In the morning Ginger poked his head in the door of the room and said "Tesla" and whistled. Nikola opened his eyes. He had been sitting cross-legged trying to send some sort of signal again when Kevin interrupted him.
Ginger called "Here boy!" With a sigh Nikola crawled out of his cage, stood up and walked over. Ginger laughed and turned away.
Nikola said "Master, I'm hungry and I need to see Helen."
"Don't bother me with that now" Ginger tossed back as he started walking away. Come along."
Nikola stopped walking and vamped. In his deep vampire voice he said "You said you would have her punished. How do I know she's even still alive? Show her to me now, or I will have to assume she is not."
Ginger stopped and said peevishly "All right, all right. I need to stop at my office anyway."
They went in silence, Nikola returning to his human appearance and walking the requisite two steps behind except when he opened doors for the red-haired man. When they reached his office, Ginger turned on the TV screen but ignored it himself, sitting down at his desk and using his computer instead.
Nikola stared angrily at what he saw. Helen was strapped into her chair, her face bruised, one eye blackened, and she sat a little hunched. But her eyes blazed with spirit so he knew she was all right inside even if she was a little worse for wear on the outside.
She was saying something too, fighting a little against her restraints. Nikola couldn't read lips, but he recognized when she said "No" with a shake of her head and then "Don't . . ." something he couldn't quite catch.
Whatever had happened to her last night, she had learned something from it. She knew that she was being watched by someone who was being forced into doing things to keep her safe. Nikola watched to see if she would say his name, but didn't see anything that he thought was it.
Ginger looked up from his computer and frowned at the screen; a few seconds later one of the guards appeared in the picture and put a piece of duct tape over Helen's mouth.
Kevin said "See, she's alive and rather feisty this morning. Satisfied?"
Nikola thought to protest the tape but changed his mind; it was better than one of her keepers hitting her some more. "Yes, but I can't tell how badly she's hurt, I want to see her in person, Master."
Ginger sneered at him. "Fat chance. I'm not stupid Tesla, you get in the same room with her and you'll protect her and tear everyone else to shreds. No, you'll never even know what building she's in, and you'll do exactly what I say. Last night was my mistake, I recognize that now. You're a slippery devil and I'm going to have to be much more careful in my instructions. Come with me."
He turned off the TV and Nikola followed him out of the room, down the elevator and out of the building. They walked back toward Ginger's house, but turned left half way there and went away from the residential area.
They walked for about ten minutes then turned and went through a large open gate with an archway over it. Nikola looked for a sign indicating where they were going, but there wasn't one. Ginger led him down a wide brick walkway. There were other paths branching off of it and buildings to either side. There were odd scents in the air and occasionally strange noises. It reminded Nikola of a big zoo.
Ah, so that's where they were. Was Ginger going to show off his collection this morning? Or did he have new creatures stolen from poor Hellman that he wanted to inspect? Probably a little of both, Nikola thought.
They visited a couple of the buildings, one very hot and dry with desert-themed habitats and the second an aquarium. Nikola was a little impressed, Ginger's collection was extensive and thorough, but so far ordinary; there was nothing in either building Nikola hadn't seen before, either at the Sanctuary or in the wild. But some of the creatures were rare, some difficult to keep alive and healthy in captivity, and quite a few that shouldn't have been in captivity at all.
Kevin glanced at him occasionally, but Nikola just looked bored and uninterested; he wasn't about to give Ginger an ounce of satisfaction if he could help it. Kevin stopped and talked to some of his employees about new arrivals in each building, so the tour was taking quite a while and really was boring.
But when they left the aquarium Varnov and Carbloc were waiting for them. The two vampires just nodded their greetings to Ginger and fell in behind Nikola. Nikola was no longer bored; he was suspicious and very alert. Being accompanied by the other two vampires couldn't mean anything good.
Ginger led them to a central building the size of a small airplane hangar. Nikola expected dinosaurs or something, but instead it was more like a museum. They entered a reception area and then proceeded down a hallway lined with information and displays about HAPs.
"At some point I want to make this more interactive" Ginger said, "Maybe add individual instructive CDs with headphones so everyone could hear the whole story behind HAPs, and how I acquired each one. Here we are."
