

I headed for Sark's cabin. Again, my rage and my fighting record brought out my cardinal sin. I thought I was better than I was. I didn't even wonder if Sark might have seen me somewhere in between. I did not know that he'd seen me a good week ago at the club when he'd been scouting for suitable victims, and I'd introduced myself there. Sark remembered me, and he remembered Damon even though it's been a long time since that happened.

I had my rage on. I'd been out eating, shopping during the day, and fighting every night. During the day, I'd been watching Sark and noticed that he didn't get out of his cabin until afternoon, so I'd have a great time now.

He would be alone in the cabin, and nobody knew anything. The Korean had a cabin elsewhere. I'd already checked that, too. I could interrogate the guy after Sark was dead, and oh fuck it. I'd celebrate this victory and celebrate it well.

Adam doggedly continued to negotiate, trying to get compensation for the rape and other expenses, and yet stubbornly, the rich alphas wouldn't budge, instead twisting the compensation percentage just a little bit lower, as if it would make any fucking difference in the end. He would have liked to spend time with Mimi; one of his ideas was to buy her clothes again, but no. Adam never saw Damon or Bran. He didn't even know what Bran was up to. 

Bran had been watching Mimi at the fight club at night, and her performance had left a powerful impression on him. Mimi would be a splendid weapon in his hands, and now he was getting the idea of making her a problem solver like Charles; it would take time, but a divorce would give Mimi enough rage, and she would have to see Damon with Brianna on the ship. 

Brianna wanted to get married as quickly as possible, and she was getting a special potion, a vampire potion that made male vampires do whatever she wanted. It made them fuck, made them forget about love, forget about feelings and just feel lust. It turned all vampires into almost what Drusilla and Spike were, soulless.

 Brianna herself was badly soulless, warped by time and experience, bruised by low self-esteem and many rejections, a broken creature who was ruthless but did not understand emotions. As long as a shipment of vampire potion came to the ship, she'd give it to Damon and be done with it.

Then she could arrange a coronation for them at some point, make herself queen, Damon king, and maybe then take Damon's ex-wife as his mistress, or her too. Brianna, as she dabbled in both sexes, and the idea of a being as unique as Mimi under her sway was something she wanted, but first, she wanted to break that.

Then she would reassemble Mimi, making her the subject, and no one would attack Mimi.

Damon didn't realize that a week had passed since he'd been dealing with Mimi. He'd had to deal with many crises and problems, mediating many issues. He'd just wondered in his mind at one point, in passing, that maybe it would guarantee him some peace of his own after the cruise, and he'd get to spend some quality time with Mimi, too.

But then there was always the next problem, and he really didn't have to plan for the future. The original folks had gone off to enjoy themselves and party, but the ship seemed to swarm with vampires who always had problems, and Damon was directing and running many operations. He didn't even notice Brianna's manipulation of how she had already got Damon to act almost like a vampire king.

I walked down the corridor. There were people walking along, one family with three children in a pram, girls, and I thought to myself that I'll probably never have children. I'm too weird a creature, and besides, if Damon's sperm causes a catastrophic abortion that liquefies my whole damn reproductive system, isn't that a pretty clear sign?

Humans had it so much easier, although I'm sure many were jealous of my immortality and powers, sure they were an advantage, but then again, they had their own problems and I tried to remember the time when I was human. 

A time when the pressure of rage wasn't my constant companion, or a time when I didn't feel like tearing everyone to shreds as I got angry. Or a time when I didn't have to keep myself under control all the time and be alert to my surroundings, a time when I wasn't a wanted target, a time when I could go to the store and that was it, I didn't have to look around, be armed and ready to act.

I approached Sark's cabin. Soon, this remaining cruise would be much more enjoyable.

One strike in just the right spot and Sark would be dead, and no one would even notice. Sark wasn't with anyone, and there was no video surveillance. This would be a quick and easy trick. People are so damn fragile.

I would not do this in any public place, not because I would get caught, but because no one would try to help Sark. I could have stopped his heart with one punch and made it look like an accidental collision, but with a defibrillator, you could restart his heart. Besides, this damage would be so lethal that no one or nothing could save Sark.

Sark hadn't taken a fancy cabin but a very cheap one, so the cleaners wouldn't be too much there either. And if you put a do not disturb sign on the door, perfect. The dagger was in my pocket, touching its cool handle, ready to work.

I felt my pulse quicken slightly. After all, I had a prize in my hands. This was going to be as damn perfect as it could be. My steps were sure, and I felt my predatory instincts awakening, my rage combining with those instincts to put me in a rather interesting state, a state where caution flew out of the window.

