Poison Promise

by Jennifer Estep

  The injured vamp kept glaring at me, but he didn’t try to push past Silvio. He was too afraid of Benson to do that.

  I puckered my mouth and made a kissy noise at him.

  The vamp’s face turned as red as the blood dribbling down his wounded hand, but the second man grabbed his shoulder, spun him around, and marched him out of the lab, closing the door behind them.

  That left me alone with Benson and Silvio.

  “Well, then, let’s get started,” Benson said, a high, excited note in his nasal voice.

  Silvio went over to a wooden stand in the corner and plucked a long white coat off it. Benson held out his arms, and Silvio helped his boss into the jacket, just like he had the night Benson murdered Troy. Silvio even grabbed a stethoscope from the table and hung it around the vamp’s neck, like Benson was a real doctor, instead of just a sadistic bastard.

  When the vamp was properly attired, he reached into his shirt pocket, pulled out a pen and his pad, and started circling around me.

  Squeak-squeak-squeak. Scribble-scribble-scribble.

  Squeak-squeak-squeak. Scribble-scribble-scribble.

  He moved behind me, so I couldn’t see him, but the squealing of his sneakers on the floor mingled with the scratching of his pen on the paper.

  “You know, most people would be crying and pleading for their lives at this point,” Benson said.

  I didn’t respond.

  Suddenly, Benson leaned forward. He must have drunk some blood recently to amp up his speed, because I never even saw him move. One second, he was behind me. The next, his face was so close to mine that he could have reached out and kissed my cheek if he wanted to. Instead, he buried his nose in my grimy hair and sucked in a deep, audible breath.

  “Mmm . . . rage,” he murmured. “One of my favorite snacks.”

  Benson’s own scent filled my nostrils, the same alcohol-and-lemon stench that permeated the lab. I glared at him out of the corner of my eye. That was all I could do, given the cuffs and the fact that I still couldn’t quite grab on to my magic. Even if I could have reached it, my Ice and Stone powers were useless in this situation. Sure, I could harden my skin, but I’d still be stuck in the chair, and since my hands were tied down, I had no hope of using a pair of Ice picks to open the locks on the restraints.

  Right now, Benson could do anything he wanted to me—torture me any way he wanted to, for as long as he wanted to—and I was powerless to stop him.

  Completely, utterly, absolutely powerless.

  For once in my life, I couldn’t fight back, and that hurt me more than anything else.

  Benson bent down in front of me so that his face was level with mine. I met his gaze with a flat one of my own, even though I was mentally counting down the seconds to my own death. Because it would be all too easy for him to reach out, touch my cheek, and use his vampiric Air magic to drain my cold rage—and the rest of my emotions—from my body.

  I wasn’t particularly scared of dying. I’d been too close to the end too many times to worry about it much anymore. When it happened, it happened. But I’d always hoped that I’d at least go down fighting. Not like this. Not so trapped.

  Not so damn helpless.

  But instead of finishing me off, Benson gave me a pleased smile. “You know, Gin, I was rather disappointed when you showed up on the bridge and even more so when I realized that you’d managed to get your sister and her witness to safety after all.”

  I kept my face blank, even as my heart lifted at his words. His men hadn’t found Bria and Catalina. With any luck, they’d made it to Xavier, and the giant had driven them far, far away.

  “But then I realized that this small setback didn’t matter,” Benson continued. “Not really. After all, I can always find and kill them later. They won’t be able to hide for long. Not in Ashland, not from me.”

  That was all too true, and it was one of the many reasons that I needed to figure some way to get out of this chair. Or at least make sure that Benson was bleeding out before I took my last breath. Too bad I had no idea how to make either one of those things happen.

  “But then, when my men captured you, I realized what a unique opportunity I had been presented with,” he continued.

  “Oh, really?” I drawled. “And what would that be?”

  “To further my studies.”

  A chill slithered up my spine. “Studies? What studies?”

  Benson straightened back up and swept his hand out to the side. “My observations on human nature, life, and especially death.”

