He felt the bullet punch into his thigh before he heard the loud report and Kane hissed in pain, gripping the wound with his hand in an attempt to halt the bleeding.
“I can’t have you running away,” she told him matter-of-factly, and then to someone else, Kane hadn’t even realized was there, “Bind him.”
Kevin Thompson, the final rogue Kane had been searching for, emerged from the shadows, his steps slow and cautious as he approached.
The witch, who could only be Evangeline, Kane decided, leveled the gun at Kane’s head though her words, rife with impatience, were directed at her vampire minion. “Hurry up. He’s not going to attack you when I’ve got a gun on him, you idiot.”
Kane thought about it, he really did, wondering if he could garner enough energy to break apart into a cloud of bats or transform into mist, but the pain in his thigh was too intense, throbbing with seemingly its own heartbeat, and he was losing too much blood too quickly. Within moments, his hands and ankles had been bound tight with wire.
“Put him in with the girl,” Evangeline purred with a malicious glint in her eyes. “She might provide a tasty little snack for him when he gets hungry.”
Kane was unceremoniously hauled up and thrown over the vampire’s shoulder, the move leaving Kane feeling like his head was spinning. A few moments later, he was dumped, impossible as it seemed, in an even dirtier, windowless room illuminated by a single bald light bulb. The heavy door was slammed shut behind him, and the next moment, he heard the thunk of a bolt being thrown.
He heard a whimper and blinked his eyes to try and clear the spots that still hazed his vision thanks to his light-headedness. The wolf shifter, Nicky was huddled in a corner, bound and gagged with clean tracks, caused by tears, streaking her dirty face.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
Seeing her nod, he told her gently, “It’ll be okay, Nicky. We’ll get out of this. You’ll see.”
She nodded again, fat tears of relief leaving more tracks on her face as Kane attempted to scooch across the floor to get closer. It was slow going thanks to the bullet in his leg, but he made it. Turning so that his back was to Nicky he told her, “Lean down to my hands and I’ll get that gag off.”
Nicky quickly complied and as soon as the gag was free, she croaked past a dry throat, “I’m sorry, Kane. I’m so sorry.”
“Shh. Hey, no. Don’t do that. This isn’t your fault.”
“I couldn’t control myself,” she sobbed, “I did everything she told me to do.”
Fucking mind control, Kane mentally snarled, and then to Nicky, “You don’t worry about that.”
“There’s something wrong with her.”
“Yeah. She’s fucking psychotic,” he replied darkly.
Nicky shook her head, her eyes closed tightly shut and her lips set in a grimace. She swallowed hard. “No, I mean something wrong with her power or something.”
Intrigued, Kane scooted even closer. “Tell me.”
“While I was still under her control, I watched her doing a spell, I don’t know what it was for,” she said with a shake of her head. “But the lights flickered, and everything shook, and then she screamed like she was in pain, and suddenly, she no longer had control over my mind, and her looks…” Nicky trailed off, swallowing audibly once more. “She was hideous, Kane. Old, almost skeletal, and her veins were black and they like, stuck out from her skin all over like the blood flowing through them was solidifying. It was nasty.”
Kane grimaced, completely agreeing with Nicky’s statement, just the description was nasty, he couldn’t imagine witnessing it first-hand. But, it was a potential weakness – not that he knew what to do with it, but Jourdain might.
Glancing down at Nicky’s ankles that he happily saw were bound with rope instead of wire, Kane told the girl, “We’re going to get you out of here. They didn’t search me and there’s a knife in my boot. I’m going to get my feet as close to your hands as I can. I need you to pull that knife out for me. Got it?”
Nodding eagerly, Nicky shifted around to make things easier for him. It took some time considering her hands were bound behind her back so she couldn’t see what she was doing, but Kane talked her through it. As soon as the knife was free of the boot sheath, Nicky turned the blade in nimble fingers like a pro and began to saw through the bindings at her wrists.
“Have they been feeding you?” Kane asked suddenly as her hands popped free and she went to work on her ankles. “Are you strong enough for a run?”
Nicky nodded, assuring him dryly, “Even if I was half-starved I’d still have enough in me to run away from this place.”
The last of her bindings fell away and she turned to Kane’s bound wrists, hesitating. “Will this cut through wire?”
“With enough pressure,” he assured her with a nod as he scooched back so his wrists were against the wall. “Press the blade to the wire and push against the wall.”
Kane heard the satisfying ping of the wire snapping and his hands were free. “Good job,” he told her, holding his hand out for the knife so he could free his feet.
“The door’s locked,” Nicky pointed out. “And there’s no way to pick it from this side.”
He nodded. “I’m going to go pound on the door. That should bring the vampire running. As soon as he sees we’re free, I’m hoping he’ll open the door to rectify the situation. That’s when I’ll grab him and you make a run for it.”
