Chapter Thirty-Five
“Winter,” Garrett said again, trying to inject authority and snap into his voice.
Winter didn’t move from the slumped position where they had dropped her onto the sofa two hours ago, when they had finished with her. Garrett had been an unwilling witness to it all. He now knew something about his past that had been a blessing in disguise: Not being there for Mary’s death.
The hour they had questioned Winter had been one of the worst in Garrett’s life – far worse than his own interview. He had been able to accept and absorb the pain, healing himself instantly.
Watching Winter writhe under the blows and the cuts, until she began to scream with the agony of it, was pure torture for he had been unable to help her. The anonymous humans had chained him to the heavy office chair he was still in, the chains wrapping around his arms and the chair itself and around his chest, holding him down more thoroughly than a dozen vampires.
The humans’ knowledge about his strength and vampire nature and their lack of caution about hiding their faces from him and Winter had worried him from the beginning. Then they had begun to question him. Garrett first – using knives to cause discomfort and momentary pain and disorientation until he could heal himself. They stabbed him repeatedly, forcing him to heal himself over and over, until his blood loss bought on the need to feed…and then he realized what they had intended. They used his blood lust as leverage, holding out human blood as enticement.
The questions seemed easy enough to answer. They wanted to know about his life. His concerns. His friends.
Garrett had known that answering even one question truthfully would have started him down the path they wanted him upon, so he had lied and evaded and given bullshit answers. Even in the depth of his raging thirst for blood, he had been able to hang on to that one thread of reasoning: Not to give them what they wanted, even while he didn’t know what they ultimately sought from him.
And finally, they had let him feed. The hot, rich and spicy liquid had soothed his fever and helped restore his functioning mind. He felt soft flesh under his lips as full awareness returned.
“He’ll kill her,” he heard, behind him.
“He’ll weaken her,” another voice murmured. “Which is just what we want.”
Garrett blinked, forcing his vision to focus. He stopped feeding and let his incisors retract as he saw a strand of long red hair in the corner of his eye. He tried to draw his head back, to look at who it was he was feeding from. But he already knew.
Three of them held Winter down in the perfect position for Garrett to batten on to her neck. Her arms were wrenched up behind her back and another one had a hand over her mouth, although by now the aphrodisiac would have hit her system and she was long past any need to scream.
They lifted Winter up as Garrett pulled away from her throat. Then they had unchained him from the chair and propped her in it, while he had been chained up upon the sofa instead. The office chair, he saw, had the wheels removed and the legs had been screwed into the floor for stability and security. They strapped her arms down.
Winter’s eyes were open, but they were glazed and unfocused and her head was tilted to one side, like she could barely hold it up. She was very weak. Garrett hadn’t stinted himself.
Guilt churned in his gut. She wouldn’t withstand what was to come if these humans went at her with the same gusto they’d used on him. How good was their intelligence? Did they understand exactly what she was? Did they think she was human? They’d let Garrett feed from her, so they knew she wasn’t vampire, at the very least.
They didn’t want either of them dead…yet. They’d let Garrett feed instead of letting the blood fever take him. They’d been careful to stop him from feeding before he’d drained Winter.
But it was a temporary reprieve. They still didn’t care about them seeing their faces. And their crass get-the-answers-now methods hinted that both Winter and Garrett were expendable commodities. These people wanted something or someone else and they were merely a means to getting them.
That meant they were looking for leverage to deal with Nial or they were looking for the Blood Stone. Or both.
Winter’s questioning had begun immediately after he had fed, while she had still been groggy and disoriented. They had begun by slapping her face until she had been able to focus. Then they had started the questions – the same questions they had asked Garrett. They had wanted to know about her marriage, her friends, her life.
Winter’s green eyes had met Garrett’s only once during the entire ordeal and that had been at the very beginning of her questioning. After that, her focus had shifted inwards. She had been healing herself as the questioning proceeded, even as she gave a series of nonsense answers that Dr. Seuss himself would have been proud of. But she was already weak and her voice grew softer and slower as the blood dripped to the floor around her, draining her.
