From what I could discern, I was shackled to metal bars. Was I in some sort of cage? I stretched my fingers, and the distance between each bar seemed to confirm this. As did the fact my arms couldn’t slide down past my shoulders. And the bars weren’t round, but square-cut, which explained why it had hurt so much when I’d smacked my head against them.
Cautiously I moved my lower extremities. If the numbness in my butt was any indication, I was sitting on a concrete floor. Okay, that confirmed it. Concrete floor and bars spelled cage in my world. A careful flexing of joints and muscles told me nothing was broken, and other than feeling sore and bruised in places I expected to feel sore and bruised, I seemed to be okay.
We’re alive, and that’s a plus.
My inner bitch . . . always looking for the silver lining.
The worst pain was in my chest, and had to be from the seat belt. I couldn’t take a deep breath without it hurting, so I made myself take shallow ones. Kind of like one of those dogs with the squashed-in noses. I was more than a little miffed at the air bag’s failure to deploy, and someone was going to get a really nasty letter from me about that, but I’ve also seen pictures of people punched black-and-blue from kissing one. It’s not like being whacked in the face with your bed pillow.
Once I got past my catalog of aches, I was surprised to realize how clear-headed I was. This was unexpected, because I figured that whatever had been in the syringe hadn’t been a round of antibiotics. If my chronic thirst was the only side effect, it was something I could deal with. The bastard who’d injected me had no idea my boyfriend could rip his head off—literally—and I wanted to be the one to tell him he’d just made the last mistake of his miserable life. All I had to do was stay calm and wait. Gabriel would come for me. He had told me the bond between us was a strong one, so I was confident he’d already plugged into my emotional grid.
Assuming he’s awake.
Yeah, well, there was that. I had no idea what time it was, or how long I’d been unconscious. After my abrupt departure this morning, Gabriel had probably taken advantage of my absence to catch a few ZZZs of his own. As an Original Vampire, he could go quite a while without sleep, but even he needed to recharge every now and then. And it had been almost a week since he’d last done that.
I could only imagine how angry he was with my storming out this morning, and I know if I were he, I’d go crash and give myself time to cool off. He wouldn’t sense anything until he awoke, so yeah . . . that might be a problem.
Hope for the best . . . but prepare for the worst?
I guess so.
The sound of approaching footsteps made me hold my breath as I tried to make out how many sets there were. Definitely more than one person, but the footfalls were muffled, and it was difficult to know if they belonged to more than two people. I figured the confusion might have something to do with the bag over my head. Then came a voice, an unintelligible garble that made no sense. Maybe I wasn’t as clearheaded as I thought.
The covering over my head was suddenly pulled off, and I gasped in a mouthful of air that was a lot cleaner than what I’d been breathing through the foul sack. I opened my eyes and then snapped them shut almost immediately. The single fluorescent bulb in the ceiling was strong enough to trigger a sudden unrelenting pounding in the back of my head—one that ice-picked its way down my neck, across my shoulders, and halfway down my back. Chronic thirst wasn’t enough. Now I was a candidate for a possible seizure. Although I was grateful to no longer be forced to inhale the odors left in the burlap sacking, I was of two minds about having the hood removed. I’ve watched enough cop shows on TV to know the inability to identify an abductor goes a long way toward ensuring the release of a kidnap victim. I had three kidnappers, and they either didn’t watch much TV or had already decided identification wasn’t going to be a problem. I was hoping for the former.
I peered into the gloomy shadows beyond the metal bars, and determined I was underground. Possibly a parking garage or some similar structure. And yes, I was in a cage. Shaped like an octagon, it made me think of an MMA fighting ring. The only way in or out was through a door cut into one of the sections of bars, and that was secured by a heavy link chain and a big, shiny padlock. Considering the fact I was handcuffed to the cage bars, it seemed like overkill to me.