They entered a large circular room. Around the edge were habitats, just like the animals in the other buildings had had, but in these there were people. Well they should be people, but all of them were in their protean forms and most looked lethargic.
Nikola was appalled. The display wasn't entirely unexpected; Ginger had already shown that he considered intelligent Abnormals no different than animals, although mentarchs of course were humans with an added ability. Nikola hadn't expected the scope of his collection. There were eight different types of HAPs in separate glassed areas, and two empty ones. The walls between the cages were solid, so the inhabitants could only see the HAPs across the room from them and of course any visitors who had come to stare.
He edged closer to one that looked like the same type as Henry. It stared at him dully and gave a half-hearted snarl. Its fur was matted and dirty, and the vampire suspected the interior of the habitat stank. It had a dirt floor, some bushes against the back wall, and several large tree limbs fastened across the enclosure at different heights and angles. There was an old tire and some gnawed bones lying around, and a galvanized steel tub with a little scummy water in the bottom.
Nikola lost his temper and vamped. He turned to Ginger and said "That is an intelligent being, these are all people, and you have them in environments that wouldn't be good enough for a, a gibbon! I knew you were a creep from the first time I saw you, but this is unconscionable!"
Nikola took a step toward Kevin and the other two vampires intervened, stepping between them. From his safe position behind them Ginger said "Now, now. A temper tantrum hurts no one but Helen, remember? You kneel down and apologize, and address me properly."
Nikola was still angry but brought himself under control and de-vamped. He knelt and said "Sorry I lost my temper, Master, at the deplorable conditions you're forcing your 'collection' to live in, but I keep telling you I need my medication to stay in control."
Irritated, Ginger said "Yes, yes, I know that. But that loss of control and your poorly worded so-called apology just earned dear Helen some more punishment. Now come with me" he said impatiently.
Kevin started off at a brisk pace with the three vampires trailing him. He didn't stop at any of the other habitats and Nikola just caught glimpses of various types of intelligent Abnormals.
They came through a side hall into another large round room. There were instruction boards and various artifacts around the edge of the room, and a large empty plexiluminum cage in the center. It was raised a foot off of the ground and cylindrical, the walls transparent.
"Now we're going to see just how much you really care about your Helen" Ginger said. "This is your daily lesson in humility Tesla. Take off your jacket and roll up your sleeve."
Nikola saw him take a syringe out of his pocket. "What is that?" he asked with some trepidation, very slowly peeling off his jacket.
"You're going to find out. I'm out of patience vampire king, either you get this or Helen gets today's lesson for you."
His shirt sleeve rolled up, Nikola watched Ginger stick the needle in his arm and depress the plunger. Nothing much happened at first, just a little dizziness.
"Strip down to your shorts and get in the cage. I'd have you naked, but I'm expecting a visitor later and I don't want to embarrass her with your nudity."
Nikola did as he was told. Whatever this was, he didn't want Helen involved. He was starting to feel odd, like long ago when he had been human and suffered from high fevers. He stepped up into the cage, and the door was locked behind him. He and Ginger just stared at each other through the wall. Ginger flicked a hand and dismissed Varnov and Carbloc, who left, and kicked Nikola's clothes into a pile by the wall.
Then Nikola's fangs and claws emerged, and his eyes changed to red-rimmed black without him wanting them to. He shook his head and tried to change back, but it didn't work. He tried again with no success. His breathing sped up and he felt a red tide of anger building in him. He tried to regain control, but it swept over him, drowning his intelligence.
The king of the vampires threw himself at the plexiluminum barrier, snarling and clawing. He bounced off, but did it again and again in mindless anger. But not entirely mindless; Nikola was watching himself act crazy, but he had absolutely no control over what his body was doing.
Ginger stood smiling at the mad thing in the cage. The drug was working perfectly. He addressed the raving vampire. "Hopefully you are still in there somewhere Tesla, and can see yourself for what you really are. As much as you deny it, all you Abnormals are just dangerous animals. You may present a veneer of civilization, a coating of intelligence to the world, but underneath that you are just a predator, nothing more. If I put your Helen in there with you, you would kill her and bury your face in her body to drink her blood. Have a nice day, I'll see you later."
