Then think clearly before acting wisely. You must reach her, and soon. During the slender remainder of the night, the pull of his almost-fledgling’s Blood had not altered, the vehicle carrying her presumably flying in a straight line. Jonathan eased his fingers from the aspen’s bark, barely noticing the marks—not splintered but compressed, so the tree might eventually heal from insult.
It had not been mercy or conscious restraint, though some part of him was aware she might care for the trees’ beauty. Absent-mindedness alone had kept him from doing greater damage.
Half-familiar mountains crowded his current shelter, stone thrusting itself skyward. Had he ever wandered over these slopes?
It did not matter. He could still move at some speed without mistform, and would have to be careful of deviating from the path. Of course, as the kidnappers neared their goal—whateverthatwas—they might turn one direction or another. He did not know enough of the fuel capacity for the… that what?
The word for the craft now lingered at the tip of his tongue, stubbornly refusing to coalesce. He could not dig it free, and rescuing the phone from his pocket did not help, for its screenremained stubbornly ‘locked’, asking for a numeric code he had no idea of.
There were limits even unto magic, of course. The item was reduced to splinters quickly, with a convulsive movement of his fist, and he tossed it away with a sudden savage twitch.
Old ways are best. Follow the line to your prey, and if all else fails wait for dusk. Once the sun falls she will wake, and when she does the call will resume.
Yet if it did not…
Jonathan did not care to think upon that prospect. He studied the rising, broken ground before him, hopped over the streamlet, and vanished into the thickening forest.
CHAPTER 23
At first shewas only aware of funny little flickers below her skin, little mice feet pitter-pattering. Her eyes burned, barely able to blink aside a heavy crust; her teeth throbbed with horrible sensitivity, sharp edges pressing lightly against chapped lips and swollen tongue. Every muscle felt savagely overstretched. Even her bones ached, a feeling she vaguely remembered from being human.
A child might call it growing pains; a middle-aged woman would know it was mortality chewing at her bones.
After a few attempts at orientation, Simone discovered herself attached to a vertical metal surface by tight restraints made of some kind of flexible woven material which burned relentlessly wherever it touched bare flesh. Ankles, above and below the knee, hips, a band over her ribs scarcely allowing enough room to take a middling breath, shoulders pressed hard to the wall by a strap passing just under her armpits and mashing her tits unmercifully as a bonus, a choker snugged to her throat, another ribbon cutting into her throbbing forehead.
Her arms were spread wide, jacket- and shirtsleeves cut away, and the burning from the strap passing over her bicepswas awful. Even worse was the wrapping on her wrists and hands; blisters swelled there, the slightest twitch sending hard zings of pain all the way up to her shoulders as they popped.
The light was a fluorescent glare from white industrial fixtures; the entire giant room reeked of disinfectant, pain, and a zoolike undertone she might be imagining since her nose was so stuffed. Stainless steel tables, likewise surgically gleaming counters and cabinets, strange shapes that had to be machines of some kind, and a virtual jungle of glass beakers, tubes, test tubes in racks, rolling cabinets, wire cages, and other weird shit turned the entire space into a cross between a veterinary clinic and a mad scientist’s laboratory.
Fully stocked, too. A collection of smeared shapes hurried back and forth, most in bright white lab coats, some with clipboards and serious expressions, more with tablets they frowned at and thrust before each other with simulated enthusiasm.
People. Human beings. Okay.
It took Simone some while, peering from under heavy, itching eyelids, to realize many occupants of this strange anthill were doing not very much at all despite their frantic imitation of busywork, and every blessed one reeked of fear and tension. A giant windowed observation deck loomed over the room, and the shape pacing back and forth behind the glass, stopping to glare down every once in a while, was a blurred but distinctly recognizable Elton Huske.
Fuckuva fishbowl you’ve got here, buddy. Her senses were muffled, her vision full of strange amorphous blobs intruding as she struggled to focus, and her ears felt stuffed with cotton. It was probably a blessing; vamp-sharp senses, when they came back, would make the bright light and nasty smells even worse.
Assuming she could heal from this. How far did her infected body’s ability to erase damage go?
Looks like we’re gonna find out.
A rhythmic but unmusical beeping and booping came from a vertical panel hung to Simone’s left, just within her peripheral vision. Marching across its top third were lines that looked a lot like a heartbeat and… was that brainwaves? Along with respiration and maybe blood pressure, yeah. Her own vital signs, somehow communicated through the metal slab or straps?
What the fuck is going on?But she knew—she was a lab rat, and these people were supposed to figure out how to extract whatever Huske wanted to sell. The tiny trickle of scent slipping into her snot-packed nose screamed of barely controlled anxiety; so did the buzz-thump of nervous human heartbeats.
Presumably everyone in here knew what vamps could do, and was justifiably a bit jumpy. Hard not to believe in the demimonde with a fang-bearing specimen strapped down right in front of you. She was, as the kids used to say, the Real Deal.
Oh, God, I’m already sounding like an old lady. Truth in advertising, she supposed.
What had they done while she was out? She hurt, sure, but she didn’t feel… well, there was no evidence of outright assault, to put it one way. And she didn’t smell blood—human,orvamp.
Yet the thirst was back, scratching at her throat. At least she wasn’t poisoned now—had she slept it off, like a college hangover? What would happen if they jabbed her again?
They didn’t leave you in the sunshine, at least. Think, Simone. Stop being scared and use that brain that got you out of that goddamn church basement.
But she wasterrified, and the last few days hadn’t helped. Whiplash was cumulative, whether physical or emotional. As soon as she escaped one trap another closed on her, and wasn’t that the way it had always been?
Fresh scurrying warned of something new afoot. The big glass observation deck had gone dark, and a knot of lab-coatedshapes crowded at a featureless steel door across the vast space, clearly visible from her vantage point. A luminous dial overhead said something was descending, and she had an idea of what.