Which led to another problem. She turned and stepped into the elevator. “Isn’t this mine only accessible by parachuting in?” Her stomach dropped.
“And teleporting,” Ivan said, following her and pressing a button near the top. “Every man I have working here has the ability to teleport in and out, just in case of mine failure or attack.”
Futility slammed into her stomach. Neither she nor Logan could teleport. Hopefully Logan would someday gain the ability; he was young yet. But she’d never have it, and now the only way out of the mining area for them was to climb down a series of frozen mountain slopes to the arctic tundra miles away. They’d face many predators, and she had no interest in going up against wild polar bears ever again.
Ivan cleared his throat. “By the way, we have all the surrounding area covered with land mines. Anybody trying to leave here by any way other than teleporting will be blown into tiny pieces even a witch couldn’t put back together.”
The Humpty Dumpty nursery rhyme trilled through her head. There had to be a place for a helicopter to land.
“We’re covered by trees with no cleared space,” Ivan continued as if slapping away each idea that occurred to her. “Any clearing big enough for a helicopter is fully planted with explosives.” His voice remained matter of fact and almost cheerful.
Felicity kept her face stoic. Her only chance was to somehow get word to Zane as to where they were, so he could teleport in and get Logan out of there. But first she had to find Logan.
The elevator door opened, and bright light cut inside. She blinked several times and followed Ivan into an opulent dining room with full floor-to-ceiling windows looking out over a cliff. The world outside was blue and white. Blue sky, blue condensed ice, and white ground with white covering the trees. Sunshine sparkled off particles in the ice, glittering and cold.
“This is so weird,” she muttered, stomping forward to take one of the two seats at the table decorated with fine red linens and sterling silver accents.
Ivan reached for a bottle of 1973 Richebourg and poured them each a glass. “A nice Pinot Noir for lunch,” he said as the red wine filled their glasses. Then he sat across from her.
A waiter, impeccably dressed in a white uniform, entered from a side room and quickly deposited soup in front of them. The fragrant scent wafted up, and Felicity’s stomach growled. There was only a soup spoon on the table, but the candlesticks appeared to be pure silver. While they were elegantly shaped with no sharp points, she could still use them. Blunt force trauma to the temple might take down Ivan.
He sipped his wine. “Eat up so we can get you healthy.”
She frowned, the spoon halfway to her mouth. “Why do you care so much about my health?”
He swirled the wine in the glass and watched the play of light. “My doctors have informed me that we can’t inject you with the mutated Virus-Twenty-Seven until all of the current drug is out of your system.”
She dropped her spoon. “You have vials of the mutated virus?”
“Yes. The queen doesn’t believe in proprietary information and made the concoction available to the world at large.” He smiled. “It didn’t take much of an effort to find a clinic and buy samples. Of course, the queen also sent very strong directions that the samples were for research purposes only.”
Nausea swirled down Felicity’s throat to thud in her stomach. “The mutation is still experimental.”
“Right, but as I can see, the drug already worked on you, or you wouldn’t have been able to mate Daire Dunne.” Ivan smiled.
She shook her head. “No. I mean, yes, it worked. But the queen made a few tweaks before we experimented, and you probably don’t have the newest samples. In addition, nobody has ever tried to negate a mating bond twice in the same body.” God only knew what the mutated sample would do once inside Felicity.
“I’m willing to take the chance.”