Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Colletion_ Books 6-10 - Laurell K. Hamilton [1000]
Richard held the earplug up to the light. I had to shine the flashlight directly on it to see that it had a metal point.
“What is that?”
“Silver,” he said.
“Oh, God, they were designed for this?”
“Remember, Marcus was a doctor. He knew all kinds of medical supply places. Places that would make things.” The look on Richard’s face told me he was lost in memory and something darker.
I glanced back at the marks on Gregory’s arms and legs. “Dear God, did the silver tear up his ear canals the way it did his skin?”
“I don’t know. It’s good that it’s still bleeding. It means if he shapeshifts soon, he’ll probably heal.” Richard’s voice was thick.
I wasn’t close to crying, the horror too overwhelming for tears. I wanted Jacob down here, and whoever had helped him, because you didn’t do this to a shapeshifter without help, not one-on-one.
Richard tried to take off the blindfold, but it was tied so tight he couldn’t get a good hold on it. I handed him the flashlight and drew the knife from my left wrist sheath. “Hold him, the knives are sharp, I don’t want to cut him if he struggles.”
Richard held Gregory’s head between his two hands like a vise, and Gregory struggled harder, screaming through the gag. But Richard held him firm while I slid the knife carefully between the cloth and Gregory’s hair. One quick slice downward and the blindfold eased away from his skin, but it had been tied so tight for so long that Richard had to peel it away.
Gregory blinked at the light and saw Richard and screamed more. Something died on Richard’s face when he did it, like it had killed something inside him to have anyone be that terrified of him.
I leaned over, placing my hand carefully on the pile of bones and watched Gregory’s eyes finally see me. He stopped screaming, but he didn’t look relieved enough. I pulled the gag out of his mouth, and it peeled away, taking bits of lip skin with it. He worked his mouth slowly, and for some odd reason I was reminded of the scene from The Wizard of Oz where Dorothy puts oil on the Tin Man’s jaw after he’d been rusted. The image should have made me smile, but it didn’t.
There was a padlock on the chains around each of his limbs. Richard crawled around me, letting me stay where Gregory could see me. I was saying over and over again, “It’s going to be alright. It’s going to be alright.” He couldn’t hear me, but it was the best I knew how to do.
Richard snapped the lock on one wrist, and pain showed on Gregory’s face like it hurt for the arm to move at all. Richard freed both wrists and then began to slowly uncurl Gregory’s body.
Gregory screamed, but not from fear this time, from pain. I tried to cradle him, but moving at all seemed to hurt. It took both of us crawling around to get him unbent enough to lay in my lap. He was never going to be able to climb the ladder.
The bends of both of his arms were covered in needle marks; none of them had healed. “The needle marks, why haven’t they healed?”
“Silver needles in direct contact with the bloodstream. A sedative to keep the adrenaline low so you can’t change, but not so much that you can’t feel, or know where you are, and what’s happening. That’s how Raina used to do it.”
“This is how she used to tie them up and exactly what she used to do to them. How did Jacob know that?” I asked.
“One of my people told him,” Richard said. He stayed on his knees rather than stand bent over. His face was calm, almost serene.
“I want them down here. Whoever helped Jacob. Whoever brought out those damn earplugs. I want them down here.”
He turned those calm eyes to me, and I saw the anger at the bottom of that calm. “Could you do this to someone? Could you plunge these things in their ears? Could you do all this to anyone?”
I thought about that, really thought about it. I was angry, sickened. I wanted to punish someone, but . . . “No, no, I could shoot them, kill them, but I couldn