Page 56 of Flames and Blood

We come down off the mountain in the dark and get back to our vehicle. Meyer drives.

“The driver,” Kent says, from the back. “The real one. What happens to him?”

“Nothing. The truck parks in an open yard overnight and he goes home to his bed. He wakes up tomorrow, walks to the yard, and finds it gone. By the time anyone’s finished shouting at him, we’re up that mountain, or we’re dead, and either way his morning isn’t our problem.”

“What about the order forms?”

“They’ll be in the cab; I’ll just write something up. Delivery firms are all the same. I’ve robbed better-run ones than this.”

“You’re very calm about all this thieving.”

“It’s the job, Kent. You do what you gotta do.”

I sit with the map open on my knees and the route to the depot marked on it, and I go through it line by line, because the work is the only thing that stops me from doing something stupid.

One way in. No way out. Two men on my team and a stolen truck.

The odds are not stacked in my favor. But it doesn’t matter. One way or another, I’m getting her out of there.

And behind my ribs, all the way down the mountain, the pull keeps saying the same thing it’s been saying since the gate, when I felt her panic.

Hurry.

Chapter 13

Kalli

I wake up a little at a time. My hearing comes back first, and it’s slow. A log settles in the fire. The light of it changes on the ceiling, and I hear the sound a second afterward. Then I see the room. Carved wood, candles, a high white ceiling I’ve seen once before. The suite. They’ve brought me back to the suite.

Shit!

My head is awake before the rest of me. I decide to move, and then I wait, and my body barely responds.

They’ve kept me drugged since the night Vex left bleeding. I know it from the taste in my mouth. The sweet drink, over and over, making me gag.

I run the check I always run. Where am I? What’s on me? What can I move? The answers come slowly, one at a time, and none of them is good. I’m on the wide bed in the middle of the room. My wrists are bare. They don’t need cuffs anymore; the drug does it for them. And I can move almost nothing.

I tell my hand to close. It closes, eventually, after I’ve asked it twice.

Mrs. Nell is here. She’s peeled me out of the nightdress I was wearing, and she’s arranging me on the bed, moving my bare limbs where she wants them, gentle the whole time.

“There’s a good fire tonight,” she says. “It got cold after dark. You’ll be warm enough.”

I get my head to turn. That’s all I can do.

“You’ll be all right,” she says. “It’s quicker than you think, and then it’s done, and tomorrow’s an ordinary day.”

She arranges a pitcher and a water bowl on a table nearby. “I’ve left clean cloths. For after. You won’t have to ask anyone for anything.”

She says it kindly. She means it kindly. I think I hate that most about her.

“You’ve…said this to someone. Before,” I manage to say. “In this…room.”

Her hands stop for a second. Then they go on, smoothing the sheets under me, tucking it at my shoulder.

“Rest now, Kalli,” she says.

I can’t fight. My dragon is awake, and she’s furious, but she can’t get up. That stuff they keep pouring down my throat suppresses her, and every time she pushes up, it presses her flat again.