Authors: M.J. Scott
“Ah, but Ashley, I’m not a stranger.”
Shit. That was even scarier. I swallowed hard then asked the question I had to ask. “Tate?” I closed my eyes for a second, praying I was wrong.
“If I was, do you think I’d answer?”
“No but I—”
“Ms. Keenan?”
One of Kenny’s men—a tall wiry guy with a Caldwell PD cap pulled down low on his head—loomed up in the darkness. I didn’t know him but I’d never been so happy to see someone in my life. Then I heard the dial tone in my ear. My mystery caller had hung up. I didn’t know whether to be relieved or frustrated that I hadn’t gotten any information out of him. I looked at the officer. “Yes?”
“Agent Gibson asked me to bring you this.” He held out a blue spotted mug. I took it automatically, holding it tight so my hands wouldn’t shake. The smell of hot, sweet coffee rose in the air and I took a mouthful, trying to calm my nerves. I was safe. There was an officer right beside me. The house was half full of vampires and weres and police. No psycho caller could grab me.
But the fact that there
was
a psycho caller was something Dan needed to know. “Thank you,” I said to the officer. “Is Agent Gibson in the house?” I drank again, feeling the caffeine and sugar clear my head a little.
“Yes, ma’am. Was there something you wanted?” He was watching me intently and I suddenly realized my skin was tingling like he was a were. But as far as I knew, the Caldwell PD was one hundred percent human. Had been since Tate’s attack.
I paused mid-swallow. Who was this guy?
Or was I just being jumpy? Maybe Caldwell had decided to join the 21
st
century. Only I was pretty sure Bug would’ve mentioned it. I swallowed and studied the man over the rim of my mug. There was nothing that screamed werewolf about him. Of course, there wasn’t anything that screamed werewolf about Dan either, if you didn’t know. Except for the tell-tale sensation that flowed over my skin around him. The same one giving me goose bumps now.
This guy was
definitely
non-human. And if he wasn’t a Caldwell cop, I was in trouble.
“Nothing important,” I lied. I didn’t want to tip whoever this was off that I was onto him. My instincts screamed “run!” but that was pointless against a were. I had to try and bluff, hope that someone else would come out.
Jase
,
if you can hear me
,
help
.
I didn’t know whether Jase’s talents extended to telepathy or whether he could hear a human like me but I was desperate.
But there was no movement from the house, no vampire running out the back door to my rescue.
I turned slightly, so I was more clearly visible from the house and drank more coffee while my brain raced. “Could you ask Agent Gibson to c-co-“ I stumbled over the word, wondering why my tongue suddenly felt thick. “Come out here?”
My voice sounded weird and echoey. I tried to move and couldn’t. The were’s pale eyes seemed to flare then blur in the dying light. I shook my head, trying to remove the fog stealing over my brain.
The coffee
, I realized belatedly. There was something in the coffee. I opened my mouth to scream for help but nothing came out.
“Sorry ma’am,” the were said, his voice falling and rising in a wave of distortion. “But we’ve got other plans for you.”
The world went dark.
Chapter Eight
Something thumped in my ears. Or maybe thumped wasn’t the right word. Pounded, perhaps. The sound was rhythmic. Regular. It should’ve been comforting, but something about it disturbed me. I rolled to one side then stilled as dizziness swept over me. The pounding grew louder and I finally worked out it was the sound of my pulse, throbbing in my head.
Something was wrong.
Why did I feel so strange? My eyes felt dry and crusted, resisting my efforts to open them. Even after rubbing them, I wasn’t sure I’d succeeded. Wherever I was, it was dark. Pitch black. Hot. And moving. I levered my arms underneath me, tried to sit up. My head hit something with a thump.
Pain flared and I slumped back down, cursing. The new ache didn’t make it any easier to remember something—anything—that would explain where I was. I searched my memories but it was like grasping at melting snow. Images flitted before my eyes then melted away. A man with dark hair, another with eyes that flared ice blue, and a pale rose tilting sideways in a darkened garden. None of it made sense.
Only one thing was clear. Wherever I was, it wasn’t good.
