"Whose body was in your car?"
"Ophelia's friend Clara. It's so convenient, vampires crumbling into ash when they're burned. It's so messy that the authorities can't tell whether they're dealing with human remains or not. You splash a little blood around the scene of a wreck, and they don't bother checking too close."
She talked about it like she was giving me instructions on how to warm up a casserole. So Tina was batshit crazy, then. Good to know.
Tina opened the back door of the SUV they'd parked in the cow pasture. Dr. Fortescue jabbed me with the gun again. At this point, I was counting the jabs so I would know how many times to kick him in the face later. While Fortescue held the gun on me, Tina looped another plastic-silver cuff around a metal hook, securing me to the headrest of the front seat. I slid into the back seat, feeling the bulk of the KidPhone against my spine. Dr. Fortescue hadn't thought to pat me down, thank goodness.
Maybe the KidPhone had some sort of emergency locator beacon?
"Yes, Ms. Messinger has become a very useful companion in my scientific endeavors. My special cocktail wouldn't transform a vampire on its own. It has to be filtered through a sire's bite, changing the newly made vampire from the moment of transformation but having no real effect on the sire. The magic of vampirism, it's a mystery," he said, with a manic gleam in his eyes. "I needed a vampire who would agree to be dosed, for a fee, and would have no moral quandaries about siring a child he had no intention of mentoring.
"That's where Ms. Messinger came in, providing a list of Ms. Lambert's associates. Given Ms. Lambert's own moral flexibility, we were sure we could find someone among her acquaintances who would serve the purpose. We didn't expect so many of them to be so mercenary, but each of them assisted our agenda in his or her own way. And then, of course, Ms. Messinger used her admin privileges on the university's intranet to sort through your friends' messages and locate you. Her support has expedited the process considerably."
I cast a serious side-eye at Tina, who was climbing into the front seat. I should have known her earnestness was a cover for serious evil.
Fortescue shrugged out of his stolen tactical gear and tossed it onto the seat next to me. He'd been wearing a nice shirt and tie under all that Kevlar. I used my high-resolution night vision to scan the discarded jacket for anything I could use to free myself. Fortescue climbed into the driver's seat and started the car. Tina played with the radio stations until she found contemporary adult and began humming along to a Nickelback song.
Evil.
"You will not inject me with drugs, conk me over the head, or otherwise cause me to lose consciousness," I told Dr. Fortescue.
"Of course not," he said, smiling at me. "Why would I hurt my prize specimen?"
Why couldn't I be targeted by scientists who were less crazy? And now that my adrenaline was starting to fade and I was still, I felt the burning against my wrists much more acutely.
"What is this crap?" I hissed as the car lurched forward.
"A special polymer I developed. It's laced with silver filaments. Terribly expensive to make but, as you can see, very effective. Just one of the many developments I've been trying to share with the Council. But they refuse to recognize the contributions I could make. The foolish gatekeepers refuse to put me into contact with the right representatives. They'll see. They're all going to see. I'm finally going to get the recognition I deserve."
Did that mean he wasn't aware that I was the gatekeeper who kept him out of contact with Jane? Was that a good thing or a bad thing? Should I hold on to that piece of information, just in case I needed to push him over the edge and make him put me out of my misery later?
I leaned my head against my arms. This whole situation sucked beyond the telling of it. Every bump and jolt from the road brought me into contact with the cuffs. It was agony, boiling up my arms, prickling up my neck. But I didn't want him to know exactly how sensitive I was to silver.
I bit down on my lips and didn't let any noise escape, even as the burns spread up to my shoulders. What if it burned through my wrists? What if I lost my hands? I tried to think of something else, anything to distract me from the pain lancing up my arms. Thinking about losing my hands probably wasn't the best idea, then. OK. I could go to my happy place. Unfortunately, my happy place had turned into a water tower, watching a silly movie with Ben. Ben. I loved Ben.
Was he OK? Were Gabriel and Georgie safe? Dick and Jane? What if Dr. Fortescue had lured them into some sort of trap at the motel? What if that was why she didn't pick up her phone? If I died, would I be with my parents, or did vampires get a ticket straight to hell?