by M. J. Scott
“You’ll make yourself sick,” Rio said. “And I don’t want to clean up any messes.” He came around to stand in front of me, tipping my chin up with one finger. “Got that?”
I nodded and sipped more slowly. If there was anything else in the cup, there was nothing I could do about it and the sugar might clear some of the fog from my head.
Rio kept watching me, then took the cup, crumpling it in one hand and tossing it to Kyra. Then he leaned forward, so his face was only inches from mine.
“You stink, Pretty,” he said. “You stink of fear.” He breathed in deeply and his hands closed over my knees. I froze as I looked down. He wore a watch—one of those big complicated things with multiple dials men like. One of the dials said ‘Wed’. Wednesday? Shit. We’d gone to Bug’s on Monday night. If I’d been gone over a day already and Dan hadn’t found me. . . . I tried to see what the time was but Rio distracted me.
“Fear. I like that smell, Pretty.”
He leaned closer still and nuzzled my face. I shivered, wanting to pull away but scared of what he would do. I felt something warm and wet touch my cheek. His tongue. I almost gagged. He licked his way down my cheek and neck until his tongue was tracing the pulse at my neck, currently going at about four thousand beats a minute. When I felt him rest his whole mouth there, I couldn’t help it. I reached down, grabbed one of the knives strapped to his leg, yanked it free and slashed it at him.
He jerked back, yelping in surprise. Then he grabbed my arm, squeezing my wrist until I felt the bones grind. I opened my hand so the knife fell.
“Bitch,” he bellowed.
I had a second to register the anger on his face and the pain in my wrist before his hand connected with my face, hitting me on the same side as the doctor had and making stars of light ignite behind my eyes as I flew off the table and crashed to the floor.
I lay there, braced for the next blow. It didn’t come. Instead Kyra snarled. “Can it, Rio.”
“Bitch sliced me.”
“Pretty has teeth.” I couldn’t see her but she sounded amused. I opened an eye a fraction. Rio’s shoes were only a foot or so away from my head and I tried to stay still. Play dead. Maybe he’d leave me alone.
“Not for long if I have anything to do with it.” Fury snaked through his tone. I prayed the threat of whatever Tate would do to them if they really hurt me would stop him from doing anything else. Apparently it did because Rio’s feet retreated then something went flying with a crash of metal as he took his temper out on something else.
Kyra crouched beside my head, tapped my face none too gently. “Open your eyes, Pretty.”
I did as she said, biting back the groan of pain as the light hit my eyes.
“Don’t play with Rio, Pretty. It’s dumb.”
I could only agree with her as she lifted me over her shoulder and carried me out of the room.
Chapter Ten
When we got back to the room I’d woken up in, Doctor Smith was there. He still wore the black lab coat. Kyra deposited me on the bed with a thud that jarred every aching muscle in my body. I groaned and wondered whether I was about to barf the Gatorade up all over myself.
“What happened?” Smith asked. “She should be feeling better.”
“Pretty decided to hit Rio,” Kyra said cheerfully. “Rio hit back.”
That was an understatement. The nausea lessened as I lay without moving but my cheek was still on fire, burning with an intensity that made me wonder if maybe Rio had fractured something.
“She better not be really hurt. We want to start tomorrow,” Smith growled.
Start? Start what? I didn’t have time to wonder. Smith moved over to me and touched my face, probing at my cheek. I winced at each touch, starting to feel dizzy again as the pain flared.
“Nothing broken,” he said eventually and stepped back. “You need to eat.”
My stomach roiled at the thought of food. “I feel sick.”
“I took a lot of blood. You need to replace it.”
When you’re being held captive by a vampire, that phrase has more than one potential meaning. And contemplating all the possibilities didn’t help my stomach settle.
“Kyra, go to the kitchen. There’s soup there.”
The door hummed open and shut, leaving me alone with Smith. I stayed curled up on the bed, watching him warily.
“You’ll feel better once you’ve eaten.”
