15
Riley
A gentle handslapped her cheek, and Riley moaned and tried to jerk away, but she couldn’t do much more than twitch. “Sssstooopp,” she slurred, tasting blood, and forced her eyes open.
Ewan sat across from her, a concerned look on his face, and his green eyes pale. “Riley, are ya back with me?”
“You…p-piece of…sh-shit,” she stammered. “Drugged…m-me.”
“They found us, lass. I wasn’t fast enough.” He hung his head, his elbows on his knees as he sat across from her. Riley blinked hard, not understanding the throbbing in her left arm or why she still couldn’t move. As the rest of her surroundings came into view, she gasped and started to shake.
Several men gathered around a table across the room. Their voices were familiar. Shouts. Curses. Gunshots. In the far corner sat a bench with lab equipment—or she thought. The world was still fuzzy. Her face hurt. Her shoulder.
The car. They’d hit something. Dropping her gaze, she felt the familiar burn of tears in the corners of her eyes. A fabric cuff held her wrist securely to the arm of a chair, and a needle was taped to her elbow, blood flowing into a bag close to her hip. Almost a pint so far, if her eyes weren’t deceiving her.
“What…are you…doing?”
Ewan reached behind him for a glass of water. “What I have to. I won’t harm ya. All we need is some of yer blood. Tommy…he says ya’ can go home in a few days.”
“A f-few d-days? You k-kidnapped me. I have to—” She fumbled for the needle, but Ewan quickly grabbed her free hand and strapped it to the other side of the chair. The restraints weren’t uncomfortable, but with the drugs still muddling her mind and body, she had no hope of escape.
“Drink, lass,” he said as he pressed the glass to her lips. “Ya need it.”
Riley tried to turn her head away, but he wouldn’t let her, and she was so thirsty. The cool liquid soothed her raw throat, and she stopped fighting. If she were going to get out of here, she had to conserve her strength. “What did…you give…me?”
“Nothing that should still be affecting ya,” Ewan said as he set the glass back down. “A fast acting muscle relaxer that shoulda worn off after an hour. It’s been almost four.”
Glancing around, her vision still a little blurry, her heart sank. They were above ground. Small windows close to the ceiling revealed the dusky night sky. If Declan even knew she’d been taken, he wouldn’t look for her here. He’d search for Patrick’s gang. Deep underground. “Where am I?”
“Our headquarters.”
“I’m getting really sick of not knowing what’s going on. Whose headquarters? Tell me everything. Right now.” Her voice cracked, and she tried to force more strength into her tone, but she felt so weak, so drained. Almost like when she’d first discovered her illness. “What the hell are you going to do with my blood?”
Ewan snuck a glance behind him. “I have to get Tommy. He’ll explain.”
As he pushed to his feet and headed for the group of men across the room, Riley struggled to twist her right arm and hand so she could undo the velcro straps, but it was like trying to move her fingers through quicksand.
“You’ll only hurt yourself,” the tall, dark-haired man with a British accent said as he lumbered towards her. “Looks like that pint’s done. I’ll get that needle out of your arm.”
“You’re Tommy?” Riley asked as the man clamped the tube, pressed a cotton ball to her vein, and removed the needle. “Undo these straps. Now.”
“Not yet.” After he handed the pint to Ewan and jerked his head back towards the lab benches, Tommy grabbed the top of the chair across from her and flipped it around, resting his forearms on the back and giving her the once over. “You don’t look like a vamp killer to me. But you killed two of them when they fed from you. By my calculations, that bag of blood could take down at least two more of those fuckers. So you’re going to stay with us for a few days, Miss Scott. We’ll make sure you’re fed and comfortable, and in exchange, you’ll donate six or seven pints of blood. There’s something in there that liquifies a vamp’s insides, and we need it.”
Riley narrowed her eyes at Tommy. “It’s not Miss Scott, it’s Dr. Scott. I’m a fucking hematologist. So why don’t you stop mansplaining my own biology to me and tell meexactlywhat happened to the two vamps I supposedly ‘killed.’”
Tommy arched a brow. “A hematologist?”
With an exaggerated eye roll that sent a deep pain thrumming inside her skull, she huffed out a breath. “Yes. I’m an MD and have a Ph.D in Hematology. And I’m dying of a rare blood disorder and some really screwed up DNA. I know exactly what’s wrong with my blood—at least from a human standpoint. Show me how it reacts with vampire blood.”
“Ewan?” Tommy called. “Help me get her up.”
The cute Guarda officer—was that all a ruse?—rushed back to her side and ripped the velcro from her right arm. But before Riley could move, Tommy grabbed her wrist and held it still. The two picked her up, then bound her wrists behind her back.
“Seriously?” Riley asked. “You just drugged me, took a pint of my blood, and you outweigh me by half. How far do you think I’d get?”
“Not taking any chances,Dr.Scott,” Tommy said before he headed for the lab bench across the room.
Ewan kept an arm around Riley’s waist until she swayed and fell against him, then picked her up and carried her the rest of the way. “A little juice or something would be nice, assholes,” she muttered when he set her down next to a microscope.
