And they reminded him, in some foggy way, of a pair of lovely wide forest-eyes, a fall of cedarbark hair.Not this way,she had choked, pleading without hope of mercy.Not like this.
A momentary flexing of his will, a signal sent along branching galvano-electric paths. Heavy thunks and buzzes sounded, wire-woven doors swinging open, glass hatches raising, soft puffs as pneumatics engaged. Not only that, but the doors he had passed along the way opened as well, their controls overridden.
The wanderer’s scent belled forth, spreading from the greenish fog in a haze of chemical communication.Go, it said.Leave.Now.
A scurrying, a scrabbling, a fresh clamor. Even those who had been maimed or mutilated, even those upon the verge of expiring from fatal despair gained a sudden burst of energy, knowing something far older and more terrifying than the mortals had passed by, was issuing a command.
The wanderer floated. Shapes slithered, jogged, dragged, fluttered, hopped along the aisles, a river of fur and teeth, feathers and scales, all seeking egress. There were even four mangled simian forms, screeching and showing their fangs as they moved in a tight pack; a single rail-thin wolf, its fur matted and singed with caustic burns, stopped near the entrance to thischambre des horreursand looked back over its scorchedshoulder, showing its own canines. In the flat goldgreen glare of its gaze was no gratitude, nor any ruth.
It merely wished to make certain of unpursuit, or perhaps it was swearing vengeance.
Do not worry, the wanderer thought, a moment of sudden clarity amid the hail of fractures spreading through the rest of his consciousness.What they have done shall be avenged.
The wolf lifted its tail and rejoined the flow of cringing, creeping creatures given a new lease upon life. The wanderer sent out one last pulse, making certain every cage was empty and every door upon this level open, the way to the outside clearly marked, then returned to his own hunt.
His prize remained, waiting in this warren. All else he found would be crushed.
Somewhere above, an irritating noise began to blare. An alarm of some kind, triggered by his actions or another event.
Simone. Mistform thinned, and the wanderer had indeed forgotten his own newly acquired name.
No matter. He did not need it.
CHAPTER 25
For all themoney clearly spent on this place, there were some piss-poor design choices. Like the fact that the slab Simone was strapped to was fixed in place, so the blond kid who had turned the screaming vital-signs machine off had to teeter on a hastily fetched metal stepstool while attempting to shove a needle into the hollow of her right elbow.
The young man didn’t seem phlebotomy-trained despite his nicely pressed lab coat. Several more of his brethren had slipped out through that automatic door, but the escapes had halted when Elton Huske turned around to glare at his underlings. Half froze in place, rabbits under a hawk’s drifting shadow, and the others redoubled their frantic though not very productive activity.
It was bleakly funny—the moment their boss swung back to bark at the kid on the stepstool, at least two more employees scurried for the door. The crowd was noticeably thinner now.
“Should’ve done it while I was sleeping,” Simone said, and watched Huske’s fury rise again. “That’s what rich boys like, right? Date rape drugs.”
A vein in the billionaire’s forehead was throbbing; if he hadn’t had a blood pressure problem before tonight, he certainly did now. It was depressingly easy to enrage this kind of a noxious asshole, and while he was boiling he didn’t notice the slow, subtle twisting of her left arm.
Which hurt like hell, bright scarves of agony twisting up from her palm, her raw-hamburger wrist now weeping pink-tinged trickles as the blisters popped, re-formed, and were torn again. Her arm on that side was similarly slick, rubbing against the metallic weave.
Silver. Gotta be.What Simone was about to do would hurt even more than the blisters, than ripping herself free of handcuffs.
She didn’t care.
The blond youth dug at her inner elbow again, the needle prodding but unable to pierce. Vamp skin was tougher than its poreless perfection seemed and this wasn’t a tranq dart going at speed; plus the kid looked definitely greenish and the thin trickle of scent from him, working its way into Simone’s clogged but sensitive nose, reeked of juicy, copper-colored fear.
There really was no point in being conciliatory. Especially once it occurred to her that Huske might not be able to load her up with that awful poison again, since tainting the blood he was planning on shooting into his own veins was a bad idea.
Of course, he could get angry enough to try it, which was a risk she was ready to run. Especially since the fluid wrung out of the popped blisters was so very slick, and the strap material thatwasn’tsilver was saturated. Felt like nylon, not a lot of stretch… but maybe, just maybe enough.
“Sir?” The brunette near the cart had a lovely, clear fluting alto. “There are protocols. Maybe we should?—”
“You’refired!” Huske barely turned his head to yell. Spittle flew in a fine spray, and that regularly twitching vein had turnednearly purple. He lunged for the cart, scooping up the largest scalpel, and Simone had to shove down a thick, braying laugh.
It was goddamn liberating to have absolutely nothing left. Her mortal life, her RV, her finder, her career as a vampire hunter, pretty much all of her dignity—all gone, lost in a rising tide of dry scratching thirst. The only wonder was that she’d played by the rules so long, doing everything expected of a reasonably good girl, up to and including simply accepting a pittance for alimony because digging in and fighting your ex-husband made you a bitchy old dried-up harridan.
Oh, she’d tried, even when middle age had arrived with perspective and very few fucks left to give. But now she was faced with the knowledge that it had always been a lost battle.
A good girl didn’t drag the vamp who had spent several nights biting and assaulting her into a weak bar of sunlight coming through a filthy daylight basement window, or feel a savage sense ofserves you rightwhen the thing began to writhe and bubble-burn, streaks of dust racing through its tissues. A good girl didn’t at heartlikeripping rabid young vamps into ribbons with her bare hands; a good girl wouldn’t deep-downenjoygetting fucked by a cowboy-drawling, nameless tramp of a vampire.
Or maybe the very concept ofgood girlwas complete fuckery in and of itself. At the moment Simone didn’t care, because Huske jabbed at her with the scalpel, roaring inarticulately, and she suspected the blade was silvered by the way it caught in the strap over her left thigh with a sweet starburst of further pain. The blond kid on the stepstool let out a blurt ending in “—lyfuck!” as he toppled, and everything slowed down.