Chapter 21
If she focused while the cramps were on an upward spike, Simone could just about taste what they’d dosed her with. Acrid and oddly sweet at once, two overlapping auras and a funny sugary afterburn, it lingered as neither blood nor alcohol-burn, slow and syrupy.
And painful.
Despite that, she could piece together a few things.
The popping sound had been a tranquilizer dart, she’d been loaded onto some kind of plastic sled by men who did not take the opportunity to feel her up—which said they might possibly have understood just what they were dealing with—and now she was on a swooping, jittering helicopter while Elton Huske yelled over and over about how smart he was.
“—Mojave Green and pufferfish,” he crowed, muffled by a helmet which no doubt had a radio mic in it—she could tell from the slight whine of feedback, and the way the pilot kept muttering on a separate channel. “Really cool, huh?”
“Yeah, it’s great.” Barry, along for the ride in a helmet of his own, didn’t sound happy.
Of course he wasn’t a big fan of heights, and Simone was wearily unsurprised that she knew that about him but hadn’t figured out he was tracking her for someone else.
“You said you were just gonna make a pitch.”
“And if she’d listened, we wouldn’t be doing this.” Huske let out a short, blurting whoop, like a toddler glimpsing a birthday cake. “Didja see the way she just fell down? It works, it absolutely works. Genius stuff, just genius.”
The cramp released, a blinding relief. Simone had a moment to goddamn think, and her first conclusion was that she had to hope whatever they’d poisoned her with wasn’t fatal.
The second was that she was tied down pretty tightly.
A wide metal band was bolted over her throat, and dozy, prickling heat poked through the general lethargic pain whenever her chin brushed its top edge.
What the hell, man? She couldn’t even talk, her jaw was locked, and the faint crackle-shifting as her fangs slid free and retracted in short uncoordinated bursts was lost under the helicopter’s irritating buzz.
Huske kept blathering about what a brilliant move this was, how many different versions of the poison—not a sedative, actual poison, Simone was too busy focusing through the wracking waves to do more than hope her vamp infection could fight the shit off—his staff had tested, the amount of trouble he’d gone to.
He certainly seemed to be having a wonderful time.
“What about the money?” Barry finally piped up. The helicopter shifted, banking, and the sound of its rotors changed. Gravity pressed against Simone’s shaking, twisting body, and a new, wholly terrible thought rose through the chaos inside her head.
Fuck the money, what happens at sunrise?
“Soon as we have some samples, that’ll be a drop in the bucket.
But don’t worry, there’s tracers on her payment, right?
We’ll get that back, and you’ll get that percentage because I really value your contributions, my man.
” There was a faint smacking sound—either Huske was clapping again, or he was pounding Barry’s shoulder like an excited sports fan.
Metal rattled—Simone braced herself for another seizure, but a gush of cold sweat flooded her skin and she realized her vamp-infected body had fought off most of the crap she’d been injected with.
Oh, hey, thanks. A delirious thought, addressing the infected, patient meat she hauled around on a daily basis. We haven’t always seen eye to eye, body, but you’re doing really well at the moment.
An experimental twitch, her fingers obeying and every savagely tired muscle in her arms and legs trembling with relief.
Yep, she was a lot better now. Tied down on some molded plastic sled, sure, and something about the straps was concerning, but she was back in the driver’s seat.
Her muscles were listening, and that was a blessing.
“And just think of the defense contracts…” Huske’s babble trailed off. “Uh-oh.”
“Oh, shit,” Barry muttered, maybe too low for his mic to pick up. “What’s uh-oh?”
Just give me a few more seconds. Simone tested her arms, found them comparatively weak but willing. First, she had to get her upper half free, then she could—
Another ice-spear jammed deep into her left thigh, and she screamed.
The howl was long and glassy, possibly edging into ultrasonic, and the helicopter jolted as if startled.
Someone cursed, another man let out a short horrified cry, and for a moment she wondered dismally if she was going to have to survive an aircraft crash tonight.
Then her limbs seized again. The motherfucker had jabbed her with another dose of poison-whatever.
Oh, goddammit.
Dawn approaching—she was dimly, instinctively aware of the fact through a screen of agony.
The cramps were more intense this time, requiring all her energy and attention to keep breathing through the waves, monstrous ripping sawteeth at every peak.
Sweat had long since crackle-dried on her clothes, and now she knew why the metal band at her throat burned.
It was silver. Not entirely, of course, but a layer of sterling over something much harder, which apparently, go figure, was one bit of folklore that actually had a claim to truth.
Blisters rose wherever the metal touched, bursting and re-forming with agonizing regularity as her wracked body tried to escape both the bonds and the terrible foreign substance busy making her every vein a stream of twisting, convulsive fire.
What had the old vamp said? Something about young fledglings—but that was useless, he was left behind in the Continental Hotel, and Simone couldn’t even begin deciding if this was worse than being trapped in an airless space behind ‘seals’.
At least he hadn’t hurt her. Fucked her to hell and gone, sure, but not poisoned or… or betrayed her. Maybe he was actually honest about what he wanted or intended?
The point was, for a bloodsucking hurricane of a monster, ol’ blue-eyed John was looking comparatively good right now.
She barely noticed when the helicopter landed, despite the jolt wringing a miserable half-choked cry from her raw throat.
The whine of the rotors slowed; a metal shelf shuddered, rattled, and the plastic sled was drawn out into a burst of cold predawn air redolent of pine, freshness, and a peculiar thinness meaning high altitude, don’t go for a jog just yet.
There was a squeak and a groan as the sled was thumped atop a metal cart, its wheels rattling over what felt like frost-heaved pavement, and she tried to blink, to gather impressions.
A mountainside cresting like a dark wave, blotting out the horrible, dangerous grey haze on the horizon. Smaller electric lights blinking, the helicopter’s whine cut off clean as a knife-slice, a gush of gasoline smell accompanied by a patter of running feet.
“—make it downhill to Aspen for breakfast,” someone called, before the waning stars were blotted out by a roof. Simone was hauled into a giant mouth carved from sheer rock, her entire frame shaking and shivering as the vamp infection fought with poison, hoping he wouldn’t jab her again.
The wheels smoothed out, clattering against smoother flooring. More heartbeats and running feet, excited voices. Simone’s hands ached, fingers contorted as her claws slid free and retracted in spasms like her fangs, and now a new and more terrible torture was rising.
The thirst-spot at the back of her throat dilated all at once.
In a moment between waves of muscle-grip wringing, she tried to turn her hands, to drive her claws into the sled.
The urge to rip, tear, strike out wildly even if her limbs wouldn’t fully obey because they were locked by toxin-flooded muscles poured through her, the last desperate attempts of a tied-down animal sensing the approach of black nothingness.
“What the fuck?” Barry, nearly hysterical. “It’s killing her, you can’t… Jesus, man, it’s killing her!”
“Get this into the lab!” Elton Huske bellowed, for once without that nasal, wheedling California accent. “I’ll fire every fuckin’ one of you if we don’t get some fuckin’ samples, now move!”
Dawn grabbed Simone while her body was still convulsing, and the thirst followed her past the threshold for a few moments before dropping away.
Nothing, then. Not even relief.