“Well, keep at it. We need to find out what’s so damned important that he’s risking it all to get it back. Renny, I’ve got Scalps watching the man’s house from the video. I want you and Ayana to go down to the precinct that handled Mrs. Crawford’s case, dig through the forensics. See if there’s anything they discounted that we might use to trace this bastard down. Ezio, take lover boy over there and question our prisoner, she should be waking up by now.”
Lover boy?
Judging by the look on Ezio’s face, he had not planning on interrogating her in a conventional fashion, which stirred an uneasy feeling in his gut. No matter what she’d become, he didn’t think he could stand there and watch her get tortured, he’d be just as tormented as she was. Yet, he also didn’t want to abandon her to the rage of a vexed werewolf either.
That thing is not my wife.
Yeah, you keep telling yourself that.
Is it working yet?
Nope.
Chapter 8
I
“What’s wrong with Speedy?” he asked Ezio as they stepped onto the back porch.
He didn’t know what he expected. Rolling hills of vegetables or cotton, stables, Nineteenth Century architecture and a lot of wooden fences? There was an overly large backyard, but if it continued past the large cement wall, he couldn’t see it. There was a garage on the left and a smaller house on the right, the interiors of both pitch-black and seemingly unoccupied. Not as impressive as the front of the house, but not many probably got this far to care.
A thought hit him, and his pulse quickened. His wife was in one of those dark buildings, probably drugged, bound, and gagged, awaiting her death at the hands of the vampire hunters that had snagged her. Was he really going to help them do it?
Ezio shrugged, “he’s been edgy since we left Dublin last spring. Maybe he’s got family problems. The Irish can be very passionate about those kinds of things, not that there isn’t a bit of that in my own; passions can run deep in our kind.”
“Italians or werewolves?”
“Both,” Ezio responded quickly.
They stepped off the back porch and Ezio turned to the right and headed towards the empty looking house, probably the caretaker’s residence. “You have a huge house here, why stash her all the way out here? Wouldn’t you want to keep her close and keep eyes on?”
The other man pursed his lips and looked from the second floor of the house they were approaching, then back at the main building. He shook his head, “no. We have a Faraday Cage installed in the basement. Best way to keep her cut off from reaching out to any unguarded minds. We don’t need her using her powers to lure one of us in to free her. Also, if she tried to escape, the house would be incinerated. You wouldn’t want to be there when that happens.”
Amanda gone in a blast of fiery rage, her ashes blown to the wind. It was disrespectful to the woman she was; this monster had corrupted forever his memory of the beloved woman that had enraptured his soul. Then again, it had a bit of poetry if it should go off and take them together.
They went through the front door, Ezio turning on the living room light and moving towards a door on the southern wall. The house was bare, didn’t look to be lived in for quite some time, and the dust made his nose tickle, causing him to sneeze. “Guess your groundskeeper holds up somewhere else, huh?”
Ezio didn’t answer as he disappeared from sight.
He followed the burly man down the dark stairwell and winced as a light got flipped on, flooding the basement with a stunningly strong white light. There was a clear barrier separating the second half opposite of the staircase housing a bed, sink, and a toilet.
Do vampires pee?
There was a wooden chair on their side of the glass, looking to have been recently moved about, an Igloo at its side, full of God knows what. He saw something move and his eyes tracked to the far left, locking on the woman standing there watching their entry like a cougar stalking a deer. When their eyes met, she launched herself at the glass, the impact hardly making a sound; it had to be thick despite its clear thin appearance. Infuriated, she balled up her fists and struck the barrier even harder, making a very slight thumping noise. With her current strength it should have been much louder, and he felt a feeling of amazement wash over him.
There was a door on the left and it looked like an airlock on a spaceship, the rectangular chamber extending three feet inside where another door waited. There were air vents in the ceiling of the inner room, too small for even a cat to climb through. Otherwise, everything was bare, white, and looking to be made of stone. Hell, it could be concrete for all he knew. And they had this built already, like they expected to have a vampire prisoner held within. Or had it been built for something in more nefarious?