Nikola screamed and threw himself at the cage wall again, clawing at it and even trying to bite it. But his razor-sharp claws didn't even scratch the foot-thick walls. Nikola thought the fit would end when Kevin left, but it didn't. He howled and leapt up at the ceiling which was made of the same material as the walls. He snarled until spittle came out of his mouth and slashed insanely at the walls. He dug at the floor like a dog trying to bury a bone.
Inside his head he kept telling himself that it was the drug that was doing this to him, he wasn't like this, Kevin was wrong, wrong, wrong. But a tiny part of him feared he was right.
It took a long time for him to tire enough to slow down. But Nikola was still trying to scratch his way through the wall when he heard Ginger's voice again, and a female voice too. He didn't recognize the woman when they came into view; at the sight of Ginger his anger rose up again and he started screaming and clawing in earnest, biting at the air.
The couple stopped in front of the vampire cage. Ginger said "You see, my dear, it's as I told you. Vampires are not suave, sophisticated beings like in the movies. In reality, they are the same animalistic types as all Abnormals."
"I think he's the worst one yet" the woman said. "He's just a horrible monster that looks a little like a person."
Nikola responded by pulling down his underpants and peeing directly at her and Ginger. It hit the side of the cage, of course, but both the visitors backed away, the woman wrinkling her nose in disgust.
The couple sauntered off, and Nikola pulled his shorts up. Was the drug starting to wear off? No, he stuck his face on the wall at their retreating backs and tried to bite it again. Well there was more than one way to be aggressive, but now he had to smell the urine puddled on the floor.
It was hours before Nikola started to regain a little control. By that time even his vampire physique was exhausted, and he was just sitting on the floor scratching at it with no real force. But he was finally able to make himself stop scratching. He couldn't withdraw his claws, but at least he didn't have to keep trying to escape, or kill the cage, or whatever he had been doing for most of the day.
He lay back and rested, trying but unable to sleep. After a while he felt his claws and fangs retract and he was able to relax fully, but not for long. He heard footsteps and sat up.
Kevin was there with the other two vampires. "Well, Tesla, that was quite a display. You utterly convinced my friend of your depravity." He pointed to the puddle of slowly drying urine. "Someone is going to have to clean that up, and I think it should be you. Lap it up with your tongue."
Nikola just looked at him in disbelief. Ginger smiled a little and said "If you don't, I'll pee in a bottle and have it force-fed to Helen until you do."
Resigned, Nikola crawled over to the stinking puddle. He knew there were places in the world where people drank their own urine as a medicinal treatment, but he found the idea repulsive. What a terrible thing to do to his refined palate. He held his breath and licked as fast as he could to get it over with.
When he was done, Varnov opened the cage door, laughing and saying "Some king. Maybe I should pee on the floor and you can lick that up too."
Nikola ignored him. Ginger gestured at his clothes and Nikola went over and dressed. Kevin said "You've been a pretty good boy today so I'm going to let you sleep in the cell tonight."
The red-haired man led the three vampires back to the basement of his office building and saw Nikola inside. The same mentarch that had been on duty before sat outside again, but this time had two bags of blood ready for Nikola, who drank them both eagerly, pleased to get the taste of urine out of his mouth.
He crawled into the bed; it felt good to be able to sleep stretched out rather than curled up. Nikola thought he should try sending some sort of signal again, but he was too tired. He needed to sleep first, he would try again early in the morning. And he reminded himself to keep after Ginger about the jessoped quills, Nikola knew the Sanctuary would try to trace them, but Ginger hadn't mentioned them at all today. Oversight or something else?
/
They had put Helen back in the chair first thing in the morning. She knew she looked awful, so she resolved to be more active so whoever was watching wouldn't think she was seriously hurt or giving up.
At first during her captivity the guards had been respectful with her and just done their jobs without any unnecessary touching or roughness. That was apparently over. As she walked to the chair one guard put a hand on her derriere and squeezed her buttock. Since there was nothing she could do about it she ignored it, but she suspected time was running out before the real rough stuff started.
When the red light on the camera came on, she started saying "No, don't do what they want, resist them no matter what they do to me!" She shook her head and struggled a little against her bonds, although she knew they would hold from earlier attempts.