Garrett strained at his chains, sickened and inflamed with a fury that wanted to engulf the entire room.
Winter’s answers eventually ceased and her head drooped.
That was when they dumped her onto the sofa next to him and he had been re-chained to the heavy chair.
The room had abruptly emptied of humans.
Two hours had passed while Garrett monitored Winter for signs of life, listening to the delicate sound of her breathing and the barely-there beat of her heart. It sounded wrong. It sounded laboured and her breath had a metallic tinge to it that all sick and badly wounded humans acquired. The room was rich with the scent of her injuries, calling to his predator instincts, which he tamped down with an impatient thrust.
She had to gain full consciousness to heal herself, but she wasn’t responding when he called. He couldn’t reach her from where he sat.
So he was going to have to go to her. He considered the chair he was chained to. There was no way he was going to remove the chains. Each link was three inches across. He’d need an oxy-acetylene blowtorch and an hour to cut just one link.
He bent over as far as the chains around his chest would let him, to look at the legs of the chair, but couldn’t see that far. The chair shifted at his lateral movement, though, and made a sighing sound. He paused, thinking.
With a smile, he planted his feet squarely on the ground and with a grunt of effort, attempted to lift himself, the several hundred pounds of chain wrapped around him and the chair itself, up a few inches.
The chair rose, with a sucking sound of air rushing into a vacuum. The chains made a collective clinking and rattle that was alarming in the silent room.
He let the chair drop back, listening for any reactions to what he had just done. When no one came bursting into the room, he let out the breath he wasn’t aware he had been holding.
Then he braced himself again. With another thrust of his thighs and abdomens, he pulled the chair up the central post it was seated upon, fighting against the vacuum holding it in place, until the stub of tubing screwed to the base of the chair that inserted inside the post that rose from the splayed legs of the base lifted far enough out to break the seal. Then it was simply a matter of moving the extra weight of the chair and chains around while he was bent over and chained into that position.
He stepped toward the sofa carefully, maintaining precarious balance, then lowered the chair to the floor right in front of Winter’s knees. It put his head at the height of the sofa seat and tilted him over at a crazy angle, for the post at the bottom of the chair thrust him sideways.
His shoulder thrust against the edge of the sofa, keeping him upright. “Winter,” he said sharply, one more time.
No response.
He focused on her thigh. She was still wearing the pale green silk trousers she wore at the party last night, but they were wrinkled and blood splattered now. Silk was organic and no barrier to him. He traced the line of her thigh, visualizing the great artery that ran its length. The artery pumped directly to her heart and brain.
He closed his eyes for a moment and thought of Roman and Kate. He deliberately provoked images of last night. The touch of Kate’s hand on his body. Roman’s lips. Sliding into her.
When his body was tight with need, with throbbing-hard desire, he let his teeth descend and rocked forward, burying them in Winter’s thigh, right through the silk, into the big artery, injecting pure aphrodisiac, a much bigger dose than usual, prompted by his visualizations.
She moaned softly, her head rolling.
“That’s it,” Garrett whispered. “Come on, wake up,” he coaxed.
Winter lay still for long minutes, but her breathing grew deeper and Garrett could hear her heart beat steady and grow stronger.
Finally, one eyelid slid open, showing a sliver of green.
“Welcome back,” he murmured.
* * * * *
The Los Angeles City Hall has an observation deck on the twenty-seventh floor and many people mistakenly think that is the top floor of the building, but it isn’t. The building has thirty-two floors and like most public buildings, Roman found there was a way to gain access to the roof from the thirty-second floor. It helped that he was expected and that doors with mechanical bars he might have had trouble with had been conveniently chocked open.
He emerged into the cool of the evening, with a light breeze blowing on his face, as the sun was dipping into the Pacific, red blazing on the low horizon, while indigo blue filled the rest of the night sky. The sun itself was a fiery ball of pulsing pink and crimson as the sea swallowed it.
