Midnight Blue-Light Special
Page 71
Not that there was much I could have done in the dark, presumably unarmed, and with a head sore enough to make me suspect concussion. Maybe I was being hard on myself . . . and maybe that didn’t matter, since Margaret and her goons weren’t going to go easy on me just because I wasn’t feeling at the top of my game. I took a deep breath, ignoring the sick swimming sensation in my head, and tugged against the chains that bound me. There was barely a foot of give, and by chaining me to a wall, rather than tying me to the chair that I was sitting in, the Covenant had managed to deny me the leverage I might have otherwise used against them.
My left leg was free. My right leg wasn’t. That made sense, too. It didn’t totally immobilize me, and if they wanted me to stay functional for any length of time, they were going to want me to have some capacity for movement. Enough to keep the blood flowing at least, since bedsores and gangrene are nobody’s friends.
That was a sobering thought all by itself. People who plan to kill you quickly don’t worry about tying you up so that you can still move enough to keep your circulation good. People who plan to torture you for everything you can tell them about your family and the cryptids you’ve spent your whole life protecting do. And if what I knew about the Covenant was accurate, they wouldn’t view torturing me as a bad thing. God told them it was all cool, as long as when it was over, they got to kill a dragon or two.
Antimony suggested once that we should all carry suicide pills, just in case a situation like this one came up. Alex and I both laughed at her. I told her that there was no way I’d ever let a situation like this one be a problem. “I’ll die before I let myself be taken that way”—those were my exact words. Yet here I was, captive for the second time since I arrived in New York, and this time it wasn’t just a harmless little snake cult intending to use me as a virgin sacrifice. This time it was the Covenant of St. George.
Worse, this time it was family. And as many people have pointed out over the years, there’s nobody in this world who can hurt you like family can.
I took a few deep breaths to calm myself down before carefully tugging on each of the chains in turn, looking for differences in how they moved. The Covenant was pretty good at chaining people up; I had to give them that. I doubt I could have done a better job. (Antimony probably could, but that’s because Antimony focused on keeping people as far away from her as possible, and when she couldn’t do that, she liked to be sure they’d stay where she put them.)
Okay: so I was chained up, in the dark, with no idea of where I was. I shifted a little, feeling loose fabric around me, and added “wearing a bathrobe instead of real clothing” to my list of problems. The material was rough enough to be cheap, meaning it had probably been purchased from a gift shop, not stolen from one of Sarah’s high-end hotels. My feet were bare. If they’d taken my clothes, they’d taken my weapons. I was as close to helpless as I was ever going to get, and that pissed me off.
Taking another slow breath, I closed my eyes and thought, as hard as I could, Sarah? Can you hear me?
There was no response, and I realized that even the low-grade telepathic static of her presence was gone. I pushed back a surge of panic. There was no reason to suspect that they’d managed to track Sarah down while I was unconscious, and that meant one of two things. Either I was still under the influence of Margaret’s telepathy-blocking charm, or the Covenant had already moved me out of New York, and I was outside Sarah’s normal broadcast range. She’d be looking for me—they all would—but if I was too far for her to find telepathically, she wouldn’t know what to do. She wouldn’t have another way to start looking. If she was smart (and Uncle Mike would make her be smart, if he had to), she was already on a plane back to Ohio to hole up with her parents. Two cuckoos in one house meant the Covenant would never find them, no matter how hard they were looking. Sarah and Angela have been the family escape plan for a generation now.
I realized I was thinking like I was already lost, and I embraced it. It wasn’t the same as giving up; I didn’t expect the Covenant to kill me fast, and the longer they kept me alive, the better my chances became. But if my family thought I was out of reach, they might give up on me, and we might be able to minimize the damage.
There was no way they were going to do that. But it was a nice thought.
There was a soft click from one wall, like a lock was being turned. Nice as it would have been to stare defiantly at the door as it opened, I wasn’t in the mood to have my retinas seared after sitting in the dark for this long; I turned my face to the side. It was a bad choice. The actual door was in the wall I was facing now, and as it swung open, a blast of industrial white light streamed into the room, framing the outline of Margaret Healy.
“I see you’re awake,” she said pleasantly. That was more frightening than any threats she could have made. “That’s good. We’ve got quite a lot to talk about, you and I.”
“You could have invited me to coffee,” I said, squinting as I waited for my eyes to stop watering. “I don’t know how you do things in Europe, but here in America, we usually start our family reunions with something a little less high-impact than assault and kidnapping.”
“You hit me first,” Margaret shot back. Her pleasant tone didn’t waver. “Besides which, you’re not much of one to talk, since the first thing you ever did was lie to me. Where did you leave that girl who was with you? Sandy, I believe you said her name was?”
There was no way I was going to remind her that Sarah was the one who hit her, not me. “She has nothing to do with this,” I said. “She’s just someone I met at a dance class. Leave her alone.”
“That’s the thing about traitors and liars. You can’t believe a word they say. She lied for you. She tried to cover for you. Now why would she do that if she had nothing to do with this?” Margaret flipped a switch next to the door. The overheads came on, filling the room with more light. This didn’t hurt as much. My eyes were adjusting. “Your name isn’t even Valerie, is it?”
