“It’s hardly bargaining when you have me tied up tighter than a mummy in a pyramid.”
Amusement slid around me, its touch as foul as the silent presence in the corner. Who the hell was he? I had a vague feeling it was something I should know—that not knowing could prove very dangerous in the future.
Or was that merely fear speaking? Was it a combination of the uncertainty of the moment and the knowledge that my end in this lifetime might very well come at the hands of either of these men, and there was nothing, absolutely nothing, I could do to stop it?
“You are tied up for your own protection as much as ours.” He’d moved around to the right side of my body and was close enough that his breath whispered past my ear.
I shivered and couldn’t help wondering whether perhaps he was tempted to have a little taste . . . I swallowed, forced the thought away, and said, “Yes, because one lone female of unknown heritage is such a danger to two very old vampires.”
Again surprise rippled across the darkness. “Interesting that you know there are two of us. You should not have been able to sense my colleague.”
“And why is that?”
“Because he is . . . not what I am.”
Meaning he wasn’t a vampire? Then what the hell was he? And how was he connected to the sindicati?
“And that, of course, makes perfectly good sense.”
“Indeed.” Amusement laced his tone. “Let’s just say he and his kin are something society will see far more of in coming months.”
Meaning another race of supernaturals was coming out of the proverbial closet? Or was it something more sinister? I didn’t know, but I had a bad feeling it would be in my best interest to find out—and sooner rather than later.
“So why doesn’t he show himself? In fact, why the darkness at all?”
“Because neither of us has any desire to reveal our identity.” He paused. “However, this is all beside the point. Let’s, as you have requested, get down to the reason you are here.”
He’d moved again and was now standing directly in front of me. I couldn’t see him. Couldn’t even see a vague outline. It was an unnerving sensation.
“Excellent,” I said. “And to repeat . . . What do you want?”
“An exchange.”
Obviously, getting to the point was not one of this vampire’s strong suits. “What kind of exchange?”
“You have something I want. I will exchange it for something you want.”
I raised an eyebrow. “If you’re talking about Amanda, then forget it. There’s nothing I have that I’m willing to exchange for her.”
It might have been a harsh thing to say, but it was nevertheless true. If Amanda was still alive, then I’m afraid it was time for her to lie in the bed she’d made. I’d done what I could to uphold my end of the deal. I wasn’t about to do anything else. Not given what she was and how many lives she had already destroyed.
“Dear Amanda,” he replied, “is not the asset we hold.”
“Meaning she is still alive?” I couldn’t help the surprise in my voice. Given that they’d sent two goons to kill her, I’d have thought completing the task would have been their first priority.
“Yes, she is, but only because my colleague has decided he has some use for her talents.”
I remembered the way his goons had tried to kill her and knew with a chill the talent he was speaking about was not just telepathy. Amanda would undoubtedly die, but it only would be after the dark presence was done using her—in bed and out.
It was a shitty way to go, but I still couldn’t muster much in the way of sympathy. Amanda had known what the sindicati were and what they were capable of when she’d thrown her towel in with them—she could hardly complain now that things had gone sour.
“If Amanda’s not the card you’re holding, then who is?” I asked.
“A very pertinent question,” the vampire replied. “And one that will be revealed in the fullness of time.”
I rolled my eyes. It was just my luck to be captured by a vampire who would not be hurried—although I guess that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing if what lay at the end of this was my death. “Then what do you want in return?”
He didn’t immediately answer, but I could feel his gaze on me, a weight that was both judgmental and condescending. “What we want is what you have hidden from us.”
I blinked. “How could I have hidden something from you when I’ve never had any contact with the sindicati up until now?”
“That is not entirely true,” he replied evenly. “And what we require is Professor Baltimore’s missing notes.”
“I haven’t got them. They were stolen—a fact you’re no doubt aware of.”
“Yes,” he said. “But the set was not complete. There’s a notebook missing.”
Meaning the sindicati had been behind the thefts. But did that also mean they’d killed Baltimore? It seemed logical and yet . . . my gaze drifted to the unclean presence hiding within the deeper darkness of the room. He wasn’t a vampire, and that meant he could cross thresholds uninvited. Maybe I was clutching at straws, but I had a suspicion that even if he hadn’t killed Baltimore, he’d at least been there.
“Why in the hell would you think there’s a notebook missing? You’ve not only stolen all the information the professor had on either the foundation’s computers or his own, but the notebooks I had as well.”
“That is the problem. As I said, we do not possess all the notebooks. There’s one missing.”
I frowned. “No, there’s not. I had five; you took five. End of story.”
Again amusement swam around me. “You may have been given five, but we hold only four. You will find that missing notebook, and you will return it to us.”
“In exchange for what? We’re hardly bargaining here, because, as far as I can tell, you have nothing to give me in return.”
“You do not consider your life good enough?”
“Well, no, because you actually need me alive to find the notebook. And trust me, you wouldn’t want to try to kill me after the exchange, because that could go very badly for you.”
“So says the woman who—as she noted herself—is trussed up tighter than a mummy and reliant on our goodwill to remain alive.”
“And yet,” I replied, keeping my voice level despite the surge of both fear and fire—though the force of the latter suggested that while I wasn’t anywhere near full flame, I might yet be able to defend myself from at least one of them. “As you yourself noted, you have me so tightly contained because you’re aware that I represent a very real danger to both you and your watcher.”
“Perhaps,” he conceded. “And perhaps we merely prefer to be prepared.”
Well, it worked for the Boy Scouts, so why not the sindicati? “Look, enough with the word games. Play your trump card and let’s be done with it.”
“As you wish.” It was said so formally, it wasn’t hard to imagine him bowing as he spoke. “Please, pay attention to the screen on your right.”
As he spoke, a bright light cut through the darkness, taking me by surprise and making my eyes water. I blinked furiously to clear my vision and saw, on the small TV screen, Jackson.
He’d been placed on a sturdy metal chair concreted into the floor, his limbs tied separately to each leg of the chair and by silver, if the gleam along the wire was any indication. There was another strand of much finer wire looped around his neck, which was connected to the ceiling. It wasn’t choking him, but if he tried to move—tried to escape—it would slice into his neck and perhaps even decapitate him. The thin trickle of blood around his neck suggested he’d already tested the boundaries of the noose.