It matched his mood, he decided, as he turned his back on the dowsing fireball, and looked along the narrow catwalk. It was empty, but there was a fine trembling in the metal plates beneath his feet which told him there was someone else moving about the edge of the roof, on one of the other sides, where he couldn’t see them yet.
Then they turned the corner and threaded their way along the three foot wide galley way, their hands on the high metal balustrades on either side.
There were three of them and from the sunglasses, white shirt, and non-descript suit of the one in front, Roman judged him to be a guard of some sort – either private security or FBI, or possibly plain clothes cop — one of the covert specialty divisions that L.A. ran to these days.
Roman leaned back against the balustrade, making it look casual, but trying to see who was behind the guard. It didn’t help him see any better. The gangway was too narrow.
The front man reach Roman and stepped past with a sway of his body. He took another three steps then turned around. Roman heard the steps, but he wasn’t watching them.
He was examining the face of the man following the guard.
“I know you,” Roman said flatly, for his face was one he’d seen on television hundreds of times. Usually behind a podium, with the American flag and the Los Angeles county flag behind him and the seal of the city on the front of the podium.
The man smiled. “We know each other, Roman Xerus. Look to your personal history.”
Roman studied his face anew, trying to strip away the modern suit, the contemporary haircut and the Los Angeles downtown skyline behind him. He studied his eyes and re-heard again his voice…and heard it bawling orders on a bloody battlefield.
“Europe. The Hundred Day Offensive. Berlin and the surrender,” Roman murmured. “I do remember. Colonel Drysdale of the Royal Welch Fusiliers.”
“Nasty business, that. Over one million allied troops were lost.” His accent was suddenly very British.
“I was counted amongst them.” Roman grimaced. “I had to start again after that one.”
The man who had been Drysdale smiled a little. “So did I.” He turned to look at the dying sun. “This abduction business you mentioned in your message is nasty, too.” All trace of his British accent was abruptly gone.
Roman turned and leaned against the balustrade beside him, working hard to make it look casual, while he struggled to contain his dismay. Was Drysdale bluffing? Did he really have no part in Garrett and Winter’s abduction? “I figured you would have more details than me,” he said carefully.
Drysdale turned his head to look at Roman sharply. “You didn’t get me all the way up here for that, did you?”
“Why did you think I called?”
“You know damned well why. Don’t be coy, Roman. We’ve been patient beyond reason with you.” Drysdale straightened up. “I came here expecting an answer to our offer. I’d be very disappointed if I thought you’d brought me all this way for nothing.”
“You rode five floors in an elevator, your Worship. It was hardly taxing for you.”
Drysdale thumped the metal railing. “Do not do this!”
Roman turned to face him properly. “Or what?” he asked softly.
Drysdale studied his face for a minute. “I told them you wouldn’t bend.” He looked toward the Pacific. “Do you have it?”
Roman laughed. “The stone? You really think I’m going to tell you?”
Drysdale shook his head. “I was just curious. Personally curious. I keep hearing rumours… Never mind.” He looked at Roman once more. “I’ve got power and more to spare besides, but I’m a minnow compared to the ones standing behind me. They’ve turned me into their messenger boy. Think about that before you turn and walk away.”
Roman studied him. “Drop the other shoe, Drysdale.”
Drysdale smiled. “You’re being dramatic.”
Roman shook his head. “Nial was right. You’re holding something back and it’s the kicker. Give it to me straight. What happens when I walk?”
“When?” Drysdale sighed. “You’re a hot headed, brainless Greek and you always, always, always fired from the goddam hip, you stupid son of a bitch.”
“I’m a Byzantine,” Roman said, letting his offence show. “Pick up a fucking history book, you ignoramus. Tell me what they’re going to try and use for leverage.”
“Don’t pursue this matter with the girl and Garrett. Leave it alone, Roman. It’s not your concern. It’s not ours.”
“The fuck it’s not,” Roman shot back.