The man standing next to the cage door was the same asshole who’d injected me while I sat, dazed and disoriented, in Anasztaizia’s crumpled car. I thought it seemed more than likely he was also responsible for the accident in the first place. His partner in crime stood next to him, watching me with beady little eyes. Half the size of his buddy, he had dirty, unkempt hair that fell over a thin face with a sharp nose and pointed chin. He bounced from foot to foot, his hands darting in and out of his jacket pockets, his upper torso rocking from side to side. If he was a rodent, he’d be scurrying all over the place, so of course I christened him Rat Boy.
But it was the last member of this happy little threesome that I needed to pay close attention to. Dressed in a suit that looked expensive, as did the pale shirt and dark silk tie he wore, he was obviously the one in charge. His dark hair was slicked back from a face with chiseled cheekbones, a long nose, and a thin-lipped mouth. He also had a moustache, but truthfully I’ve seen women with more hair on their upper lip than he had.
He was also a vampire.
There was nothing blatantly overt about his behavior. Nothing that said regular infusion of blood required or deadly allergic reaction to sunlight, but I knew he was a vampire nevertheless. I think it was his skin that gave him away. The tone was too uniform, and there was something about the way he moved. It was as if he had calculated how every gesture would look when observed through human eyes. It was freaky weird, but I was learning not to question my own intuition.
He gave me a long look, took a few steps forward, and then narrowed his eyes as he continued to stare at me. I got the oddest feeling that I had disappointed him, that I wasn’t what he’d been expecting. Yeah? Well, disappointment was a two-way street, because I found him seriously lacking as a vampire. Maybe being around Gabriel and Aleksei had skewed my ideas on how a vampire should look. Still, there was no doubt in my mind that this guy had his own set of fangs. Only neither of his two companions knew that.
“Is this some sort of a joke?” he asked them in a voice that was a little nasal and held enough of an accent to tell me English was not his native tongue. Rat Boy and the big guy looked at each other and then at the vampire. From the expressions they wore, it was plain to see his question flummoxed them. The vampire waited for one of them to answer, and I got the feeling he didn’t have much in the way of a funny bone. “Who is this?” he snapped irritably, pointing a finger at me.
Two sets of eyes looked at him, then at me, and then at each other. It was quite a pantomime, and under different circumstances I would have laughed my ass off. Both of them looked horribly, almost comically, dismayed. Someone had fucked up. Royally.
“That’s her—the woman you told us to grab,” the big guy said, sounding puzzled. He hesitated a beat before adding, “Isn’t it?”
“Which one of you did I give my instructions to?” A slight movement of Rat Boy’s head indicated he was the lucky winner. “And were they not explicit enough?”
I didn’t think explicit was in Rat Boy’s vocabulary.
“I guess,” he mumbled with what had to be the slowest shoulder shrug in the history of mankind.
The vampire suddenly yanked him across the floor, pushing him to his knees before me, and bringing him close enough I could tell it had been a while since Rat Boy had acquainted himself with a bar of soap.
“Does her hair look blond to you?” he snarled menacingly. Blond? Had they actually meant to grab Anasztaizia? “Did I not say the woman you were to acquire had blond hair?”
Not waiting for a reply, the vampire jerked Rat Boy to his feet and backhanded him across the face. It’s got to be humiliating for a guy to be bitch-slapped by another gu
y in front of his pal. I couldn’t tell if the big guy had participated in the screwup, but he absolved himself of blame by giving Rat Boy a hard look and saying, “You didn’t tell me she was blond.”
“Sorry, Gus, must’ve slipped my mind,” Rat Boy mumbled as he rubbed the vivid scarlet imprint on his cheek. “She was in the car, and I didn’t think anyone else would be driving, know what I mean?”
“Well . . . fuck it!”
“Succinctly put,” the vampire commented on Gus’s assessment of their predicament.
In whatever world Gus and Rat Boy inhabited, a car being driven by someone other than the owner just didn’t happen. But, unable to change a mistake already made, Gus accepted there was no point in dwelling on it. “How can I make this right, Mr. Petrov?”
