Chapter 31
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
THE THROBBING PAIN IN Elliot’s skull wouldn’t let up.
He squeezed his eyelids tighter to block out the bothersome light and suppressed a miserable groan.
Elliot’s sluggish mind scrambled to take in his situation, but his thoughts were still fracturing too easily.
He was strapped to a hospital cot, helpless. Panic surged in his blood.
After a few seconds of nausea, he focused on what he could hear around him. Someone was moving nearby, metal instruments shifted on a metal tray .
Oh, that cannot possibly be good.
He cracked his eyes the slightest bit. A tall, slim man with graying blond hair in a lab coat was fiddling with a large needle.
Inside a clear fluid through which deep blue swirled like smoke.
The needle alone was concerning, but the blue liquid sent a chill down his spine and goosebumps prickling over his skin.
Whatever it was, Elliot could sense evil emanating from it, the kind of evil that evoked an instinctual ancient fear.
Oh, this is very fucking bad.
He must not have quite smothered his gasp, because an emotionless gaze met his. “Pity you woke for this; it will hurt.” The man spoke in thickly accented English, German. Right. Captured. In shit up to his eyeballs. He needed to think. Stall?
“What are you doing?” Elliot asked, tongue clumsy, mouth dry.
A faint smile graced the man’s face. “Testing something new. Albrecht has only now finished it. She’s talented you know, it’s a wonder the things she has been able to do for us. If this is as successful as we hope, the possibilities will be limitless.”
Elliot fought the fruitless urge to struggle with the leather bindings. It won’t help. Focus, Stone. Put on a show. Everything is all right. “Richter, I presume?”
“Mmm. Hold still for this would you?” Richter said, reaching out to pat Elliot’s hand in mock reassurance, and there, that was his chance.
As soon as Richter’s fingers made contact with the back of Elliot’s palm, he shoved every ounce of magic he could summon into an immense burst of horror, flooded everything he had into Richter.
He’d never let it loose in such an uncontrolled, uncoordinated rush before.
It felt like frozen sludge surging through Elliot’s veins, making his fingers tremble with cold and effort.
Richter’s face instantly drained of color, his mouth forming a silent ‘O’ of surprise. The muscles in his face spasmed twice and he stared at Elliot in complete terror, body frozen stiff and unable to move. Silent tears streaked over his chalk-white cheeks.
“Try to pull away from me, and I’ll flood you with more than your mind can handle before you so much as twitch. You’ll never recover,” Elliot bluffed. “I’m going to ease the flow slightly. Undo that restraint with your free hand and it all stops.”
Richter shuddered, mouth working, like he was trying to scream for help, but the only thing that came out was a wheezing choke.
His fingers scrambled with the belt mechanism on Elliot’s left wrist. The second he was free, Elliot sent a renewed spate of horror through the connection, intending to render Richter unconscious.
Richter dropped to the floor, twitching.
His chest seemed to struggle for long minutes in the unsuccessful attempt to breathe.
And then it stilled. Elliot blinked down at him, his own lips parted in shock.
Richter was dead. Elliot had killed him.
Richter hadn’t been their target but eliminating one part of the equation was nearly as good as the other. There would be time later to puzzle out his feelings on the entire situation. Now he needed to focus. No telling how long he had before someone returned to check on them.
Elliot worked his right wrist free of the restraints, then his ankles. He pushed to his feet and staggered toward the door, wishing he had Hoffman or—no, he could not think of Warren right now. If he did, he would crumple to the ground and let the German bastards take him.
He was halfway across the room when he remembered the needle.
His stomach rebelled, but he couldn’t leave it there.
Who knew what it was? If Albrecht had cooked up something new, it needed to be investigated.
There might be more of it somewhere. With a shudder, he stumbled back to the silver tray it sat on, nestled in a syringe case.
He snapped the metal lid shut and jammed the case in his pocket.
Elliot cautiously approached the door again.
He peered out the window and glimpsed a soldier walking his way.
Reaching into his pocket, he located a slip of paper Remonet had given him ages ago, he’d hidden it among the poems he always kept with him.
When he was divested of weapons it must have gone unnoticed.
