Voices roused Cat. She opened her eyes and blinked dazedly. The world swam with a kaleidoscope of colors and shapes. Her stomach lurched. Oh, God. And her head...
"What were you thinking?" The voice was female and very angry.
Cat tried to move and failed. Turning her head shut the weird colors off as the world went black once more.
The conversation was still going on when Cat woke up again. Moving with more care, she tested her arms and legs. Wide bands (metal from the unforgiving feel) held her motionless to a cold, hard surface. Her head still pounded.
"...Slayer. And a cop. We'll have every uniform and..." This one was male. His voice rose and fell like a radio slightly out of tune.
It hurt to think. Cat bit her lip against the pain and focused. Cop. That was her. Good. She could do this. Cat was a cop and that scared the people who had drugged her. The fuzzy feeling, the headache. Cat was familiar with it.
Her focus wavered.
"You know that your bondmate is never coming back." The doctor, Cat couldn't remember his name, smiled. He had nice teeth. Straight and shiny. His eyes didn't smile, though. "You have to accept that, Cat. Accept it and move on."
"Accept it and move on," Cat echoed. Easy peasy. Or, it would be if someone would pull the cotton out of her brain. It was so hard to think.
The doctor leaned forward and patted Cat's knee. "That's right, Cat. I'm glad you're being so reasonable."
"Damn it. Who authorized this?" The woman was back. Cat really wanted her to stop shouting. The words stabbed into her head. "Do you have any idea what's going to happen? You took a Slayer! A baby Slayer at that. The Council will tear Boston apart to find her."
There was a deeper rumble, too low for Cat to follow.
Luckily, her friendly shrieker was there to help out. "You're an idiot!" If Cat could have summoned the energy, she would have laughed at the blunt assessment of the other voice. "We can't kill them like the others. If we do, the trail will lead right back to the Legion! You'll ruin everything!"
That would be terrible. A sudden, nearly uncontrollable need to giggle hit Cat. She bit her tongue and tensed every muscle against the urge. Not now. God, not now! While she struggled not to laugh, the woman muttered something too softly for Cat to hear. A door closed nearby.
"Damn it. I told you this was a bad idea," a male voice muttered.
Cat slid her eyes up enough to peer through slits in her lashes. One woman and two men in a group. Three more men. No, not men. Vampires. They had fangs, Cat thought. And there was another body slumped on a metal table across the room.
Sam. Cat jerked reflexively.
Now the bad guys knew she was awake. One of the vampires was at her side immediately. His eyes were soulless. "The Master will want to know this has been cleaned up. Let me take care of her now." He smiled and his fangs appeared.
"Get the fuck away from me, you freak," Cat snapped. She had to stay in control. She couldn't panic. Thanks to the drugs, Cat didn't have a clue why she was here or what the people in the room knew about her real identity. For now, she'd stick with her alter-ego. "Is this some kind of lame initiation ritual? Where am I, and who the Hell are you?" Yanking at the bands on her arms and legs, she fought to break free.
The vampire snarled and moved even closer. She could smell his breath, ripe with the coppery stench of blood.
Cat couldn't move away so she did the only thing possible. She spit right in his face. "Ever heard of personal space? I like mine." She never saw the blow coming. Her head snapped to the side, banging painfully into the table. The room spun and Cat vomited helplessly. Each gasping heave turned the edges of her vision gray.
The human woman sauntered over. Regarding Cat with a grimace, she said to the vampire, "She isn't yours yet."
He took a step back but didn't give up.
"Let me up. I'm one of you, in case you missed the memo. Alina recruited me," Cat choked out. Dry heaves made talking (and breathing) difficult. "Brad's my Cohort Leader, and I'm happy to report I completed my first mission." She tried to smile and wink flirtatiously. "And I'm not in the market for a Dominant. Besides, the whole medical fetish... It doesn't get my motor running."
The woman stared at Cat in confusion. Good. Cat's acting had her questioning things. "You were with a Slayer."
Oh, goody. Cat was smart enough (and trying too hard to breathe) not to say that out loud.
