Another one of those broken seconds later, Isleen was gone. Night air whooshed in softly to fill the place where she had stood. Rick smelled honeysuckle and wild jasmine from the vines on the barn’s walls. In Isleen’s place was the new arrival. His new tormentor. She was pale skinned, standing somewhere around five feet, and her hair was dyed Goth black. Dark circles rimmed beneath her eyes, and the flesh of her throat was bruised, with blue veins tracing beneath the surface. Her neck, throat, and upper chest were crusted over with scarring. Some of the wounds were fresh, puckered, and oozing. Vampire bites weren’t supposed to do that. Vampire saliva and blood were supposed to have healing properties. Unless something was wrong with Isleen. There had been rumors of vampires with illnesses, notably the long-chained scions he was supposed to find.
The girl lit more lanterns, light flooded the room, and Rick raised his head, looking at where Isleen had licked his left wrist. His wrist, hand, and arm were pain free, but the skin was still inflamed. A pustule was forming on the outer part of his wrist, and red streaks were running up his forearm. He wasn’t being healed. He was being made sick. His heart sped up again, and Rick turned his head to the girl.
She was a fragile thing, her clothes dirty, blood dried on the neckline. She lifted a case, one that looked a lot like a gun box but bigger, and set it beside him. When she opened it, he could see needles in sterile packets, and chemicals, and his heart painfully skipped a beat. She was going to torture him. With needles. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. She’s going to use needles. Son of a bitch. He hated needles. He struggled again, pulling at the bonds. The sound was muted but for his cursing, which seemed to echo through the deserted barn. His energy was quickly depleted, and he fell back, banging his head on the black stone, gasping, sobbing. He was so dehydrated that his eyes stayed dry. He couldn’t break free. He had to use other talents.
Humanize yourself. Talk to the captor. Right . . . “What’s your name?” he croaked. Ignoring him, the girl lifted out vials and bottles of chemicals, and set them on a small tray, one she could carry and maneuver easily. When she was satisfied, she stepped back and uncoiled an electrical extension cord. Which meant there was a generator—which he couldn’t hear—or a building nearby. Someplace to escape to. Maybe find a phone. “What’s your name?” he said again, and when she didn’t answer, he said, “My name’s Rick.”
“I don’t care,” she whispered. She took out a small clock and opened out little legs on the back, making a stand, placing it so that she could see its face. The time read nine twenty-seven. “I don’t care what you do or why she brought you here. I don’t care if you rescue puppies and heal the sick with a touch of your hand. I’m going to do what she wants. So shut up.” She placed the glass, newly filled with water, at his lips.
He drank, and when he spoke, his voice was stronger. “Why? Why are you going to do what she wants?”
The girl’s hands stilled. She was so thin that light from the closest lantern spilled through her flesh, turning her bones dark and red, ghostlike and ephemeral. “She tried to force me as her blood-servant”—she glanced away, and when she swallowed, it looked painful—“but she couldn’t bind me. I don’t know why. But when she failed, she lost control. She nearly drained me.”
“Forcing a blood bond is illegal according to Mithran law. So is draining humans.”
“I know.”
“We could go to the Master of the City. Leo Pellissier is big on vampire law and order. He would make her stop. Punish her.”
“I can’t.” She tried to take a breath, and it sounded like silk tearing, wet and painful along her throat. “I tried to get away. Three times. And this last time . . .” Her voice broke, mewling like a kitten crushed in a fist. Tears filled her eyes, and she rolled her lips in, as if sealing in a memory and its pain. Her breath was tortured, and she pressed her pale hand to her even paler throat. “This last time . . . she took my brother. He’s seven.” The girl turned her face away, hiding behind a spill of black hair. “She made me watch as she fed on him.”
A first feeding always had sexual overtones. What the girl described was molestation and torture all at once. Rick yanked against his bonds, a growl coming from him, part pain, mostly anger. “Let me loose. We can take her down if we work together.”
“No. If she dies, Jason is dead. She hid him with her scions,” the girl said, “which she calls the long-chained. I don’t know where. And if she doesn’t come back, they’ll all die. If she lives, and if I don’t do what she wants, she’ll make me watch him die.”
“We can find him in time,” he snarled.
“I can’t take that chance. But thank you for the anger. No one has been angry for us in . . . in forever.”
Rick shoved down his rage. It wouldn’t help. Neither would the fight-or-flight instincts that battled through his blood. Forcibly he silenced his fury, tamping it down, sealing it off. “What does she want?” he asked when he could, his voice low and even.
Her movements economical and fiercely determined, the girl positioned the lanterns around him, uncapped a marker, and placed it against his skin at his shoulder. “She wants you bound to her,” she whispered. “And if she can’t do it with her vampire gift, she’ll do it with magic.” She began drawing on his skin with the marker, drawing and wiping away most of the ink, leaving only a faint outline.