The House (41 page)

It still took
my brain a second to register the danger. My panic at being grabbed
had driven all sense from me. I realised that I was screaming at
the top of my lungs and I couldn’t stop. I had started to think we
were doing well; despite my knee we were working our way through
the vampyre. I had thought there was a chance of success, a chance
that this wouldn’t have been the stupidest thing any of us had ever
done.

Of course, the
man that held me wasn’t a vampyre. He was a shifter. Which was why,
when I struggled, I felt claws slide in where he held me. They
pierced my arms and tore at my skin as I moved. The message was
clear; the more I struggled the more I would tear myself up.

It took more
effort than I liked to admit to stop moving, to lie passively in
his arms. The claws still tore at my skin because he was holding me
up off the floor. He finally retracted them when I stopped moving
so that he could hold me better.

“Stop
screaming,” he growled. I actually did stop. I shut my mouth and
tried to stop the tears that tried to come after the screaming. He
gripped me harder and I let out a small whine. I’d preferred the
screaming, the whine sounded pathetic even to my ears.

“What do you
want?” I gasped. He was holding me so tight that I couldn’t breathe
properly. He turned around with me in his arms to face everyone
else.

Marlow was
being restrained by five people, but I couldn’t tell if they were
vampyre or shifters. James was actually being sat on by several
people. Some of them looked very young and James seemed unwilling
to hurt them. Hercules was held up by just one vampyre but since he
was barely conscious it wasn’t surprising.

I wanted to
know what had knocked Hercules, who healed better than anyone I’d
ever seen, unconscious. I wanted to know how they had gotten close
enough to Marlow to subdue him. I also wanted to know why it looked
like a bunch of teenagers were sat on James, and how they were
strong enough to keep him down.

“We want you,”
the man behind me growled. “I hope you liked my e-mail. I was
surprised you fell for it, but I have to say I had hoped that you
would come alone. Not that I’m complaining, it’s always nice to add
to my collection.” I saw someone poking at Hunter as he lay on the
floor. There was a lot of blood around him and I feared how much of
it might be his.

“Talon,” I
said. He just laughed and started to walk with me towards one of
the cages that was open. The whole clear wall had been retracted
upwards to let us in. Or me in. I started to fight again as we
headed towards it. It did no good. I couldn’t break his hold, which
wasn’t right.

He threw me
into the space and I would have gotten out again if I hadn’t landed
on my crushed knee. I collapsed to the floor as soon as I landed.
My leg would not hold me, so I sat on the floor. I could only watch
as the clear wall came down and trapped me.

I didn’t sit
there and ask what had gone wrong. I think I had known from the
beginning that it was a trap that we waltzed into. We had known
that it was more than likely that we would be caught. I didn’t
think that Eddie had seen it coming.

He stood
nearly in the middle of the floor. He wasn’t being restrained but
he looked lost. I didn’t think that he had been involved in the
planning but it was clear that Talon was allowing him to join them.
For the moment though, they were just ignoring him. I wanted to
shout to him to do something but I couldn’t hear anything from the
main room and I was fairly sure that they couldn’t hear me.

The others
were thrown into their own cell cages. I saw that there was already
someone in the one Hercules was thrown into. That meant that all
the cells were full. I had counted about twelve, which meant that
they already had seven shifters. We weren’t missing that many
people. I wondered briefly how they’d done it. Then I got back to
concentrating on my own situation. We were in enough trouble
without trying to analyse everything else.

Marlow fought
every step of the way to his cell. He fought so much that I saw
someone come out with what looked like a dart gun and shoot him. I
jumped up at that, only to fall on my bad knee again. It wasn’t as
painful as before but it was definitely going to heal badly if I
didn’t do something. I had to leave the mystery of what they had
done to Marlow for a moment.

I sat down
with my leg out in front of me trying to figure out what had
happened to it. I was blocking out the scenes in the main room. I
had to fix myself first. My knee was at an odd angle as I sat
there; it had been badly dislocated and it looked like parts of it
were completely shattered. It was going to take a long time to
heal.