Right. Because nothing cheers you up after a beating better than soup. I didn’t answer him; just lay there, in a semi-daze, trying to ignore the pain in my face.
Eventually the door hummed again. I opened my eyes to see Kyra wheeling in one of those little room-service-type trolleys like. There was a huge bowl of soup of some sort steaming on the trolley and several packets of crackers. The sight was weird enough to almost make me smile. I wondered idly whether I should tip her then bit down on the thought. I didn’t need to fall into hysterics just now and I could tell from the rising whirl of my thoughts I was heading in that direction. I’d had it happen to me a few times after my parents’ death and couldn’t risk it now.
Smith helped me sit up and then made me try the soup. Chicken noodle. I thought I’d gag but the first mouthful tasted wonderful, salty and warm and I swallowed greedily.
“Eat slowly,” Smith warned and I nodded. I polished off the soup, another bottle of Gatorade and nibbled the crackers at a cautious pace.
When I finished, Smith pulled a vial and a syringe out of his lab coat pocket. I shrank back on the bed. “What’s that?”
“Vitamins.” He grabbed my right arm and plunged the needle in without ceremony.
I winced, biting my lip. Vitamins. Yeah right. The bottle disappeared back into his pocket but I’d caught a glimpse of the label. There was a logo on it that seemed familiar. I wracked my brains, trying to remember where I’d seen it before. But I was too tired and the memory stayed stubbornly out of reach.
Smith let go of me and I cradled my arm against my body. My stomach rumbled. I needed a bathroom. Desperately. “I have to pee.”
Smith made an irritated noise but walked over to the far wall and swiped his hand over a spot that didn’t look any different than anywhere else to me. But sure enough, a door swung inwards, revealing a small bathroom with a toilet, sink and shower. “Don’t be long. But shower.” He wrinkled his nose. “You stink.”
He was right. I reeked of sweat and another acrid smell I couldn’t identify. There was soap in the shower stall and a towel on the rail. So I took advantage of the facilities then climbed into a warm, steamy shower, scrubbing myself with the soap until I felt a little more human. The water stung my face and the sore spots on my arms and stomach but it still felt better than anything else I’d felt all day.
I stayed under the water as long as I dared then dried off. The room held nothing I could see that offered any chance of escape: there was an exhaust fan that an anorexic baby might fit through and no windows. Apart from toilet paper, the soap and a tube of toothpaste, the room was as bare as the bedroom.
I squirted toothpaste onto my finger and scrubbed it over my teeth several times until they felt clean. I swished water, gargled and spit. The back of my throat had stopped tasting of soup and the sour aftertaste of bile. Then I picked the hospital gown up from where I’d dropped it on the floor. It was splashed in a few spots, it smelled and it was a bit soggy from the steam but I wasn’t going back out there naked. I pulled it back on and then walked to the door and banged on it.
The door slid open. Smith pointed to the bed. Another paper gown lay on top of the blanket. “You should sleep,” he said.
The idea was tempting and I didn’t hesitate to switch gowns as soon as he’d left the room. They’d left another bottle of Gatorade on the floor by the bed. I was still thirsty but reluctant to drink too much when I didn’t know if I could access the bathroom.
Instead I prowled round the room, trying to figure out what made the outer door open. The bathroom one—to my r
elief after several long minutes of futilely waving my hand at the wall at approximately the spot I thought Smith had—opened at my command but the outer door remained shut no matter what I did. I figured the bathroom door had to be motion sensitive and the outer one worked some other way. Some sort of recognition system. And I wasn’t recognized.
Defeated, I sat on the bed then lay back as fatigue washed over me. I tried to sleep but my mind kept circling endlessly. How was I going to get out of this? Where was Bug? Where was Dan? The police? The FBI? And why the hell were they taking my blood. My thoughts circled and swooped but I had no good answers to any of my questions. Only fear.
Gradually I realized the lights in the room had gone off, leaving me in darkness. Without sight, I felt disoriented, vulnerable. All alone. I huddled under my blanket and tried not to let the fear take over. But it did. Sweeping over me in waves of terror. I was going to die here. No one would find me. No rescue was headed my way. Tate would hurt me then kill me. I had no illusions there would be any merciful death offered.