Ezio walked around a slight corner, disappeared for half a second, then returned with two more folded up chairs. He leaned them against the wall and reached up to a pin pad by the doorway.
“Not much of a talker, are you?”
Ezio briefly glanced his way. “I’m tired. It’s been a long night and now it looks like it’s going to be an even longer day. I want to do this and be done with it.” He then keyed something into the pad and the inner chamber began to fill up with a white phosphorous gas.
Amanda began striking the glass harder, her words inaudible but clear nonetheless; she was vowing to end their lives. In all the time they’d been together, never had he seen so much hate on her face, so much rage; it pained his heart to see it now.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t protect you better,” he whispered.
“There was nothing you could’ve done, you would’ve been swatted like a gnat,” Ezio stated, as if that did anything to comfort him. “Not that you wouldn’t have gotten points for trying, just, there really wouldn’t be anyone left to give a shit, right?”
“Whatever you do, don’t go into grief counseling, cuz you’d suck at it,” he snarked.
Ezio stopped staring at Amanda’s body upon the floor randomly spasming from the drugs she’d been doused with, and glanced his way, a smirk upon his face. “Do you want to talk about your parents? Did your daddy touch you when you were a child? How much of your life is fucked up because of how you were raised? None of this your fault, it’s everyone else’s, right?”
“Smartass.”
The big man’s laughter echoed across the chamber and he suddenly wished the man would enter the room so his voice would be just as muffled as Amanda’s had been. “You ready for this?”
His hand instinctively went for his new sidearm but Ezio chuckled and waved his hand dismissively. “You won’t need that,” the other man said as he keyed something into the keypad. The air in the adjacent room immediately began to clear, the vents sucking out whatever gas was still left in the milky air-tight chamber. Ezio’s hand was on the open door, motioning him inside. “Let’s go have a chat with your wife, shall we?”
“You’re really going to step in there?”
“Kind of the point isn’t it? Can’t very well interrogate her from out here.”
He looked at his wife lying there on the ground and thought of how furious she’d been acting when they’d walked in; going in there was not something he was comfortable doing.
I am scared of my wife.
Ezio laughed and stepped inside, leaving the door open as he entered the inner chamber, just in case he decided to follow after. The bulky man walked over to Amanda, grasped her under her shoulders, then pulled her over to the chair as if she didn’t weigh anything at all.
Before he realized what he was doing, he had entered the room as well. For better or worse, he was in this now. “You’re not going to strap her down?”
Ezio shook his head, “won’t need to. She’ll be fine until after we leave.” He reached into one of the pouches on his waist and pulled out a syringe. Removing the plastic protector over the needle, he applied pressure to Amanda’s bicep, used his large finger to stroke her inner elbow, then sunk the needle into her arm and emptied
its contents. “You can breathe. The danger has passed for now.”
He was confused, was she a vampire or not? After what had happened hours before at the aquarium it was hard to understand how relaxed the man looked, like she was nothing but a slumbering woman who’d drank too much, the red on her shirt spilt ketchup rather than the blood of the innocent man she’d murdered.
“Wusgoinon?” a sluggish voice asked.
It startled him because it was a tone and timber that he had grown accustomed to over the last twelve years whenever she unexpectedly got woken up by something he was doing. “Amanda?”
Her eyes were droopy, her irises unfocused, and she turned her head at a cocked angle as she tried to look his way. “Derek? Where am I?”
“What the hell is going on?” he asked Ezio, anger rising quickly. He had been expecting to see a monster, not his innocent beloved wife. Torturing a vampire bitch who murdered innocents was one thing, but a lucid normal version of the love of his life? No fucking way.
Ezio grimaced and held up a hand. “It’s temporary. We’ve got maybe thirty minutes to talk to her before it wears off. You are here to help facilitate things, as she would be more likely to talk to you rather than one of us. She trusts you, so she should open up without hesitation. But you need to hurry. We don’t want to be in here when they wear off; she will be righteously pissed off.”
