Her voice trailed off and she covered her face with her hands. He could tell she was sobbing, because each shaking movement of her shoulders fractured another piece off the edges of his heart. He needed to hold her, and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it. The electric charge on the bars would kill a human with any prolonged contact. It had almost knocked him out, and he had an Atlantean warrior’s strength and endurance. He tried to find his calm center again, to analyze their options, but the only thing he came up with was, again, the obvious: they were in very deep trouble.
“We’re kind of screwed, aren’t we?” she said, unknowingly echoing his thoughts as she wiped her eyes with her sleeve.
“No. We are not. Remember that Alexios will be on his way to find us very soon.” He put far more confidence in his voice than he felt. Alaric had told them that any type of massive electrical force would interfere with their abilities. Brennan studied the wiring connected to the bars and conceded that the entire setup certainly qualified as
massive
.
Oh, yes. They were definitely screwed.
“That was a lie. You don’t believe Alexios is on his way at all, do you? I think we should—” Her eyes widened as she jerked her head up to stare at something over Brennan’s left shoulder.
“How about you let me do the thinking,” came the surly, accented voice from behind him. “These morons guarding you should let me do the thinking, too.”
Brennan slowly turned and positioned himself so that he could see the new player but still keep Tiernan in his line of sight. The man was built like one of Yellowstone’s bison. Thick, broad, all muscle and no neck. He wasn’t quite as tall as Brennan but twice as wide, probably not an ounce of fat on him. He also was far from stupid; keen intelligence shone from his unusual gray eyes as he assessed the situation.
“I hear you’ve been making a run at the bars, over and over,” he said to Brennan. “Want to tell me how you’re not dead yet?”
Brennan said nothing, just swept a dismissive glance over the man.
“Right. Well, you’re not a shifter, and you’re not a vampire, and you’re sure as hell not Fae, so I’m wondering what other kind of wee beastie we’ve caught in our net.”
British. Or somewhere in the British Isles. Brennan hadn’t heard “wee beastie” in several hundred years.
“A rich beastie,” one of the goons called out, and the rest of them started laughing.
“Shut up, or I’ll shut you up,” the newcomer said, but without heat. He was still studying Brennan, who had the uncomfortable feeling that the man was trying to mind-probe him. Some definite psychic power there.
“Stay out of my brain,” he growled.
The man laughed. “You’ll wish it was me in your brain after Litton gets done with you. Crazy bugger is a menace. It really ought to be him locked up in here like an animal, but he’s the one that signs the checks.”
“Is money all you care about?” Tiernan called out. “You’re willing to torture your fellow human beings for that monster—and all for
money
?”
The guards started laughing, but the British one did not. He simply trained that dead, measuring stare on Tiernan. “I’ll do a lot of things for money. Nothing else matters, does it? And if you think your boyfriend here is human, well, I’d guess you’re going to have a very interesting honeymoon.”
“Yeah, Smitty, if they live to have a honeymoon. Odds are bad,” one of the guards called out, to the loud amusement of his colleagues.
Smitty, if that’s who he was, aimed that dead stare at the loudmouth, who quit laughing immediately.
So. This was the one of whom to beware. Brennan carefully noted everything about him. The time of reckoning would come, and soon. Smitty must be first in line to die. He was the biggest threat.
Smitty walked around the outside of the cages until he reached Tiernan’s cell. “Begging your pardon, ma’am, but take your clothes off.”
“What?” Tiernan moved away so fast that she nearly backed into the bars. Brennan called out a warning and she stopped, only a breath away from a massive jolt of electricity.
“You’d survive it,” Smitty told her. “Once.”
Brennan found that he was cursing; a steady, virulent stream of ancient Atlantean that should have singed the flesh off the man’s bones. He switched to English. “Touch her and die. I will hunt you down, peel the skin from your body, and eat the beating heart from your chest if you touch so much as one hair on her head.”
Smitty’s head jerked up at the icy menace in Brennan’s voice, and he, too, seemed to mark Brennan as the one true threat in the room. “I don’t respond to threats, and I don’t hurt women,” he said flatly. “But these morons almost certainly didn’t check you two for weapons, and I’m not going to wake up dead because your fancy piece there slipped a switchblade in my carotid artery, the way she did to that idiot upstairs.”
