Page 269 of Golden Eagle

45

Sedatives didn’t work very long on vampires, even the strong ones. As hazy gray consciousness returned, and Alexei blinked open gummy eyes, he decided, based on his nausea and the way the lights burned his eyes, he’d been hit with enough to drop an elephant.

A few attempts to move revealed that he was strapped down at the arms and legs. He blew out a breath and blinked some more, working on getting his vision clear. A terrible wave of dizziness came, and then passed. He thought he might be sick, bile building at the back of his throat, but he swallowed, and that passed, too.

“Hello, Your Majesty,” Gustav said, pleasantly.

Alexei lifted his head up as best he could, and searched for the bastard.

As if waiting for such a cue, he paced into view, hands clasped behind his back, casual and unbothered.

A second glance, though, proved that his face was too pale, his eyes too wild. He was trying to play the wily villain, in control of this situation, but he wasn’t.

Pathetic a thought as it was, being strapped to a table, Alexei saw that weakness as something that could work in his favor. “Where’s Dante?”

Gustav’s brows knitted a moment before understanding dawned. “Ah.” He walked up to the table Alexei was strapped to, and looked down at him. “Norrie, you mean.”

“He prefers Dante.”

“And I prefer it when my friends cooperate, but we’re past that now.”

“We were never friends.”

“No, but we could have been.” Gustav tilted his head, and looked apologetic. “It’s a shame, really.”

Someone approached from Alexei’s other side. A vampire, though one dressed in scrubs, wearing gloves…carrying a hypodermic needle.

Fear lanced through him, sharp and painful, clearing the last of the drug’s aftereffects. “If you want revenge, just cut my heart out and get it over with. What the fuck’s with the mad scientist routine?” He struggled against his bonds, but he knew they were silver without being able to see them, and he couldn’t do more than rattle them. A cool, gloved hand touched his arm, and Alexei snarled up at the vampire dressed as a doctor.

It did no good. The vampire didn’t respond, only pressed in with the needle, and it bit into the vein on the inside of his elbow with a sharp pinch. When it was in place, the vampire attached a tube…attached to a blood bag. They weren’t simply drawing a vial.

Alexei’s mouth filled with saliva, and nausea returned.

“What are you doing?” he growled.

Gustav answered. “Had you been more cooperative – if you hadn’t fallen back onto the bad habit of trusting those sentimental idiots you call friends – we could have taken this sample under different circumstances.”

The bag began to fill, ounce by ounce. Alexei could feel his strength ebbing; swore he could feel the blood rushing down toward the needle, always so quick to leave him. “What are you talking about?” It felt important to keep talking, for some reason; to stay awake.

“It would have still been unpleasant – giving blood always is. Especially for you, I’d imagine, given your chronic condition. But we have to have a large sample, you see. We’ll pack it in ice, and get it transported as quickly as possible, but we needenough. It would be easier to take you with us, but if watching mortals conduct their little experiments has taught me one thing, it’s that an unwilling prisoner is just a hassle. A liability. And you, poor thing, just can’t help but be unwilling, can you? They’ve crawled inside your brain.”

“What the fuck does that even mean? Why do you need my blood? You’re a vampire. You don’t need a goddamn miracle drug.”

The bag filled, filled, filled. His stomach lurched, and his pulse tripped and stuttered. The room seemed to tilt.

“Is this–” He struggled to think. “Is this still about World War I? About revenge? Or…That was my father! I was only a kid!”

Gustav looked down at him – for a moment, there were two of him, blurring out, stretching into a two-headed monster, and then blurring together again – and clucked, like he was so, so stupid. “Leaving you for dead – for them – will be revenge. Personal revenge. The last of your fucking terrible family gone.

“But the blood isn’t personal. That’s for my master. For his own experiments.”

Alexei swallowed with difficulty. His vision fuzzed at the edges. He heard a faint, high whining, like a pitiful dog. Was that him? He didn’t know.

“Ex – experiments?”

The bag filled, filled, was full. The vampire sealed it off, pulled it away – blood sprayed down on the tile, red and wet – and then attached a second, so that it could fill, fill, fill.

Gustav’s voice seemed to come from a long way off. “For all that he was a fool, it was Philippe’s idea, originally, to let the humans do some of the work for us. Let them figure it out: humans, despite their shortcomings, are so dissatisfied with life they can’t help but tinker and experiment.

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