"Did you think we wouldn't find out?" This question seemed to be directed at Cat. She managed to glance up and found the woman staring at her.
"Find out what?" Cat choked out. "That you're crazy? That you're an idiot? That you have your own special dungeon? You're going to have to give me a little more." Bitch, she finished mentally. There was a moment while the woman merely glared at Cat that she thought she might have pushed too hard. Maintaining eye contact was the hardest thing Cat had ever done.
While the woman waffled, the vampire waiting to eat Cat snarled. "She helped a Slayer clear out the bars. She killed some of the Master's soldiers. Let me kill her!"
"Look, blood breath," Cat's mind raced. How could she explain being with Faith? The room seemed to grow even colder and blood began to trickle down her arms from scrapes caused by her struggle against the metal cuffs. "Of course I was there. I found a letter under my door. My assignment from Brad."
Cat doled out information slowly. Some long ago advice reminded her to keep her lies simple and straightforward. And she needed to burn as much time as possible, too. Surely a radio car or team of Slayers had responded to her emergency call. Her cell phone was in that alley. Someone would be looking for her and Sam. If she could keep them both alive long enough, there was a slim chance the cavalry would arrive.
The cavalry. Cat's mind conjured visions of Faith and Tara bursting through the door... Oh, yeah. Perfect.
"Brad wouldn't tell you to go to a vampire bar and kill them." The woman had no doubts about that, and Cat bit off a curse.
"Duh!" Cat wasn't a hundred percent sure of all the reasons for the Legion-Vamp alliance. However, she didn't have to be a genius to know killing a bunch of vampires would never be on the Legion's To Do List. "Your sources must have left off the part where I only roughed up one vamp. I didn't kill anything. That was all Faith. Faith the Vampire Slayer. What was I supposed to do? Throw myself in front of her stake and say, 'Killing vampires is wrong. They're not really evil, only misunderstood.' If she didn't toss me back in the loony bin, I'd be up on charges or in front of a disciplinary committee for interfering in Council business."
Not even the vampire had a smart remark for that.
Risking a quick glance at Sam, Cat noted the younger girl still appeared unconscious. Good. That was good. Cat needed a few more minutes to convince their captors that she was on their side - and she didn't want Sam to hear what she had to say. There was only a slim chance this would work, and Cat was stacking the deck. "You want to know why I was with Faith? Brad's order was to tell Faith she was my Domme."
By itself, the comment meant nothing. The woman's lip curled, and Cat's sense of urgency shifted into overdrive.
Her words picked up speed. Funneling her fear into an approximation of righteous anger, Cat snapped, "Since this whole setup screams torture or worse, I guess I have to share my private life with the world. Faith, the Slayer I was with in the bar, is my Domme. The one who fucking abandoned me years ago. She has no clue how she ruined my life. Brad knows all about it. He and Alina told me that I should tell her. So I did."
Cat was afraid to hesitate or look away. She had a rapt audience. "And she still didn't remember. Can you believe that?" She invited participation and noticed the human men and woman shake their heads in silent response. "What a bitch. I told her I was through, that she didn't deserve me anyway. Then my watch commander had a brainstorm. Out of the blue he decides I need to broaden my horizons and sends me out with a visiting Council team. Faith and her bondmate, pub crawling in crappy, rundown warehouses."
"That wasn't what we heard." The woman was definitely wavering. She glanced back and forth between her two male companions. "That's why..."
"Jesus. You grabbed me on your own." Cat didn't have to fake her amazement. "Brad's going to kill all of you."
The jibe hit home. Anyone who could turn pale, did. And shuffle and clear their throats.
"Get me off this fucking table. I want to talk to Brad. Actually, I want you to call Brad, Alina, and Jonathan." Cat dropped the names with poorly disguised glee. If she really had been a Legion member, her connections, tenuous and new though they were, would cause no end of trouble for the crew in the room.
All three humans scrambled to obey Cat. For the moment, her ruse was working. The metal cuffs clicked open and Cat swung her legs over the edge and stood up.
It was a mistake.
