He hoped he was wrong, but Saber had a bad feeling about where his friend had gone and what exactly he had gone to do. What price had the swamp witch demanded for her services? And why had she sent Reddix to Earth? He couldn’t be acclaiming a bride—without a proper Touch sense he could never bind one to him. So then what was he going to do? And who was he going to see?
Saber didn’t know, but he was going to find out.
Chapter Nine
She put up a hell of a fight—Reddix gave her that. She screamed bloody murder and beat at his back with her little fists as she tried to twist free. He was having none of that, though—he had her now, and he wasn’t taking any chances on letting her go. He gripped her tightly, keeping her captive despite her struggles.
He’d already ascertained that the place was empty except for the girl at the front so he left by the front door with Nina over his shoulder. The receptionist—Cherri, Nina had called her—was also screaming and punching numbers into a communications device. Reddix assumed she was calling some kind of authority figure or peacekeeper, but it didn’t matter. His ship, which transformed neatly into a good approximation of an Earth vehicle, was parked in the lot just outside. Before they could get anywhere near him, he would be halfway out of Earth’s atmosphere and headed far away.
The one thing he could be thankful for was that despite Nina’s struggles, he couldn’t feel any of her emotions. Reddix didn’t know what to attribute that to—or the fact that he hadn’t been able to feel her or the girl up front when he touched Nina’s bare skin. Maybe it had something to do with the Earth’s atmosphere, or maybe it was a temporary short in his own system. He’d had that before once or twice, when he had been subjected to so many emotions it had overloaded his system, resulting in a temporary numbness. It would pass—it always did. And then he would be back in the middle of a hellish stew of emotions again, feeling everything that everyone felt around him and helpless to stop it.
Reddix knew the condition wouldn’t last, but for right now, he was damn grateful for the temporary reprieve. If he’d had to feel Nina’s fear crawling all over him, taste her panic at the back of his throat, he wasn’t sure he could have gotten through the kidnapping. As it was, he felt like he’d suddenly gone deaf—emotionally anyway. There was nothing wrong with his actual hearing—he could hear the girl, Nina, screaming in his ear just fine, and it was beginning to get on his nerves.
“You can’t do this!” she gasped as he shoved her into the passenger side seat and attempted to belt the harness in place despite her flailing limbs. “You can’t do this, let me go!”
“I am doing it, and I’m not going to stop so you might as well shut up and sit still,” he growled, fighting to get the harness in place.
“No!” She beat her small fists against his shoulders and fishtailed her body, very nearly slithering out of the harness and into the floor of the ship.
Reddix let the harness go and grabbed her shoulders, shoving her back against the seat. He leaned in close to her face and glared at her.
“Hold…still.”
Her blue eyes flashed defiance.
“Right. Hold still so you can take me away somewhere in your weird Kindred ship and rape me and kill me? I don’t think so.”
She started struggling again, even more than before. In the distance, Reddix could hear some kind of siren wailing…and it was getting closer. He had an idea it had something to do with the girl behind the desk calling for help. Time was running short, and he was out of options.
“Fine,” he growled. “I didn’t want to do this, but you’ve forced me.”
Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out the metal wrist restraints and slapped them onto her slim wrists. They were too loose, and she started trying to wriggle out of them at once. With a muttered curse, Reddix pulled out the locking mechanism and pressed a button to tighten the restraints. The unbreakable metal immediately molded to her wrists, becoming snug enough that no escape was possible. There was absolutely no getting out of them—not without chopping off her hands, and he didn’t think she’d be willing to go quite that far to get free.
Nina stared at her cuffed wrists for a moment and seemed to realize that the restraints were completely escape-proof. She took a deep breath and started to scream again.
“Help! Help me! This man is kidnapping me. Help!”
Reddix finally lost it. He was still on the ragged edge and the desperate fear in her blue eyes bothered him more than he liked to admit. The guilt that threatened to overwhelm him made him angry.