Another name to add to my vampire address book. At least this one had a mister in front of his name.
“I’m not sure that you can.” The vampire tapped a finger against his mouth as he considered his options. I was pretty sure letting me go unharmed wasn’t one of them. He stopped and looked at me, narrowing his eyes. “But perhaps she can be of use, after all.”
“You don’t want to use the blond woman now?” Gus sounded disappointed by the possibility, making me suspect he might have a thing for blondes.
“I would love to,” Petrov told him. “Especially as she remains an integral part of my plan.” If Rat Boy didn’t know explicit, then I was willing to bet Gus hadn’t heard of integral. “But due to your incompetence, I am forced to rethink my strategy.” He gave both of them a scathing look. “Still, I might be able to salvage something from the situation.”
There was a heavy silence as three heads turned almost in unison, and I felt the grim weight of unknown possibilities being put on my shoulders.
Chapter 6
Petrov came toward me and dropped to his haunches. Taking hold of my chin in his fingers, he turned my head one way and then the other, his fingers brushing down either side of my neck. I knew what he was looking for—bite marks, and forty-eight hours ago he would have found some. But I’d long since healed. I doubt even a shadow of a bruise existed, especially not with the care Gabriel took when feeding from me.
A dozen questions bounced around inside my head, looking for a way out. If he was searching for evidence of bite marks, then he must also know that Anasztaizia fed Aleksei, and that Aleksei was a vampire like him. Should I tell him I was a Promise, and hope he knew what that was? Anasztaizia had surprised me by revealing not every vampire did, just as some vampires couldn’t name a single Original Vampire. She had even heard rumors that the existence of the Originals was being questioned.
But if he knows Anasztaizia feeds a vampire, what does he want with her? To feed him?
I thought that was highly unlikely.
Opening his jacket, Petrov took something out from his inside pocket. It was a slim black case that looked a little like a jewelry box, the kind that usually contains something bright and sparkly and very expensive. This one held two syringes.
“No thanks, I’ll pass,” I said, watching as he removed one from the molded insert. “Your boy there already inoculated me.”
“Mmmm, I know,” Petrov said, “but that was something different, and as you weren’t the intended recipient, it was completely wasted.”
“Why? What did you expect it to do to Anasztaizia?”
He pulled his brows together and gave me a puzzled look. “Who? Oh, so that’s her name. I didn’t know.”
Really? What kind of shithead arranges an abduction but doesn’t know who he’s kidnapping? And what the hell could Anasztaizia possibly be involved in—a conspiracy to corner the world market in paprika?
Ignoring my question, Petrov removed the needle cap and tapped the cylindrical tube with a nail. Holding it upright, he depressed the plunger slightly. A small fountain of liquid sprayed in the air. Narcotic rain. He turned his head. “Gus, come unlock the young lady’s handcuffs, if you please.”
The big man hesitated. “Do you think that’s a good idea, Mr. Petrov?”
“I only need one arm free, Gus. That shouldn’t be a problem.”
Although unhappy with the request, Gus was smart enough to keep his mouth shut and did as the vampire asked. I wondered what was making him nervous. How much of a threat could I be with one arm free and one still handcuffed? I gritted my teeth as my left arm fell to my side like a lead weight. Stinging pins-and-needles pain shot from my fingers to my shoulder as blood began to flow.
Petrov turned my arm over and pulled what looked like a length of thin rubber tubing from his pocket. Using it as a tourniquet, he deftly knotted it around my upper arm before stretching it out and tapping the inside of my elbow with two fingers. I have good veins, or so the people at the Red Cross have told me whenever I’ve donated blood. Gabriel has also said the same thing. My abductor grunted in satisfaction as my vein popped up, begging to be poked with something sharp.
“Will you at least tell me what it is you’re giving me?” I said, trying not to sound panicked.