  For the first time, I realized that my chair was facing the wall in the front of the room—a wall made out of one-way glass.

  People sprawled on couches and pillows. Smoke spiraling up into the air. The ceiling fans spinning around and around. I could see into the drug den next door as clearly as if I were in the other room, although I couldn’t hear any noise coming from that area. This room, maybe both of them, must be soundproof.

  “Is that why you have all these people down here in your dungeon?” I asked. “So you can drug them up and experiment on them?”

  “Of course.” Benson beamed. “Like any good businessman, I have to keep on top of current market trends to meet customer demand. Have to keep growing, changing, and . . . innovating. I wouldn’t want my products to get stale. That’s when sales start to dip, and well, we just can’t have that. Not these days, when there’s such a nasty power struggle going on in Ashland.”

  I gave him another disgusted look. “You mean you have to keep coming up with new poisons to push on people to keep the cash rolling in.”

  He chuckled. “Ah, Gin. That’s where you’re wrong. I don’t push anything on anyone. The first hit is always free.”

  “Yeah,” I snarked. “It’s all the others they pay the price for.”

  He shrugged. It didn’t matter to him what his drugs did to people—only that he profited as much as he could from their pain and suffering.

  “Tell me, how many of those folks are on your newest recreational hit? What’s it called? Oh, yeah. Burn.”

  “Quite a few,” he said in a cheerful tone. “It’s been quite popular, more popular than I thought it would be, actually. I’ve made a tidy little sum on it, although not as much as I would have liked, since I’ve had to import it from out of town.”

  He gestured at the metal table. The glass vials with their cheery red, orange, and yellow powders reminded me of sugar sticks that kids might eat.

  “But I’m reverse-engineering the formula, and I’ve almost got it, except for one small component. It’s always more profitable to make products in-house, rather than contracting them out.”

  Benson kept staring at me, and I focused on him again. Maybe he thought that he could intimidate me with his steady gaze and faint smile. Please. If I got upset every time someone looked at me that way, I’d never get out of bed in the morning.

  “You are amazingly calm,” he said. “Your heartbeat has barely spiked this whole time, not even while you were attacking my man. It’s fascinating, really, considering the situation you’re in.”

  “And what situation would that be?”

  He grinned, showing me his fangs. “In my mansion. In my lab. At my mercy.”

  I matched his toothy smile with one of my own. “I imagine that you’re rather like me in that mercy isn’t exactly a popular word in your vocabulary.”

  His grin widened, and we fell into our silent staring contest again. Silvio stood off to my right, his hands clasped in front of his body, watching Benson and me watch each other, patiently waiting for his boss’s next order.

  “I find it interesting that you can be so very calm,” Benson said. “But your disposition is exactly what I’ve been looking for to conduct my latest experiment. It involves Burn. You’re going to help me test out a theory I have about it.”

  My stomach twisted at the casual way he said experiment, but I forced my gaze to stay on his. “Really? What’s that?”

  Excitement flare
d in Benson’s eyes, making them gleam an electric blue behind his glasses. “Burn is one of the most potent drugs I’ve ever come across. It gives everyone an incredible high—humans, vampires, giants, dwarves. But it seems to affect elementals the most, and the stronger they are, the harder and faster Burn works on them.”

  That was more or less what Bria and Xavier had told me the night Troy was murdered.

  “Because elementals have such an unusual reaction to Burn, it’s easier to hook them on it, and they crave it more than any drug I’ve ever seen before,” Benson said. “I’ve made more money selling Burn than I have with any other product I’ve ever produced, including oxy and meth. We’re talking millions, Gin. And that’s just in the few months that it’s been available.”

  “So that’s why you want to reverse-engineer it,” I said. “You want to cut out your supplier and make it yourself so you don’t have to share any of the profits.”

  “That’s part of it,” he admitted. “But this drug? It’s going to help me finally take my rightful place in this town.”

  “And what would that be?”