Her stomach revolted again, and Cat doubled over. Sweat burned her eyes and chilled her skin as she emptied what little remained in her stomach onto the floor. A tendril of spite reared its head when speckles of vomit dotted the shoes of the woman and one of the men who'd kidnapped Cat and Sam.
Hands on her knees for leverage, Cat straightened. The room tried to close in. Black dots danced crazily in front of her eyes. Pass out? Or maybe stay alive? No thought went in to Cat's decision. Despite her shaky condition, Cat lashed out immediately. She backhanded the woman, who staggered and nearly fell. "I should kill you myself," she announced. "But we've got to clean up your mess first." Cat had to save Sam. The young girl was ghostly pale and still on the steel table. "How long will she be out?" Cat asked.
"We tripled the dose we gave you," one of the men offered. He didn't trust Cat, not from the way he watched her. Luckily, he seemed too scared to object to her sudden leadership.
"In other words, you don't know," Cat summed up. The situation kept getting worse and worse. Wanting to close her eyes and pretend this was a nightmare, Cat stayed focused. She had to get Sam to safety. "You," she said to one of the vampires. "Grab the kid. I doubt Jonathan's ready to start a war with the Council. We'll dump her out in Dorchester, minus all her cash and ID. If we're lucky, she won't remember anything after trying save the stupid townies in that alley. No one will connect a mugging with the Legion."
The vampire didn't move. Damn it! Cat didn't have any other ideas. Mimicking a Dominant's surety of a submissive's obedience, she walked across the room. Her coat, holster, and gun lay on an open shelving unit. With hands that trembled more than she wanted, Cat released the magazine, set the slide lock, and racked the slide. The chambered round popped from the ejection port, and she caught it smoothly. Cat completed a quick visual inspection. No damage to the weapon. Three rounds missing from the 15-round magazine. Cat added the round she'd ejected to the magazine and snapped it home. All rounds accounted for, including the two shots she'd fired in the alley. The slide lock released with a click.
Feeling unaccountably better, Cat donned her harness, secured her weapon, and slipped into her coat. The heavy leather combated the lingering chill of fear. "Who's driving?" she asked the motionless crew. "We're running out of time."
"We don't follow your orders." Cat's favorite vampire sneered at her.
"Fine. Kill the kid. I don't care if the Council turns you and every vampire in the city into dust piles." Hiding her growing panic, she turned to the woman. "Give me your phone. Since you won't call in your mistake, I will."
Reluctance in every movement, the woman pulled a smart phone from a belt-clip and held it out to Cat.
Cat took it and thumbed the screen. Her first plan had ended in failure. She had just one more shot. Keeping her eyes locked on the woman, she dialed Jane's number quickly.
"Alina, it's Cat. From Brad's cohort," she announced as soon as the call went through.
A quickly indrawn breath then, Jane asked, "Cat? What's going on?"
"Some of the Legion's dumbest picked me and a Slayer up last night." She waited, pretending Alina was asking questions. "Drugged us. The kid's still out. I don't know for how much longer, though. The Moron Cohort just guessed at the dosage." Another pause. "I don't know. They thought I was a friend of the Council. They're holding us…" Pausing, Cat pulled away from the phone. "Where the Hell are we? Beacon Hill? Or another private party site?" she asked her kidnappers.
"We're…" The woman broke off when one of her companions elbowed her in the ribs.
He wasn't happy with Cat. "If that's really Alina, she'll know where we are."
Perfect. Just fucking perfect. "Did you hear that?" Cat murmured into the phone. "When this is all over, you owe me for this shit. Brad better let me take care of these idiots before sending me out on any more missions."
There was no response to her comment. Jane waited for Cat to feed her as much information as possible. "Fine. I'll leave them for you," she said with ill grace. "Don't take too long to get here," she added with absolute honesty. Acting wasn't Cat's forte. One wrong word or move and she'd be right back on that table with no hope left. "I don't know if I can restrain myself much longer."
She hung up and tossed the phone back to the woman. "Alina's on her way. We hang tight until then." Wanting to be close to Sam in case she woke up, Cat pulled herself into a sitting position on the table next to Sam's right hand.