Bloodshot - Cherie Priest [21]
As for my eyes, they were probably on fire, too. I could smell him and it turned me on, for lack of a better way to put it. I was hungry; I hadn’t eaten in the better part of a month, and look. Delivery.
I grabbed him by the throat and I would’ve killed him on the spot but I felt like someone was watching me and I hesitated.
Oh yeah. Pepper. She’d crawled out of her hidey-hole and she was staring, blank-faced, at our little tussle.
The guy in my grasp twisted and managed to kick me hard in the gut. It hurt, yes. I made the appropriate “oof” noise and almost let go, but didn’t. He kicked again, but I dodged that one. With the momentum of my dodge, I pulled him after me, yanking him off his feet and dragging him over to the door. Hey, he’d wanted to go there, right? I was only helping.
I knocked the door open with my shoulder, even though it was supposed to open in, and not out. So I’d have to replace the hinges later. No big deal. But I was angry, and wound up, and trying to blow off enough steam to keep from sucking him dry in front of a little girl.
He fought like a wolf, though. He wrestled and contorted himself, and it was hard for me to drag him along by the throat or anything else, but I did it. I hauled him a few feet at a time, letting him use his weight to play a futile game of tug-of-war. Back and forth we went, me gaining ground, and him losing it.
Out to the stairs we bumbled, and I threw him down them, which took the edge right off him. After that, he was slower and easier to haul. We had one more flight of stairs to the basement, and he took them the hard way, too. At the bottom I half dragged, half kicked him around the nearest corner with a door so I could close it and make sure we were alone.
It’s more than being a secretive eater. It’s a matter of practicality (easier to force him down than up), and consideration for others (Pepper, who frankly did not need to see it), and ease of cleanup (concrete floor with a slightly sinking foundation).
Down in the basement it was so dark that even I could barely see, but I didn’t mind so I didn’t do anything to correct the situation.
My quarry was starting to babble. I don’t usually like to start up conversations with people I intend to nosh on, but I wanted to know what this paramilitary freak was doing on my premises, and it was either ask him now or figure it out later.
I planted my boot in his back somewhere near his kidney.
He groaned, and I demanded, “What are you doing here?”
He groaned some more, so I swung my foot into his ribs some more until he answered, “Looking around. Just looking around.”
I could smell blood when he talked. His face must’ve met the corner of a stair. Good. Or rather, good for me. Bad for him. Between the salt-and-vinegar tang of his sweat and the rich, metallic scent of bleeding, he needed to talk fast. He had less time left in this world than he knew.
“Bullshit,” I told him. The word came out funny. I was salivating to a degree that could best be described as embarrassing.
He fumbled around, reaching for something. I didn’t want him to retrieve any weapons or get a good handle on anything potentially defensive that might be lying around on the floor, so I pounced down on him, rolled him over, and pinned him spread-eagle. I tried not to drool all over him when I said, “Tell me what you’re doing here, or you’re never leaving this room alive.”
“Just looking!” he almost wailed. “And climbing … climbing around,” he added.
I didn’t believe him.
Nobody dresses so thoroughly in special-ops garb just to take a stroll through an old building. But he didn’t sound like he was ready to spill any good beans, and the smell of him had me so starved that before I could even make the conscious decision to bite, my hand was over his mouth and my teeth were in his throat.
He struggled and whimpered, but not for long. Going headfirst down the stairs had really softened him up, and I filed the information away for future reference. Violent trip down the stairs equals bruised-up victim who doesn’t fight hard and