I slid a little on the snow-slicked roads, found traction and then sped back up. “How is kidnapping my kid going to do any of that?”
“Fate, my dear, won’t be denied.” He gave a little enigmatic smile. “You drive very fast. Pull into the Galley.”
“Nothing good ever comes of a night at the Galley,” I mumbled.
“Depends on your point of view. I am about to have a ball. Come, let’s not keep Maxine waiting…” I got out and stiffened my back. I walked in front of Chance and opened the door to the Galley.
And then everything went dark.
Dammit
, I thought as I went down.
The bastard koshed me on the head.
~
I awoke in a room with sunlight pouring in on me. I blinked and moved my head to bury it under my arm.
But I couldn’t move my arm. I tugged and struggled for a minute before any of it made sense.
Oh, okay, I’m tied up in a chair and freaking Chance put me here.
I looked around, and had no idea where exactly here was.
“Can you get loose?” A feminine voice floated in the air.
I tried to turn my head and only got so far because of my restraints. I could kind of see a woman tied in a similar fashion to a rack filled with bottles of wine. She had jet black cornrows in her hair and polished mahogany eyes. Her dark skin reminded me of the color of coffee.
Hmm, coffee. I could use some coffee.
“Nope.” I tried to loosen my hands from their bonds. “Who are you?”
“Shawna Peterson.” Her voice trembled. “They have had me down here for two days. Are you FBI?”
I blinked at her. “No. Why? Are you?”
“Yes.” She shrugged in the semi-darkness. “I was kind of hoping you were the second line, coming in to rescue me and all that jazz.”
Her smooth and melodic voice sounded calm—even though it had a slight warble that may have been fear or exhaustion—for a woman who had been tied in a…wherever we were. I wouldn’t have been nearly as calm after two days. By two days of this, I would have been a blubbering idiot.
Hell, I had only been awake for two minutes and I was considering trying out the blubbering already. And where was Vickie? Wait, question the other prisoner. Yeah, that was what Bruce Willis would do. I had a bad feeling I was closer to parodying a B-rate movie than a Bruce Willis flick, but
hey, this is my head, not yours. And I wanna be Bruce…dammit. On with the questioning
.
“Why do they have FBI tied up down here?”
“Max owns the Galley. Word got out that she was making local law enforcement do her bidding, collecting debts and things of that nature. So, they sent me in. I pretended to be with the local paper, the Beacon, and that I was doing a story on her.”
She shrugged as much as you can when tied up. “I am not sure how they knew I was lying or if they caught me just because I asked too many questions.”
I looked at her. “You said you were working for the Beacon?”
“Yeah, why?”
“Small town. Everyone knows everyone’s business here. If you were really with the Beacon, they would have known it three days before you got hired.”
“Hadn’t thought of that. I am out of Detroit, and I just transferred here. There is a lot of crazy shit going down in this little town, isn’t there?”
“You have no idea.” I redoubled my efforts to free myself. “Have you seen a little girl, looks like me, blond hair…”
“No, why?”
Max entered the room right then, followed by two henchmen. Why do all the bad guys have henchmen? I want a henchman. A big, burly one. If I am going to be one of the good guys, I am going to start a new good guy trend and get me a henchman. Oh, wait. Good guys have henchmen, too. They’re called side kicks. I want a henchman though. Side kick is just not as impressive of a term.
They picked up my chair, me included, and carried me up a staircase. Music played in the distance. “Are we still in the Galley?” I strained to look around me.
“Uh, huh.” The henchman did not look at me when he spoke. No one ever properly introduces their henchmen, either, while we are on the topic of henchmen. So, me, I like to give them names. Gregorian’s two lead henchmen I named, by appearance and demeanor, Lug and Weasel. So let’s name Max’s, too. We will call henchman number one Fugly, because he wasn’t just ugly, he was freaking ugly. Hence, Fah-ugly.
That done, I was pretty sure I had also figured out where we were.
“You kidnap people and keep them in the bar?” I tried to look back at Max.
