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“Yes,” he said, smiling like I’d said something smart. He stroked my hair like I was a child. “Now I can tell my new master, Deimos, that you fell into my eyes like taking candy from the proverbial baby.He will see you as safe and try his own wiles.” He looked up as if he’d heard something, then leaned over me and whispered, “Deimos chose me because I am asexual; he wanted only vampire mind powers to be tested on you. I will tell him how easily you fell and stayed under my control. It will make him bold, and hopefully careless. His mind powers are not his strong suit; add that he is tempted by flesh, and I think you should be able to distract him.”
I whispered back, “Without Jean-Claude I’m not as into sexy.”
Trappolino planted a gentle kiss on my cheek, then another one on my lips. He drew back for a second, then kissed me with more passion than he said he ever felt. “Sex does not move me, but power does, Anita Blake.” His eyes seemed to grow larger until they filled my vision like dark water shimmering in the moonlight, covering the ocean, and then you drown.
37
I lay in thebig bed in Jean-Claude’s room on the royal blue silk sheets with too many pillows, but there was no one else in the bed with me. I couldn’t remember that ever happening. I never went to bed alone anymore. I tried to sit up and look around the room, but my hands were tangled in the sheets, I was tangled in the sheets and I couldn’t sit up. The harder I tried to unwind myself from the sheets, the more they tightened until I called out for Jean-Claude to come help me, but he wasn’t there. The room felt cold and empty, as if he’d never be there again.
I woke gasping, trying to move my hands, and still couldn’t. I reached out to Jean-Claude down the marks that bound us together and there was nothing. It was like a huge echoing emptiness. I remembered then about Queenie damaging the vampire marks. I hadn’t gotten to him in time to fix the damage, and now it just felt gone. The panic came first, then anger. Queenie was supposed to be part of our security. Some fucking security.
I tugged on my hands and knew before I rolled my head back to look that my wrists were chained to something behind me. I looked back to see a pair of handcuffs fastened over a chain. It was threaded around pipes set into a wall that was covered in white paint that was flaking off. The whole wall looked like it needed to be scraped andrepainted. The ceiling was so high overhead that it was lost in a tracery of thick metal beams. There was enough light for me to see that, but the ceiling was lost to darkness. I pulled on my hands again, but it rattled the chains against the pipes, which wouldn’t help me get free and might attract whoever had chained me up. I did appreciate the extra chain through the handcuffs because otherwise it would have pulled my shoulders up at a really uncomfortable angle while I’d been unconscious. That was a good way to get nerve damage.
I couldn’t remember how I got here, or…what did I remember? I looked down at my clothes. Tactical pants, boots, and a black T-shirt that didn’t help much because it was what I wore as a U.S. Marshal if I worked with the local police, or traveled out of state on a warrant of execution. My body armor was gone along with all my weapons. No big surprise there; if the bad guys captured me they weren’t going to let me keep the dangerous stuff. I seemed to be lying on a pile of rolled-up carpets. Persian ones with bright colors like stained glass, glowing and vibrant even in the dim light. I raised my head and shoulders as much as the restraints would allow and finally found the light source.
A tall floor lamp stood against a partial wall to my left. There was a big overstuffed chair by it with a small table by the arm of the chair, a book sitting on the table with an empty glass beside it with a metal handle and framework around the glass part like something you’d drink a hot beverage out of if you wanted to be able to see what you were drinking. I couldn’t read the book titles from here; that probably wasn’t important. There were big industrial-looking stairs leading up to the second level above the reading nook. The top had metal safety rails that looked like they were meant to keep heavier things than just people from falling off the edge.
I didn’t know where I was, or how I got here, but I did know that I couldn’t see anybody guarding me. I looked back at the handcuffs. The last time I’d worn a pair had been with Nicky, though my hands had been behind my back for a very carefully negotiated bondagescene. I suddenly remembered my gun falling until it vanished out of sight toward the ground.
I got snatched off the motorcycle. I’d seen Nicky wiping out on the highway. He’d slid into a grassy area between the highways, so that was good. At least he hadn’t gone into traffic; about the only thing that could have killed him would be to have been run over by a large enough truck. Even then, if it missed his head and didn’t sever his spine, he’d heal. He’d gone into the grass, though; he was safe. I believed that logically, but the fluttering tightness in my gut wasn’t entirely convinced. I said a prayer that Nicky would be okay. I got that sense of comfort that comes sometimes. It helped calm the panic.
I stopped trying to figure out what I did or didn’t remember. It didn’t matter right now; all that mattered was getting the hell out of here. I scooted back toward the pipes until I could sit up with my hands to one side. What I wouldn’t have given for a handcuff key right now. If I’d been a regular cop who arrested people instead of executing them, I might have had one shoved in a pocket somewhere. They’d have probably found it and taken it along with all my other gear, but I had a moment of wishing. But wishing wouldn’t save me.
I had to either get one hand out of the cuffs, break the chain, or tear the pipe out of the wall and slide the cuffs off. I stood up, finding solid footing in the pile of carpets. I started to wrap my hands around the chains to see if I could find the literal weak link, but then I felt one of the cuffs shift more than the other. I had small hands and small wrists. Regular cuffs didn’t always fit petite women or juvenile offenders, just like you had to have extra-large boot cuffs for some men.
I tried to pull on just the one wrist, but I couldn’t get the leverage to pull hard enough that way. I found that solid footing among the carpets again and backed up until the chains were taut, and then Ileaned back as hard as I could, letting the cuffs slide up my wrists to the heel of my hand. It slid a little further down my left hand. I tried folding my fingers together to make my hand as small as possible and tried again. That helped a little more, but to get my hand out I was going to have to bleed myself. Totally worth it.
I grabbed the chain with my right hand so I wouldn’t hurt that hand for no reason, then pulled as hard as I could on my left. I kept steady hard pressure. It started to hurt, but I didn’t stop pulling. I wanted out of here.
“I should let you bleed yourself,” said a voice.
I stopped pulling and whirled toward the voice. Rodrigo stepped out of the darkness at the far end of the room. It was a dream: another fucking nightmare like in the car.
“You’re not dreaming, Anita,” he said, stalking toward me, putting that sway in his walk like his sister did sometimes. A menacing, predatory catwalk strut.
“You’re dead.”
“No, I’m undead,” he said.
“The shotgun blast took out your chest.”
“Missed my heart, though,” he said.
“Then you healed, you’re still a wereleopard.”
“No, Anita, I died and then I rose again.”
“Shapeshifters can’t be vampires.”
He stopped just short of the pile of carpets. He looked identical to Ru, until you got to his eyes. They both had black eyes, but Ru made them shine with happiness, sympathy. There was nothing sympathetic in these, and anything that made Rodrigo happy would probably hurt someone else. He grinned, flashing dainty fangs.
“Now, Anita, you know that the Mother of All Darkness was a shapeshifter and a vampire. She sent you visions of it, hunted you with the spirit version of her great cat.”
“That’s her, she was the first vampire. You are so not her, Rodrigo.”
“I would never dare dream of comparing myself to our delightfully evil queen, but I’ve been standing in this room hiding in the shadows since before you regained consciousness.”
I shook my head as if that would make it not true, but unless there was a secret door that had the world’s quietest hinges in the room, he hadn’t walked in from anywhere else.
