Immortal Unchained(17)

Not just saline then, Sarita thought.

Turning her attention to the catheter in his arm, she ripped the tape away and slid the apparatus out. She let it drop to swing free next to the table, and then gave the insertion point a quick look to be sure all was well. A bead of blood had bubbled to the surface, but when she brushed it away Sarita couldn't even see a pinpoint to show her where the needle had gone in. He healed that quickly.

Shrugging, she released his arm and peered at his face again, wondering how long it would take for the drugs to wear off. Probably a while, she decided and debated what to do next.

Sarita glanced around the room, spotted the refrigerator along the wall to her right, and walked over to open it. Blood. Lots of it. Not as much as had been in the refrigerator she'd seen in Dr. Dressler's torture chamber, but a good thirty or forty bags.

Another sign that Dressler expected them to be here a while, Sarita thought and felt her mouth flatten. That was not going to happen. She was getting out of there as quickly as she could. She had things to do. She had to find her grandmother, and that could be a problem in itself. She hadn't seen her in Dressler's house or in the labs, but that didn't mean she wasn't there. Certainly, Sarita no longer trusted that the man had told her the truth when he'd called with the news that her grandmother had been injured in a fall. Wherever she was, Sarita had to find her and get her away from the crazy old geezer the woman had worked for since before Sarita was born. And then she fully intended to report the bastard to the Venezuelan police and see that charges were laid against him before she went home to her little apartment and her job. She'd have to take her grandmother with her, Sarita thought now. The woman would have nowhere to go here.




 

 

Her mind immediately crowded with worries about how she could do that. Would she need a visitor's visa? How did you go about getting one? Did her grandmother even have a passport?

Shoving those concerns away for now, Sarita pushed the refrigerator door closed and turned to lean against it as she considered how to get away from this place. Dr. Dressler had said in the letter that this was where he and his wife had lived as they'd waited for the house on the island to be built. She supposed that meant this house was on the mainland. That was something at least. There was a dock and no road so they were obviously on the coast and a good distance from the nearest village or town.

They'd have to walk out, Sarita supposed. Try to find help. Hopefully they wouldn't have to travel too far to find it. But there were plenty of provisions here that they could take with them just in case it took them a while to find civilization.

Sarita didn't like the idea of having to walk out of there dressed as she was, though, or in any of the ridiculous concoctions in the closet upstairs. Which was probably why that was all there was available to her. Dr. Dressler had probably hoped that would keep her here.

"Not gonna happen," Sarita muttered and pushed away from the refrigerator to walk out into the next room. She'd quickly check the boxes while she was waiting for sleeping Dracula there to wake up. Maybe she'd find something useful, like old clothes. They'd probably stink of mold or mothballs, but she could deal with that, and at least she'd have some protection against being eaten alive by bugs.

Stopping by the boxes along the one wall, Sarita began opening them. The first appeared to be stuffed with plain brown paper, but when she grabbed a handful and pulled it out, it unraveled and something tumbled to the ground and shattered.

Frowning, Sarita stepped back and peered at the broken china on the floor. A teacup, she realized, spotting a delicate handle still attached to a broken bit of china. The box was full of china, she realized after feeling the paper-wrapped items still inside. Setting that box aside, she moved on to the next, but it too held china, as did the third. The fourth box had a bunch of old board games in it. The next two boxes had books. Most were paperbacks, old romances and pulp fiction, nothing that would be helpful to clothe herself or the man in the next room.

Sarita barely had the thought when a jangling noise drew her head sharply around. Recognizing it as the sound of chains clanging against each other, she forgot about the boxes and turned to rush for the door. Unfortunately, while she'd been conscious of the broken teacup on the floor and been careful to avoid the shards of porcelain while she'd searched the boxes, she didn't think of them as she turned to sprint for the door. At least, not until a sharp pain had her gasping and reaching for the nearest box for balance as she jerked her foot up off the floor. The box didn't offer much stability. The minute her fingers brushed it, the damned thing and the two boxes it rested on toppled away, crashing to the floor.