“You chase this one, you’ll end up with much more than a few angry Nazis on your tail,” Drysdale warned him. “This is not an ants’ nest you want to kick over, believe me.”
“You know something? Something that could help me find them?”
Drysdale shook his head. “You’re probably too late, anyway.”
Roman grabbed Drysdale’s shirt front, which triggered the two guards, making them surged forward. Drysdale got his hand up in a ‘stop’ motion and stared up into Roman’s eyes. “Going to try and strangle me like you did that German officer that was summarily executing the Jews in your squad? You always did run five degrees hotter than any vampire I know.”
“B. Goodwich. 1359C South Atlantic Boulevard,” Roman quoted. “Tell me what that means to you.”
Drysdale pulled Roman’s hands away from his shirt and straightened himself up to his full height, which was an inch or so shorter than Roman. “You’ve got that far, then,” he said. “I’m impressed. Sebastian’s good. Very good.”
“It’s an east L.A. address but it’s a nonsense address. There is no 1359C on South Atlantic Boulevard.”
Drysdale shook his head. “I give you anything at all, Roman, they’ll crucify me.”
“Then you know.”
Drysdale gave a dry laugh. “Of course we know! We know everything! With our resources, we could find a lone sheep on the sub-Saharan continent at midnight inside thirty seconds. We’ve known where they were taken thirty minutes after they arrived there.”
Roman closed his eyes. “Are they still alive?”
“The last I heard, yes.”
Something loosened inside him. “You know who Garrett is, don’t you?”
For the first time, Drysdale hesitated. Roman looked at him directly.
Drysdale grimaced. “You mean, besides being a financial genius who doubled my personal wealth in five years when I followed his advice?”
“Besides that,” Roman agreed.
Drysdale nodded. “I know who he is. What he is to you.”
“Why won’t you help?”
Anger infused Drysdale’s features. “You don’t get it, do you? You – Nathaniel and his little team – you threaten our very future, the existence of vampires themselves, with this ill-conceived scheme to dump the facts upon humanity en masse. Why on earth would we help, when by not helping, we can passively resist your program?”
“Spoken like a true politician,” Roman said bitterly. “Sabotage, and not a finger gets dirty in the process.”
“It’s a win-win for us.”
“You speak the party line well, Drysdale. Congratulations.”
Drysdale’s face flushed red. “That’s what I get paid to do,” he said flatly.
“Paid, or are they coercing you in some way, too?” Roman stepped away from the balustrade.
“We’re not ready to come out. It’s not time and perhaps it will never be the right time. These things must be managed properly, not hacked at like Nathaniel is going at it. He hasn’t bothered to consult anyone on this. He is holding an entire species to ransom with his cavalier ways. Well…he must pay the consequences for his thoughtlessness.”
Roman headed for the slim security door that gave access to the roof. “It’s not Nathaniel who is holding you ransom, your Worship. It’s humans and their technology.” He slid past the guard, grabbed the door handle and pulled the heavy door open. “I’m going to give you a tip in exchange for the one you won’t give me. Read up about Bluetooth 4 technology. If you have any clue about technology and network connectivity at all, it should scare the crap out of you and your friends. If you don’t, get hold of someone who does and ask them to interpret for you. A vampire someone – a futurist, not someone with their head stuck up history’s ass like you.”
He stepped through.
“Roman!”
Drysdale was gripping the rail with a grip that was making his knuckles whiten – which was no small feat for a vampire with very little blood circulating in the first place. Something was punching his buttons for him.
“This is just like Cuvilly during the war, Roman. You need to remember that and make adjustments.”
Shock slithered through him. Roman kept his face schooled and neutral, though. “Fuck off, Drysdale,” he shot back with a growl. “You guys have tried my patience enough.” It was an answer designed purely for the guards – Drysdale’s watchdogs, who would report back to the Libertatis that the last comment had no significance at all.
None whatsoever.
His head reeling with the ideas exploding through it, Roman slipped through the darkening corridors of City Hall and out into the streets of L.A., in a panic to reach Nial and help.