Hour of the Dragon - Heather Killough-Walden Page 0,91

friend, who in turn shrugged. That was a good sign. It meant she wasn’t too weakened by blood loss, at least not yet. They were both still in good shape. That actually comforted Randall. He didn’t really have any desire to do anything to his angel that would break her heart. Not yet, anyway. Not if it could be avoided.

“This is a single step along the path of a plan, dear Carmen,” he told her. “Don’t you worry. You’ll understand well enough very soon.”

Carmen closed her eyes and dropped her head a little. He saw a fresh tear break free and trail down her cheek.

“I won’t hold it against you if you change your mind and decide you want that medicine after all,” he told her gently. “Now would be the time since you just finished vomiting.” He could imagine she was quite weak by now. At least physically. All the fire she’d originally shown him had burned down to faint red embers.

So he wasn’t surprised at all to find that when he took the medicine and a fresh, cold ginger ale and knelt down beside her chair to offer them to her, she could only stare at him in misery and nod. Just once.

“There now. That’s more like it. Things will start to get easier now.” He stood and held the pill out toward her. “Open up.”

She tensed under the command, which he expected – and behind him, Piper the blood donor started yanking like mad against her bindings. She was trying to scream something at him from behind the tape over her mouth, but he couldn’t make heads or tails of it. He could surmise what she was trying to tell him, based on how hard she was fighting.

“It’s not poison, if that’s what has you ruining your fresh wrappings,” he said with a glance over his shoulder. “You have no reason to believe me, but the fact is, I’ve no desire to kill either one of you. And it really doesn’t make any sense for your friend to continue being sick when there’s medicine right here capable of helping her. Does it?” He asked, shrugging and gesturing to the pill.

Piper calmed down just a little, but he could tell it was more out of frustration and hatred than anything else. Possibly exhaustion and hunger. She was probably getting very bruised under all that thrashing as well.

Fortunately she was still enough to be ignored, and when Randall turned back around to face Carmen, she opened her mouth right away. He smiled and placed the pill on her tongue, then opened the ginger ale and helped her wash the medicine down. “Slowly,” he told her.

Something in the shadows moved behind him, and her gaze slipped to the space above his shoulder. She stopped swallowing, but the pill was down anyway. “That’s a good strong dose; if you can keep it down, it should start working soon.”

“What… was that?” she asked, her voice completely raw.

“What I just gave you?” he asked, knowing full well she was referring to the thing behind him.

She shook her head just a little, and her eyes slipped past him again to the darkness of the shadows at the other end of the unfurnished room.

He sighed wearily. “That is unfortunately the watch dog Maze insisted on leaving in his staid. He’s here to make certain that neither of you escape.” He turned to the darkness and addressed the beast. “I thought I told you to remain hidden.”

There was a shifting sound in that darkness, heavy and slithering. The beast was what Victor Maze had referred to as a “Dweller,” and according to him the monster normally lived underground. It could also become quite huge apparently, but Maze had confined it spatially and altered its coloring from white to dark gray so that it could hide in any shadow of any size. Leave it to him to force a fish out of water, Randall thought. No doubt, the man thoroughly enjoyed the tumultuous discomfort the monster experienced.

He was having more thoughts like that since Maze had left. He was having coherent, cohesive, and decidedly unfavorable thoughts toward his co-conspirator. They were intermingled with returning thoughts that were less cohesive but more pronounced, stronger, determined.

Victor Maze apparently needed to rest. He was spending inordinate amounts of energy keeping some kind of ward over Randall and the girls to prevent them from being found by scrying or location spells.

But he would be returning later that night, when the trade