She hit him with a sudden, sizable blast. As the big male crumbled to the floor, she ran to peer inside the room behind him. A blond vampire lay strapped to a bed, naked, convulsing and straining against the metal bonds that held him down. The Breed skin markings that swirled and arced over his chest and down his thick biceps and thighs were livid with pulsating color, seeming almost alive the way the saturations mutated from shades of crimson and deep purple to darkest black. His face was hardly human, completely transformed by the presence of his fangs and the glowing coals of his eyes.
Could it be Nikolai? At first, Renata wasn't sure. But then he lifted his head and those feral amber eyes locked on to her. She saw a flash of recognition in them, and a misery that was palpable even from a distance.
Her heart twisted, burning with regret.
Good Lord, what had they done to him?
Renata grabbed the bulk of the unconscious guard and dragged him with her into the room. Nikolai bucked on the bed, snarling incomprehensibly, words that sounded close to madness.
"Nikolai," she said, going to his bedside. "Can you hear me? It's me, Renata. I'm going to take you out of here."
If he understood, she couldn't be certain. He growled and fought his bonds, fingers flexing and fisting, every muscle taut. Renata bent down to strip a set of keys from the guard's belt. She took his pistol too, and swore when she realized it was merely a tranq gun loaded with less than half a dozen rounds.>What the hell was this about?
But he knew. He knew as soon as the attendant lifted the human's limp arm and fixed the tourniquet around the area of her brachial artery. The needle and siphoning tube were next.
Nikolai tried to ignore the clinical process taking place beside him, but even the subtlest scent of blood made his senses fire up like holiday lights. Saliva surged into his mouth. His fangs stretched longer in anticipation of feeding.
He didn't want to hunger - not like this, not when he was certain Fabien intended to use it against him now. He tried to ignore his thirst but it was already rising, responding to the visceral urge to feed.
Fabien and the other two vampires in the room were not immune either. The attendant worked expediently, the guard keeping his distance near the door while Fabien watched the blood Host being readied for the feeding. Once everything was in place, Fabien dismissed the attendant and sent the guard back to his post outside.
"Hungry, are we?" he asked Niko when the others had gone. He held the feeding tube in one hand, the fingers of his other hand poised on the valve that would begin the flow of blood from the woman's arm. "You know, this is the only way to feed a Rogue vampire in containment. Blood intake must be closely monitored, controlled by trained attendants. Too little and he starves; too much and his addiction becomes stronger. Bloodlust is a terrible thing, don't you agree?"
Niko snarled, wanting so badly to leap up off the bed and strangle Fabien. He struggled to do just that, but it was a futile effort. The combination of sedatives and steel restraints held him down. "I'll kill you," he muttered, breathless from exertion. "I promise you, I will fucking kill you."
"No," Fabien said. "It is you who's going to die. Unless you start talking now, I'm going to put this tube down your throat and open the valve. I won't shut it off until you indicate that you're ready to cooperate."
Jesus Christ. He was threatening to overdose him. No Breed vampire could handle that much blood at once. It would mean almost certain Bloodlust. He would turn Rogue, a one-way ticket to misery, madness, and death.
"Would you like to talk now, or shall we begin?"
He wasn't idiot enough to think Fabien or his cronies would release him, even if he did cough up details about the Order's tactics and current missions. Hell, he could have a rock-solid guarantee of walking away free, but he'd be damned if he'd betray his brethren just to save his own neck.
So, this was it, then. He'd often wondered how he would check out. Figured he'd go down in a blaze of glory, a hail of bullets and shrapnel, hopefully taking a dozen suckheads with him. He never guessed it would be something as pitiful as this. The only honor in it was the fact that he would die keeping the Order's secrets.
"Are you ready to tell me what I want to know?" Fabien asked.
"Fuck off," Niko ground out, more pissed than ever. "You and Dragos both can go straight to hell."
Fabien's gaze sparked with rage. He forced Nikolai's mouth open and shoved the feeding tube deep into his throat. His esophagus constricted, but even his gag reflex was weak due to the sedatives coursing through his body.
There was a soft click as the valve on the human's arm was opened.
Blood gushed into the back of Nikolai's mouth. He choked on it, tried to close his throat and refuse it, but there was too much - an endless flow that pumped swiftly from the blood Host's tapped artery.
Niko had no choice but to swallow.
He gulped down the first mouthful. Then another.
And still more.
Andreas Reichen was in his Darkhaven office reviewing accounts and downloading the morning's e-mail when he noticed the message waiting in his in-box from Helene. The subject was a simple handful of words that made his pulse kick with interest: found a name for you.
He clicked open the e-mail and read her brief note.
After some determined investigative work, Helene had gotten the name of the vampire her missing club girl had been seeing recently.
Wilhelm Roth.