Angel: Private Eye Book One

  Chapter 13

  I woke up. And unimaginably, I was tied to a chair.

  These didn’t feel like ordinary silver magical ropes locking me in place this time, though. Though I was too dazed and fatigued to open my eyes and inspect my binds, they felt more like chains. Massive chains with inch thick steel links, kind of like the ones you used to tie up a boat. Not to lock an ordinary woman to a chair.

  Agony tore through my body. It felt as if I’d soaked every cell in acid.

  This wasn’t ordinary pain. Even in the same realm as everyday ache.

  I… it was so hard to explain. But it felt as if somebody had assaulted the very nature of my being. That ever elusive source of my magic.

  Finally, wearily, I managed to open my eyes.

  I was in a room. I couldn’t tell how large it was, where it was, whether there was a window, or even if there was furniture lined up along the walls. Because all I could see was myself. My chair and I were lit up by a single globe dangling from the ceiling above.

  The light coming off the globe was powerful enough to illuminate me completely, and yet strangely dim enough that it could not penetrate even a centimeter further than my form.

  This… this was the kind of implausible, eerie situation that should only be possible in movies.

  Here I was. I could try to pretend this was a nightmare, but even nightmares weren’t this bad.

  Just when I tried to convince myself it couldn’t get any worse, I heard footsteps.

  From out of the darkness, Theodore Van Edgerton appeared. He was dressed in a truly fine suit. Though I hated to admit it, it gave his somewhat wiry frame a nicely rounded look. Making him seem larger, stronger.

  He walked all the way up to me, reaching out. At first, it appeared as if he intended to brush his long fingers down my cheek, but at the last moment he changed track and smoothed his long, thin, ice-white hair out of his face instead.

  “It’s so nice of you to finally join me,” Van Edgerton said in a smooth, calm, courteous voice. It was the kind of voice you would use on a valued guest. Maybe a friend. Maybe an acquaintance. Not a woman you’d kidnapped and tied to a chair.

  It cost almost every scrap of energy I didn’t have, but I managed to sneer at him. “The only place I’m going to join you is in my car as I take you to the police station. Kidnap and assault are illegal, Van Edgerton, and I will testify against you. Just as I’ll prove that you killed Susan Smith,” I snapped. The reason I could snap – the reason I could face him – was that memory. The memory of Susan’s ghost clutching onto me. The memory of the last pulse of her fear before she’d slipped away to the afterlife, a fragment of her soul missing. I’d been too chicken to look up what would happen if somebody died without all of their soul. I wasn’t naive, though – it would be devilish. Maybe she’d be sent to Limbo. Or perhaps she’d book a ticket straight down to Hell.

  One thing was for sure – she didn’t deserve it. And I was currently looking up into the goddamn repulsive expression of her murderer.

  “Now, now, Miss Luck. You are strangely brave for a woman in such a precarious situation.”

  “I’ll find some way to get out of this chair,” I sneered at him.

  “And then what? Lizzie – you don’t mind me calling you that, do you?”

  He didn’t wait for me to reply.

  “Lizzie, you need to accept your precarious position now. I don’t just have you tied to a chair, my darling. I know precisely how to kill you. Kill you in the most painful way I can find.”

  I swallowed. Or at least I tried to. In the end, I choked as if Theodore had just wrapped one of those white-knuckled hands around my throat.

  “You don’t remember, do you?” He ticked his head to the side and smiled as if he were about to share a tremendously funny joke with me. “You appear to be dangerously allergic to vampire blood,” he said through a happy laugh. “It’s extremely rare.” He suddenly locked all his attention on me as he shifted forward and gently pressed a hand into my shoulder.

  While the move was soft, and some could say tender, it was accompanied with all the promise of a gun pressed against my throat. “Do you know how exquisitely rare it is for somebody to be allergic to vampire blood? It means the person in question can’t be turned into a vampire.”

  I tried to hide my surprise, but couldn’t as I hissed, “What?”