My pulse pounded harder at that realization, racing as panic swept through me. I grasped for calm, schooling myself to breathe slowly. The air smelled like dirt and oil and something less pleasant like rot or mold. Not comforting.
Nausea rose as the scent and the continuous motion made my stomach churn. I swallowed hard. Throwing up wasn’t going to help anything.
Abruptly the motion ceased and I lurched sideways, banging my head again. Light blazed as the surface above me suddenly vanished.
Hands grabbed me. I screamed and kicked out at them, blinking back the tears the burning light brought to my eyes.
“None of that, you shouldn’t even be awake,” a male voice snarled.
I kicked harder, connecting with something warm and solid.
“Ow. Bitch.” Fingers twined in my hair, grasping hard, bringing a gasp of pain to my lips. “Not so fun now? Good.” The grip tightened, raising my head then slamming it backwards. Sparks flashed behind my eyes then darkness took me again.
***
When I woke for the second time I wasn’t moving. Or, at least, whatever I lay on wasn’t moving. My head, however, was spinning and it took me three tries just to roll over. A move my muscles protested vigorously, adding a chorus of aches and throbs to the sharp twinges in my skull.
Keeping my eyes closed so as not to make the spinning any worse, I ran my hands cautiously over the bits of me I could reach. Nothing felt broken or bleeding, though there was a lump on my forehead and another one at the back of my head that made me see stars behind my eyelids when I touched it. I was still wearing my suit trousers and my shirt but my feet were bare. And the cross around my neck had vanished.
Good news. I wasn’t naked and I didn’t seem to be tied up.
Bad news. I felt like someone had driven a tractor over me and then left the remains out to be trampled by elephants. Even my fingers hurt. What I really wanted was to go back to sleep and hope that this was all a nightmare. But I knew it was real. The fear quickening my pulse told me that.
I had to face my situation.
The surface beneath me was soft. A bed? I cracked my eyes open cautiously. The pain in my head stayed at the same level so I risked opening them further, desperate to find out where I was. My vision was blurry at first but soon the details came clear. A single bed in a room of about ten feet square. Dim light came from recessed bulbs in the ceiling, a sort of diffuse glow that gave no indication what time of day it might be. From my position I could see a door the same pale maybe-white, maybe-cream color as the walls and nothing else. I stared at the door—something about it was off. Then it hit me. No handle.
Locked in.
Fear flared stronger. Where the hell was I?
I drew a shuddery breath and steeled myself for the pain of rolling to my left. It took an effort. I panted through my mouth until the worst of the sensations subsided. I shouldn’t have bothered. My new view revealed nothing. No windows, no pictures, no other furniture. Just a few slits high in the roof that had to be some sort of ventilation system and more of the lights in the ceiling. The air was cool and smelled kind of stale, the way rooms get when they haven’t been used for a while.
Four bare walls and a bed and me. That was it.
I shivered and dug my hands into the blanket covering the bed, rolling again so I wrapped myself in it. The wool was scratchy and uncomfortable but it was warm. Not that warmth helped my shivering as my situation sunk home.
I was alone. Trapped. God knows where.
The shivers turned to shudders and I curled into a ball, huddling into the blanket. As I lay, my head eased a little and I suddenly remembered. Bug. The garden. The coffee. The not-cop.
Kidnapped.
Most likely by whoever had Bug. Call me wimpy but on top of everything else the thought was enough to push me over the edge. Sobs racked me, deep, heavy, gasping noises, the kind you can’t stop even if you try. The kind you just have to cry out.
Eventually I did and then I just lay there, eyes and throat burning, trying to make some sense of what had happened. Trying not to succumb to the terror lurking in the back of my mind.
I had no idea how long I’d been unconscious. My left wrist, usually occupied by my mother’s watch, was as bare as my feet but I was desperately thirsty and despite the residual sick feeling in my stomach, starting to feel hungry as well. So hours, not days. Surely I’d feel worse if I’d been out for days?
Though whatever they’d drugged me with could be affecting me. I’d had some screwy reactions to anesthesia in the past.