I pulled off
one of my sleeves to bind it up. The cell I was in was completely
bare, there wasn’t even a bed. I didn’t want to consider what would
happen when I needed to go to the toilet. It was a problem best
left until I had to deal with it. I wasn’t going to be much use for
anything if I couldn’t get my knee working.

The plus side
to my little cell was that I couldn’t hear the screaming any more.
I couldn’t remember if they had still been screaming when Talon
grabbed me, I felt they probably were. Nobody seemed worried about
it. I had to block out the thought that maybe they were torturing
us. It was too soon to worry about that.

I braced
myself and took my knee in my hands. I had to push my lower leg
back into place before I did anything else. It hurt so much that I
had swallow another scream. I wanted to be strong. I carefully
avoided thinking about the screams that had brought us here. It
wasn’t someone I knew.

I wrapped my
knee as tightly as I could in my sleeve. It was much harder than
using a bandage. Partly because my sleeve was more elastic and
became quite thin when stretched, partly because it wasn’t really
long enough. I had to pull of my other sleeve while holding the
first one in place to finish binding it.

There was
blood soaking my jeggings. I hadn’t noticed at first because of the
velvet texture but they were thick with it. I didn’t unbind my knee
to check on it. If I had a flesh wound it was probably already
healed. I just had to hope that it hadn’t healed into the fabric.
It shouldn’t have because on the inside they were a smooth
synthetic fibre. I kept the jeggings on. It wouldn’t make any
difference, either I had healed into them or I hadn’t. If I had,
then taking them off would do me more damage than good.

I did take my
gloves off; they were covered in blood that was starting to congeal
and stiffen. I was shocked at the amount of blood I found on
myself. I had been so focused that I hadn’t noticed that I was
covered in the stuff. Most of it was probably from punching through
the vampyre’s side. It scared me a little that I had been so intent
that I hadn’t noticed that much blood.

I didn’t have
time to keep analysing my actions. I had to think of a way out. Or
at least I had to try. I realised that I had gone into it thinking
that I wasn’t coming back out again. Now that I was caught and at
their mercy? Suddenly it didn’t seem like such a good idea. It was
brave and noble and one of the stupidest things I had ever done. I
might have destroyed any chance of ever helping Marie or the
others.

I crawled to
the edge of the little space so that I was pressed up against the
clear wall. The cell must have been all of two metres square so I
didn’t have far to go but, boy, did it hurt. I jarred my knee
several times and had to stop to rearrange it. I wanted to see what
was going on.

There were
people cowering in the back of each of the cells. In a few, I saw
piles of blankets. I didn’t see any beds or amenities. It would
drive me crazy – crazier than I already was – to sit in silence in
a plain box and know that everything I did could be seen. Maybe
that was the point; it made me feel like an animal in a zoo.

I knocked on
the clear wall to see what would happen. It barely made a sound. If
I hit it any harder it would hurt my hand. The wall itself seemed
to be very solid. It was almost like hitting concrete. I remembered
the state of the man’s head when he’d hit it and decided that I was
not going through the wall; I would break long before it did.

It was a
prison for shifters. There were no holds for leverage on the wall
and it was so solidly built that we would break ourselves beyond
repair before we made a dent. You didn’t need this kind of
technology for humans. It made me wonder where they had gotten it
all from. There was no way that this warehouse was originally meant
as a prison.

Even the
Covenant didn’t have these kinds of cells. Although if my
grandfather ever did come to my rescue I had no doubt that he would
take some back with him. No, the Covenant used good old stone walls
and metal bars. They used spells to stop people breaking out. You
couldn’t break the walls there because they had been imbued with
the very essence of strength. I hoped that Talon didn’t have access
to similar spells. Some of them were very nasty indeed.

I looked out
again and saw that Talon was approaching Eddie. I could tell he was
speaking because I could see his lips moving, but he was side on
and I couldn’t get any idea of what he was saying. I needed to know
what was happening. I had to think; if I could stay calm and keep
thinking I might be able to do something vaguely helpful.