“Shut up, honey.” When the second henchman spoke, I immediately named him Stupid. We will call him Stupid because he called
me
honey. As I mentioned before, not fond of being called honey unless the caller is over eighty. And if I got out of this frigging chair, he was going down for calling me honey as he was no where near eighty. I was gonna jam some “honey” down his frigging throat.
I glared at him. “Where is Vickie?”
“Who?” Max looked confused.
“My daughter, you bitch. Where is my daughter?”
Her eyebrows twitched up. “You lost your kid?”
“No, you kidnapped her,” I informed her.
She laughed. “I didn’t even know you had a kid.”
I stiffened. “What?”
“I do believe that Chance has been making things up again. Chance, lover, come here.”
Chance entered from the room they’d hauled me from. I glared at him.
“So, you didn’t kidnap Vickie?”
“That would have been Max’s next move, had she figured out there was a pawn to steal. Look at it this way, we have all the benefits from actually doing the deed, but none of the trauma to your lovely child. Everyone is better off my way.” He brushed his dark reddish brown curls back from his forehead.
“You bastard.” I threw the words at him, wishing I could hurt him with them.
“I have been called that before, but it is neither accurate, nor creative.” He gave me the happy golden-retriever-harmless-smile. I was finding out that golden retrievers had a bite. Ah, well, I had always been more of a cat person anyway.
“Why? Twenty-four hours from now, she and I would have been out of your hair. Why? Why suck me back in?”
“Maybe because this is where you belong?”
Another man entered from the bar and a wave of noise came into the room. He mumbled something in Max’s ear, and she said in a hissing voice, “Take care if it.”
He mumbled again, borderline frantic and Max threw up her slim hands. “Fine, I will come fix it.”
She snapped her fingers and Stupid and Fugly went with her. I was alone with the two faced jerk.
“Who are you to decide where I belong? Why would you
do
this to me?”
Tears threatened as a wave of helplessness washed over me. Thank God they didn’t have Vickie, but I was still in some serious trouble here. I mean, last I heard, people who tie you up generally have some nefarious intent.
“You are going to have to sing. You are going to have to grow a fucking spine and take care of this shit that you were going to run away from. You have to do this for yourself. Don’t you see that the whole life you have pretended to have has been for others? What others say you should be, how you should act…it is all fake. Be real, be yourself.”
I glared at him, knives in my gaze. “Oh, yeah, because
you
say so. That is so much better.”
He knelt in front of me. “Look, I only want for you what you want, but are afraid to take. Do you think you are a good guy…filled with human compassion and all that sop?”
“Yes!” I spat the words at him.
“You aren’t. You aren’t even as good as your cronies Vance and Mia. Here is the big difference. They are, or once were, human. They honestly have human compassion. You aren’t, and never will be, human. It is all fake, learned behavior picked up and aped so that you could fit in. You have no real human compassion because to have it, you have to BE human. You aren’t. Accept who you are, and live with it. Quit living this half life. Be you.”
“Once again, I reiterate, because
you
say so.”
He stood and brushed off his knees. “Fine, keep pretending to be a nice little human, disgusted with all of the weird stuff. Fake it the rest of the day. If you do, you will die here in this back country bar. Makes no difference to me. I can’t stand to watch you do this anymore, and if you aren’t here, you won’t. Or, embrace it. Quit pretending to be a nicey-nice human, and fess up to what you are. Not human. You don’t care if you hurt Max’s feelings. You don’t care about any of it. Take what you need to survive and to allow those you love to survive and live. Or die. You pick. I won’t interfere.”
He stalked to a wall and leaned on it casually.
“I can’t do this. I can’t be this.”
“You can’t
not
.” Double negative equals a positive, I thought.
I blinked back tears. I wouldn’t give the bastard the satisfaction.
Oh, who am I kidding. I was crying. Tears and boogers…the works.
He’d put me in a corner. If I wanted to see my kid again…if I wanted to live, he was going to make me become one of the monsters. Vance wouldn’t be awake for hours. Mia had no idea I was here…no help was coming. It was me verses the night world.