I opened the door and stepped inside. The cabin was small, there was a bed, some kind of chest of drawers and then all I could see was the world turning into a white-hot pain.-A thousand volts or something like that hit my brain as Sark put the taser around my neck and pressed the button.

He closed the door to the cabin, now locked. I regained consciousness a little, but I couldn't move yet.

Sark said softly, "You took your time before you came at me. I had some cameras set up in that hallway, flea."

I couldn't answer. Taser had thrown my rage completely back down the well, and I got a hard lesson in how electricity is a fucking evil weapon against my rage. When I couldn't get my rage out yet, electricity paralyzed me.

I was lying on the ground, and my muscles still didn't want to work. Sark crouched down next to me, dug in his pocket, and grabbed the syringe. He pulled the needle guard off with his teeth, then pushed it into my vein and pressed the plunger to the bottom swiftly. My head was cloudy, and I couldn't move because of the taser hit.

Sark said, "Oh, I hit the jackpot."

I almost lost consciousness and had to fight to stay awake. This was really strong stuff, and without my rage, I was helpless. Sark lifted me up on the table and lifted my shirt up to expose my stomach. He took a portable ultrasound machine and started using it to examine my stomach.

He inserted a thick needle perpendicular to my stomach, looking at the monitor the whole time, waiting for an eruption of arterial blood that would tell him he was in the abdominal aorta. Once that was there, he then threaded the cannula deeper into the artery, pulling the needle out. He turned off the ultrasound machine, taped the cannula to my skin, and cuffed my hands still so I couldn't yank the cannula out.

Sark looked at me triumphantly and said, "You little pest, let's do the tests then; oh, this will save you the trouble of kidnapping if you walk straight into my lap. Now, I'm going to test metals on you, too. Today, it's iridium. This is a very heavy metal. We've developed a technology that allowed us to keep all the metals in liquid form at room temperature and they were really well absorbed into the tissues. But you're a very special creature, and I'm curious. Let's see what this does to your body. Here's a thousand times the dose of other werewolves. I've tested this a little bit, and it seems to lower immune defenses, predispose you to drugs, and slow down the breakdown of drugs. The effect starts within 24 hours and can cause other symptoms: headaches, muscle aches, all that sort of thing. Interesting, I think you're still cage fighting, even better, so I can see the effect even more clearly. I have to thank you. You brought me a hell of a lot of money the first night. I recognized you right away." 

Sark put a bag of metal into the cannula that was stuck in my stomach and dripped it full force. The metal felt heavy as it spread through my system and somehow my hunger completely disappeared.

Sark was typing something on his computer, and I saw he had a big case full of different drip bags.

He said, "You're not the only test subject, not even close. But you are the best."

In less than ten minutes, the whole damn bag of iridium was now happily circulating in my system.

Sark said, "I'm going to give you one of these long-acting sedatives to slow down your reflexes and stuff. This should normally work for two days, but with your super metabolism, I don't know the duration, and then how the iridium affects that equation. Let's see how you do in a fight now."

He put a bag of some bright yellow stuff in the IV, and I felt how fuzzy the medicine made my head. At least it took away my coordination almost completely. My vision was swimming, and it was hard to focus my eyes. Another 6 minutes, and now I was drugged.

Fine, I'll be fine. Rage helps. I'll take it out, then. Sark doesn't know that. He took the cannula out of my aorta and led me into the hallway.

He said, "I'll catch you again one day, so many metals to test and still a couple of weeks to go."

I was well tranquilized, sedated, staggered to sit on the bench, and concentrated. Fine, I dug out my rage and wandered around the ship, picking up my rage just in time so the medicine wouldn't go to my head. I'll kill the son of a bitch tomorrow. I was walking down the corridor, and I found the damn cameras. I destroyed them. I just didn't think he could put new ones in. My rage was on; I felt it burning fogginess out of my mind, and at the same time, it burned my carefulness and self-preservation, bringing on only the need for revenge, the need to win Sark, to kill him.

Even though the medicine didn't go to my head, the iridium, my rage, and the medicine took away any instinct of self-preservation. The metal feeling I got, the pain in my neck, the headache, and the light sensitivity made me take more rage out. Symptoms made me take on more rage, making my need for vengeance even greater. Not to find Damon, not to call him, not when I wanted to take care of this thing myself now. This was personal between me and Sark.

This was one nasty roundabout where I just took more and more and rage on, becoming even sloppier, even more reckless, and none of my pack mates noticed anything, not even Bran; he had found a sea of pussies on to cruise and did not know that Brianna sent those. She would not give Bran anything. She was just using this in order to get Damon. There were no willing vampires to work for Bran or become hybrids.