He couldn’t fully grasp what he was being told. He had no forewarning, no prep; he had just been tossed in the deep end and told to swim. He looked from Ezio to the woman seated before him, her blue eyes staring up at him, tears streaming down her cheeks; breaking his heart. He knelt before her and grasped her hands gingerly with his left, his right reaching up to wipe at her cheeks, the smile on his face forced as he tried to give what comfort he could summon forth. “Hey you.”
“Baby? Where am I? What am I doing here? Why is this guy glaring at me?” Amanda’s concerned voice pushed, the confusion genuine.
“You don’t remember?” he asked, stroking her cheek, his heart aching at every second of this. He had never imagined he’d ever get to talk to his wife again, had thought that it had been ripped away when the monster forced its way out of her grave.
Her eyes cast about as if searching her memory, her hand gripping his tightly as she fumbled to dredge up an answer. “I was at the Willowbrook Mall. I went there to get you a birthday gift, it’s only two weeks away. I was getting your father’s watch cleaned up and fixed.”
Tears nearly ripped free and he took a deep breath to force them back. “That would have been perfect, you know me too well,” he told her softly. “Do you remember what happened when you went to leave?”
“Someone hit me on the back of the head,” she commented slowly. “I remember lying there on the pavement, my purse on its side, wondering if I would ever see you again. I was in the back of a panel van. They had tied me up, put a gag in my mouth.” Tears were streaming as she talked, every word a needle sting to his heart.
“They took me to a mansion, I think,” she continued, wiping her arm across her face. “The driveway circled around a fountain with this goat thing playing a flute. It wasn’t asphalt but cobblestone. The exterior of the house was white, and they had these enormous oak trees. Two men held me as a servant of some sort came out of the mansion to retrieve me. They talked back and forth, but I don’t remember of what. I was crying, barely on my feet, and the bindings were so tight that I couldn’t feel my hands or feet.”
“Was he human, this servant?” Ezio asked, speaking for the first time and giving Amanda a start.
She looked up at him with fear, the armor he was wearing slightly torn with bits of blood on them; he’d be scared to. She shrugged, “I guess so. He was strong though. He picked me up and threw me over his shoulder while the van drove away. I was put in a bedroom, straps were placed around my hands and feet to hold me down, and the man cut away my clothes and tossed them on the floor. Then he left me laying there naked and bound in the dark.”
Her body shivered, and her facial features drew together. “Please, I don’t want to remember any more.”
“We’re running out of time,” Ezio told him.
“Isn’t that enough to go on? What else do you need?” he returned, feeling his wife’s hand grip his forearm tightly, as if seeking protection.
“Why does he want you back so bad? Why did he discard you to begin with?” Ezio pushed, his hand gripping the back of Amanda’s chair, his weight leaning it back slightly, causing her head to tilt to face him.
“It’s my phone he wants, not me,” she sobbed, the horrors of the last week causing her anguish to increase. “There’s an app, it lets you order food for delivery.”
Ezio snorted, “that’s nothing new, nor important. I have the Domino’s app on my phone as well.”
“I don’t think it’s human food she’s referring to,” he said in a lower voice, dread in his heart. That’s just wrong.
“Are you telling me there’s an app for vampires to order their meals? And have them delivered? Are you fucking kidding me? They too lazy to go out hunting for themselves now?” Ezio stormed.
Amanda nodded her head, then broke into sobs.
“I think that’s enough. You got what you want,” he told the taller man.
Ezio’s eyes fell on him. “I know what you’re thinking, but I’m not leaving you alone with her. You’ve got maybe five minutes before she reverts and tries to tear your throat out.”
“Then give her another injection! Why let her revert at all?”
The man hovering over him shook his head, “it has diminishing returns. Next time it might last fifteen minutes, or ten, just depends on the person. You’ve got just about all the time we can give you with your wife. I’m sorry.”
“He’s right,” Amanda muttered with a hitch in her voice. “You need to go. I can feel her coming back. She’s tearing at the edges of my thoughts, fighting to get free.”