  He smiled. He probably intended it to be electric. To be charming. To be powerful. What it was, was insane. He looked as if he was trying to chew his own lips off. “Lizzie, my dear Lizzie,” he leaned down, pressed his face alongside mine, and whispered right in my ear until every puff of his breath played through my hair and shivered down my neck. “Though you can’t be turned into a vampire, if I make you drink my blood, you will die. You will die the most painful death in existence. You’ll be split apart, cell by cell, cell by cell,” he repeated with a slimy hiss.

  “No, no,” I stuttered.

  “So, isn’t this fun? I now have the perfect means with which to threaten you, don’t you agree, Lizzie?”

  Though I practically begged Benson to call me by my first name, now I wished I didn’t even have a first name. The way Theodore said it made me cringe and shiver with such a violent force, I was sure I was ready to shrug out of my shoulders.

  He tipped his head back and chuckled at my move.

  “I must say, it’s terribly nice to have the means to finally get your attention. Though I’m surprised you’ve been trying to get mine.” He ticked his head to the side, opened his lips, and appeared to test the strength of his canines by running his tongue experimentally over them. “I heard from reputable sources that you signed a contract promising that you would kill me before the next full moon.” Again he began to lean in. This time he was slower, though. This time he clearly wanted me to see every minute movement of his muscles as he shifted my way.

  He didn’t stop until his face was almost pressed up against my own. “You should not have signed that contract, dear Elizabeth. But I’ll help you break it.”

  There was such a dark promise slipping through his words that I couldn’t help but gasp.

  Theodore appeared to take stupendous pleasure in the noise, and shifted forward, pressing his ear close to my mouth. “What a pleasant noise that was, dear Elizabeth, please do it again.”

  Though fear still curdled through my gut, growing with every awful second, so too did a flash of anger. “Get the hell away from me, you bastard,” I spat, a few droplets of my spittle splashing over his cheek.

  He made a disgusted face, jerked back, and wiped his pretty little face clean with the sleeve of his expensive jacket.

  “Now, now, Elizabeth,” he snarled around his teeth, “You really need to be a lot nicer to me. You see, I now hold your life in my hands.” He snapped his hand up, spreading the fingers wide before snapping them closed with all the force of somebody trying to crush a stone.

  I shuddered but wasn’t stupid enough to let out another gasp. Instead, I ground my teeth closed, pressed my lips against them, and practically choked.

  “We’re going to start with you telling me just why Benson is interested in you. And I shouldn’t need to remind you that if you lie, I will know. I’ll be able to smell it.” His nostrils flared.

  I… I think I was waiting. Waiting for something to save me. Whether it was Benson or the strange power I appeared to have. Something, anything. I needed a miracle.

  But as the seconds passed, and Theodore only drew closer until he clamped both hands on my shoulders and tore into me with his gaze, I realized the cavalry weren’t coming.

  If my magic was somehow strong enough to push through the ropes holding me in place, surely it would have done so already.

  Which meant I had to face the fact I could not be saved.

  Unless I told the truth.

  Closing my eyes, unwilling to face him, I opened my mouth. “I killed a vampire.”

  “I know that. You’ve told me that before. How???
?

  “I don’t really know. The vampire… he attacked me, drank my blood. But it… it did something to him. He had a reaction. And before I knew it, he turned to dust,” my voice collapsed in my throat on that word. Because it conjured the full horror of seeing that vampire crumble to ash before my eyes.

  Though I shouldn’t have, though I really shouldn’t have, I opened my eyes to stare up into Theodore’s face.

  He hadn’t moved, he was still barely a few centimeters from my nose. Close enough that I could see the exact confused and yet almost greedy expression that crossed through his eyes. He brought that same tongue out and ran it over that same canine. Except, it was slower this time. Goddamn, was it slower. I saw every move of the muscles down his neck and up into his cheeks. “Continue. Tell me everything,” he warned.

  “I was taken to the police station, and they called Benson. He forced me to sign a contract with him. I had to promise not to let any vampires drink my blood.”

  “And in return?” Theodore barely raised his voice above a sharp hiss.

  “In return, he’d find out what I am.” I shivered uncontrollably as I admitted that. Because I was starting to realize that if only I’d known what I was earlier, none of this would have happened. If I hadn’t put my head in the sand over the past nine months and refused to investigate my magical origins, I wouldn’t be here now. I wouldn’t know Benson, I wouldn’t be tied to Theodore’s chair. I would be safe even if I wouldn’t be normal.