The guards let her do as she wanted until suddenly one of them slapped a piece of duct tape over her mouth. All she could do was glare and shake her head then, but the light on the camera went out and she was released from the chair. She ripped the tape off her face as she was led back to her cell by her usual two guards, while the cameraman and the technician turned off the equipment.
"You're pigs, not men" she said to the two guards as they escorted her. "It takes four of you to beat up one woman and now you're treating me like I was your personal doxy. I'm not, I'm a lady and I'll thank you to remember that!"
"Oh blah, blah, blah, shut up 'lady'" one of the guards said.
From her cell Helen challenged him. "Why should I? I can say whatever I please. Or are you going to tie me up and gag me for days or weeks at a time?" she asked, hoping for information on how long she might be here.
"If that's what we're told to do, that's what we'll do. If we're told to do other things, we'll do that too" the guard replied with a leer.
"Told by whom, and how? I don't see anyone communicating with you; I think you're just doing whatever you want."
"I don't care what you think" the guard said and turned to leave.
"You're a sadistic infantile little tin god trying to make up for your shortcomings by taking your self-loathing out on me."
"Look lady . . . Helen, I do what my clan head tells me. The next time he tells me to punish you without giving any specifics, believe me you're going to be sorry you talked to me like that. I can't kill you or cut off any parts, but I can do anything else . . . anything at all, got it? And now I'm looking forward to it."
The guard stomped off after his fellows. Helen mulled over what he'd told her. The not killing her or doing something that could put her into shock and kill her made sense; they wouldn't want to lose their lever to get whatever it was they were after. But the remark about the clan head was interesting, even if she hadn't learned much else.
Helen had most of the day to think about it. These people obviously weren't Scottish, but there were others who might use the term to refer to an extended family; human people and Abnormal people as well. Put that together with the unknown means of instant communication and that equaled . . . either mentarch or seniagu.
Unfortunately there were problems with both those conclusions. Seniagus were native Africans, and these people weren't black. Mentarchs were extinct, or nearly so, weren't they? Perhaps a clan with a very strong central leader might have survived, and if they were mentarchs then that would explain the instant communication.
Unfortunately, reaching that conclusion really didn't improve her situation at all. Helen wasn't aware of any particular weaknesses that mentarchs had that she could exploit. She had no way of interfering with or joining in on telepathic communications, and other than that mentarchs were human.
At lunch time she got only stale bread and water. The guard said "Your boyfriend has been acting up again a little; you're already bruised so this is your punishment."
Helen took the tray and set it aside. She was getting three meals a day, skipping lunch wasn't much of a punishment but she wasn't going to complain about it. The guard was a young one she hadn't seen before so she tried a different tactic.
Before he could leave she said "Please, could you tell me how long I'm going to be here? Am I to be ransomed or what?"
He just shrugged and replied "I don't know, but you're in a long term cell, so I suppose you'll be here for a while."
She took a guess just to see his reaction. "Is Nikola Tesla all right?"
The guard gave a bark of laughter and said "Well if you call being treated like a dog or something all right, then I guess he is." He flushed a little and said "Darn it, I'm not supposed to be talking to you, lady."
Helen smiled as he left. So it was Nikola they had, and it was supposed to be a long term or even permanent arrangement. And Nikola wasn't in league with this clan or its head, and he was not in their good graces either, which was excellent.
But she stopped smiling when she thought about Nikola being a tremendously potent tool, or even weapon. He was a brilliant scientist, engineer, and inventor, personally powerful, and as king of the vampires he could call up a vampire army. And if he was letting himself be treated like a dog, then he was bending to someone else's will to keep her safe.
Nikola loved her, Helen knew that. Sometimes he was flippant, lecherous, even a little insulting, but his feelings for her were long-standing and deep. She was pretty much the only person on the planet that he would listen to or change his behavior for. She had to get out of here, they both needed to get out of here before he did something drastic and irreversible for her sake.
Once the guard was gone there was only the mentarch sitting in the hall and the camera. She was going to have to try an oldie but a goody and hope she had enough time to accomplish something.
Helen went over near the door. "I . . . I don't feel very well. There's a pain radiating from my chest down my left arm, and it feels like an elephant is sitting on me, I can hardly breathe. Could you . . . could you . . ."