I stopped blubbering and stared at my legs.
Max reentered the room. I’d mostly made up my mind that I would die.
She sat across from me. “What are you?”
I looked over at Chance. “Hasn’t your spy told you?”
“No. He said I could find out for myself.” She gave him a glare similar to the ones I cast at him. Chance was not the most likable guy. “I want to know what you are.”
“I am a normal woman who happened to be friends with a witch who was friends with a vampire that you wanted to kill. Six degrees of separation and all that.”
“Try again.” She took off a necklace that looked to be polished obsidian. It winked black in the low light of the room.
“Like I said, plain Jane.”
She touched the rock to my cheek. It burned. Like, really hot, burned. I sucked in air and tears spilled from my eyes. She dragged it down to my neck, and I had a hard time breathing.
“Try it one more time. Somehow you helped Vance and Mia get out of the bar. For some reason, everyone, even Chance, is interested in you. Tell me what you are, and I will decide if I want to keep you or not.”
“Let’s go with, or not.” The wound throbbed, making me want to scream. I clamped down my teeth and glared at Chance. He mouthed,
Sing
, at me.
She touched the rock to my hand, and pain ripped through my flesh. “If we go with ‘not,’ I kill you and you get no chance to change your answer. So, I will ask you one more time…” She dragged the spelled rock down my leg and it cramped and burned. My flesh ignited, and my hand bubbled with blisters.
Max tilted her head at me. “What are you?”
CHAPTER Sixteen
I could take pain. I could stare at her through it. I gave birth to an eight pound, eight ounce baby, natural childbirth, no drugs. A little burning flesh?
Forgeddaboudit.
This must have somehow been translated to my face, even through boogers and tears—I mean, I couldn’t wipe my face as I was tied up, so I had to look really sexy right about then. But I found a core of steel and decided to let her do her worst with the evil burny rock…and I wasn’t gonna tell her poo.
I assume she decided the rock wasn’t working. I mean, it worked in that it hurt like a bitch, but it wasn’t making me talk. Since I was willing to take it until the sun set and the reinforcements showed up, she was right. She stood and closed her eyes. When she opened them a moment later, they shone black.
I wondered what little treat this change signaled.
“She is a psychic vampire.” Chance tapped his chest. “She is going to suck out your soul.”
For a moment, I thought he was telling her what I was, but not quite. I wasn’t a psychic vampire. I didn’t suck souls. I sucked the electricity…the stuff of brain synapses and all.
Ohhh, dawning realization
. She was gonna suck
me
dry. I realized just then that he was talking about Max.
That is bad.
Well, I still had a shot. It had to be getting close to dark by now. Vance and Mia would come and…
How?
How would they know where I was, not to mention knowing I was even in trouble to begin with?
I am toast. She is gonna kill me off, here and now. Help isn’t coming.
I stared at her as she got closer to me, her movements very nearly sexual. I am straight so I found this mildly disturbing. I tried to think of a smart ass remark, but for the first time in my life, I had nothing. She wore knowledge of my death in her eyes.
I tried to move away which doesn’t work well when you are tied hand and foot to a chair. “Eek,” I managed. This worked about as well as it had with Vance. Eek seems to have little effect on monsters…so why do girls always say it in movies? She sat on my lap, legs spread around mine, and put a hand, palms flat, to each side of my head at my temples. Her eyes burned into mine, searching for something.
I felt a tug. She had found a line that went right to my soul. She pulled at it through her hands. I could feel it. It’s like when you are very, very tired and you are groggy…I was becoming like that. I blinked and a pull tugged at my body again. She writhed a little.
Neat power. She was going to suck me dry and it wasn’t going to take long. I would never make it to sunset.
But I guess I understood what Chance liked about she and I. We were sisters in some elemental way. Two sides of the same coin, two different ways of looking at life. I hid from it and hoped it would go away. She embraced it. She might be a stupid evil bitch, but she was one hundred percent stupid evil bitch. She was what she was, while I was too busy being afraid of myself to even be partly me.