“Hmm.” Dante scowled at him. “That is your fault. You are the one who told her about that projecting business.”
“What? I should have left her ignorant?” Francis asked dryly. “Knowledge is power, my friend. She needed to know.”
“Yes, but—” Dante paused and sat back in his seat as their waitress rushed to the table.
“Um . . . hi,” she greeted them, her expression flustered, almost panicked. “Er . . . I was out having a cigarette and I think—I mean I saw—That lady who came in with you guys? I think she’s in trouble. Some guy just carried her out the back door of the restaurant and put her in a van. She was unconscious.”
Dante was out of his seat and rushing for the door before she’d finished speaking.
Mary woke to the hum of an engine and rumble of voices and for a minute, didn’t have a clue where she was. She also couldn’t open her eyes at first, or even move, she realized, and felt panic well up within her as she tried to sort out what was happening.
“Dr. Dressler is going to be mighty pleased with this shipment,” a man said, his voice filled with what sounded like glee. “Five vampires, two of them twins, and one a new turn. He’ll give us a huge bonus for this.”
“Don’t count your chickens before they hatch, Ernie,” another voice cautioned. “Right now we only have the woman and the one twin. We haven’t captured the rest of them yet.”
“We will,” Ernie said with certainty. “That waitress told the fangers like you paid her to, and they’re following us. Once we stop at the warehouse, they’ll rush the van to save the girl and Danny and Jackson’ll take ’em out with the darts. Easy peasy.”
Mary frowned at this news, and actually felt her mouth move. Whatever they’d shot her with must be wearing off, she thought, and opened her eyes, happy when she was able to. She opened them all the way, and then closed them to slits in an effort not to give away that she was stirring. Mary then glanced around to see that she was lying on the floor in the back of a van. She had been placed along the wall behind the driver’s seat with her head toward the front of the van and her feet toward the back.
Mary tried to tilt her head back to look at the men who were speaking, but her head didn’t move. She didn’t think it would be long before it would; her fingers already had movement again, as did her hands, although she couldn’t move them far. She seemed to be tied up or something. She could move her feet too though, and they were bound. Still, the rest of her felt like she’d been given some kind of numbing agent. Whatever the darts held was definitely wearing off quickly.
“How much do you think our bonus will be for this one?” Ernie asked, his voice excited.
“I don’t know,” the driver muttered. “All I’m thinking about is making sure those fangers don’t catch up with us before we get to the warehouse.”
“They’re still two car lengths back,” Ernie said, his voice growing a little louder and Mary stilled, her eyes closing. She was quite sure the man had turned to glance back toward her as he spoke so stayed as still as she could, practically holding her breath.
“We still have six blocks to the warehouse,” the driver said grimly.
“Yeah, but they won’t try anything on a busy street,” Ernie said, his voice returning to the quieter level, suggesting he’d turned away again.
Relaxing a little, Mary carefully opened her eyes and glanced toward the front of the van. This time she was able to tilt her head. Her gaze slid over the driver and passenger, Ernie. All she could see was the backs of their heads over the seats. Both had dark hair.
Lowering her head again, Mary started feeling around with her fingers, trying to sort out what she’d been tied up with. A quick inspection of whatever was around her wrists told her she hadn’t been tied. Instead, something that felt very like shackles to her were around each wrist. The shackles both had chains flowing away from them. Following the chains with her fingers, she found that it was actually one chain connecting both shackles. But that it was threaded through some sort of metal circle attached to the sidewall of the van, she noted, wincing as the chain made a clanking sound behind her.
Mary stilled, her eyes instinctively closing in case the sound made one of the men glance back, but their conversation continued, unhindered.
“The bonus has to be huge,” Ernie muttered. “Hell, even if we don’t catch the others, he’s gonna be pleased with the woman. Especially once he finds out that the hottie in the back was an old broad just yesterday. He said he thought the fangers could turn mortals and she’s proof they can.”
“Maybe, but we still don’t know how they did it, and he’ll want to know that more than anything else,” the driver pointed out. Mary dubbed him Bert rather than keeping thinking of him as “the driver.”
“So? She’ll know,” Ernie said with certainty. “He’ll make her tell him.”