Hit List - Laurell K. Hamilton [109]
Bernardo collapsed to the floor with his gun in his hand. The damned coffee spilled about half of a cup into the worn carpet.
Ron, the clerk, was holding his hands out from his body, “I didn’t know . . .” Olaf shot him in the chest. The shot was like an explosion. I fought to focus through the dizzy, tilting world, and had a moment to see the door behind the desk open black and empty, but somehow I knew it wasn’t empty. The black cloak and white mask were clear for a second as it moved in a blur so that it wasn’t there when Olaf and Nicky fired.
I heard the bell on the door, and the last thing I saw before the dizziness ate the rest of the world was a blurring wave of black cloaks coming toward us. My last clear thought was, Please, God, let that be the drug, and not their real speed.
I heard Nicky yelling my name in the dark.
35
IT WAS COLD. Cold and hard. I was lying on something hard and cold, my cheek pressed to the rough chill of it. My hand spasmed and my hands were tied behind my back. My eyes opened wide, pulse shoved into my throat, heart thudding. I could see a darkly stained stone wall. I pulled at the ropes behind my back, but the rope was tight, biting into my wrists when I tugged on it. I moved my legs and realized my ankles were bound together, too. My boots protected my ankles, so the rope didn’t bite into the skin, but they were tied just as tight. My heart was threatening to choke me, as if I needed to swallow it back down into my chest. I was so scared my skin ran cold with it, and it had nothing to do with the concrete floor.
I tried to think through the panic. Was there anyone to see me move? Had the movements been small enough that my captors hadn’t noticed, or was I alone? There was nothing against the one wall I could see. The wall was water stained, which was probably one of the things that made the floor damp. I forced myself to notice things; there just wasn’t a lot to notice. But just taking the time to try had slowed my pulse, helped chase back the panic. I was tied up, but I wasn’t hurt as far as I could tell. I’d come to in worse places, with lots worse happening to me.
I felt movement behind me. Maybe I heard it, but it was as if the air currents stirred behind me and I just knew that someone was behind me, and that they were close. I fought not to tense more than I already had, but it’s almost impossible not to tense when you’re tied up and you have no idea who or what is coming up behind you. Being completely helpless makes you tense.
“If you had just come with me and my master, things would have been so much simpler.” The deep growl of voice was the shapeshifter from the motel, the one that had stabbed Karlton and made her a werewolf. So at least I knew his flavor of shifter; that was something, not much, but something.
I swallowed and found my voice. “Simpler for whom?”
“Whom, you say, whom, when I have you tied up on the floor, helpless.” I heard the brush of cloth now, and small noises that I couldn’t have told you what they were exactly, but I’d have bet money that he was crawling on the floor toward me.
I felt the heat of him behind me, before the white mask and hood of his face peered over my shoulder. He leaned over my face so I could see that the eyes in the mask were pale green, and not human. He had wolf eyes in his human face, which might mean that the reason his voice was growly was because he’d spent too much time in animal form, either because he liked it, or because he’d been forced as punishment. The eyes usually changed first, and then the teeth, and then internal mouth and throat changes so the voice stayed deeper.
His eyes were so close to me that I could see the edges of them and knew he was frowning. “You aren’t afraid, and you’re thinking something. What are