Two hours before dawn, Loriann packed up her torture implements and allowed him to wash off and eat a meal. Near dawn Isleen appeared in a whoosh of air, creating her own wind, and stood there bent over him, fully vamped-out, fangs exposed and fresh blood on her mouth and chin. Her fingers were almost warm—though still cooler than a human’s—where she traced the tattoos, and they grew warmer when she slid her fingertips up to touch the pulse point in his throat.
Her body was bent weirdly, as if her spine was more articulated, snakelike. Her fingers were spread, and bloody claws were out, held wide, fingers curved as if to catch prey. Rick couldn’t help the hard thump of his heart or the way it raced when she bent lower, folding herself in two, and licked the trace of his blood from his skin with a dead, cold tongue. A shiver raced over his skin, and Isleen laughed, her vamped-out eyes blacker than the doorway into hell.
“You have done well, little witch,” she whispered, her chilled, fetid breath blowing across Rick’s face. “He tastes . . . lovely.”
“Thank you, mistress,” Loriann whispered, her face averted from the vampire.
“You will be finished tomorrow?”
“Before the moon rises, mistress.”
“Good. I shall be here. The ceremony will go forward.”
“And Jason?” Loriann whispered even more softly, as if the words strangled in her throat.
“Who? Oh.” Isleen stood and flicked her fingers as if brushing something inconsequential from her. “The child. You may have him when the work is completed.”
“Will you bring him when you come?”
Isleen tilted her head to the side, that lizard-movement thing again that vampires never did in front of humans because they knew it creeped out their dinner. “I suppose I can bring him. Perhaps seeing him will convince you to work well and finish the project on time.”
“Yes, mistress.” But the witch was watching Rick through her dyed tresses, some meaning in her expression.
“Before midnight, then, witch, for the ceremony.” And Isleen was gone. Loriann unlocked three of his shackles, gathered up her belongings, and walked to the door just as the sun rose over the horizon. Framed in golden light in the doorway, she stopped. “You’ll have only a moment,” she whispered. And then she, too, was gone.
Rick rose and wrapped himself in the clean sheet she had left folded on the black stone. Pressed into the dirt by the rectangular shape of the kit that carried her needles was a knife, its sturdy blade about four inches long, and a rasp, a kind of sanding implement used by farriers when they needed to reshape a horse’s hooves. It was perfect for smoothing rough wood implements. The kind one might make with a knife, from boards in a barn, to kill vampires.
Rick laughed, the sound low and vicious and victorious. She had decided to trust him. She had arranged for the dangerous, insane vampire to bring Jason here tomorrow night. And at some point in the proceedings Loriann was going to make sure he got the chance to stake Isleen.
? ? ?
The knife and rasp made the work of chipping and shaping stakes much easier, and by noon Rick had six good stakes, two short ones and four well-shaped, well-balanced ones that hefted nicely in his hand. And he had the knife, which he had carefully honed with the rasp, though the edge wasn’t particularly sharp; the rasp wasn’t manufactured with the goal of smoothing steel, and his efforts had been laughable at best. It also wasn’t plated with silver to kill a vampire. But it was a bladed weapon, and having the weapons improved his chances of saving his hide. Rick knew that fighting a pissed-off vamp while naked, weakened, hungry, and sick as he was wasn’t likely a survivable endeavor, but he had decided that going down fighting was better than submitting.
Midafternoon he showered in the cold water, ate the small plate of food left by Loriann, and took a nap on the dusty floor, curled on the folded sheet, hoping to garner some strength for the night.
And he woke with a vampire’s jaws at his throat. Drinking.
His body reacted instantly, sexually, to the attack. One of Isleen’s hands was holding his nape, the other playing him. He couldn’t scream; he couldn’t fight. He couldn’t stop her. And with the vampire saliva entering his bloodstream, he didn’t want to. He was aroused, chained by the ankle, and drunk on vamp. Her hunger was insatiable. Her body corpse-cold. But resisting was all he had left.
One hand wound into her hair, holding her. His head fell back and his spine arched up, closer to her. His other hand found a stake under the edge of the sheet. He curled his fingers around it.