“Carotid artery?” Tiernan repeated, and her face drained of all residual color until she resembled a ghost or, worse, a vampire.
Smitty grinned, displaying large, crooked teeth. “It’s the artery—”
“I know what it is,” Tiernan shrieked, an edge of madness in her voice. “I didn’t do it, though. I didn’t . . . I didn’t mean it.” She abruptly sat on the floor, pulled her knees up to her chest, and dropped her head down on them. “I’d like this day to be over now,” she whispered, but Smitty heard her.
“Right. You can get some sleep in a few minutes, but first I want those clothes,” Smitty said, producing a large and deadly looking gun from somewhere. “Do it now, or I’ll shoot your boyfriend in the leg.” He cast a dispassionate glance over at Brennan. “You’re next, cupcake, so you may as well strip down now.”
Brennan’s rage consumed him, and he hurled himself at the bars, desperate to get at Smitty. The jolt from the high voltage seared through him, knocking him back several feet.
“Brennan. Brennan!” Tiernan was standing up now, pulling her shirt over her head. “Stop. It doesn’t matter. None of this matters. We just need to get through it.”
He stood there, his body shuddering with the force of the electrical shock and the fury, fighting to control himself, but when he raised his head, gasping for breath, he met Tiernan’s gaze and the connection between them locked into place with an almost audible snap. He’d seen inside her soul, and he knew what she needed now.
She needed him to be in control—for her. There was no way in the nine hells he’d let her down.
The fury cooled to ice, and he nodded. “Yes. None of this matters.” He yanked off his own shirt and then stripped out of his jeans as Tiernan did the same. The sight of her, trembling in her undergarments, triggered his rage again but he simply funneled it into the ice, to be carefully preserved for later. For when he fought his way free and killed them all.
The guards outside the cells were hooting and making lewd remarks, but most of them shut up when Brennan slowly turned his head and trained his gaze on them. Marking them. One by one.
Smitty held his hand through the bars, and Tiernan, stumbling, took her clothes to him. He took them and shook them, then patted them down for weapons.
“If you’d turn around, miss,” he said, still emotionless. “I think you can keep your knickers if I can see all the way around that you’re not concealing anything in them.”
She hesitated, then held her hands out to her side and turned in a single revolution until she faced Smitty again.
“That’s fine, then. Thank you,” Smitty said. He handed Tiernan her clothes back and she yanked them away from him and moved farther back in the cell before scrambling into them.
Smitty turned to Brennan, saying nothing, and held out his hand. Brennan weighed the odds of Tiernan’s survival if he grabbed the man’s arm and pulled him tight against the electric bars until the high voltage fried the thug.
“Don’t even think about it, mate,” Smitty said, glancing from Brennan to the bars. “All those guns are trained on the two of you, and she dies first.”
Of course the man knew what Brennan had been thinking. It’s what Smitty would have considered had the roles been reversed, Brennan realized. His estimation of the man as a threat—which was already high—grew. He tossed his clothes at Smitty, then lowered his head and coughed, holding his hand over his mouth. When he straightened, Smitty was feeling along the seams of Brennan’s jeans.
“Let me see your hands, and turn around,” Smitty said.
Brennan glared but did as he said, spreading his fingers wide so Smitty could see that he concealed nothing. “You have my daggers, and nothing else would get past your metal detectors,” he snarled from between clenched teeth.
“You look like the sort who could appropriate what he needed,” Smitty told him. “You’ll have to tell me how you got those daggers past my screener, though.”
Brennan laughed. “Sure. Just let me out of here, and we’ll have a long conversation about all sorts of things.”
Smitty’s grin was a dead thing, like his eyes. “Right. You keep on hoping.”
He tossed Brennan’s clothes back to him. “Now, if I were the bastard you think I am, I’d keep your clothes, and take your girl’s lovely underthings, too, and let my men here enjoy the view.”
“You’re a real hero,” Tiernan said bitterly, and Smitty turned to her and laughed.