She faked a collapse. She heard the man opening the door, bending down over her, and she opened her eyes and hit him in the face as hard as she could. He went down and she leapt up and hit him again behind the ear. A second to make sure he was out and she was out of the cell and running to the big heavy camera.
It was on wheels, but still hard to move. Helen shoved it up against the door, spotted a pad of paper, folded it in half and jammed it under the door as hard as she could. It wouldn't keep them out forever, but maybe long enough.
She went to the electronic equipment. It wasn't exactly the same as transmitting equipment she had used before, but close enough. She flipped switches and grabbed a microphone; she didn't need video, and the camera was in other use.
"This is Helen Magnus. I am a prisoner of Kevin Ginger and a clan of mentarchs. Nikola Tesla is here within their compound too, also a prisoner. Henry, if you can read this start tracing my signal."
She could hear voices in the corridor outside. "I won't be able to transmit very long, so be as quick as you can. I don't know my location, but I was brought in by truck on a dirt road. I'll put this on a loop. Get us out of here, they're using my safety to blackmail Nikola into heaven knows what."
There was pounding and pushing at the door. The paper door stop slid, and the camera rocked. Helen quickly set up the loop, and broke off or bent as many switches as she could that might be used to turn it off.
The camera rocked and skidded a few inches, and she put her shoulder against it and pushed back. She moved the door almost closed again, but a harder shove from the other side opened it an inch, then a few more. Helen held it as long as she could, but eventually a guard squeezed through the opening and pushed her away. Helen backed away to the middle of the room as a second and then a third guard shoved the door open farther and came in. She surrendered.
The technician came in next and went to his equipment and started to work trying to end her transmission, struggling with the switches. That went on for a minute, until a guard watching him impatiently just went over and started unplugging everything. The boards went dark and Helen knew her signal had been cut off. She had transmitted for somewhere between six and eight minutes, she thought; had anyone been listening?
She expected the "rough stuff" she had been promised from the angry guards, but they just shepherded her back into her cell. A big fellow picked up the unconscious mentarch and carried him out, and the cell was locked behind him.
The guard that locked the cell just said "That was very bad of you. I know some blabbermouth told you we have Tesla, so I'm not giving anything away. I just want you to know that he will be punished for your actions very severely tomorrow, when Mr. Ginger has determined what is appropriate. Pleasant dreams."
"Bloody hell" Helen whispered. She hadn't even thought of them reversing the process, and punishing Nikola for what she did. And they knew he was a vampire and could withstand a lot of punishment. Sorry Nikola.
/
It was late afternoon by the time Henry was set up in Houston. Will went to the restaurant where Ana's vampires had reported seeing Tesla to try to find out more information on what had happened, who he had been with, and where he might have gone, but the place was closed down and there was police tape across the entrances.
There were a few reporters hanging around, and Will casually sidled up to one and started a conversation, pretending to be one too. But he didn't get too much information, only that there had been multiple murders in a private dining room, and there were wild rumors of monsters and dismemberment. Unfortunately he didn't have a police contact in Houston and soon returned to the high-rise hotel where he and Henry were staying.
The room wasn't cheap, but Henry said being up high would help him pick up signals from farther away. He caught the end of Helen's transmission as soon as he set up, but it cut off before he could trace it very far.
When Will returned Henry said "Hey I got a message from Magnus. I recorded it." Henry played it for Will who said "That's great, so we know where they are?"
"Not exactly, it didn't last long enough for an exact fix, but triangulating with what I had before they have to be in this area." Henry pulled up a map on his computer and added a four line overlay, two coming down from the Kansas City area and two across those from Houston.
"That's about thirty klicks square, we ought to be able to find them in that."
"Yeah, but it'll be dark by the time we get there so we're not going to be able to see a lot."
"We'll go in the morning. From what Magnus said about the auction, Ginger is going to have resources, a lot of guards at least. If this is his home base it could be a big set-up. I think we're going to need reinforcements anyway." Will pulled out his cellphone.
"Who you gonna call?"
"An interested party; Queen Ana."
A/N: Norah, Kotah, thanks for your reviews.