“Don’t you want your treasures?”
“Enough!” his voice turned inhuman as he lunged at me, his teeth inches from my throat. “Perhaps it’s you who’s planning to betray me. Perhaps I should save him time and just eat you now. I wonder if you’ll taste like the last vampire. He was tough, like jerky, but had a certain spiciness.”
I held still as his black tongue forked out, tasting my cheek and sliding up to my forehead. I bit my tongue to keep from whimpering when I felt the edge of teeth.
“It’s not me who’s betrayed you,” I forced out. “How many people did Victor send you out after in search of that locket and watch fob? Ten? Twenty? How long are you going to kill for him?”
He drew back, the madness still very present in his eyes.
How much of the doctor remained? Enough to feel anger at being turned into a weapon? Or was that person gone? Erased by a prison camp and the rage that made him cling to life long after it was time to move on?
He bared his teeth, hissing again.
He spun and loped up the stairs on all fours.
The breath trapped in my chest finally escaped.
When I got out of this, I was going to take up a job with zero danger. No running errands for sorcerers or accepting foolhardy deals. No marks. No magic and definitely no undead monsters.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
PEOPLE WERE ARGUING upstairs. Sounded like Victor and Angela. If I concentrated, I could barely make out what they were saying.
“She should be dead already.”
“I have a plan.”
“I don’t understand why you would keep her alive. She knows everything. If she escapes, she’ll tell everyone. Any plan you have won’t mean anything if you’re too dead to reap its rewards.”
I had a feeling the ‘she’ they were talking about was me. Angela seemed dead set on my death. I knew why, and she was right, as a witness my testimony would damn them with each of their kind.
I didn’t know why she needed my death right this minute. I was chained in a basement with silver. Unless I developed super strength or lock picking skills in the next couple of hours, I wasn’t going anywhere or telling anyone their secrets.
“Baby, trust me. You know I wouldn’t let anything happen to you.”
Whatever else Victor said was lost as he lowered his voice. There was a soft giggle and then the two became occupied with other things.
Angela was a lot more naive than I’d thought to be seduced so easily by someone who obviously had a hidden agenda. She’d possibly turned against her own mentor as I still wasn’t sure what roll Miriam had played in this. Killed for him. They were a regular Bonnie and Clyde, if Clyde had secretly planned to off Bonnie in the last act.
I put my head back and closed my eyes.
Odd. I was tired. Maybe since I’d been up half the day, my body was now craving the sleep I didn’t get.
*
Something was kicking my foot. There was a sharp pain in my knee, and I came all the way awake with a start. I jerked forward. The chains wrenched me back.
Angela laughed as I struggled and slapped at what was holding me in place.
I stopped, looking around as the cobwebs began to clear from my brain.
I wasn’t in the basement anymore. I was in a cemetery. The same cemetery I’d landed in last night. Gravestones peeked from the ground in military straight lines. Rows and rows of them. It wasn’t a huge cemetery, but it was big enough.
My sleepiness in the basement hadn’t been natural. Given the smug look on Angela’s face, I had the feeling she’d given my rest a magical boost.
I looked up at the sky. The stars were visible, the moon still low in the horizon. I hadn’t been out long. Maybe a couple hours at most.
The draugr appeared from the shadows beside me, his stench announcing his presence as effectively as a trumpeted introduction.
