thirty-five
I had the worst headache I’d ever had. I needed to take some medicine and find a dark room to curl up in. I wondered if Thurl had aspirin. Probably not. I can’t imagine the wyrfangs got headaches. He said they couldn’t get sick. I was thinking about the flu but that probably meant headaches, too.
I rolled over to ask him if he had a first aid kit and my arm scraped along the floor.
Wait. Why was I on the floor? Why was the floor rough like badly poured concrete?
I pushed myself up and cracked open an eye.
The floor was badly poured, rough concrete and I was not in Thurl’s house. I wasn’t in the joint task force warehouse, either. I had no idea where I was.
A thick layer of dust didn’t help cushion the floor, but it let me see a few sets of footprints leading to a door on the far wall. Mold covered the ceiling and had made it about halfway down one wall. There was a dirty window with a pane missing over a cracked sink, but I could see the bars on the outside from where I sat.
“Luna?” My brain punished me with a sharp stab when I turned to look for her. I was alone.
I closed my eyes and took a few calming breaths. Panicking would do me no good and just make my head hurt worse.
The arm propping me up sported a line of blood running from my inner elbow to my wrist. The hole looked like the kind you got from an IV. Despite my best efforts, anxiety surged.
Someone had injected me with something?
I struggled to remember what happened, but after stepping out of the warehouse and walking toward the SUV, everything was a dark blur.
I pushed at the wound and hissed. The red lights I’d grown used to enough to have forgotten about flared bright.
Oh no.
Thurl would be going crazy.
Judging by what made it past the grime on the window, it was still daylight.
The door opened, and light rushed in, blinding me.
“Oh good, you’re awake.”
Rough hands yanked me to my feet, and I stumbled as the man pulled me along. I blinked and swallowed down a wave of nausea. “What did you give me?”
“A sedative. I needed you easy to handle.”
I looked over and forced my eyes to focus on his face.
“Officer Phillips?”
“You remember me?”
I nodded and then regretted it. “Yep.”
He sighed. “Too bad.”
I didn’t ask what that meant. After a short hallway, we entered a living room that was only marginally in better shape than the room I’d been in. A table stretched along one wall, currently occupied by a man’s body. A woman in scrubs stood next to it, arguing with another man whose back was to me.
“You can’t expect me to save him when he’s full of this many holes!”
“I can, and I do.”
The front door opened and a third man who rivaled the breadth of Zeus walked in. A towering figure, standing well over six feet, who seemed built entirely of muscle. His tight black t-shirt exposed gray scale tattoos covering both arms, marred by scars that crisscrossed his knuckles and forearms, evidence of countless brawls.
His face would be handsome if he wasn’t wearing a scowl. He was a stark contrast to Vale’s elegance.
Then I saw a tiny figure behind him.
A little girl I instantly recognized.
“Sophia?”
The nurse spun toward the door and Sophia’s eyes went impossibly wide as she took in the scene. The other woman lunged for her, but the businessman grabbed her arm and yanked her back.
“She’s fine, and will remain that way as long as you stay focused on your task.”
My head throbbed, my elbow stung and I was so confused I wanted to cry. “What is going on? Where’s Luna?”
The businessman turned around slowly and I gaped at Adrian Vale.
He tilted his head at me and then pinned Officer Phillips with a death stare.
“Why is she here?”
“You told me to grab her, boss.”
He backed up a step, and since he hadn’t let go of my arm, I did too.
His tone was deadly quiet when he said, “I told you to grab her, not bring her here. So I’ll ask one more time. Why is she here?”
Phillips audibly swallowed. “I… I… I…” He stammered the word without adding any others.
Vale slashed his hand through the air. “It’s done.” He directed his next words to Sophia. “Sit down, sweetheart, and watch mommy work. Everything’s fine.”
She looked from him to her mother and back again. Then she made her way at a snail’s speed to the couch and sat, avoiding the rips and springs that poked through.
I swung my focus to the nurse and finally recognized her from parent-teacher meetings. “Mrs. Calder?”
Her lips pinched shut as Vale spoke.
“Ms. Massey, please don’t distract her.”
“Where is Luna?” My head was full of cobwebs, but I’d managed to knock a few down.
“I don’t know anyone by that name.”
Phillips found his voice. “Her bodyguard.”
“Ah. In that case, answer the lady Phillips.”
“She was a problem. I shot her.”
I jerked in his grasp. Tears sprang to my eyes and I blinked furiously. I refused to cry in front of these assholes.
Vale scrubbed his hand down his face. “Do you not have a single brain cell, Phillips?” He didn’t let him answer. “Shut up. Not another word.”
“I don’t understand. Why am I here and not dead?” I couldn’t figure out why he didn’t just shoot me, too.
“I was hoping we could come to a mutually beneficial agreement.”
“How on earth could I benefit you?”
He smiled and it was the definition of slimy.
“You have managed to elude me and all of my associates, thus, you have skill at hiding that supersedes those in my employ’s ability to find what they’re looking for. It would prove useful to have a skill like that at my disposal.”
I glanced at Mrs. Calder, who was throwing bloody stacks of gauze on the floor and poking inside the man on the table’s body.
“That’s … not a skill I can transfer to anyone else.”
He steepled his fingers at his chin. “Are you unable or unwilling to teach someone else?”
“Unable.” I yanked at Phillps’s hold again and managed to get free this time. I didn’t move my feet. There was no point. I wouldn’t outrun Phillips or Wall of Muscle, much less a bullet.
“That’s disappointing. I thought you were a teacher.”
“It’s not a lack of skill, Mr. Vale, that prevents me. It’s the simple fact that my solution only worked because of who I am. No one else could take advantage of it.”
He dropped his hands and cocked his head. “Interesting. Explain.”
“No.”
I saw the change in his demeanor. He went from behaving like he was at a business dinner to pure rage in the blink of an eye. “No?”
I nodded.
“Do you know how I got to be so powerful, Ms. Massey?”
“I do not.”
He moved to the couch and picked up a lock of Sophia’s hair, letting it run through his fingers. “I find out what people want, or what they can’t live without, and then I exploit it.”
He looked back at me. “I’ll figure out your pressure point, eventually. It will be a lot easier on both of us if you simply tell me now instead of making me go to the trouble.”
“I’m sure your minions won’t mind doing the research.” I stopped. “Why did you murder that boy?”
His face shuttered. “He stole from me.”
“No, why did you do it? Why not have Wall of Muscle or another lackey do it?” I waved in the wall’s direction.
“I gained power by leveraging my skill at ferreting out information, but that often isn’t enough to keep it. I killed that boy because it’s good to remind everyone what lengths I’m willing to go, what I’m capable of doing, to stay at the top.”
He didn’t get to continue his villain speech because Mrs. Calder started slamming her fist against the bloody man’s chest, punctuating each hit with a yelled, “Fuck!”