Lawrence stayed hunched behind the door of the car, radio in one hand and gun on the other. “Sir? What do we do?”
She wanted a heroic, last minute save, the sort of thing that the old stories about Cardinal Madoc were ripe with, the sort of story this was meant to have been.
The threats were to-the-point and unimaginative, scored across plain sheets of paper and signed as though it were something to be proud of.
“How did you get these?” Madoc asked as he flicked through them.
“If they threatened him, then they threatened her,” Took didn’t answer him. “Except she hasn’t told us, so that means she’s probably theirs. We can’t trust her, but—”
“We can use her,” Madoc finished for him.
Now it looked like they’d been used.
“Sir?” Lawrence tried again. “Madoc?”
The truth was Madoc couldn’t lose Took again, not like this. Death was one thing, but trapped and tortured? No, Madoc couldn’t live with that thought. So he did something for Truckstop that he hadn’t done since the first night they landed on this continent.
The Bathory’s cardinal, once the most feared man in half of the US, knelt down on the concrete and laced his hands behind his head. For the first time in living memory, Madoc just gave up.
BLOOD OOZEDstickily from the raw sockets in Madoc’s gums. Truckstop had held the pliers as he worked all the teeth he wanted free. His wife would have a full set of tacky ivory jewelry before the month was out. It wouldn’t last, but it wasn’t pleasant.
His arms were twisted behind him and broken over a silver bar that slotted under his arms and was secured with silver wire. His shoulders dislocated and upper arms broken, he’d been thoroughly worked over with fist, boot, and submachine gun butt. Most had delivered the beating with a businesslike thoroughness until he stopped healing so quickly. A few had gloated as they tried to punt his testicles back inside him, but he had killed their friend, so he supposed he couldn’t blame them.
The wheels hit a bump and pain scraped along Madoc’s abused bones. Next to him Lawrence sat in tense resentment while Heather Waring sobbed noisily over her silent son. A sharp turn rolled Madoc against the side of the truck, his arms twisted even more awkwardly than before.
He passed the trip with a short list of who could have done this. It was a very short list.
At last the truck stopped. The engine grumbled on, overclocked and overused, as they dragged Madoc and the others out of the back. A rough hand on his collar hauled him to his feet and marched him toward a low-slung wood building that proclaimed itself the clubhouse with a carved sign over the door.
Six steps up onto the veranda and then they threw him through the door. With Madoc’s hands behind him, it was impossible to catch his balance or preserve his dignity. He hit the ground and rolled, half gagged on his own bloody drool.
It was Lawrence who caught his arms and pulled him into a sitting position. She dodged a backhand to the head and hunched over him protectively as the other hunters filed into the room.
One of the men, bony and unremarkable in his camo, saw the pale, grubby kids huddled against the wall. Despite everything, he had the gall to sound relieved, a father reunited with his daughter. “Kerry! Thank God.”
He slung his shotgun over his shoulder and crossed the room to pull her into a hug. That she tried to flinch away from him didn’t seem to matter as he petted her hair and told her how he’d missed her.
“Leave her alone,” Annabelle Franklin, her face familiar at this point, protested as she lunged forward. “She doesn’t belong to you.”
It was Took who pulled her back and muttered something in her ear. He gave Madoc a quick, guilty look but stayed where he was until the one-sided reunion was over and the men had dragged in Waring and his hysterical mother. Annabelle tried to run over to him, but one of the guards grabbed her arm and slammed her back into the wall. No sentimental reunions for her, then.
Once everyone was inside, Took staggered over the room to Madoc. Sympathy made him wince as he saw the hobble bar stretched over his back. Instinct made him reach for it and rip his fingers open on the barbed wire ties, but one of guards grabbed a pale kid and dragged him out of line.
“Hands off,” he snapped.
Took glared but did as he was told.
“I missed something,” Took admitted as he sank down next to Madoc. He brushed his hand carefully over Madoc’s battered cheek. “I don’t even know what. Who.”
Madoc tilted his face into Took’s hand. “We all did.”
“Where’s Pally?” Lawrence asked sharply. “Quick?”
Took shuddered. He nodded out the door into the bright morning light. “They shot Pally in the head,” he said, “and dumped him into a well.”
“That—” Lawrence blurted. She caught herself before all the words got out. That wouldn’t be enough to kill Pally. He was an old vampire, nearly as old as Tepes himself, and it would take fire to keep him down. But it would be enough to incapacitate him until nightfall, and that would be too late for them. She swallowed hard. “Quick?”
“Waste not, want not,” Took said as he looked over his shoulder. “They need to build the kids up again. I’m next. They’re going to keep us like cows, milk us until we run dry, and then throw us in the well.”
