Maybe it was smartest to just trust her, but damn, that was another uncertain road to travel. She tapped the glass a few more times. Maybe she had better think about it some more and talk to Dragos later.
In the meantime, he had given her good advice.
She said, “I’m so hungry I could eat my boots.”
Eva stirred. “We better get some food to that baby before he chews a hole in you.”
“There’s a concept I could have lived without,” Pia muttered.
A vision of the baby monster breaking out of John Hurt’s chest in Alien came to mind. Yeah, she needed that image to stick with her for the rest of this long, weird pregnancy like she needed another hole in her head.
Eva went into the common room. Pia dug through her pack for the handful of soy protein bars she always carried with her, then she joined the other woman. She settled at one end of the couch while Eva brought her a bowl of nuts and fresh fruit from table by the window. After plowing through several protein bars, most of the nuts and half the fruit, she was finally able to make herself stop.
Eva ate a couple of MRE meals she carried in her own pack. Even though they had taken pains to keep their conversation low, somehow the others sensed that it was okay to reappear. They did so quietly, bringing their own supplies of food to eat.
Then the door to the apartment opened, and Hugh walked in.
He said, “Hey, kids.”
“Yes!” Andrea leaped across the room to smack both his upheld hands and throw her arms around him. Johnny leaped on the pair, and all three staggered, laughing.
James grinned, and Eva said, “Good job, bucko.”
The gargoyle shrugged loose of Andrea and Johnny, walked over to Pia and dropped her cell phone into her hands. His plain, bony face crinkled in a smile. “I don’t mind telling you, answering that phone when the Old Man called was one of the braver things I’ve done. He did not like the sound of my voice coming over on your frequency.”
It was just a phone. See, like she said. Biggest psycho of them all.
“Thank you, Hugh,” Pia said.
“No problem.” He threw himself on the couch, dug through his own pack for food and ate with all the others.
Pia drifted, listening to the psychos talking smack with each other. They had a rough-and-tumble camaraderie that reminded her of the sentinels, and in spite of all the issues that waited back in New York, listening to them made her homesick. Like the sentinels, this group was used to facing death and danger, and they had a kind of emotional ballast for dealing with violence that she might never achieve.
You’re gonna have to toughen up fast, chickadee, she told herself. There’s more violence on the road in front of you.
Because she had no intention of letting Dragos cross over to the Elven Other land without her, and while he had backed away from Eva when she had told him to, he had still carried death in his eyes when he left.
And call her crazy, but she was pretty sure he wasn’t planning on having tea and cookies with Gaeleval when he caught up with him.
Dragos strode with Miguel through the halls, his sharp gaze taking in the damage to the building along with the nervous reactions of the Elves that they passed. The scent of fear and stress littered the air along with the stink of ash and blood, and the fires in wall sconces flickered in a macabre echo to the forest fire.
Once he might have enjoyed seeing his old enemies when they were so devastated. Now he thought of Pia’s distress when she had looked at the pile of bodies. He frowned, and an Elf who was coming toward them from the other direction shrank back against the wall until they had passed.
Miguel led him down a flight of stairs. There was a minute change in air pressure and scent, along with the lack of windows. He was unsurprised. Underground was the best place to have holding cells. As pretty as this place had once been, it was still the seat of the Elven demesne and they had to house prisoners somewhere.
They reached a spelled and bolted door where a pair of armed Elves stood guard. The guards regarded Miguel and Dragos with stony faces but unbolted and opened the door right away. The sound of screaming boiled out as soon as the door was cracked, along with the quieter undertone of people engaged in intense conversation.
Just as Dragos had expected, beyond the door was a block of cells. This cell block was probably where people were held until judgment had been passed. There would be another, more permanent place where the Elves would hold criminals sentenced to prison terms, but this was a solid temporary holding area.
At the moment the cells were packed with bedraggled, bloody people, all in some state of half dress. Calondir stood with a cluster of armed guards and a few other Elves. Their focus was turned inward to an area that they circled. That area was also the source of the screaming.
A few of the guards turned to face them as they entered the block, but their attention was fractured and they looked distressed. One of the guards tapped Calondir politely on the shoulder, and the High Lord turned to face them as they approached.
Dragos studied the occupants of the cells sharply as he and Miguel walked past. They stood passively, staring into space, their faces blank and hands idle at their sides. When he came closer to the High Lord, a couple of the guards moved between him and Calondir, while the rest of the circle moved back, not, he could tell, to allow him access to the screaming male that sat bound in a chair, but to move further away from him.
He bared his teeth at Calondir. Some foolish, naive creature might have called it a smile.
Calondir didn’t even try to return a false response. Instead he said abruptly, “Those who were captured are all like you see in the cells, and our healers cannot bring them back to themselves. This is the third person they’ve tried.”
Dragos asked, “What happened to the other two?”
“The healers had to stop when their heartbeats became irregular.”
He nodded. “Move,” he said.
A couple stepped back timidly, but one stood stiffly defiant. Dragos regarded the Elf through lowered eyelids as the healer hissed, “My lord, we’ve barely begun to try. If you could only give us more time to experiment . . .”
“We don’t have time,” Calondir said bitterly. “Do as Cuelebre says. Move back and let him examine Threidyr.”
Fortunately looks couldn’t kill, and Dragos did not have a single finer feeling for the Elf to hurt. When the way had been cleared, he stepped forward and Miguel followed.
They had tied the male to a simple upright chair, his arms strapped to the wooden arms. Urine and vomit stained the Elf’s clothes, although his screaming had faded when the healers had stopped doing whatever it was they had been trying to do to him. He stared dully into space, his face as slack and blank as all the others in the cells. Dragos noted that the bonds were carefully positioned to restrict but not injure. Their goal, then, was to recover the Elf, not to dig for information.
But his goal was not necessarily the same as the Elves’.
Careful to avoid the body liquids that smeared the stone floor, Dragos squatted in front of the Elf to examine him more closely. He took his time, and gradually the resentful muttering around him fell to silence. He ignored them, concentrating on the shards of Power in and around the male’s aura. The dragon took note of the male’s own Power first. Once he had identified it, he moved on to studying the rest.
The Elf’s aura held a lingering taint of the Machine that was interwoven with another, third identity. Much as he was interested in locating the Machine itself, he was less interested in the aftereffects of its use. Instead, he filtered that out carefully until he could concentrate all his attention on that last thread of Power. The dragon savored the taste of it like it was the blood of his prey.