Chapter 23 #2
But they’d noticed the monster was awake.
A cringing wash of terror rolled through the scent of massed humans, so intense it filtered through her blocked nose and scratched against the thirst, hard.
The brunette next to the cart flinched; the blond kid swallowed visibly, his grip on the pole white-knuckle and the entire apparatus swaying, blood and plasma bags swinging grapes on a shaken vine.
Several of the lab-coated crowd stopped or backed away, staring wide-eyed at the lab rat who had just made a noise.
“Elton Huske,” Simone said, loud and clear, scraping each word from the bottom of her lungs. “Typical. When you can’t buy your dates you drug ’em, right?”
It got his attention off Barry, at least. And Simone had no idea why she was distracting Huske from carrying out his threat, when all things considered her treacherous redheaded finder had been the one to talk her into this ambush.
That, and your own greed. Be fair.
She didn’t want to be fair. The only thing she wanted to do was tear these restraints off, leap on the nearest throb-thumping human pulse, and sink her aching, overly sensitive fangs deep.
The first hot gush would be heavenly, and she might not be able to stop no matter how much John insisted on her being a super-special lemon-scented fledgling.
Bet he says that to all the girls. It was hard to concentrate with the thirst rough-pulsing in her throat, and the machine recording her vital signs was emitting all kinds of interesting noises now.
The billionaire stopped in his tracks, still staring at her. His pupils were dilated, and through the reek of fear as well as the crap in her nose Simone caught a high, sawing metallic edge—some kind of drug, a tranquilizer if her vamp instinct was right.
Dried sweat crackled on her skin. She tried to blink away the crust on her swollen, tender eyes; the machine’s noises were getting fucking irritating. Just as she thought so it began to whine, static crawling through the displays.
Huske’s Adam’s-apple leapt up, dropped, and his grin held no amusement whatsoever.
“Glad to see you’re awake!” he crowed, and a rustle ran through the lab coats.
A portly man on the other side of the room backed up, triggering an automatic door into whooshing patiently aside; he vanished through, probably relieved as hell to have got while the getting was good.
Simone could second that emotion. Her gaze roved, taking in the gigantic room’s dimensions, and she wished again the goddamn machine would stop its cawing and beeping.
“Elton.” Barry was giving it another try, the sheen of nervous sweat on his forehead coalescing into fat drops. “This wasn’t in the deal, okay? Let’s just all calm down and talk about—”
“Barry, you’re fucking fired. Someone get him out of here.
” Huske approached the hanging slab, his sneakers squeaking more loudly now; the socks under them were still creased from packaging.
So goddamn weird, that he didn’t wash before wearing—but maybe whatever employee laid out his clothes didn’t like him enough to clue the boss in on that little life hack.
John hadn’t washed his new clothes either, but that seemed different. She didn’t want to pin down just why at the moment; no, Simone had all she could handle.
She studied her new captor, denying the urge to blink. Her aching, split upper lip twitched, rising, and it was quite possible she was sneering.
Huske, of course, was just the type of asshole to be overly sensitive to even the faintest flicker of disdain on a woman’s face.
Another bright false smile slid into place, exposing his expensively capped teeth.
“Jane Smith. You know you’re kind of famous?
Nobody can decide on your real name, if you’re really a sanguinant—”
He knows that word? She couldn’t help but twitch. The machine reading her vital signs whined, burped out another cascade of beeps like the world’s crappiest slot machine.
“Will someone turn the sound on that down? Thanks.” Huske addressed empty air, shifting to stare vaguely at a point past Simone’s right shoulder, and the blond kid fiddling with the pole of blood bags and plasma hurried to obey.
She heard the kid’s footsteps, passing behind her, and that was valuable information—she wasn’t mounted on a wall, the slab was a free-standing structure.
Not that it did much good, but any detail could be the critical one allowing escape, a lesson learned in an abandoned church’s daylight basement as she worked at handcuffs cinched to bloody wrists, hoping the snoozing monster who kept attacking her in the dark hours wouldn’t wake up.
Sure, this situation was bad; it was arguably worse than being held down and athletically fucked on the floor of her RV.
But Simone found out, with a weary useless variety of relief, that it wasn’t as terrible as the nadir of her entire existence, those endless morning hours as the sun rose and she tore at her own flesh, discovering her willingness, her own determination to survive.
No matter what.
Two more lab coats—a man and a woman, both with glasses and matching harried, hunted expressions though the woman was a bottle-blonde and her compatriot shiny-bald—hurried up to take Barry’s arms, muttering at him.
Barry cast a single agonized look in Simone’s direction…
and let himself be hustled away, probably grateful to get the hell out of this madness.