  He scoffed. “Pushing pills to bums, hookers, and gangbangers in Southtown is one thing. But I want to move up to a higher level of clientele. Northtown is where the real money is. Why, just think how much cash I can make getting all those rich Northtown elementals hooked on Burn. I’ll make more money in six months than I would in ten years with my normal products in Southtown. Mab kept me locked away down here for years. Well, now that she’s gone, I plan to take what I’ve wanted all along.”

  “Her spot as the head of the Ashland underworld.” I didn’t have any problem sketching in the outlines of his dream.

  He shrugged again. “It’s just good business. I’m tired of being everyone’s middleman, the dirty little secret they don’t want anyone to know about. I learned a long time ago that you’re either on top or you’re nothing.”

  Well, I couldn’t argue with that, since I was currently shackled to a chair.

  “Although it’s not just power that I’m after,” Benson continued. “It’s the elementals’ reaction to Burn that truly fascinates me. Like I said, there’s one small component that I’m missing from the formula, and I think it’s the key to how the drug affects elementals.”

  “So how I am going to help you with your little theory?” I sniped.

  “I’ve tested it on all sorts of elementals. Air, Fire, Ice, and Stone. But I haven’t had the opportunity to test it on someone who is gifted in more than one element, like you’re rumored to be, Gin.”

  Benson kept his gaze locked on my face, gauging my reaction to his words and the fact that he wanted to make me his own human guinea pig. A cold tendril of fear curled up in the bottom of my stomach. My face stayed frozen, but my heart gave me away.

  Beep-beep-beep. Beep-beep-beep.

  The machine monitoring my pulse picked up speed as my heart thumped in time to my growing worry.

  Benson cocked his head to the side. His eyes were still on my face, but once again, I got the sense that he wasn’t looking at me so much as he was peering inside me. The faintest sensation swept over my body, one of invisible sandpaper sliding across my skin. I knew what it really was: the phantom teeth of Benson’s Air magic, ready to tear into my body and rip out my emotions for him to feast on one terrified breath at a time.

  It disgusted me.

  Not too long ago, a vampire named Randall Dekes had bitten me, sinking his fangs into my body over and over again. That had been a brutal, vicious attack, but at least it had been head-on. Benson’s magic was far more sinister than that. The sort of sneak attack you wouldn’t even realize had started until he’d sucked away half your soul and was licking his chops in anticipation of dining on the rest.

  Beep-beep-beep. Beep-beep-beep.

  My heart continued to pick up speed, but instead of giving into my fear, anger, and disgust, I forced myself to take slow, deep breaths and remain calm. No way was I giving Benson any more ammunition in his deranged game of doctor. I wondered how many other people he’d done this to. How many people he’d shackled to this chair. How many of their emotions he’d snacked on while conducting his twisted experiments. I made a silent promise to myself that I was going to be the last one, that I was going to find some way to end him—even if it killed me.

  Benson’s lips puckered, his eyes focused, and the horrid feeling of that invisible sandpaper sliding across my skin vanished. Apparently, I’d annoyed him by not giving into my fear. Well, too damn bad.

  “Silvio,” he said. “Please retrieve the latest sample for me.”

  Silvio walked out of my line of sight. The door on one of the refrigerators snicked open, and I heard him rustling around inside. A few seconds later, he came back over to his boss and held out a plastic bag.

  A single pill lay inside.

  Benson took the bag from him, opened it, and carefully drew out the drug. “I just got this in this morning. It’s a new and improved formula that my supplier came up with. One that is supposedly ten times more potent than what my men have been distributing.”

  He held it up between his fingers so that I could look at it.

  Unlike the red ones that I’d seen before, this pill was a vivid green, although it still featured the same crown-and-flame rune as the others. It looked so innocent, almost like a breath mint he was about to pop into his mouth, though it was anything but. I’d seen Benson’s drug den, and I had no doubt that taking even just that one small pill would fuck me up in the worst way possible.

