“Though we intend to discover your limits,” Glassport said.
“Where are we going?” I dreaded the answer.
“Oh, we’ve found a little place,” Glassport said. “Just down the road a piece.” He delivered the colloquialism mockingly.
Pam had wasted her blood healing me. I’d just have more flesh to torture. I don’t mind saying, I was at my wit’s end and then some. I didn’t know how fast Sam or Jason and Michele would be able to follow me, if they even had a clue which direction the van had taken. Maybe the furor over the abduction and the stabbing of the bouncer would impede them even getting out the door. And my guardian vampire, Karin, was back at my house, presumably making sure no coons came out of the woods to steal my tomatoes.
The first rule about kidnapping attempts is, Don’t get in the car. Well, we were already past that, though I’d given it a try. Probably the next rule was, Observe where you’re going. Oh, I knew that! We were going either north or south or east or west. I told myself not to be a Helpless Hilda, and I thought back. We’d turned to the right out of the parking lot, so we were going north. Okay. That should have been visible from Stompin’ Sally’s, because there weren’t many trees to obscure the line of sight . . . if anyone had had the presence of mind to watch.
I didn’t think Claude had made any turns since then, which even Claude would know was dumb, so we were going straight to whatever place they’d decided was secure, and it must be very close. I assumed they planned on getting there and concealing the van pretty quickly, before pursuit could even start out.
I felt like giving up right then. I didn’t think I’d ever felt so defeated. Johan Glassport was still looking at me with that sickly anticipation, and Steve Newlin was praying out loud, thanking the Lord for delivering his enemy into his hands. My heart sank as low as it could go.
I’d been tortured before, as Claude had so thoughtfully reminded me, and I still bore the scars on my body. I had the scars on my spirit, too, and I always would, no matter how well I’d recovered. Worst of all, I knew what was coming. I just wanted the whole thing to be over, even if I died . . . and I knew they intended to kill me. Death would be easier than going through that again. I was very clear on that. But I tried to rally. The only thing I could do was talk.
“I feel sorry for you, Claude,” I said. “I’m sorry Niall did that to you.” His face was an especially cruel target, since Claude had been outstandingly handsome and very proud. If he’d wanted women, he could have had them by the dozens, instead of sampling one now and then. As it happened, Claude liked men, men rough around the edges, and they’d responded to him with enthusiasm. Niall had found a perfectly devastating punishment for Claude’s treachery.
“Don’t feel sorry for me,” Claude said. “Wait to see what we’re going to do to you.”
“Cutting me will make you well again?”
“That’s not what I’m after.”
“What are you after?”
“Vengeance,” he said.
“What did I do to you, Claude?” I asked, genuinely curious. “I let you live in my house. I cooked for you. I let you sleep in my bed when you were lonely.” Of course, all the time he was scouring my house looking for the cluviel dor, but I hadn’t known that. I’d been genuinely glad to have him there. I also hadn’t known anything about the plot against Niall, the rebellion Claude was fomenting among the other fae who hadn’t made it into Faery when Niall closed the portals.
“You were the cause of Niall’s wanting to close Faery off,” Claude said, surprised at my even having to ask.
“Wasn’t he going to do that, anyway?” Geez Louise.
Steve Newlin leaned forward to bitch-slap me. “Shut up, you godforsaken whore,” he said.
“Don’t hit her again unless I tell you to,” Claude said. And he must have given them great cause to fear him earlier in their partnership, because Glassport put his knife away and Newlin settled back against the wall of the van. They hadn’t tied me; I guessed that was the weak point of an impromptu kidnapping, nothing to bind the victim with.
“You think I am unfounded in hating you,” Claude said, and we made a hard left turn. I rolled over on my side, and only when the van straightened out was I able to make some cautious moves to sit up myself. To avoid the two men, I had to stay in the middle, so any turn or bump in the road was going to knock me over. Well, great. Then I spied a grip on the back of the passenger seat, and I grabbed it.
“I do think so,” I said. “There’s no reason for you to hate me. I never hated you.”
“You didn’t want to sleep with me,” Claude pointed out.
“Well, damn, Claude, you’re gay! Why would I want to have sex with someone who’s fantasizing about beard stubble?”
Neither Claude nor I considered what I’d said anything extraordinary, but you’d have thought I’d stuck a cattle prod where the sun didn’t shine on the two humans.
“Is this true, Claude? You’re a fairy who’s a fairy?” Steve Newlin’s voice had gone super-ugly, and Johan Glassport had pulled his knife out again.
“Uh-oh,” I said, just to alert Claude—since, after all, he was driving the vehicle—that there was dissension in his ranks. “Claude, your buddies are homophobes.”
“What does that mean?” he asked me.
“They hate men who like men.”
Claude appeared perplexed, but I could see the distortion and hatred in the brains of the two men, and I knew that completely without intending to, I’d hit the perk button on their ethical coffeemaker.
Ordinarily, in the interest of making trouble in the ranks, I’d be glad they had such a huge issue with Claude’s orientation. But then again, he was driving and I was the instantly available victim.
“He seemed like a tough man to me,” Glassport said to Steve Newlin. “He would have killed that young man if the lawyer hadn’t interfered.”
I finally had a clue about what had happened to Barry. I hoped the “lawyer” reference meant Mr. Cataliades had rescued him.
Claude said in a puzzled way, “Johan, are you calling me less than a strong man because I like other men in bed?”
Glassport winced, and his mouth compressed with disgust. “I am saying that I think less of you,” he replied. “I do not like contact with you.”
“And I think you’re going straight to hell with the imps of Satan,” Steve Newlin said. “You’re an abomination.”
There was more than one “abomination” in the van, but I wasn’t going to point that out. Very cautiously, I wiggled a little closer to the spot where the back of the passenger seat was very close to the sliding side door. Glassport had his back against the door a little farther away from the front of the van.
If Glassport would move away from the door, just a little, I would open it and throw myself out. I could see that the door was unlocked. Of course, it would be nice if Claude slowed down first. I had no idea what was outside the van, since I couldn’t see out the front windows; but I was assuming we were still in farmland, and there was a chance that with all the rain we’d had lately, I could make a relatively soft landing. Maybe. I would have to act with speed and no hesitation.
I defy you to throw yourself out of a moving vehicle without hesitating. Just the idea was giving me qualms.
“Then we have to have a serious discussion,” Claude said, and his voice became sexy as hell. “A very serious discussion about how we all have the right to find someone who wants to have sex with us.” The voice oozed over us like warm caramel.
It wasn’t working nearly as much on me as it was affecting Newlin and Glassport, who were looking oddly shaken and horribly frightened.