I felt myself
slip into Talon’s mind. When I realised what I had done I almost
backed out, then I caught the edge of the conversation they were
having. If I concentrated I could hear them through Talon’s ears. I
just didn’t want to. I pulled out of Talon’s mind but without
shutting down my telepathy. I entered Eddie’s mind instead. It was
easier to make sense of than Talon’s because I had been there
before.

I knew that
Eddie knew I was there. I also knew that he let me use his ears. I
assumed that he could still hear and understand with me in his
mind. I didn’t really have time to think it through.

“What do you
say?” I heard Talon say. It was strange to hear through someone
else’s ears. I wasn’t getting the sound, just Eddie’s mind’s
interpretation of the sound. Talon’s voice sounded different to
Eddie than it did to me.

“I don’t
understand what you want of me,” Eddie replied. His voice echoed
and I realised it was because it was his own voice. He was going to
try to direct the conversation so that I would know what Talon
wanted. At least it made me understand that Eddie really wasn’t
involved. By the tone of his voice I got the feeling he didn’t want
to be either. I just hoped that he didn’t blow his cover before
getting something useful.

“I want you to
be a part of our new world,” Talon replied. It was hard to
concentrate on just the conversation. Eddie’s mind might be able to
focus but I got all of the stimuli going to it. I had to sort
through it all myself, something that my mind did very easily for
my own body, but it was much more difficult when it was someone
else. Not to mention that I still had all the signals from my body
to deal with as well. The pain in my knee was starting to make the
world hazy.

“You can’t
make a new world by changing runaways.”

“We will. It
will be wonderful. They can choose what they want to be. Wouldn’t
you have wanted that choice, if you could have had it? They don’t
have to be lions. They can be anything they want.” Talon was
smiling. I saw that from my own eyes. I didn’t want to try to use
Eddie’s. I was focusing very carefully on just his hearing, to the
expense of my own.

“You can’t
just go around changing underage kids. They won’t understand what
you’re offering them.”

“I offer them
freedom.”

“You offer
them slavery. Just like you offered me. You have told them exactly
how much they need to know to think that you’re wonderful, that
you’re their saviour. Have you told them of the risks? Of the
consequences?” Eddie was growling now. I could feel it vibrating
through me. I needed him not to lose control. I did something I had
only ever done once with him before. I sent him calming
thoughts.

He visibly
shook with the effort to control himself, but when he next spoke it
was with his own, human voice.

“Have you told
them what they have to give up?” he asked. Talon actually looked
sorry for a moment before he caught himself.

“They have
nothing to lose. I know that I made mistakes with you but I have
perfected it now. They have nothing; no family, no friends. I have
given them their lives back.” He sounded like an evangelist. He was
a fanatic and that made him a lot more dangerous. There would be no
arguing with him, no changing his mind. He knew he was right and he
would do anything to keep it that way.

“I won’t help
you take away their lives,” Eddie said through gritted teeth. Talon
tensed and I realised that Eddie had made a mistake. He’d taken
sides against a madman.

“Then I have
no choice.” Talon gave a nod to someone out of my line of vision
and I saw a dart head for Eddie’s head. I wanted to shout a warning
but he wouldn’t hear me from my cell. Then he turned and moved out
of the way. It was faster than I had ever seen him move. Apparently
Talon thought so to because he paled. Before Eddie could fully
recover from what I realised was my mental warning, Talon punched
him in the side of the head. Eddie went down like a ton of
bricks.

They threw
Eddie in with me before he came around. One of the vampyre held a
dart gun to the entrance while he opened the door. I didn’t try to
escape. I was fairly sure that it was just a sedative, but you
could never be certain. I got the feeling they weren’t going to
worry about medical treatment for us. Even if it was only a
sedative, I didn’t want to miss anything. One piece of information
or one lost opportunity could condemn us.