Great.
The elevator opened and Elton Huske stepped out—bloodshot and blinking, though he’d changed into a fresh set of ironed jeans and T-shirt, his fleece vest now dark green instead of blue. His jowls were tight with anger, his hair aggressively mussed under a payload of what had to be very expensive gel. Instead of Birkenstocks, there were brand new sneakers, probably custom, squeaking in a different register than the sandals had. The billionaire stalked through the flutter of lab coats, his gaze fixed past them.
Nailed, in fact, to her own sorry self strapped in T-pose like the most fucked-up crucifix imaginable.
The only surprise was Barry beside him, rumpled, pale, and bobbing alongside in imitation of an agitated stork, mouth moving at a mile a minute. Simone strained through the murk of overlapping voices; her arms and legs twitched, and the beep-boops changed intensity.
“—look, man, just let me talk to her. You don’t have to do all this.” Barry Jessup, bless his mercenary little heart, sounded downright upset.
“Shut the fuck up,” Huske hissed, his already-thin mouth now nearly lipless with tension. He probably never showed this narrow-eyed glare in board meetings or breathlessly adulatory journalistic interviews; no, Simone thought, this expression was saved for anyone unfortunate enough to be labeled ‘the help’.
A rolling rattle alerted her to one of the lab-coated humans—a willowy brunette with a set expression, her gaze refusing to settle on a tied-up vampire—pushing a shining metal contraption, coming to rest just at Simone’s right. It looked like a goddamn dessert cart, but its stainless steel top shelf held a tray of polished implements instead of sweet treats.
Nothing nice about the offerings here, no sirree bob. Several large scalpels arranged by size, a rack of big syringes with elephant-sized needles… was that a bone saw? Clamps, a kidney-shaped dish with smaller scalpels, surgical scissors—Simone didn’t want to think about what was in the drawers underneath.
Especially since the top also held a shining metal blowtorch, the type used for creme brûlée, resting on its own pad of bleached, presumably sterile paper.
A gangly blond kid behind the woman was pushing a wheeled pole, a complicated contraption festooned with tubing and hanging blobs Simone recognized.
Blood bags. Needles topped the tubes, oversized as the huge syringes, and there were other bags of yellow plasma. She couldn’t smell the red stuff in the closed sacks, but knowing it was there… God, that was almost as bad.
She was even thirstier, now.
“This isn’t what I signed up for,” Barry persisted, his hands flapping like fish just dragged from a pond. “You said you were just going to make the offer. You could’ve let her think about it, you could’ve?—”
Simone saw the twitch of Huske’s left arm, a motion stopped just in time. Looked like the billionaire had a teensy anger management problem, no doubt kept under careful control when there were reporters or fellow investors around. He reminded her of Curt, in fact—all smiles and schmooze around clients and corporate visitors, passive-aggressive to anyunderling who didn’t seem likely to ever fight back, flat-out aggressive to wait staff or retail workers.
This guy seemed like her ex-husband dialed up to eleven, and the only surprise was that even this variety of cowardly, bullying asshole had the courage to get close to a vamp. Then again, Simone was apparently a failure at being a finely tuned killing machine; all her experimentation and laborious logical testing of boundaries clearly hadn’t been the right kind of survival strategy.
Maybe she should have stayed with John, learned a thing or two. He was no doubt chasing some other girl vamp now, calling herlemananddarlin’.
You can’t honestly be mad about that, can you?
“If you don’t shut up I’ll have Security drop you in the middle of the mountains. With no pants.” Huske continued striding along, and the dismissiveness in the threat was almost as bad as that little twitch. Something in his tone said he might have done it before, and of course with enough money you could make people disappear, couldn’t you? A helicopter ride into the boondocks of Colorado could even be called comparatively cheap.
Her neck ached, her forehead burned. Simone coughed, wishing she could move—if she developed a sudden itch, being strapped down like this would quickly become unbearable.
What do you mean, quickly? It already is.
But they’d noticed the monster was awake. A cringing wash of terror rolled through the scent of massed humans, so intense it filtered through her blocked nose and scratched against the thirst,hard. The brunette next to the cart flinched; the blond kid swallowed visibly, his grip on the pole white-knuckle and the entire apparatus swaying, blood and plasma bags swinging grapes on a shaken vine. Several of the lab-coated crowd stoppedor backed away, staring wide-eyed at the lab rat who had just made a noise.
“Elton Huske,” Simone said, loud and clear, scraping each word from the bottom of her lungs. “Typical. When you can’t buy your dates you drug ’em, right?”
It got his attention off Barry, at least. And Simone had no idea why she was distracting Huske from carrying out his threat, when all things considered her treacherous redheaded finder had been the one to talk her into this ambush.
That, and your own greed. Be fair.
She didn’t want to be fair. The only thing she wanted to do was tear these restraints off, leap on the nearest throb-thumping human pulse, and sink her aching, overly sensitive fangs deep. The first hot gush would be heavenly, and she might not be able to stop no matter how much John insisted on her being a super-special lemon-scented fledgling.
Bet he says that to all the girls. It was hard to concentrate with the thirst rough-pulsing in her throat, and the machine recording her vital signs was emitting all kinds of interesting noises now.
The billionaire stopped in his tracks, still staring at her. His pupils were dilated, and through the reek of fear as well as the crap in her nose Simone caught a high, sawing metallic edge—some kind of drug, a tranquilizer if her vamp instinct was right.
Dried sweat crackled on her skin. She tried to blink away the crust on her swollen, tender eyes; the machine’s noises were gettingfucking irritating. Just as she thought so it began to whine, static crawling through the displays.
Huske’s Adam’s-apple leapt up, dropped, and his grin held no amusement whatsoever. “Glad to see you’re awake!” he crowed, and a rustle ran through the lab coats. A portly man on the other side of the room backed up, triggering an automaticdoor into whooshing patiently aside; he vanished through, probably relieved as hell to have got while the getting was good.
Simone could second that emotion. Her gaze roved, taking in the gigantic room’s dimensions, and she wished again the goddamn machine would stop its cawing and beeping.