"He-pp." Ava licked the blood from her lips to wake the predator within her. Her tongue seemed heavy but she was once more in command of it, and it was getting easier to blink. Easier to twitch her fingers and toes. She was nearly there.
He must have heard the noise.
Footsteps paused above her, then turned unerringly toward the stairs. The cat kept making that horrible yowling sound in its throat, but the dhampir ignored it. His heels thundered on the staircase, and Ava forced herself to move, to crawl.
"Where do you think you're going, Miss McLaren?"
Too late.
Frustration tore through her. She was so close to burning the poison out of her blood, and her inner predator was definitely sitting just beneath the surface. The dhampir knelt in front of her and hauled her upright, taking in the jerky movement of her hand, and Ava's gaze locked on his throat. "I'm an idiot," he muttered, slinging her back into the chair, and then looking around, patting at his pockets.
No more hemlock, she guessed.
His eyes lit on a tea towel, which he tore into strips and used to bind her arms to the chair.
"That's better," he muttered.
Poor Geraldine stared sightlessly at the wall, a black-red flower of blood blooming in the middle of her forehead. Ava's vision kept coming in and out of color.
"Shit," her abductor swore again. "Ghost is not going to appreciate this mess." He seemed to realize the water cart sirens outside were still wailing, and looked at her. "All right, let's do this." Reaching inside his waistcoat, he produced a small leather satchel and unrolled it on the kitchen counter.
Ava flinched back as far as she could.
"What... do you... want with me?" Or at least that's what she tried to say. Everything tingled. "What are you... doing?"
"I'm only obeying orders." The dhampir plunged a syringe into a wax-sealed vial, drawing up some sort of pale green liquid inside. "Relax, Miss McLaren. This won't hurt too much and then it will all be over."
No. No.
She twitched, forcing weak limbs to obey her.
The last time she'd been a prisoner of a man she'd been powerless too. And he'd hurt her, destroyed her life. Ava's vision dipped through shades of gray, the color bleaching from the world around her as some inner rage she'd never recognized rose like a snarling animal.
She'd felt the craving take her over before, when she'd smelled blood in the early days of her infection, or when emotion overtook her.
But this time she embraced it.
Feeling flooded along her limbs, along with the surge of blood. The killer looked at her, as if he'd sensed something different, and his lips thinned. "That's enough of that."
Stabbing the syringe into her neck, he pumped her full of a cold substance that burned through her veins.
Ava screamed, a gargle of sound that scraped her throat raw. A flash fire of arctic cold filled her body, flooding her vision with red. She could smell blood. Taste it in her mouth. Something cool slid down her cheek. Ava touched it, finding a tear of glistening black, that would probably be a bluish red if her vision was normal, and the irony bit her. She hadn't been able to shed a single tear since her infection, only this single bead of blood....
There was a coldness in her chest that made her lungs ache, but her clockwork heart ticked on, pumping blood through her system. It hurt. So much. But this was not the worst she'd ever endured. Pain was an old friend. Hague had hurt her worse than this dhampir could ever dream. Ava clenched her teeth, embracing the predator within her, and then slowly looked up.
The relief in the dhampir's expression wavered, his eyes darting to the syringe in his hand, then back to her face again. Whatever reaction he'd expected from her, this was not it.
Ava flexed her arms, a growl of rage filling her throat. Not again. Never again. Hague flashed into her vision, overriding the dhampir's face. One rope tore apart under the force of her arm, and then she turned and spun the chair against the wall, smashing it to bits, the other rope still dangling loosely from her wrist. The veins in the back of her hands were almost bruised, as though something was wrong with her blood, but her heart ticked on.
"How?" the dhampir barked, grabbing hold of her arms. "How are you doing this?"
Ava drove a piece of chair leg into his abdomen. A hand flashed up, smashing her across the face, and pain exploded through her jaw. She staggered back into the counter, and then he was there, grappling with her, the steel syringe clattering to the floor.
Red, red everywhere. It was all she could see. That and Hague, smiling down at her like a father as he cut the stitches out of her chest that last time. "You're my finest creation, Miss McLaren."