But he obviously hadn’t gone down without a fight, because his face was bruised, his lips cut, and his left eye swollen shut. His torso was in little better shape, with his clothing torn and blood splattered, and cuts scattered across his chest and upper arms.
Anger surged through me, but again I controlled my fire. Now was not the time to reveal my hand. But Sam was certainly going to get more than an earful if I ever ran into him again. He was the reason this had happened. If not for that damn drug he’d administered, there was no way known the sindicati could have gotten the better of a Fae. Not when he could use the tiniest spark to create a bonfire strong enough to take out an army.
But they had gotten the better of him, and he was now one hell of a trump card. I could not—would not—let him come to harm for the sake of some damn research notes.
“A decent enough play,” I said, “but there is one sticking point—what guarantee do either of us have that you’ll let us free once I’ve found the missing notes?”
“You have my word,” the vampire said. “You will both walk free once we have the final notebook in our possession.”
Yeah, but just how far would we get before they tried to take us out?
“Forgive me if this sounds insulting,” I said, as politely as I could manage and yet unable to help the slight edge of cynicism, “but the word of a vampire afraid to reveal himself is not something I’m inclined to put a whole lot of faith in.”
Anger surged, so fierce and thick it momentarily snatched my breath—which was pretty scary given I wasn’t usually that sensitive to emotions. I held my breath, my fires an invisible force ready to explode from my body. What good it would do me when I was so well tied up, I had no idea. If I’d been able to shift form, it would have been a different matter. But I couldn’t. Not yet. Not until I got back to Rory.
The vampire didn’t attack. In fact, he didn’t do anything more than shut down the TV and plunge us back into utter darkness.
“You have twenty-four hours,” he said, voice clipped and colder than hell itself. “If you have not contacted us in that time—or if we suspect police or PIT presence—we will scatter bits of the Fae from one end of this city to another.”
Twenty-four hours didn’t seem anywhere near long enough to find the missing notebook. Not given I had no idea where the hell it could be. But I kept my doubts to myself. Twenty-four hours at least gave me time to look. And time to figure out not only how to free Jackson, but to stop these bastards from getting what they wanted.
“And how do I contact you once I’ve found the notebook?”
“We have placed a number on your phone,” he said. “Ring it once you’ve found the notebook, and we will arrange an exchange.”
“The Fae had better not sustain any more wounds,” I said, voice as cold as his. “Or there will be hell to pay.”
“Do not threaten us.” He was so close that his breath whispered across the nape of my neck. My breath caught somewhere in my throat and my stomach began to churn as I waited for that moment when teeth pierced skin. For several seconds, nothing happened; then he chuckled softly. The sound jarred uneasily against the ink surrounding us. “It would not be wise.”
“I didn’t threaten.” My voice was little more than a croak of fear, but I couldn’t help it. He might not smell as bad or radiate the desperation of the vampire who’d killed me several lifetimes ago, but he was still a vampire. And his hunger was so palpable I could have touched it had my hands been free. “I merely made a statement of fact.”
“As, indeed, do I.” His breath continued to brush my neck. “There is no place in this city we cannot get access to should we desire, and therefore no place that is safe from our ire. Remember that the next time you are tempted to make a statement of fact.”
And with that, something pierced my neck. Before I could flame, before I could even scream, the ink descended and I knew no more.
Waking the second time was no easier than the first. I groaned loudly and rolled onto my back—and the mere fact I could do that had my eyes springing open. It was immediately obvious that I was no longer in the hands of the sindicati. The utter darkness had gone, replaced by thunderous skies and a drenching mist of rain—and I have to say, I’ve never been so happy about getting soaked in my life.
I was free and I was alive. It was definitely my lucky day.
The ground underneath me was slushy, meaning it had been raining for some time before I’d been dumped here—wherever the hell “here” was. There was no traffic noise and no industrial noise. In fact, there was nothing more than the occasional squawk of a bird and the mooing of cows. Meaning they’d dumped me in the country rather than the city. But why do that, given the twenty-four-hour time frame? It didn’t make any sense.
Unless, of course, the black room itself was somewhere in the country rather than the city.
I carefully propped myself up on my elbows, but even that small movement had the hobnailed idiots in my head starting up again. I winced and tried to ignore the pain as I looked around. I was, as I suspected, in the middle of a field. Several cows were giving me the evil eye from under the cover of nearby eucalypts and, beyond them, kangaroos grazed near the banks of a decent-sized dam. Farther down the hill, sitting in a small hollow, the tin roof of either an old farmhouse or barn was visible through the trees surrounding it.
I shifted position, waited for the idiots in my head to calm down, and studied the land above me. There were tire marks coming into the paddock from a road that disappeared around the left of the hill, and, if the size of those tracks was any indication, we’d come here in a four-wheel drive. Which really didn’t help all that much, because there were a million and one four-wheel drives on the road these days.
There was no sign of Amanda in either direction, but I guess that was no surprise. After all, my cool-voiced kidnapper had stated they had other plans for her.
I pushed fully upright. Almost instantly, a dozen different aches fired into action, and for several minutes I did nothing more than breathe deep in an effort to keep my stomach from leaping up my throat. When I could, I did a quick body check—bruised ribs, cuts on my left arm and right leg, and wrists that were rubbed raw by the thick wire that had bound me. Nothing truly incapacitating—a miracle in itself given the force with which we’d hit that tree. Air bags really did save lives.
But what about my neck? Had it been teeth or a needle that pierced my skin? I tentatively felt around and wasn’t entirely surprised to find two neat, round wounds. The bastard had bitten me, though I very much doubted he’d taken all that much. It was more a reminder of what he was and what he could do if he so desired. But what about the man in the shadows? I checked the other side of my neck, knowing from my time as a cop that vampires rarely used the same entry point even if they were sharing a victim. Luckily, it appeared as if I’d been spared the horror of my unsavory watcher taking a sip—though why I should be more scared of being bitten by him than the vampire who’d done all the talking, I couldn’t really say.
I took another deep breath that did little to ease the various aches and pains, then went through my pockets. All empty—not that I’d had much in them to begin with. Thankfully, there was a suspiciously familiar brown shape half-hidden in the grass ten feet or so away and, with any sort of luck, my phone and wallet would still be inside. I pushed upright. The paddock did a mad dash around me, and my knees briefly buckled. I swore loudly and fought to remain upright, knowing that if I went down I’d more than likely stay there. The cows, it seemed, were unimpressed by my language, because they now had their butts to me.