Miranda said little until they returned to the Prime’s wing, where he had to leave her in the care of her guards. Then she gave him a quiet “Good night” and returned to her room, still hugging herself in the huge tattered sleeves of her blue sweater.
He was satisfied for now; her color was better, and she was growing stronger little by little, enough that the walk had tired but not exhausted her.
Still, it had been only a week since her world had been razed to the ground. She could hardly be expected to jump up and embrace life, grateful for a second chance.
He knew all too well how bitter life’s second chances could taste.
Faith met him at the end of the hall, bowing. “Sire.”
He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Is he here?”
“Yes. We’ve got him isolated in interrogation room B. Shall we?”
This time, the walk he took was for a much different purpose. With each step he felt himself shedding the human woman’s comparatively easy companionship and returning to what he knew best.
He had not been exaggerating. This was no place for mortals.
They headed outside, this time taking a different path than he had with Miranda, toward one of the smaller outbuildings. Tonight he was supposed to be evaluating the new recruits, spying on their training session, but instead Faith had brought word that he was needed for something a little more urgent.
As he walked, he reached up and fingered the Signet, a habit he’d noticed almost all Primes had when they were deep in thought. He felt oddly preoccupied, and not remotely in the mood for the task ahead, though once upon a time the idea would have cheered him. Once, he would have looked forward to questioning a suspect all evening. When he had been second in command in California, he had earned the reputation that had followed him here, and since taking the Signet he’d kept it easily, but still, there were times . . .
He didn’t allow himself to finish the thought. There was no room for doubt here.
“This way.” Faith swung open the outer door of the cinder-block building and stepped back to allow him first entry. “We caught him in the act, blood still on his hands. The girl was still breathing, but she died en route to Brackenridge.”
“Good,” he said, ignoring her raised eyebrow. With the victim dead, the suspect was under a death sentence; he didn’t have to worry about causing permanent damage.
Another Elite guard stood outside the metal interrogation room door. He bowed and slid the bolt back.
The Prime stood in the doorway a moment, allowing his presence to fill the room, knowing that the suspect would feel it. He reached out with his power and swept the chamber, his senses calculating: male, under a hundred years of age, and scared shitless.
Just like he liked them.
He walked into the room and towered over the suspect, who flinched as the Prime’s shadow fell over him and tried to edge even closer to the wall. The chains around his wrists and ankles wouldn’t let him go far.
David gestured for Faith to stay back. He looked down at the suspect.
“Name?”
The vampire stammered something unintelligible in Spanish.
“I’m sorry, could you repeat that?”
This time, in English, “I’m not telling you nothing. You’re gonna kill me anyway.”
The Prime raised his hand, and the suspect was immediately jerked upward and thrown backward against the wall. The shackles snapped off, allowing him to move, but he was pinned by the Prime’s power, whimpering as he tried to struggle.
“You’re absolutely right,” David told him, stepping closer. The suspect cringed visibly. “You broke the cardinal law of this territory, and you’re going to die. There are therefore only two questions remaining. One, do you want to die by my Second’s hand, or by mine? And two . . .”
He reached into the man, seeking out the capillaries of his fingers and toes, and applied pressure, squeezing almost gently. The man’s eyes went wide and he tried again to fight, but couldn’t; as the tiny vessels began to pop, he made terrified animal noises and the drenching sweat of fear broke out over his face. It wasn’t painful, really, though it would be as the burst capillaries became bruises—but the vampire could feel it happening, and knew he couldn’t stop it.
“How long do you want it to take?” David concluded, doing it again. This time he saw a blood vessel burst in the man’s left eye.
Barely expending any effort, he lifted his hand again, and the suspect screamed hoarsely as the fingers of his right hand began to crack, one phalanx at a time.
Faith said from the doorway, “Obviously not a trained warrior.”
“No,” he replied, watching the man writhe. Little finger; metacarpal. They broke so easily, like snapping twigs. David remembered how it felt to do the same thing with his bare hands; this was much less messy. “If he had any sort of Elite history, he’d have been taught to withstand pain. Was this attack as meticulous as the one at the Greenbelt?”
“Not this time. It was a straight-up slashing with the Seal of Auren carved into the girl’s arm with a blade.”
“Hmm.” David moved closer to the man again, abruptly releasing him from the vise. “I would imagine that if he’s familiar with the Seal, he may have one on him somewhere.”
The man was panting, his eyes rolling wild in his head. “Don’t—don’t—”
“Shut up.” With a wave of his hand, the Prime forced the man’s mouth closed. “Speak when I ask you to or don’t speak at all.”
He reached up and unbuttoned the suspect’s shirt, yanking it aside unceremoniously, frowning in distaste at the filthy state of what was underneath. “Your boss isn’t paying you well enough,” he noted. “You smell like the ass end of a dead rodent.”
Sure enough, just over the prisoner’s left pectoral muscle was a week-old tattoo: the Seal of Auren in black and red.
“So,” David said, “let me go over this one more time just so we’re on the same page. You’re working for a dead man, or at least for his friends. You’ve committed at least one murder, which you were caught at, so your life is forfeit. Now you can either tell me who you’re working for, and die quickly by decapitation, or you can keep pretending you don’t know anything, and die slowly by decapitation. Slowly, and screaming.”
To punctuate his words, he reached into the man and broke one of his ribs cleanly in two.