Keri Arthur - Fireborn

“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.”