“She’s still asleep,” the woman said.
“Are we draining her dry?” a man asked. I didn’t recognize either of their voices.
“No,” the woman snapped. “Billy wants her alive. The sorcerer needs her blood.”
The sorcerer? Was he here?
My stomach flipped, and I fought back the rising bile in my throat. Why would Billy be working with a sorcerer? I knew he hated the LaSalles, and I’d assumed he hated all magic and sorcerers, but clearly, that assumption was wrong.
One of my abductors tugged on the needle that was secured to my arm, and I battled the urge to flinch. I peeked open an eye. The woman frowned as she removed the blood bag from the IV stand and replaced it with an empty one. A gold ring pierced her lip, and her eyes were smudged with what looked like day-old shadow. She secured the tube to the needle that was stuck in my vein, and then the two of them left.
Fear pulsed through me, and the room spun. I glanced at the empty IV bag and strained against my bindings. How much blood could they take? The average human body had ten pints.
Fight, Savannah. Before it’s too late.
Tears welled in my eyes. I leaned over and tried to grab the tube that was draining my blood with my mouth, but it was too far. A wave of dizziness and drowsiness settled over me, and I closed my eyes and drifted as I tried to fight it off.
Minutes—or hours—later, a hand slapped my cheek. “Wake up!”
I forced my heavy lids open and blinked several times. I must have passed out. How long had I been down here?
“Where the hell am I?” I mumbled.
“Eat.” The woman with the lip ring and smudgy eye shadow shoved a peanut butter and jelly sandwich at me. I turned my head away, but she grabbed my hair and forced my head back. I took a bite and chewed.
Tears rolled down my face, and I swallowed the rising lump of sorrow.
A brawny man with a scar under his left eye appeared by my side. “I’d love to have a few moments alone with her. Make her pay for what she did to the others.”
He grinned and brushed my cheek with his knuckles. My skin crawled, and I jerked against my bindings.
“Hands off. You can use the look-alike for your twisted fantasies. This one’s too important.” The woman’s voice was filled with malice, and she shoved the sandwich into my mouth.
The man leaned forward and sniffed me. I strained as revulsion overcame me, but he held me down. “I wonder if her blood tastes like his?”
If my blood tasted like whose? Billy’s? The sorcerer’s? Why in the hell were they tasting anyone’s blood?
Confusion clouded my mind as he detached the tube from the needle in my arm and smeared a few drops of my blood on his finger. He tasted it and jerked, closing his eyes. When he opened them, they were a deep crimson and manic.
Holy smokes.
“She’s like him,” he growled. “Not as potent, but sweeter.”
The man looked like a drug addict who needed another fix. His nostrils flared, and a crazed grin cut his face. “I need another taste.”
Crap.
He lifted the dripping tube to his mouth, but the woman snatched it from his hand. “No! Billy will kill us both. Her blood belongs to the sorcerer.”
I watched in a daze as the woman secured the tube to the needle in my arm. What the fuck was going on?
The woman picked up a needle and jabbed it into a vial, filling it with something. She stepped over and lifted my sleeve. I struggled, but the man pinned my arms while she jabbed me and injected the fluid.
She flicked the needle into a metal trashcan and opened the door. “Come on. This dose of magic inhibitor should keep her down for a few more hours. I wish they’d just spring for magicuffs. Let’s finish draining the others. We don’t need them anymore.”
As soon as they left, I glanced around the room, searching for anything I might use to get out of these bindings. There was a scalpel on the counter, but it was too far away to reach.
I grunted and thrashed uselessly against the bonds, but then an idea drifted through my sluggish mind.