  “Drugs have always fascinated me,” Benson said, staring at the pill, a dreamy expression on his pasty face. “No, that’s not quite right. People’s reactions to drugs have always fascinated me. You can give a dozen people the same drug, the exact same chemical formula in the exact same dosage, and you will most likely get a dozen different reactions. Oh, the majority of them will be more or less the same, but there are always one or two that surprise you.”

  He waited, as if he expected me to chime in. When I didn’t, he continued with his musings.

  “Some people have violent allergic reactions, of course, which cut short any sort of pleasure they might experience from the drug,” he went on. “But what’s most interesting to me are the people who are so controlled, so buttoned-up, so tightly wound. The ones who have such a clamp on their emotions and never seem to show what they are really thinking or feeling. Drugs always seem to impact them the most—and in the most interesting ways.”

  He tilted his head to the side again. “I’m most curious to know what losing control would do to you, Gin.”

  I still didn’t respond, but apparently, Benson was tired of chatting. Before I could try to move, before I could bite his hand, before I could do anything, he leaned forward, pried open my mouth, and shoved the pill inside.

  I tried to spit it out, but he clamped his hand over my nose and mouth, cutting off my air. I could see the silent promise in his eyes. Take the pill, or he’d suffocate me right here, right now, in this chair, his experiment be damned.

  Die now, or hope that I could survive what trip Burn might take me on.

  No choice, really.

  I swallowed the drug.

  20

  The pill had started to dissolve the second it hit my tongue, and my weak struggles with Benson had only hastened the absorption process. He removed his hand from my nose and mouth, and I barely had time to suck down a breath before Burn was in my system.

  Bria and Xavier had warned me about the drug’s powerful effects, but it was quite another thing to experience them firsthand. The rest of the limp, languid fog from the sedative Silvio had given me immediately vanished. A foul, bitter, almost smoky taste filled my mouth, and I could almost feel the pill sliding down my throat, like I’d swallowed a glowing ember, one that grew hotter and hotter the farther it dropped down my throat.

  Then it hit my stomach, and the world erupted into flames.

  The fire exploded low in my belly, do
zens of hot, hungry little tendrils crawling outward from the epicenter like spiders scurrying through my insides, dragging burning threads of silk along behind them and weaving together a tight, inescapable web of flaming destruction.

  I stared down at my stomach, almost expecting the spiders to come surging up out of my belly button and rip through the thin fabric of the hospital gown, stringing their stinging silk over the outside of my body as well as the inside. Sweat streamed down my forehead, the salt of it irritating my eyes, but that pain was small compared with what the drug was doing to me.

  Burning, burning me alive, from the inside out.

  I bucked and heaved and thrashed in the chair, so hard that the restraints bruised my neck, wrists, and ankles, but I couldn’t break free of the cuffs. Even if I could have, I still couldn’t have escaped the drug and what it was doing to me. All too soon, I had exhausted what little strength I had, and I sagged against the chair, gasping for air, even though every breath I took only seemed to add more fuel to the fire roaring through my veins.

  While I’d been thrashing around, Benson had pulled a chair right up beside mine, his pen and pad in hand, observing my pitiful struggles. He leaned forward, his excited breath brushing against my face, as hot and eager as the drug coursing through my system.

  Benson’s nostrils quivered as he sniffed my emotions again. “Finally,” he murmured. “Fear.”

  He looked at the watch on his wrist, scrawled something on his pad, and then raised his eyes to mine again. “Tell me, Gin,” he cooed. “We’re five minutes into our experiment. What does it feel like? All of those sweet, sweet chemicals pumping through your body. Shooting straight into your heart, circling through your brain, and cycling back out again. What do they feel like, interacting with your own magic, your own elemental power? Hmm?”

  “It . . . burns . . .” That was all I could rasp out.

  I don’t know how long I sagged in the chair, just waiting and waiting for the horrible burning sensation to leave my body. But instead of lessening, it only intensified, and then—suddenly—from one blink to the next—