Blood and Fire (McClouds & Friends #8)(138)

She started to cry. In shock, that she’d scored even that tiny victory. Terror, at the thought of daring to use it to defy them. Grief for her father, fear for Bruno. Too many reasons to count.

She curled up, clutching her prize, and gave into the storm.





It was an exercise in self-control. The agonizing, sweatpopping kind, never a talent upon which he had particularly prided himself. The driver of the bronze BMW, who’d confided that his name was Julian, had pulled over after ten blocks or so, offered him a bag to put over his head, d htold him to lie down in the backseat.

Bruno stared at the bag dangling from the man’s hand. Black, lined, drawstring at the border. He’d as soon lie down into his own grave. After a few seconds, Julian just shrugged, pulled out his cell phone, held it up to his ear.

Oh, no, no, no. Bruno promised to be good. He put on the bag and lay down on the seat. The new-car leather stink made him queasy. He was claustrophobic anyway, and not being able to see or breathe fresh air made him frantic. It would have been easier to bear if he’d been bound with rope, duct tape. But it was just fear that held him.

The car got on a highway. He tried to estimate the time, but anxiety skewed his perceptions. The best he could figure when the car got off the highway was more than one hour, less than two. Julian had tuned into Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons,” at high volume. The melody of the bouncy, shrill violins grated on his nerves like a car alarm.

After fifteen minutes, the car stopped, the window whirred down. Some muffled conversation, a shiver of cold air, and off they went again. The car moved at a sedate pace. It came to a stop. Doors, popping.

He was dragged out by more than one set of ungentle hands. Three people, from the sounds. Someone jerked his hands back, put the plastic cuffs on, yanked them tight. Sounds echoed, hollow and booming. Indoors, but the air was still. Very cold. A big garage?

They gripped him from either side, dragging him off his feet however hard he scrambled to keep his feet underneath him.

The first tract was a well-sprung wooden floor, and then he was shoved into a smallish elevator. A sliding cage slammed shut. It was so small, one of his captors had to stand right in front of him. He caught a whiff of perfume. One was a woman.

The thing made a surprising amount of jerking and grinding as it went up. Antique. He was in an old building. The elevator didn’t go far. One floor.

The door dragged, clanged. They shoved him out and into another long corridor. Finally, a door opened, and he was shoved through it so hard he tumbled to his knees and then onto his face, without his arms to brace him. They dragged him through the room. His butt connected with a chair seat so hard it jarred his spine all the way up to his skull. They fastened his bound hands. Then his feet to each chair leg.

The hood was jerked off.

He sucked air into his starved lungs in wheezing gasps, blinking away tears from the influx of light.

He was in a large room. Several people were arrayed before him. Julian was there. The knife-wielding ghoul bitch from the videophone call. Another guy, too. Young, white, bland. All of them had a strange look in their eyes. Fascination. And focused, concentrated hatred.

Another guy stepped into the floodlight. Bruno struggled to bring him into focus. Big, tall, backlit by the powerful light. The man grasped Bruno’s chin between his thumb and forefinger. His face swirled in Bruno’s vision. That smug smile, those glinting eyes. Did he know this guy?

“Bruno,” the man said. “Finally.”

Bruno convulsed at the sound of his voice. The guy grabbed his chin and yanked his face up into that helpless, supplicating child-awaiting-punishment posture.

The question building inside him for the past three days burst out. “Where’s Lily?” he yelled. “What have you done with her?”

The man gave his cheek a slap. “One thing at a time. Look at me.”

His eyes stred from the light. Tears ran down into his nose, a wet, ticklish flood, creeping down. He had no way to wipe his face.

It felt so f*cking familiar. He wanted to scream, thrash. He got a grip on it and stared right back. “Yeah?” he said, belligerently.

“Do you know me?” the guy asked.

Yes. Yes. His gut knew, but his head still couldn’t nail it; the how, the when, the who. “No. Who the f*ck are you, and what do you want?”

Another stinging slap. Whap. “Don’t play dumb,” the guy said. “I know you’re not stupid. Look again. And dig deep.”

Terror swelled. He did know this man. The memory was locked in his body, in muscle and bone. He felt small, confused. Wanting his mother. So angry. Couldn’t move. Struggling against restraints until the needle stung his arm and paralysis took him. And that face, so pleased with himself. That deep, horrible voice, setting his every hair on end—

“DeepWeave sequence 4.2.9 commencing,” the guy said.

Bruno convulsed once again, violently. His body jerked as if electricity juddered through it. The heavy chair rattled, shook. “Oh, shit. No.”

“Yes,” the guy said. “Yes, it’s coming to you now, right?”

Bruno wanted to deny it, but it was flooding back in sickening waves. “The dreams. You’re that guy who talks in my dreams.”

“Do I?” The man’s eyes sparkled. “I’m delighted to know that the programming went so deep, even in the experimental stages of my research. Remarkable, considering how short a time I had to seed it.”