“No, we weren’t in any bar. My car got a flat tire; I was on the side of the road changing it when someone stopped to offer their help.”
“Who?”
“Idon’tknow!” Mollie cried. This guy did not know how to listen. “A man came up and asked if we needed help. I told him no, and that was the last thing I recall. I don’t know what he did to me, what they did to my sister, or where she is now. Do you know who brought you here?”
“No.”
“Thenstopaskingme. And no one else here has any idea either, though only a few of them will talk to me.”
“Were others brought in with me?” Mike asked as he scented the air for Doug and Jack, but there were too many aromas for him to differentiate his friends from the numerous others. If they were here, they weren’t close to him.
“Yes. They brought in about twenty with you. They’re locked up too.”
“Doug! Jack!” he called, but he got no response from his friends. If they were here, they must still be unconscious. He refused to believe they were dead.
“Shh,” someone hissed from the shadows. “Sometimes they come back if someone makes too much noise.”
“And then what do they do?” Mike demanded.
He was up for a fight against these bastards, and if they killed him, so be it. He suspected he’d prefer death to whatever these assholes planned for him.
He ran his hands over his body as he searched for any weapon his jailers might have left on him. They’d taken his coat and weapons, but as he felt the pockets of his jeans, he realized they’d left him with his Zippo. They probably didn’t see any threat in letting him keep it, or they hadn’t found it when they searched him.
“No one knows what they do,” someone else whispered. “Everyone they take never comes back.”
In the cage next to his, Mollie’s breath sucked in and her heart rate skyrocketed. Mike froze in the act of pulling his Zippo from his pocket when her distress beat against him. His hand clenched around the lighter, and his teeth clamped together as he was seized by the irrational urge to destroy whatever upset her.
“Never?” she croaked.
“Not that I’ve seen,” another murmured. “But I think I’ve only been here for a few days.”
“But they took my sister!” Mollie lunged toward the front of the cage and gripped her bars. “Aida wasn’t making any noise, and they tookher!”
“Sometimes they take hum—ah… others, just because,” a woman whispered.
Mike didn’t miss the near slip from the woman he assumed was a vampire. “Sometimes they takehumans,” was what the woman had been about to say, and there was no, “justbecause.” They took humans to feed on them.
Mike hadn’t gotten close enough to his captors to confirm what they were, but he had no doubt they were vampires, most likely Savages. And if they were imprisoning humans and vampires here, it meant one thing: they intended to starve the vamps until all they could think about was feeding and killing.
His blood ran cold when he realized they most likely planned to turn him and his friends into Savages.
Yes, he’d much prefer to be dead, because if these bastards succeeded in turning him, then all his nieces and nephews and alltheirchildren would be at risk.
Chapter Five
Mollie releasedthe bars and shifted toward the back of her cell. A hush descended over the barn again, and her hand fell on the bobby pins tucked into her bra. Tomorrow, when the sun was up and there was more illumination in the barn, she’d try to get a look at the locks on the other cages and attempt picking hers again.
Rustling in the cage next to her drew her attention, but she couldn’t see what Mike was doing. Then something clicked open, flicked, and light flared. Mollie scurried toward the flickering flame he held.
“Put that out!” someone spat.
Mike ignored the command as he moved the flame over the bars surrounding him before locating the lock on the front of his cage. Leaning closer, he examined the steel frame of the door, or whatever metal this cage was made of, as it was stronger than steel. He banged his fist against the back of the locking mechanism before throwing his full weight against it. The cage didn’t have the decency to pretend he had any effect on it.
“Stop that. It’s pointless, and they might come for you,” someone else said.
“I hope they do,” Mike muttered as he used the Zippo to examine the rest of his cage, but he didn’t see any weaknesses in the welded seams of the bars.
“Can I have the lighter?” Mollie asked.