So really, I knew nothing. I lay still, trying to calm myself, and listened for clues to my location. Nothing. No road noise, no outside world noises, nothing at all to indicate anything lay beyond the four walls of the room. There was a soft background sound that made me think air conditioning but that was it. Wherever I was, it was well soundproofed.
I reconstructed events in my head. I’d been in some sort of vehicle when I’d woken the first time. The details were sketchy but I was sure I’d been in a trunk. Which wasn’t entirely useful. After all, I had no idea which way we’d gone or how long we’d traveled.
But arriving in a vehicle meant there might be one around if I managed to get free.
Big if.
But I was alive, so whoever had taken me didn’t want me dead—not immediately anyway.
Hello not-so-comforting thought.
I burrowed deeper still into the wool blanket as another set of shivers wracked me. I breathed deep, hoping its stale scent could drive all the scary thoughts from my head.
Focus on the positive, Keenan
. One bout of hysterics was all I was allowed. All I could give into if I was going to survive.
Okay, so I was alive. That might mean Bug was too. And, if I had anything to do with it, we were both going to stay that way until Dan—because if I knew anything, I knew Dan would leave no stone unturned to find me—rode to the rescue.
Summoning more courage than I knew I possessed, I forced myself to sit up. They might as well know I was awake, if they didn’t already. Just because I couldn’t see any cameras in the room didn’t mean they weren’t there. And there was no sense playing dead. A vamp or were could hear my heart beat several feet away.
Mr. Not-cop had been a were, so it seemed reasonable to assume that there could be more of them around. I might as well find out what I was up against.
I sat clutching the edge of the bed and waited. And waited. I have no idea how long I sat there but it felt like hours. And with each beat of my heart my nerves grew tauter and tauter.
Just when I was starting to think no one would come, that maybe they were just going to leave me here to rot, the door slid open with a faint hum.
And the face of the man who walked through the door was enough to make me wish that rotting
was
my fate.
Tate.
His face had haunted my nightmares for twelve years.
I knew every line of his features. I’d studied the pictures in the paper obsessively, wanting to be ready if I ever came across him. Ready to do what, I’d never been entirely sure but it involved pain and death. His.
But the papers couldn’t convey the reality of the monster.
He looked normal enough. About six foot, average build, sandy brown hair in a nondescript spiky cut. The sort of guy you’d pass in the street without a second glance.
As long as you didn’t look in his eyes.
That was the part the pictures didn’t reveal.
Whatever was behind those eyes had nothing human about it. It wasn’t just vampire but something far more primitive. Soulless. Something that screamed predator. Evil. Run. Hide.
Die.
The sort of terror in the night that men had discovered fire to protect themselves against.
I pushed myself back on the bed instinctively.
“Ms. Keenan,” Tate said. “How nice to see you.”
He might have been greeting someone at a garden party. The sheer detachment in his tone was creepier than any threat or menace could be. Despite myself I inched further back until I felt my butt hit the edge of the mattress. Any further and I’d fall.
“Pity I can’t say the same,” I managed to say with a mouth suddenly dry as dust.
“Now, now, be polite.” He leaned against the door, a slight smile on his face as if he were admonishing a naughty child.
I bit back the retort that rose to my lips. I didn’t want to bait him. Not when I had no idea how he might react.
No taunting the serial killer.
Instead, I studied him, avoiding his eyes.
He submitted to my examination, the smile still playing around his lips. It looked fake somehow. Like expressions and emotions were something he practiced in front of the mirror rather than something he had any real experience with.
Whatever it was that lurked inside him, it felt nothing.
“See anything you like?”
I dropped my gaze, tried to grow smaller. I didn’t look away completely though. Number one rule in every self-defense class I’d ever taken is don’t take your eyes off the attacker.
I had no idea what Tate might do.
“I’ll take that as a no.” He flowed into the room, put a hand—inhumanly cool—under my chin, and forced my head up. I didn’t resist but made sure we didn’t make eye contact.
“You’ve grown up quite nicely, haven’t you? One of the lucky ones.”
Lucky ones? I jerked away. His grip tightened, stopping me.
“You have an interesting definition of lucky,” I said.
“You’re alive. That’s pretty lucky.”