Which was about all you could expect from anyone, so it was silly to feel a thin, cold spike go through her chest. There were more immediate problems, like the burning in her arms, across her forehead. Her wrists, elbows, biceps were slippery, blisters swelling and bursting, swelling again.
There was no give in the restraints. What the hell were they made of, under the silver?
A strangled squawk, a muffled curse in a young, near-breaking male voice, and the machine stopped its warbling.
In fact, its glowing screen died completely, becoming a blank dark glass pane; Simone suspected he’d just unplugged the damn thing, and mentally applauded the kid for solving the problem in the most direct way.
Huske, still blinking rapidly, didn’t notice—and appeared to have immediately forgotten all about Barry as well.
“I’ve done my research, you know.” Despite his great show of unconcern, he edged sideways instead of approaching her more closely, and finally stopped staring at her long enough to check out the surgical cart.
“It’s taken a decade and a half, plus a lot of resources; even the young ones are so fucking hard to catch.
To be honest I thought ol’ Jessup there was running some kind of scam.
They’re all over, especially on the dark web.
But he wasn’t, was he. You’re the real deal. ”
If I wasn’t, would you have shot me with that tranquilizer? But Simone knew the answer. “Can the goddamn monologue,” she said, wearily. “You’re not a supervillain; you’re just a kid who lucked into Daddy’s money.”
The hush became profound. Every lab coat in the room had frozen in place, and it was depressing that she could guess with near-perfect accuracy what button to push on a middle-aged man.
She had, after all, been married to one.
“Maybe.” Huske extended a hand, his well-buffed fingers wiggling to brush the blowtorch’s canister, almost lovingly. “But I’m also the guy who finally caught himself a real live vampire. I’m going to live forever.”
Bullshit you are. Simone couldn’t help it. She began to laugh, harsh chuckle-caws shaking her against the unforgiving restraints.
Huske’s face congested. Another pair of lab-coated workers saw their chance and made it through the automatic door at the far end, its whoosh covered by her hoarse, scraping chuckles.
“Shut up. Shut up!” His scent changed, a harsh purple-red tint invading the drug’s caustic screen; he snatched the blowtorch and heaved it at her. The willowy brunette let out a short, squeaking cry, the cart rattling as her hip bumped the pushbar.
Pow. A good throw, all things considered, the canister’s bottom bouncing off the strap over her eyebrows. It didn’t hurt; Simone had taken worse during any number of bounties. Face-hitting a vamp was a good way to break whatever you were swinging at them, or your own damn hand.
So he’d been trying to catch vampires for years, huh?
It just went to show how irredeemably stupid the man was.
Whether the money atrophied his brain or it had been useless to begin with was an open question, really.
Which made her laugh even harder, and God but she suspected her own sanity was about to snap.
She might become just as foaming-psycho as the eight young bloodsuckers she’d killed.
Huske stood stock-still, ribs heaving as she continued to laugh. Finally the fit passed, and she found she could breathe a little more easily. She couldn’t shake her head, but Simone hoped the impression was there.
“Dumbass,” she croaked, in what she hoped was a pleasantly dismissive tone. “You absolute chuck-fuckling dickbag dipshit. You won’t ever be a vamp; you wouldn’t survive a half-hour.”
Huske’s nostrils flared, color draining from his face until the skin turned chalky-yellowish all the way down his neck, every pore and hair visible even with her eyes so badly crusted, along with the flutter of his raging carotid pulse.
There was no swelling point of wet crimson light in his pupils or spreading to engulf his eyeballs, no sense of cold, prickling, absolute focus.
No superhuman speed, no superstrength, not even the advantage of enough fierce, uncompromising human willpower to rip his own flesh to ribbons, yanking hands through too-small metal cuffs.
He was just another small-dick midlife crisis, albeit a variety with enough money to make everyone around him miserable.
Of course he wanted to get infected, of course he thought it was like the movies, living forever and getting everything he wanted.
Just like a toddler might want an entire birthday cake, throwing a tantrum when other children got reasonable pieces.
Maybe he’d manage it, with some kind of transfusion—that looked to be his plan, what with all the blood bags, tubing, and plasma. Maybe he had figured the details out, or someone working for him had, but Simone didn’t think so.
This didn’t seem like a fully functioning evil scientist’s lair, after all. It was just a stage set to massage a single manbaby’s ego.
“Get set up,” Huske said, in a strangled, unnatural rasp. “We’re going to tap this thing like a keg ,and drain it dry.”
So that’s his plan. Simone let her eyelids droop, sagging against the restraints.
Except for her left hand, which twitched inside its wrapping. The bands over her forearm, elbow, biceps, and chest were fractionally looser on that side.