“Reggie,” he said, the hint of a smile on his weary face.
“Who?” Why had this name not come up before?
“He’s a ghost, Ms. Rutledge. One of my former associates from long ago who stuck around to help me out. He’s good for… special projects.”
“You lead a very strange life, Nick.” Her cell rang again before he could reply. It was Shelby.
“Can you call off the damn cops? I’ll never get a solid bead on him if I have to keep sidestepping the law.”
“It’ll take a while to filter down to them, Shelby.”
“Just do it, please. How close are you?”
They were crossing over the river now. “Not far.”
“Okay, I’m south of Central and Pine, and the feeling is getting weaker. So head north. Nick with you?”
“Yeah, you need to talk to him?”
“Nope, just call if he gets a hit on him.”
Shelby hung up, and Jackie called in to have the cops quit looking for her. North of Central and Pine did not narrow things down much.
“Anything?” Nick wondered.
“North of Central and Pine.”
“Okay, we aren’t far. Slow down a bit so I can concentrate. A bit of luck, and we’ll triangulate somewhere nearby.”
“You can feel Drake around here?”
He nodded. “Yes. When he’s ripe with blood, he’s difficult to miss, but he’s been harder to pinpoint this time. Keeps fading in and out. I haven’t figured out what he’s doing yet.”
Ripe with blood. “Can you tell if he’s fed on Laurel?
“He hasn’t yet.”
Oh, thank God. Laurel was a smart cookie though. If anyone could deal with something like Drake, it would be Laur. She knew all about that supernatural shit. “Did you know Laurel is thirty-one?”
“I’d have guessed as much now,” he replied, leaning back in the seat and closing his eyes. For all Jackie could tell, he was going to sleep. She checked in on her phone, but nobody had come across anything. Shelby had been spotted, though the story of her leaping over moving cars stretched the limits of believability.
“How much stronger are you when you drink real blood?” Morbid curiosity kept her brain churning and helped to keep it from preoccupying itself with Laurel.
His head turned, a softly glowing eye shielded by heavy lids. “Much. The strength of ten men probably. The mind-control thing is even more easily done, and control over the body is such that you can make your skin knit itself up from wounds, mend bones, and the like. The power of the dead, Ms. Rutledge, is not human. It’s an otherworldly thing.”
Hard as it was for her, Jackie kept the car at the posted speed limit of thirty-five miles per hour. Her stomach was nothing more than a squirming bucket of worms now, every minute leading closer to a fate so incomprehensible her mind refused to acknowledge it.
Chapter 30
Reality snapped back like a broken rubber band for Laurel when Drake let her go at last. She had not been oblivious to him and had in fact been aware of his every action. The ride in the Rolls had not been long. She even knew where they were but had missed the exact address. The decaying sign over the doors had said FITZSIMMONS FURNISHINGS. It was a warehouse, or used to be at some point in time. The windows had been boarded up, and most of the inside was scattered with refuse, clutter, and fallen ceiling tiles. Three floors up, the entire floor had been converted into a living space. Of sorts.
Upon entering the room, nothing had been visible other than the stainless-steel table in the center of the room. A dangling fluorescent lamp illuminated it and provided the only light in the cavernous room.
“Please, Ms. Carpenter. Have a seat upon the table.”
The slight British accent might have had charm under other circumstances, but now, feeling trapped within her own body, she could only think of Hannibal Lecter. She obeyed like a mindless zombie and sat on the edge of the table, noticing the raised lip around the edges and the hole in the corner. She had seen tables like these numerous times in the past, generally in unfavorable conditions. A cadaver’s table.
On one side of the table, a chenille-covered lounge chair and ottoman, floor lamp, and side table. On the table were several books and a newspaper. Dimly, she had awareness of there being more to the space. There were other aspects, more furnishings, but they were barely noticeable in the glare of the overhead light, and her eyes had no will of their own to wander and take in the surroundings.
She watched him move around the room, into and out of the central light, removing his jacket and draping it carefully over the back of the lounge chair, then disappearing into darkness until she heard the unmistakable tinkling of ice cubes. He returned with a drink in hand. His tie had been removed, and the top two buttons of his crisp, white shirt were unbuttoned. He seated himself in the lounge chair and sipped down the martini, reading through some of the newspaper. With no sense of time to speak of, Laurel could only guess how long she sat there unmoving before he finished off the martini and laid the paper back down.
Drake pulled her cell phone from his pocket and held it up. “Fourteen calls now, Ms. Carpenter. You appear to be a rather popular woman. Why is that, I wonder?”
Laurel had nothing to say, as he had given her no permission to speak. I can’t die like this, not buried inside my own body.
Fourteen calls meant Jackie was wondering why she hadn’t called to check in and would wrongfully suspect Shelby of taking her. They would be focusing on the wrong person.
Drake sighed with exasperation. “I suppose I should strap you down so we can have a proper conversation. Don’t you agree?”
“Yes,” Laurel replied, unable to keep her lips from forming the words.
He leaned down and opened a drawer beneath the table, and Laurel soon found her wrists zip-tied to the edges of the table. Her legs from the knees down still dangled over the end. “Well, then, there we go. We may speak freely now.”
And like that, the impenetrable weight upon her mind lifted, and Laurel could control herself once again. “You’re going to kill me.” She was surprised at the finality in her voice.
He stood next to the table, looking down on her much like a wolf looks at a fawn with a broken leg. “I’m going to drain the blood out of you, sucking the precious life force from it until you leave this world of the living and enter that of the dead. It is more a transition, really, but not one I highly recommend.” He smiled, and the charm may have been there in his lips, but the eyes ruined it completely. No charm was possible from glowing, irisless eyes. “It is wretchedly cold over there, and most of the fellows are a bit of a bore. I’m afraid you will not find it much to your liking.”
The bastard was a talker at least. That much went in her favor. There was little other advantage she had at her disposal, however. The straps would only get tighter if she pulled on them. Time would prove to be her only ally. She needed it badly. “You aren’t exactly what I’d imagined from a… um…”
“Vampire, Ms. Carpenter?” He laughed softly. “Such an amusing twist of the reality, but in essence, yes, I am one of the very same, and it is not so much like the stories portray. Both more and less, as it turns out.”
“You are both living and dead at the same time,” she said. Shelby had shown her that much. She wondered if Shelby was out there now, cruising the streets on that death trap on wheels looking for her. Jackie would be. Two hours of no contact would be about her limit, if she guessed her friend correctly. Her patience and paranoia would have met head to head by now.
“Why, yes, indeed I am, Ms. Carpenter. How very astute of you. Your ability serves you well. I wonder,” he said, leaning over her, his face next to hers. Laurel turned away from those enthralling eyes. She could not bear the notion of that mindless enslavement again. His breath sucked in next to her ear, a deep inhalation. “I wonder if your blood is any richer because of it?”