Fireborn

CHAPTER 11

Waking was a slow and agonizing process. As I climbed toward full awareness, various bruised and battered bits of my body came to life, and they all seemed overly determined to make consciousness a living hell.

I tried to shift position and ease some of the pain, but quickly discovered I couldn’t move. It took several minutes to realize why—my hands and my feet were tied so tightly that red-hot lances of agony were shooting up my limbs. To make matters worse, a herd of people wearing hobnail boots were stomping about inside my head.

Waking, I decided, just wasn’t worth it. But try as I might, I couldn’t slip back into the peaceful bliss of unconsciousness. I took a deep, somewhat shuddery breath and forced my eyelids open. To be greeted by nothing but black.

But one thing was obvious immediately—wherever the hell I was, it was no longer in Jackson’s truck. I had no idea how much time had passed, but surely I hadn’t been unconscious long enough that day had turned into night. And even if it had, night wasn’t usually this dark.

Thinking maybe there was something wrong with my vision, I blinked. It didn’t help. Everything was still black.

But it was a blackness that was not uninhabited. Out there in the darkness, someone was watching. I couldn’t hear him, I couldn’t smell him, but I was nevertheless aware of him. The energy of his presence skittered across my senses, powerful and yet oddly repelling.

“I know you’re there.” The words came out little more than a husky whisper. I cleared my throat and tried again. “Show yourself.”

For several minutes, there was no response. Tension crawled through me, and it was tempting—very tempting—to reach for whatever fire remained within and let it loose. But it was never a good move to reveal your trump card too soon—especially when that card wasn’t up to scratch. The first thing I was going to do once I got out of this place—if I got out of this place—was reenergize with Rory so I could shift shape and burn the remnants of the drug from my system. I couldn’t afford to be powerless—not when our investigations kept taking such nasty turns.

I flexed my fingers, desperate to get some life into them as much as trying to uncover what I’d been tied with. It didn’t feel like rope. It was cool and smooth against my skin rather than rough, and there was odd warmth to it.

Silver, I realized. They’d tied me with silver. Which, under normal circumstances, wouldn’t have been much of a problem, as silver didn’t actually restrain or hinder those of us who were spirits.

But the fact that my captors had tied me with silver suggested they suspected I was a nonhuman, even if they didn’t exactly know what.

“Look, whatever it is you want, just get on with it.” Though I kept my voice low, it nevertheless spurred the hobnailed idiots in my head into greater action. Tears stung my eyes, and I blinked them away furiously. “I really haven’t got the time to be playing games.”

As I half expected, it was a comment that finally got a response.

“And yet,” a cool voice replied, “we have.”

It wasn’t my watcher who spoke, but someone I hadn’t sensed until now. Someone who stood behind me. I didn’t bother twisting around to try to spot him. Not only would the hobnailed folk be unappreciative of such an action, but the utter blanket of darkness made any hope of spotting him nigh on impossible. Phoenixes weren’t blessed with the extraordinary eyesight of werewolves and vampires.

And that, I thought with a chill, was who held me now.

Vampires. And not just any old vampires, but the sindicati.

Fuck.

“Well, good for you,” I said, trying to keep my voice even despite my heart hammering so hard I swear it was attempting to jump out of my chest. “But, as I said, I have things to do. Can we please just move this along?”

“It is odd that you do not question who we are or why you are here.” He’d moved to my left, though I’d heard no footsteps.

A tremor ran through me. Only the very old ones could walk so silently. I licked my lips and tried to shove old fears back into their box. That I was still alive meant they had some use for me. Whether they’d let me go after I’d fulfilled those uses was another matter entirely.

“I don’t question who you are because I already know that. As to why I am here—” I paused, then shrugged. I might not be able to see them, but I had no doubt that the two men in this room—if they were vamps—could see me as clear as day. Vamps were blessed with night sight very similar to infrared. Even if he couldn’t taste my fear or hear the pounding of blood through my veins, he’d be able to see it. “I’m gathering it has something to do with Amanda Wilson.”

“Then you would gather wrong.”

Meaning I was in even deeper shit than I’d thought.

The voice, however, hadn’t quite finished. “And just who do you think we are?”

“Sindicati, obviously.”

“Ah,” he said, his cool voice still giving little away. But then, if my guess was right and he was a very old vampire, that was no surprise. They had a tendency to become more remote—and far less human—the longer they were alive. “Dear Amanda obviously talked far more than was wise.”

“Dear Amanda had little other choice given it was either talk to me or I’d leave her to the tender mercies of whatever goons you decided to send after her next.”

The speaker was silent for several minutes. I closed my eyes and tried to get some sense of him. But all I could feel was the man whose presence was beginning to scratch at my skin like some foul disease. He was the real power here, I suddenly realized, not the man who spoke.

“Ah, so you are the reason no one has heard from either of the subcontractors.”

“Well, I might be responsible for one being incommunicado, but not the other. He is, as far as I know, still in the hands of PIT.”