This close up, I could sense there was something off about him. Not off because he was a vampire; it was something else entirely. Something I couldn’t put my finger on but knew intuitively was horribly bad. Homicidal maniac-slash-serial killer bad. The best way I could describe it was to say if I was walking down a dark alley late at night, and Petrov was coming the other way, I’d turn around and run like hell before he got the chance to pass me.
As he rubbed the ball of his thumb over my vein, I wondered how long it had been since he last fed. Had to have been recently because he was controlling himself well. “It’s just something I’ve been playing with,” he said, answering my question about the contents of the syringe.
He obviously wasn’t going to share the recipe for his creation with me. Either that or he figured I was too dumb to understand the chemistry. He might have been right, but even I knew lysergic acid diethylamide was LSD. Ah shit! Was that what he was doing? Making me OD on an acid trip? Fuck! I hoped to God he was giving me the good stuff.
But you can’t die . . . can you?
Oh shit! Yeah, that’s right . . . well, I don’t think so.
Being told you have an extended life span is one thing, but knowing you have an extended life span is something else. Because how could you really be sure, unless it was put to the ultimate test?
I had made a bargain with a demon, a master of deceit, trickery, and lies. I had no way to know if he would honor the terms of our agreement, but I had no reason to think he wouldn’t either. If he could be convinced the love Gabriel and I shared was true, then my vampire lover would be released from the rule of the Dark Realm, and I would keep my soul. So I had bargained, and my life span had been extended as part of the deal, or so I’d been told. What I hadn’t anticipated was my demonic pact being sealed with a kiss. A kiss that allowed a piece of my soul to be stolen.
You didn’t ask?
Sorry, I was kind of distracted at the time.
Yeah, I guess having a demon’s tongue halfway down your throat could be considered a distraction.
You really need to go there?
My demon had told me that my life would be extended to match Gabriel’s, and he’d also said I would not fall prey to disease or infirmity or perish at another’s hand. I wasn’t completely sure whether the definitions of disease and infirmity were the same in the Dark Realm as in my world, but I was pretty confident that perish at another’s hand was self-explanatory. If that was true, then whatever was in Petrov’s syringe couldn’t kill me.
Yeah, but we’re talking about a demon . . .
A trickster, a deceiver, a liar.
Believing the potion might not kill me didn’t mean it couldn’t fuck me up so badly I might wish I was dead. What if it totally screwed with my brain and I didn’t even know I was still alive? The devil, as they say, is in the details.
Or maybe the demon is in the lack of them?
Just couldn’t resist that
one, could you?
How are you feeling?
Are you kidding me?
No, I’m being serious. You’ve already been given something, right? So . . . how do you feel?
Pretty damn good actually, apart from still wanting to drain Lake Michigan. I still ached and was sore in places, but that was more from the physical toll of the car crash. My head wasn’t anywhere near as messed up as I might have expected, especially after being injected with an unknown substance.
Think you can get him to tell you what it was you were given?
Maybe . . . “Is this more of the same shit Dickless Wonder gave me earlier?”
Petrov shook his head. “No, I already told you that was different and completely ineffectual.”
“How do you know?” I challenged. “How do you know it’s not working on me right now?”
He snickered as he considered my question. “The formula was designed to interact and react with a certain type of blood chemistry. Chemistry you don’t have,” he added smugly.
“How do you know that? Did you do a test while I was unconscious?” The idea that he might have was more than a little scary.
Petrov shook his head. “No testing needed. I just know.”
Oh, but you don’t, you asshole!
He’d just confirmed he didn’t know I was a Promise, and I was glad I hadn’t told him. “Well, why don’t you tell me what it was supposed to do,” I said. “I mean what can it hurt if it’s not working on me?”
I could almost see the cogs whirling in his head as he weighed the pros and cons of full disclosure before he sighed and decided what the heck. “Not every drug produces a physical response or is designed to get you high in the way you’re thinking.” He sounded like some college professor giving a lecture. “This particular formulary is designed to be an inhibitor, to prevent a specific reaction from occurring.”
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