Bound by Night(67)

“You’ve got an hour,” Chuck said. “Nicole takes blood fi rst. We’ve found that the rate of infection is slightly higher if the vampire gives blood to the human before feeding rather than the other way around.”
Chuck disappeared through a door at the rear of the gymnasium-sized chamber Riker hadn’t been able to see when he’d been hanging from chains. Now the giant room appeared to contain dozens of small cells like the one he and Nicole were in, plus some sort of large cage near the center. There was movement from within, but Riker couldn’t tell what it was.
“That son of a bitch.” Nicole’s voice was stricken, her expression equally so, as she gazed in the direction Chuck had gone. “I’m sorry, Riker. God, I’m so sorry.”
“I know,” he said. “But let’s not worry about that now. We need to get out of here.”
She slammed the side of her fist into the window, and the resulting warbling sound reverberated around the room in an almost musical wave. “These cells are built to neutralize most vampire abilities, so unless you have a laser-vision superpower we didn’t know about that can burn a hole in the Plexiglas, we’re screwed.”
Well, she’d just explained why he hadn’t been ableto use his hypnotic ability on Chuck while t he asshole was stringing him up in shackles. “Sweetheart, I’ve beenscrewed many times, and tr ust me, this doesn’t even come close to being the worst of them.” She shot him a dark look, no doubt thinking of their encounter in her room when he wasn’t screwed, and he clarified. “When I was in the military. I spent a lot of time pinned down in burnt-out buildings and on mountain ridges. There’s always a way out.”
“Then what do you suggest?”
He scanned the area, noted the cameras mounted in dozens of spots on the walls and ceiling. “Do you think he’s watching?”
“Probably.” She glanced at the twenty-four-hour clock on the wall in the main chamber. “It’s the middle of the night, so except for a guard, he’d be the only one.” She rubbed her ribs where Chuck had kicked her, the bastard.
“I still can’t believe this is happening.” Riker didn’t have that problem. Humans were capable of anything. Nicole turned to him, her eyes haunted, her face pale and etched with desperation. “You’ve got to try to turn me.”
He shot a middle-finger salute at one of the cameras. Yeah, yeah, real mature. “Not an option.”
“It’s the only way to save Neriya.”
“You know he’s not going to release her.”
“No, but maybe he won’t kill her,” she said, looking so troubled and disgusted that he had to fight the urge to take her in his arms. No way was he going to give Chuck a means to hurt them both. Better if he believed they were enemies. “The longer she stays alive, the more time we have to figure a way out of this.”
“I’m not going to turn you.”
She studied the equipment in the outer chamber.
“I hate to even say this after everything Daedalus has done, but the company has had great success with its medical applications. The vaccine Chuck injected me with should work.”
“And if it doesn’t? You had complications from the#p#分页标题#e#
 first vaccine. What if something similar happens with this new one? Are you prepared to spend the rest of your life being what you hate the most?”
There was a long pause. “What I hate the most isn’t vampires.”
Her gaze slid up to his, and the devastation in her eyes rocked him to the core. He suddenly didn’t want to know what she hated the most, but he had a feeling she was looking inward rather than out.
He hated seeing her in pain, and the irony wasn’t lost on him, since for two decades, all he’d wantedwas to see everyone in the Martin family suffer. But now that he was here with a Martin who was suffering inside her own facility where vampires had been tortured and killed, he felt no sense of vindication. Nicole wasn’t the monster he’d believed, and again, he had to fight the urge to comfort her. Protect her.
How could he sink his fangs into those scars on her throat, knowing how much a vampire had hurt her? “Iswore I wouldn’t bite you.”
 “And I swore I’d do whatever it took to rescue Neriya,” she said firmly.
Shit. This was a no-win situation if he’d ever been in one. They weren’t going to get out of here unscathed, but he was determined that they would get out. Not a win, exactly, but not a loss. At this point, he’d take a draw. And he hated draws.
Nicole blew out a long breath. “This is my fault, Riker. I need to do something to help.”