“I can’t lose you again,” he replied, grief filling his own voice as well.
“You already did,” Amanda told him, reaching up and wiping at the corners of his eyes. “At least this way, I get to say goodbye. I have loved you more than anyone else in my life, as much as a person can love another. You are my soulmate, and I will wait for you on the other side. I love you.”
“No, this can’t be goodbye. If they found a cure that lasts half an hour, we can find one that’ll last an hour, or two. Keep working on it until we find something that works permanently,” he argued, gripping her arms and looking straight into the depths of her eyes. “Please, Amanda. I love you so much that I have been literally dying every second that’s passed without you. Don’t ask me to do this alone.”
“You are stronger than you give yourself credit for,” she told him, her smile faltering slightly at the end. She looked up at the bigger man nearby. “You need to kill me, now.”
“I can’t do that sweetheart,” Ezio returned. “Time to go.”
“Kill me! Do it! You must!” she suddenly roared, her body convulsing.
Ezio gripped him by the shoulder and yanked him to his feet. “Time’s up.”
“No!” he screamed, fighting back. “Amanda!”
“Kill me you sniveling mutt! Do it, now! Before she takes over! Please?” Amanda’s voice called after them as Ezio thrust him through the inner door and slammed it shut behind him.
An instant later Amanda was standing right outside the doorway, her face full of rage, her fury returned with a vengeance as she began striking against the glass. “You cowardly son of a bitch! Come back in here and finish the job! You yellow-bellied mongrel!”
He placed himself against the glass and looked the woman in the eyes; his wife was gone.
She struck the glass right before his face and he flinched. “I will kill you. I’ll rip your fucking throat out and glutton myself on your blood.”
“All right play time’s over,” Ezio snarked, grabbing him by the back of his vest and pulling him towar
ds the outer door. “We need to tell Naomi what we’ve found out. See what she wants to do with her. I know it’s hard on you, but you need to remember your wife as she was. Do not think of this thing as your wife, but as some evil manifestation that needs to be put down. That’s the only way you’ll ever cope with this shit.”
He took a brief second to look at the woman standing at the glass, her fists balled and striking out, and thought back to the twenty or so minutes he’d been able to spend with her; she had been right, at least they got to say goodbye.
II
“An app? ¿Lo has perdido totalmente?” Naomi asked, her disbelief evident. “Tienes que estar cagándome. Even if that were the case, so the fuck what?”
Speedy had a look of excitement about him as he typed furiously on his keyboard, his earlier anxiety temporarily forgotten. Something of what they said had ignited his imagination and had taken over completely.
Naomi saw the direction of his stare and glanced at the young hacker. “That spark something for you?”
The young man bunched up his cheek and turned to look at a monitor on his left. “If I’m roi aboyt dis, den yeah, Oi can totes clap why dis fecker is worried. It explains lashings.”
Her face was going through a series of emotions, the last being frustration; he was glad he was not on the rough side of her tongue this time. “You gonna let us in on what you’re talking about? I don’t speak nerd.”
Speedy’s silence was pissing her off even more. She looked like she was about to get physical when he suddenly turned with a grin plastered across his face. “If Oi can 'ack into 'er phone an' fend de source code for dis app she’s blatherin' aboyt, not only may Oi fend de source, but possibly a client list as well wi' up ter de minute GPS coordinates. Dat is waaat dis current bun av a wagon is worried aboyt us findin'. Yer man doesn’t gie two shits for de lassy, yer man wants de phone back.”
He had to bite off the urge to remind the younger man that it was his wife they were talking about; but they knew that. He didn’t need to point it out. They just didn’t care. Maybe it was better if she were dead. It had been a pipe dream, thinking they might find a cure and return her to him; some dreams just needed to die rather than continually nurtured. He had thought, maybe if they found this Master they kept referring to and offed his ass, that she might return to her normal state, but that was movie mumbo jumbo and in his heart he knew it; this would not have a story book ending.
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