I fought the fear with something I hadn’t done in a long time. Not since I’d lost my family. Lying in the darkness, I prayed. To anyone or anything that would hear me. Hoping against hope, someone would answer. Prayed like a child, repeating any snatch of hymn or bible reading I could remember, begging for rescue. Until eventually, as the room remained dark and no one answered me, I knew Tate had been right. There was no point hoping.
***
“How are you today?” Tate appeared as the door slid back for the second time the next morning.
The first time had been Smith bearing a huge breakfast which I had devoured before he’d given me yet another shot. I hadn’t been able to see the symbol on the vial this time but the more I thought about it, the more I thought the one I’d seen looked like the same company that made the vamp and were vaccines. But that made no sense . . . why would Smith be giving me more vaccine?
“I’ve felt better,” I said, skirting the line between submission and defiance. Somewhere in the long night that had just passed, I’d decided that survival was up to me. I couldn’t rely on hoping for rescue, so I had to watch and wait, bide my time then take a chance when I could.
Which meant surviving Tate. I had the feeling surviving Tate meant keeping him interested. If I bored him, I’d be discarded like a broken toy. If I annoyed him he’d break me himself. So I had to walk a very thin line somewhere in between the two.
Tate studied me. I could feel the path of his gaze as he took in my battered looking face—which had come up in a brilliant shiner overnight—and my other bumps and bruises. “Rio shouldn’t have hit you.”
“I did try to stab him.”
He laughed. “He shouldn’t have been so careless. He knows better than to let a weapon get within range of a . . .” he paused, as if searching for a diplomatic term, “. . . guest.”
“Is that what I am?”
“It is a somewhat fluid term. But you don’t want to be a prisoner. Prisoners receive less friendly treatment.”
Hell, no. If my treatment had been what he considered to be friendly then no, I definitely didn’t want to be a prisoner.
“So, as my guest, if you would be as good as to come with me?”
Reluctantly I walked across the room, adjusting the gown so it covered as much of me as possible. It had mostly survived my restless night but it was somewhat crumpled and torn in a couple of places and I was horribly aware of just how flimsy it was. Tate had torn normal clothes in seconds. If things turned ugly, how long would it take for him to dispatch a paper gown?
I followed Tate down the corridor in the opposite direction to the previous day. Rio and Kyra had been waiting outside my room. They trailed along behind us. Rio had greeted me with a smile that hinted at all sorts of unpleasant things he might do to me if Tate hadn’t been there. I did my best to ignore him and the crawling sensation his expression caused.
I counted steps again, reaching nearly five hundred before Tate finally paused and opened yet another of the invisible doors. This time the room we entered was an office, dominated by a huge oak desk marooned in the center of the carpet and a bank of monitors on the rear wall.
The monitors were currently dark. I don’t know why but the rows of blank screens were disquieting.
Tate seated himself behind the desk. Kyra motioned me into one of the black leather chairs arrayed before it. She and Rio took up position behind me, their reflections gray ghosts in the monitors behind Tate.
“I thought we should have a discussion,” Tate said, leaning back with his hands behind his neck. “About the behavior expected of guests.”
I didn’t like the slight stress on behavior but I kept my face neutral. “Yes?”
“I like my guests to be cooperative.”
I shifted uneasily. “Define cooperative.”
“Not trying to stab my staff would be one thing.”
Rio’s reflection frowned. I shrugged, trying not to feel satisfied. “I can do that.” Next time I’d go for the gun. I had more chance with a gun anyway. I had no problems breaking any promises I made to a loony like Tate.
“There are rewards for cooperation.”
“Like, you’ll let me go?”
Tate’s smile was slow. “Let’s start small. I’m sure you’d like something else to wear?”
Clothes. I nodded. Yes. Those were high on my list. The gown didn’t make me feel protected at all, even though it was better than being naked.