As the soldier closed in, Elliot opened the door and launched himself forward. Sucking in a breath, the German prepared to call out as the paper landed on his chest with a muffled smack of Elliot’s palm, and in the nick of time Elliot whispered, “Sassafras.”
The soldier’s face and posture went slack, his mouth closed, eyes glazed.
It didn’t sound nearly as funny now as it had when Remonet first told him, not when it’d just saved his arse.
Glancing around to ensure no one else was in the corridor, Elliot used a guiding hand to propel the soldier into the room he had exited, shutting the door firmly behind them.
This particular spell rendered the target suggestible, suspending their ability to exert independent cognitive function. It would last a half-hour at best, in Elliot’s experience, and he intended to use that time wisely.
Speaking in German he asked, “The other American, do you know where she’s being held?”
The soldier’s vacant expression didn’t alter. “Yes.”
“Right,” Elliot wanted to ask how she was, if she had been hurt, what they had been doing to her.
But he wasn’t sure he could hold his temper if this young man gave him the wrong answers.
“I want you to listen closely. You will take me to her. You will hold onto my arm and…” Elliot pulled the pistol from the German’s holster, emptied it of ammunition and handed it to him.
“Hold this on me. Be convincing. If anyone asks what you’re doing, you’re to say Richter ordered you to take me…
oh I don’t know…tell them you’re taking me outside to shoot me. ”
That seemed like a plausible enough lie. What use was he to them after all?
Complying, the German took hold of Elliot and did as instructed.
Dragging him roughly through corridors. They garnered a few curious looks, but no one outright questioned them.
Elliot wondered how common the scenario he had proposed was.
Then he thought of Emilienne and her missing family with a pang.
It wasn’t long before they approached the room where Bellona must be held. Two soldiers flanked the door, expressions uneasy as they approached.
“What do you think you are doing?” The one on the right asked, burly and dark haired.
The one on the left squared his slim shoulders. Blond eyebrows raising over apprehensive blue eyes as they approached. “We’ve orders not to let anyone pass.”
“Don’t stop,” Elliot said under his breath.
“Hey! I’m talking to you.”
The two soldiers were reaching for their weapons when Elliot broke free of the hold his ‘captor’ had on him.
He smacked his hands to their faces and jolted horror through them, more careful this time to hold back enough.
They collapsed instantly. Elliot stepped past and peered through the window, relieved to find Bellona inside alone.
Less relieved to find she remained unconscious.
“You there,” Elliot said to the soldier still under his sway. “Take that one, bring him inside. Then get the other.”
Entering first, Elliot watched the soldier gather his fallen comrades, then closed the door once all three of them were inside.
He retrieved the empty pistol, reloaded it, and tucked it in his jacket.
He confiscated the other soldiers’ weapons for good measure.
No sense leaving them armed to shoot him in the back.
With hurried clumsiness, he unstrapped Bellona’s arms and legs.
She didn’t appear to have been harmed further.
Whatever drug she’d been injected with earlier had kept her sedated.
He wished he knew how long they had been unconscious for, or when it was due to wear off.
“It would be a lot easier on both of us, if you’d been the one to devise this escape you know,” he muttered, considering her.
She made no response. Elliot searched the room for something that could wake her, as if he knew what any of the various jars labelled in German were for.
It wasn’t as though they would label it ‘wake up time’ was it?
During his search he made certain to devote partial attention to his unalert but still awake captive lest the spell wear off.
“Christ, what am I going to do. If I carry you out of here, we’ll both be shot escaping, and before you say it, I won’t leave you,” he told her as if she was in any state to argue.
Giving up on his search he returned to the bed and shook her shoulders gently.
“Bellona, you’ve got to wake up. Bell, I’m afraid I must insist. Winifred. ”
Precious minutes stretched uncomfortably long as he stared down at her, willing her to wake. When that didn’t work he raked his hands through his hair in anxious frustration. Time was ticking.
“I don’t know what to do Bellona,” he admitted, holding one of her cool hands in his. “I haven’t a clue this time. I need to save you because I couldn’t…” His throat hurt. “I think he’s already dead and seeing you out of this jam is the only thing preventing me from cracking up completely.”
Two explosions outside shook the building, windowpanes rattling against the bars that lined them.
What on earth?