One hard straining push, all her remaining, waning strength concentrated in a single burst. Her shoulder popped hard, dislocating with a red flare lost in the general misery, and shebarely felt her own skin peeling free as she forced joints in ways they were not intended for, degloving almost her entire arm.
A coyote would gnaw its own paw off to escape a trap; snakes burst and slid out of their hides all the time. The animals were onto something, and what was a divorce really but a painful shedding of the scales over a woman’s eyes?
One thing wasn’t left behind in the tight, unforgiving straps, though.
Her claws. She swiped first at the band over her throat, nylon and thin strands of metal parting like water, and if the triangular razor edges at her fingertips also slashed her own flesh Simone didn’t particularly care. Freeing her right arm was a flicker. She dragged the finger-knives down her ribs, blood bursting free; the sweet candysick scent shouting of pain and illness stroked the thirst’s dry-dollar spot at the back of her throat, reaching down and yanking at something old, something very nasty living in any woman who had made up her mind to fucking well survive.
It seemed almost leisurely to her, but vamp speed and human reflexes were two very different things. The straps over her torso parted, and the thick band over her hips was sawed through in less than a heartbeat.
Sure, the restraints alllookedgood, very aesthetic. But none of this guy’s shitactually worked, except for maybe the tranquilizer and that was questionable at best. Still, Simone was pretty sure that cocktail of bullshit had nearly killed her, and maybe if she hadn’t been sucking at old-vamp blood for a couple days the helicopter ride might have gone a lot worse.
Her temples throbbed, the band over her forehead slipping, and she managed to cut her legs free on the way down, a swift stripe of bright spangled sensation up her ribcage as the scalpel was torn from Huske’s trembling, sweating paw. Simone hit the ground, arms and legs not responding as they should for a long, taffy-stretching moment; the thought that maybe she’dexpended her final burst of energy on simply thrashing like a landed fish was bleakly funny as well.
All of this was so fuckingdismal. Even the floor, which was indifferently mopped for a place with so many pretensions to scientific or medical cleanliness. Simone realized she could see as much because her only slightly injured right hand was rubbing the crust from her eyes, and she blinked furiously as the first cries rose.
Human screams, accompanied by a general rush for that automatic door. And somewhere nearby a red light began flashing, an electronic warble pouring from porthole-shaped speakers.
A shattering metallic crash was the blond kid, knocked from his perch to land on the stainless-steel not-dessert cart. The brunette froze—at least, for a very brief span of time before the wheeled contraption, obeying the dictates of physics, hit her amidships and sent her ass-over-teakettle. The stepstool skidded sideways, its indifferently padded feet losing their grip on featureless metal, and headed for a slice of blank, smooth concrete wall.
Simone’s left leg pistoned out, a completely instinctive movement. Once more, her body knew what to do and she was just along for the ride; her boot kissed Elton Huske just between floating ribs and hip, sending him careening across the floor in loose tumbledoll fashion before he tangled with the still-moving cart. The maneuver produced a terrible cascade of bonesnapping sounds, audible over the hideous, continuous blatting.
Someone pulled the fire alarm,she realized. Which made some kind of strange sideways sense, even if she wasn’t surethis place would have adequate, OSHA-approved exit routes.Motherfucker didn’t even take my boots off.
Then again, Huske had to be really excited. A real live vampire after years of effort, strolling right into his rented ballroom; he probably had never, ever considered that she might be able to wriggle free of the trap. It really was a curse to get everything you wanted, Simone thought. Made you sloppy, slipshod.
All the money in the world couldn’t buy classorexperience.
Her wet, bleeding left palm smacked the floor. Simone found herself flickered up into a crouch, fangs out, a deep rumbling hiss rattling from her ribcage. Growling like any of the vamps she’d put down—had they felt like this, a wildfire inside their skull, nothing but red glow and smoke?
No wonder they’d chased her.
Another instinct lifted her head, peering through strings of brown hair writhing like snake-coils. A quick hardhuffcleared her nose, then the smells poured in, wonderfully vivid. Even the foul odors were a blessing, because she was no longer tied down. Her eyes, tender and throbbing, blinked rapidly as she shifted, knees wide, crouching with turnout a ballerina might sell a soul for, a faint ripping lost in the hubbub as her jeans tore along the inseam.
The crowd at the automatic door, milling desperately, had hit a snag. It wasn’t just that both glass halves had frozen instead of whooshing neatly along their tracks; the bigger problem was a half-dozen men in tactical gear, rifles pointed up as they hammered through the press, trying to getin.
The elevator to the observation gallery dinged, its steel doors reluctantly spreading, and there was another clutch of big black-clad male figures. One wore sunglasses despite the hour, and every throat gleamed dully—blackened chainmail gorgets, all the fashion among vamp hunters lately. She’d seen instructionalvideos on a few forums, a real do-it-yourself project if a hunter had the time, available for a fee if not, and even thought of maybe getting one herself.
But in the end there was no point. She didn’t need body armor, fancy toys, crucifixes, rifles; she was what they fought.
Did they have a tranq gun laden with that poison shit?
Be careful, Simone.
Which was a laugh and a half; did she really want to live after all? Why else had she ripped her arm out of the restraints? It stung, rags of flesh left on saturated straps shredding into gleaming grit, the tiny particles falling with crystalline tinkles buried in the racket though clearly discernible to vamp hearing.
But the pain was retreating, akin to the remembered sensation of a deep sunburn as tissues plumped in fast-forward, rebuilding. She stretched the limb, shrugging the dislocated shoulderhard, a quick flick of bones pop-crackling back into place.
The hunters burst out of the elevator, clumsy-clunky humans shouting at each other over the din, and her fangs were so far extended she couldn’t speak if she wanted to. Because along with the scent of her own spilled-free blood, delicious and wicked, was a thinner though far more enticing note. Salt-hot, deadly sweet crimson, not the cold ersatz from the bags but pumped from living veins—not the taste-shifting gorge-delight from an old vamp either, but good and necessary. Her body knew what it needed, what it craved, and the screaming crowd packed against the far wall was no longer a collection of unique individuals.
Now the crush was simply a mass of bleating, milling, juicy prey.
Simone uncoiled, blurring through air gone tight, hard, and straining against her skin.
CHAPTER 26
The place was a poked anthill,seething. Multicolored lights flashed at intervals along the passageways, and the constant klaxon was a mild aural irritant as he followed a soft, almost elusive pull against every nerve and artery. Each time his heart squeezed the call intensified, leading him through the maze of concrete tunnels. Blundering along with a little less than the whispering speed, stopping and doubling back, he barely noted the changes when he burst into what were clearly the habitable places of this heap—a bedroom with black walls and a mirrored ceiling, a long low room with a strange tank full of iron-smelling water, its egg-shaped lid open and a rubber suit like a discarded skin hung upon a nearby, curlicued metal pole, two large functional kitchens with attached plastic-booth dining areas and a smaller, much more expensive dining room with a very large tinted window staring out onto the night, more bedrooms, one reeking of recent fumbling mortal lust with an acrid tinge of some chemical aphrodisiac under a flood of hastily applied cleaning agents. Other rooms held long tables and electrical equipment, screens crawling with static as the various interlocking fields of visible and not-so-visible flexed and fluxedin response to an Archon’s will. And yet more rooms dedicated to purposes he did not care to guess at or even consider, since none held what he wanted.
The most concerning spaces were those full of metal tables and vaguely insectile equipment, reeking of pain and death. More torture chambers with lifts connecting to the animal prison below, simmering with a reek of stinging disinfectant applied slapdash-fashion, unable to wash away the filth.