The Strega suckled Jimmy’s neck. I wanted to gag again.
“If he’s on your side and all our plans are crap, why didn’t you just kill me the instant I walked in here?” I asked.
Lifting his head, the Strega licked his lips. “He is my son, and the one thing he’s asked of me in return for all he’s done…” He straightened, petting Jimmy’s sweat-matted hair fondly. “Is that I give him you.”
Chapter 32
His words caused a spark of hope. My mistake.
“You think he’s still Jimmy?” The strega sneered. “That he begged me for your life? Watch.” He lifted the gold knife and sliced his own arm.
Note to self—pure gold doesn’t make a strega burst into flames. Too bad. That would have been a bonfire worth watching.
The strega waved his bleeding arm in front of Jimmy’s face, and like a baby desperate for nourishment, Jimmy latched on.
“The more he drinks, the more vampire he becomes. Soon there will be nothing left of the human at all.”
“I don’t believe you,” I said.
The strega removed his arm from Jimmy’s mouth. It came away with a sucking sound that almost made me hurl. Jimmy fought against the restraints as the strega chuckled and patted him on the head. Then Jimmy’s eyes snapped open, and I saw the truth.
No one was home.
He recognized me because he said, “Elizabeth.” Except Jimmy never called me that.
Why hadn’t I listened to Sawyer and avoided this trap? Would I have, even if I’d known?
No. Because Jimmy, back when he’d been Jimmy, would never have left me here alone.
“She came, Father,” Jimmy whispered. “Just like you wanted.” He jerked against the chains. “Let me go now.”
The Strega’s long fingers, which should have had razor-sharp, scraggly fingernails but were instead manicured and buffed until they shone, stroked Jimmy’s hair again. “You don’t want to kill her right away. What fun is that? Besides, the blood of a seer—” He licked his lips, the gesture so suggestive, so… hungry I had another “settle down” talk with my stomach. “Ambrosia,” the Strega finished.
His gaze met mine, and the smirk was back. I clenched my hands to keep from launching myself across the room and smacking him. He’d only smack me back, and he wouldn’t even need his hands.
I put aside thoughts of killing him. I didn’t yet know how. But I’d spend every moment I had left trying to figure it out; then I’d do it.
I dragged myself upright, thrilled when my legs didn’t wobble. Having a plan, however vague, always helped.
Jimmy’s dark eyes followed my every movement, like a dog with a juicy steak, or perhaps a wolf that’s just seen something small and tasty skitter free of cover. For the first time I was very glad of those chains.
His eyes had an odd flare of red at the center, making me think this body was just a Jimmy-shell, a home for something else, and that scared me more than anything had in a long time. Because if that were true, then where was Jimmy? Could I reach him if he were truly gone?
The door opened, and a man and a woman, black suit and gray, tromped in.
Vampire.
I was beginning to think that Ruthie’s whisper was stuck.
“They’re all vampires?” I asked.
The Strega contemplated me for several seconds, as if trying to decide if it would help his cause or hurt it for me to know what I was dealing with. He decided, as I already had, that it didn’t make much difference what I knew. I’d never leave here alive.
“They are,” he agreed. “My personal army.”
“They look like lawyers,” I mused, “which I guess makes sense. Bloodsuckers.”
He dipped his head in an Old World gesture rarely seen in this one. “We fit in well here, and Manhattan has always been the best place for those of our kind. So many people, so little time.”
Sawyer had said that New York was a place where the Nephilim thronged. I suspected a vampire, or a thousand, could survive in the big city virtually undetected. Who would notice a missing street person here, a tourist there? And so what if they did? I doubted anyone would ever find the bodies.
The vamps suddenly lifted me right off my feet.
“I can walk,” I protested. They didn’t speak, didn’t even glance my way. They were a little robotic.
Vampire robots. The movie would probably be a blockbuster. People were such sheep.
I winced at my thoughts. For the vampires, people were sheep, or maybe cattle. Definitely food. I did not plan to be the next course on anyone’s plate.
As the vampires hustled me from the torture chamber, which appeared to have been staged for my benefit, or perhaps Jimmy’s pleasure—his moaning at the pain of the cuts was pretty damn creepy—I searched for any weakness in their defenses.