“Ah, the little bird has a bite, does she? No matter. After what the doc has in store for you, I think you’ll be chirping a different tune. Maybe even want to get to know me a little better.” Smitty swept a long, appraising look up and down Tiernan’s body, and the rage threatened to burn through the ice in Brennan’s mind, but his control won out.
By a thread.
Smitty grinned at Brennan, then tossed him a mock salute. After that, he herded all but two of the guards from the room, ordering others to set up shifts in the monitoring room. Tiernan had been right about the video surveillance, then. Brennan decided he’d wait until Smitty left the room to try to find the cameras. The man was too sharp.
“Until later, mate,” Smitty said, and then he sauntered out of the room.
Brennan toyed with the idea of trying to call water in the shape of ice spears, but the constant buzz of electricity reminded him of how futile the attempt would be. He’d have his chance. He’d simply have to be patient.
“Brennan,” Tiernan said, moving closer to the bars separating them. Her face was still pale, pale white, as if fear had drained the blood from her head. “Whatever you’re thinking, don’t do it. I’m afraid that if you hit those bars again, it might incapacitate you, and—I know this is selfish—but I’m afraid to be here alone, if they knock you out. Especially since”—her voice, which had already been quiet, dropped even further until he could barely hear her—“when you wake up, you won’t know me.”
She stared up at him, and her eyes were enormous in her pale face. “I can’t do this without you. I can’t.”
Brennan took a deep breath. “You will never, ever have to do anything without me, ever again,” he swore.
“Now what?” She looked over at the guards, who were mostly ignoring them and arguing about some bet they’d made on sports, from the sound of it.
“Now,” Brennan said, “we make a plan.”
Chapter 27
Tunnels, deep underneath Yellowstone National Park
Devon might have thought he currently stood in the worst situation in his long existence, had he not previously faced down insane ancient vampires and—only once, but that had been far and away enough—the vampire goddess herself.
This, however, was running in the top five.
If all of them made it out alive, it would be the first vampire conclave he’d ever attended where that was the case. Even the notion of vampires, who were notoriously unable to play well with others, forming alliances was ridiculous.
He spotted Jones over where the powerful vampire was holding court on one side of the long, bare room. Jones was the one who had discovered these tunnels more than a century ago and expanded them with the help of a large work-force of slave labor who later did double duty as food. Now only the bones of the dead workers knew the location of the vampires’ meeting halls, and as everyone knew, dead men told no tales.
Unless the dead men were vampires. Then the tales were not only told, they were embellished, or exchanged for outright lies.
He needed Tiernan Butler. Although, perhaps not. Her Gift apparently did not extend to vampires or psychopaths. Since many vampires were psychopaths, he idly wondered if that made their lies more impenetrable to her or if the two conditions canceled each other out. He’d have to ask her.
If he lived to ask anyone anything, ever again.
Smith drained the goblet of very fine brandy he’d been sipping and slammed it down on the table. “Who was that on the phone?”
Devon glanced down at the cell phone he’d just disconnected, then back at Smith. “It was Dr. Litton, our favorite evil genius. He has captured Brennan.”
“The rich human?”
“Precisely.” Devon frowned. “I’d specifically told him to hold off and play along, but he claims that the man instigated violence.”
“I wonder how Litton manipulated him into doing that,” Jones said, sneering. “He is one of the most unpleasant of the sheep I’ve ever had the bad fortune to encounter, but he is a clever little bastard.”
“Does it matter?” Smith asked. “We have our money now, don’t we? Isn’t Brennan some kind of billionaire?”
Devon shrugged. “Perhaps. But how pathetic are we that we hide in tunnels and depend on humans for our finances? Which among us is qualified to be a leader if we cannot fund our own plans?”
He knew that of every vampire in that room, he alone was rich enough to take on any and all political challenge. Everybody else knew it, too.
Jones spat on the floor. “We know you have money, Devon, you don’t need to drop these heavy-handed hints. But why spend our money when we can so easily control the sheep?” He dropped an arm around his current blood slave, a dim-witted bottled blonde who was the heiress to some kind of soap products fortune.