“Then we can start with those.”
“And what do I have to do to deserve these rewards?”
“Do as you’re told. No foolish struggling. No heroics.”
Maybe I was wrong about Tate. Maybe he did like being bored. Or maybe it was just that he didn’t like anyone challenging his authority.
“And if I don’t?”
“Ah. That.” Tate leaned forward, hit a button on the console in front of him. “Let’s just say I believe in providing incentives not to misbehave.”
As I watched, the bank of monitors sprang to life behind him. It took me a moment to recognize what I was seeing. The picture was a little grainy and the room it showed wasn’t brightly lit. I saw my aunt tied on a bed, wearing the same sort of gown as me. She was very still and her eyes were closed. Drugged? Or dead? I couldn’t tell whether or not she was breathing. My heart leapt into my throat. “Aunt Bug!” I stood and stepped forward, as though I could leap straight over the desk and through the monitors to her side
Kyra pressed me back down into the chair. “Sit, Pretty.”
I strained against her but then realized this was probably the sort of thing Tate was talking about when he mentioned cooperation and froze in place. I concentrated on trying to make out more details in the image of Bug. “Where is she? Is she okay?”
Tate shook his head. “You don’t need to know that. Not yet. What you need to do is understand. Are you listening?”
I forced myself to look away from the monitor, to pay attention to him. Adrenalin surged. Bug. Alive. Now I really had something to fight for. “I’m listening.”
“Cooperation will bring rewards. Rebellion, however, has consequences. Your Aunt will pay the price.” He tapped something else on the keyboard and the picture panned back so I could see the whole room. There was a table like the one Smith had strapped me too. And next to it, a tray of large, ugly-looking knives.
Spots danced in front of my eyes and I stuck my head between my knees, not caring what Tate or anyone else thought. Bug. They’d hurt Bug. The only remaining rational part of my mind noted that if they were holding her over my head as a threat, she was definitely still alive and they hadn’t shown me a recording. Maybe. “How do I know she’s alive?”
Tate hit speaker on his phone. “Get me Doctor Smith.”
There was a brief spurt of music—something chilly and classical sounding—then. . . . "Smith here.”
“Ms. Keenan wishes to know if her aunt is alive. Show her.” The line
went dead.
A few moments later, Smith appeared on the monitor. He leaned over Bug. I wanted to scream at him to get away from her but I bit my lip and stayed silent.
Smith did something blocked from the camera’s view by his back then stepped back. Bug’s head turned on the pillow, moving slowly as if she were in pain. Her eyes stayed closed. Relief and concern warred in me. My hand reached toward her.
Abruptly the monitor went dead.
“So you see. She is alive. Whether she stays that way, and how she is treated, will be up to you.”
I opened my mouth and he held up a hand. “If you annoy me or resist me, then your aunt will suffer. Believe me that the good doctor knows plenty of ways to inflict pain. As do my friends here,” he nodded at Kyra and Rio. “And we have other employees who are even less civilized. Do you understand?”
I wrapped my hands around the arms of the chair, digging my fingers into the fabric in an effort to maintain control. “Yes. May I ask a question?”
Tate nodded. “Go on.”
“You obviously have more in mind for me than just killing me. I’d be dead now if that was all you wanted.”
“Is that a question?”
I didn’t know where my courage was coming from but I literally had nothing to lose. There were only three possible outcomes to this situation. Both Bug and I would both die here, or one of us would or we’d both survive. I wanted to slant those odds in Bug’s favor. “It’s not exactly a question. More a request.”
He arched an eyebrow, looking amused. Except for his eyes. They stayed blank and empty. “You think you’re in a position to request a favor from me?”
“I think I’ve earned that much. After all, you’ve taken a lot from me already.”
“True.”
I held my breath as he pressed his hands together and stared at me. “All right, make your request. But be aware, I may choose not to grant it. And, if I choose not to do so, there may be consequences for asking.” As if to emphasize his point, the monitor flared back into life with a close-up of Bug’s face, looking old and drawn.