Killer's Gambit (Psychic For Hire 3)

This was a special prison for otherkind only, and Steffane Ronin was being kept in a wing specifically designed for vampires. I had to go through a metal detector and be eyed up by a grumpy mage and then be patted down by a female security officer before they let me through. The cowboy was not allowed in, so I had to go alone. I followed a pair of beefy guards down several dim corridors before coming to a door. One guard handed me a pair of weird looking goggles and told me to put them on.

“Do not make eye-contact with the prisoner at any time,” he warned me sternly. “And do not take these off.”

“Sure thing. What are they? Some sort of magical anti-mesmerism glasses?”

“Supposedly,” said the guard.

“No such thing,” said the other in disgust. An undercurrent of fear was coming off this one, as if he was fully aware that he was working in a place surrounded by monsters and the idea of what one of them would do to him if it got free was constantly nag at him. This guy was a stress-pot.

“Stay outside the circle at all times. Do not approach the prisoner. Do not touch the prisoner. Keep the alarm button in reach and press it the second you need help.”

“Much good it’ll do ya,” muttered the stress-pot.

“I’d prefer if you armed me with a cross bow,” I told the first guard with a grin. “The type that shoots stakes.”

He grinned back. “Tell me about it. Why are you here to see this one anyway?”

“That’s what I’m here to find out.”

The guard shrugged. “Your funeral.”

He opened the door to let me in. The room inside was completely dark, but I didn’t need the help of the glasses to see. The room was ten feet square. At its center was the circle that the guard mentioned —

it was made of sigils carved permanently and deeply into the stone floor. They were highlighted by the faint glow that they were emitting.

In the middle of the circle was a metal monstrosity of a chair that was welded into the ground. And sitting on it, shackled with chains, was a dark-haired man with glittering eyes. A thick metal belt around his naked torso held him attached to the back of the chair. His wrists and forearms were shackled to the chair’s arms. He had been staring at the ground and sitting as still as a corpse. But then he looked up directly at me and I saw that cruel edge to his features that I had seen in my dream.

Suddenly I remembered who he reminded me of; one of my favorite actors — Joaquin Phoenix — when he was young and playing some evil Roman emperor. I’d been spending my evenings binge watching movies and tv shows, trying to distract myself from my itch to go out and kill something.

The movement of Steffane Ronin’s head had caused the sigils on his shackles to gleam. He didn’t react. No wincing and gritting his teeth like he had done in my dream, but I did notice that he stiffened almost imperceptibly until their light died down. He was shirtless and pantsless, wearing only a black pair of boxers just like I had seen. I had thought that the chair was a prison, but now I thought it was more a torture device.

An unpleasant thought occured to me. This was not just a visitor’s room. This was his cell. This was how he was being kept permanently.

“Diana Bellona, I presume,” the vampire said.

His voice was unexpected. For a guy locked into a chair it was far too smug. And deep and rich and melodious; the kind of voice that immediately magnified a man’s attractiveness tenfold. But he wasn’t for me. Sadly I seemed to be stuck on Storm.

“At your service,” I told him, taking a seat on a second chair outside of the circle. It had an alarm button attached to its arm. Compared to his, this chair was spindly.

“Glad to hear it,” he said.

“A figure of speech,” I retorted. “Don’t get your hopes up, vampire boy. You want to tell me why I’m here?”

He threw back his head and laughed a booming laugh, and this time he didn’t seem to care at all about the gleam of the sigils. “Vampire boy,” he said, shaking his head. “Nobody has ever dared call me that.”

“Ooh. You must be a big bad vampire boy. So, what do you want?”

Meeting him had thrown me off. I had expected that I would come in here and I would sense something from him immediately, the way that I had sensed that insistent nagging tugging from his case file. But he was like the vampire Marielle; a void in the middle of the psychic music. I could not sense anything coming from him at all and I did not like it.

“What do you think I want?” he said.

“Very funny. Am I am supposed to pick your brains for you? I’m not in the mood. You asked for me, so spit it out.”

He tilted his head and looked at me curiously. “Why you came when I asked is of interest, no?”

“Call me curious.”

He didn’t tell me that curiosity killed the cat. He glanced around his cell meaningfully. “Clearly I want your… help.” He said the word ‘help’ like it was an unpleasant thing. Like he had never asked for help in his life.