This news finally got a reaction. It was little more than a hiss of annoyed air, but it was nevertheless there. It made me wonder if the werewolf we’d questioned was more closely connected to the sindicati than just being a mere subcontractor. While wolves and vampires generally weren’t overly fond of one another, there were certain elements within each society that happily coexisted. I suspected the sindicati and whatever the werewolf equivalent was would be one of those.

“And you are responsible for this?”

“Well, he did try to kill me.”

“An unfortunate mistake on his part,” was the response. “Especially since we still have need of you.”

And if they didn’t, would I now be dead? The answer, very obviously, was yes. I flexed my hands, felt the surge of heat across my fingertips, but resisted the urge to let it show. I might have little more than sparks, but those sparks might yet save my life.

“Which leads neatly back to my original question,” I said. “What the hell do you want from me?”

“Ah,” the vampire said. “You are a being who obviously does not appreciate the complexities of bargaining.”

“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.

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.

I glanced down at the valley, then up at the road, and decided to go up rather than down simply because it involved less distance and far fewer fences to climb over.

I walked across to my handbag. A quick look inside revealed both wallet and phone. But then, it would hardly make sense for them to take either of them—stranding me in the middle of nowhere with no way to communicate and no cash or cards to grab a taxi wasn’t going to get them the notebook any quicker.

I turned on my stolen phone and discovered that it was nearly four in the afternoon. I’d been in the hands of the sindicati for more than five hours, even if I couldn’t remember more than half an hour of it. I scrolled through the contacts list, looking for the number I was supposed to ring once I’d found the notebook, and discovered it under the name of Mr. Dark and Dangerous. Someone in the sindicati had a warped sense of humor.

The next thing I did was take a couple of photos of the tire tracks. Who knew? Jackson’s secret source might be able to uncover what type of four-wheel drive used these type of tires. How that would help us find the vehicle, I had no idea. With the way our luck was running, it’d turn out to be a tire used by most of the major four-wheel drives found here in Australia.

That was presuming, of course, Jackson got out of this alive and in one piece. God, I hoped he was okay.

Hoped the sindicati weren’t dining on him as they had on me.

I squished down the worry and contacted Rory.

“Thank god you’re okay,” he said without preamble. “I heard over the radio that there’d been a major crash on the freeway involving a red truck and a van, and I was worried it was you and Jackson.”

I hesitated, knowing he’d be madder than hell given my promise to keep safe, then quickly updated him on all that had happened.

“Damn it, Em!” he exploded. “They could have killed you!”

“Not until they get what they want,” I said. “Trouble is, I have no idea where that notebook is, and though there was a copy on my laptop, it also went missing.”

“Well, no, it didn’t. I have it.”

I blinked. “You what?”

“The damn battery on mine died, so I borrowed yours. It’s sitting in my locker at work as we speak.”

I closed my eyes and rubbed my forehead wearily. Even if I couldn’t find the notebook, I still had a chance of saving Jackson.

“Em, you okay?”

“Yeah. Listen, can you meet me at home? Before I can do anything, I need to recharge. It’s just become too damn dangerous to run around as I am.”

“Can do, but if you’re intending to confront the sindicati, you are not doing it alone.”

“Rory—”

“No,” he cut in. “Not this time. I don’t trust vampires at the best of times, let alone ones as steeped in crime as this lot. They won’t see or hear me, Em, but I will be there, just in case.”

I opened my mouth to protest, then closed it again. He was right. It was infinitely better to be safe than sorry.

“Okay. I’ll meet you at home.” I hesitated, then added, “Oh, and don’t bring the laptop. It’s safer where it is for the moment.”

“No problem. See you soon.”

I hung up, then slowly made my way up the hill. The clean air and exercise didn’t make the hobnailed folk any happier, but it wasn’t like I had much choice.

The road at the top was little more than a thin strip of gravel, and I hesitated, undecided whether to go left or right. Neither direction appeared particularly promising, given there was little more than trees and scrub to be seen either way. I tossed a mental coin, then headed right—at least it was downhill. Hopefully, it would lead somewhere. Even some sort of street sign would be handy right now; then I could call a cab.

After what seemed like ages, an odd sound began to cut across all the birdsong. I frowned and stopped. After a moment, I realized it was a car coming up the hill toward me.

Relief filled me, but it was quickly followed by wariness. This road didn’t look particularly well used, so what were the odds of someone coming along at the precise moment that I needed them?

None. Not the way my luck had been running of late.

It couldn’t hurt to be cautious. Even if it turned out to be a coincidence, as Rory had already noted, it was far better to be safe than sorry. I headed off the road, pushed my way through several feet of thick scrub, and sheltered behind the trunk of a big old ghost gum.

A dark blue car soon came into view. The windows were heavily tinted, so I couldn’t see who was inside, but it slowed as it neared my tree. I resisted the urge to step closer to the trunk, knowing any sort of movement just might capture their attention.

If, of course, they were actually looking for me and not just slowing down for the corner.

The car crawled past, then stopped.

My breath caught somewhere in my throat. Damn it. What else could go wrong today? Wasn’t being rammed into a tree and becoming an unwilling guest of the sindicati enough?

Apparently not.

Because the door opened and a man climbed out. It wasn’t a stranger and it wasn’t a vampire.

It was Sam.