“Does it matter?”
Margaret smiled. “Oh, it matters. It matters a great deal. We’ll need to know what name to bury you under, when we’re finally done with you. If you’re worried for your life, don’t be. You’ll be with us for quite some time.”
My left leg was free. My right leg wasn’t. That made sense, too. It didn’t totally immobilize me, and if they wanted me to stay functional for any length of time, they were going to want me to have some capacity for movement. Enough to keep the blood flowing at least, since bedsores and gangrene are nobody’s friends.
That was a sobering thought all by itself. People who plan to kill you quickly don’t worry about tying you up so that you can still move enough to keep your circulation good. People who plan to torture you for everything you can tell them about your family and the cryptids you’ve spent your whole life protecting do. And if what I knew about the Covenant was accurate, they wouldn’t view torturing me as a bad thing. God told them it was all cool, as long as when it was over, they got to kill a dragon or two.
Antimony suggested once that we should all carry suicide pills, just in case a situation like this one came up. Alex and I both laughed at her. I told her that there was no way I’d ever let a situation like this one be a problem. “I’ll die before I let myself be taken that way”—those were my exact words. Yet here I was, captive for the second time since I arrived in New York, and this time it wasn’t just a harmless little snake cult intending to use me as a virgin sacrifice. This time it was the Covenant of St. George.
Worse, this time it was family. And as many people have pointed out over the years, there’s nobody in this world who can hurt you like family can.
I took a few deep breaths to calm myself down before carefully tugging on each of the chains in turn, looking for differences in how they moved. The Covenant was pretty good at chaining people up; I had to give them that. I doubt I could have done a better job. (Antimony probably could, but that’s because Antimony focused on keeping people as far away from her as possible, and when she couldn’t do that, she liked to be sure they’d stay where she put them.)
Okay: so I was chained up, in the dark, with no idea of where I was. I shifted a little, feeling loose fabric around me, and added “wearing a bathrobe instead of real clothing” to my list of problems. The material was rough enough to be cheap, meaning it had probably been purchased from a gift shop, not stolen from one of Sarah’s high-end hotels. My feet were bare. If they’d taken my clothes, they’d taken my weapons. I was as close to helpless as I was ever going to get, and that pissed me off.
Taking another slow breath, I closed my eyes and thought, as hard as I could, Sarah? Can you hear me?
There was no response, and I realized that even the low-grade telepathic static of her presence was gone. I pushed back a surge of panic. There was no reason to suspect that they’d managed to track Sarah down while I was unconscious, and that meant one of two things. Either I was still under the influence of Margaret’s telepathy-blocking charm, or the Covenant had already moved me out of New York, and I was outside Sarah’s normal broadcast range. She’d be looking for me—they all would—but if I was too far for her to find telepathically, she wouldn’t know what to do. She wouldn’t have another way to start looking. If she was smart (and Uncle Mike would make her be smart, if he had to), she was already on a plane back to Ohio to hole up with her parents. Two cuckoos in one house meant the Covenant would never find them, no matter how hard they were looking. Sarah and Angela have been the family escape plan for a generation now.
I realized I was thinking like I was already lost, and I embraced it. It wasn’t the same as giving up; I didn’t expect the Covenant to kill me fast, and the longer they kept me alive, the better my chances became. But if my family thought I was out of reach, they might give up on me, and we might be able to minimize the damage.
There was no way they were going to do that. But it was a nice thought.
There was a soft click from one wall, like a lock was being turned. Nice as it would have been to stare defiantly at the door as it opened, I wasn’t in the mood to have my retinas seared after sitting in the dark for this long; I turned my face to the side. It was a bad choice. The actual door was in the wall I was facing now, and as it swung open, a blast of industrial white light streamed into the room, framing the outline of Margaret Healy.
“I see you’re awake,” she said pleasantly. That was more frightening than any threats she could have made. “That’s good. We’ve got quite a lot to talk about, you and I.”
“You could have invited me to coffee,” I said, squinting as I waited for my eyes to stop watering. “I don’t know how you do things in Europe, but here in America, we usually start our family reunions with something a little less high-impact than assault and kidnapping.”
“You hit me first,” Margaret shot back. Her pleasant tone didn’t waver. “Besides which, you’re not much of one to talk, since the first thing you ever did was lie to me. Where did you leave that girl who was with you? Sandy, I believe you said her name was?”
There was no way I was going to remind her that Sarah was the one who hit her, not me. “She has nothing to do with this,” I said. “She’s just someone I met at a dance class. Leave her alone.”
“That’s the thing about traitors and liars. You can’t believe a word they say. She lied for you. She tried to cover for you. Now why would she do that if she had nothing to do with this?” Margaret flipped a switch next to the door. The overheads came on, filling the room with more light. This didn’t hurt as much. My eyes were adjusting. “Your name isn’t even Valerie, is it?”
“Does it matter?”
Margaret smiled. “Oh, it matters. It matters a great deal. We’ll need to know what name to bury you under, when we’re finally done with you. If you’re worried for your life, don’t be. You’ll be with us for quite some time.”