  “What you are?” he asked, tone flat.

  I closed my eyes. “What race I belong to.”

  There was a long pause. It was so long, in fact, that I had to blink one eye open to check that he was still there and hadn’t wandered off in boredom.

  He was still there, all right. In fact, he was closer now. So close he was just a millimeter from my face.

  There was that look again. That look of pure, undiluted greed. I shivered as his gaze sliced down my form and locked back on my face.

  He smiled, showing all his teeth. Was it just me? Or were his canines growing longer?

  “This,” he said, a puff of air splitting from his lips and blasting against my cheek, “Is interesting. Perhaps I will keep you alive, after all.”

  I cringed, even whimpered. I was way beyond being brave. I was now completely at the mercy of this bastard.

  Still, I didn’t crumple completely. I didn’t start to cry, and, importantly, nor did I start to beg for my life.

  Instead, I opened my eyes, and I stared.

  Though fear undoubtedly punched through every part of me, something else… something else was there. Right at the edge of my mind, just beyond reach.

  It was the light from my dreams. The force that had killed the vampire, and undoubtedly the true origin of what I was. There was a part of me that wanted to stay away from it for the rest of my life, but my life would be short unless I found a way to utilize it. So, for the first time since this awful misadventure had begun, I actively tried to embrace it.

  Though it was the force that chased me through my dreams, the force I’d run from with a heart full of terror, now I reversed the situation, and I chased it.

  But I wasn’t quick enough to catch it in time.

  Theodore Van Edgerton leaned forward, pressed a hand against my cheek, and locked his thumb hard over my ear.

  Just when I thought he might try to squeeze my brain out of my eyeballs, he gave me a caress.

  Before I knew what I was doing, I gulped. “Benson will come for me,” I said in an almost pleading tone. And it was pleading. Because the last scrap of hope I had told me it could still happen. Maybe he’d call my phone like he had in the basement. Maybe he’d appear like he did after I signed that contract with Betty.

  This was a magical world, right? And didn’t that mean anything was possible? Yes, and no. Because Benson… he didn’t come for me in time.

  “Would you like to know what I’m going to do with you?” Theodore asked almost conversationally as he tucked his head back and grinned.

  I couldn’t speak, let alone breathe.

  “I’m going to run some tests on you, Lizzie, take a little blood, and then a little more,” as he spoke, his gaze ticked down, locked on my neck, and then swiveled to my wrists in turn. “Once I’m done with my tests, once I confirm what you are, I’m going to get you to sign a contract.”

  I choked on a swallowed breath. “What? I’m not going to—”

  He brought up a finger and pressed it against my lips. “You are in no position to object. Only to listen. So be a good girl, Lizzie, and listen to what I have to say.”

  I could have snapped my mouth open and tried to bite his finger, but that would have been a very bad idea for two reasons. One, he’d punish me for it. Two, it would likely mean I would cut him. And if he was right… a drop of his blood would kill me.

  Totally defeated, totally beaten by shock and panic, I had no option but to listen.

  “Once I’ve confirmed what you are, my dear Elizabeth, you are going to sign a contract, giving your life to me.”

  I shook my head vigorously, madly, wildly, as if I would be happy to snap my neck if only I made my disagreement crystal clear. “That’s never going to bloody happen—”

  Again he brought up a finger, but thankfully this time he didn’t press it against my lips. “It will, Elizabeth. Because it will be the only way you will ever get out of this basement. It will be the only way to ensure you live. And, Elizabeth,” again he leaned in until he practically pressed his eyes against mine, “You really don’t want me to kill you. I will make sure it is as painful and protracted as I can.” With that absolutely horrendous promise, Theodore Van Edgerton shifted back, looked me up and down as if he were checking the strength of my magical binds, then walked away into the darkness. I heard his echoing footsteps until they suddenly cut out completely. There was no creak as a door opened, no retreating footsteps as he ascended a set of stairs.

  He just disappeared.

  Leaving me alone.