a look. “You’ll be okay while I deal with this?”
She nodded, edging the door open and tugging the body into the room.
Inside, the room looked like a serial killer’s playhouse. She and Kovit had draped everything in plastic and taped it there so that all the evidence could be bundled away and destroyed afterward. She dragged Zebra-stripes across the room and hauled him onto the bed with her enhanced strength. He grunted but couldn’t say anything through the gag.
She used industrial-strength chains to bind him to the bed by his hands and feet, even though he was paralyzed. Then, as an extra precaution, she shoved a needle in his jugular. The needle was connected to a long plastic tube that led into a massive cooler.
Vampires could self-heal, but it took a lot of energy. Eventually, his body might find a way to heal around the knife in his back. She didn’t want that. So she drained his blood out, knowing his body would divert energy to replenishing his blood to keep him alive and delaying his healing time and reducing his physical abilities if he did escape.
He glared at her, and she let out a breath. It was done. She had caught him.
The monster who had murdered her father. Who had somehow managed to con the DUL and escape justice for it.
It was time for answers.
She stared down at the pale vampire, his deceptively youthful face twisted in anger. But she could see the fear that lurked underneath the anger, because Nita had made a vampire’s worst nightmare out of this room.
Vampire blood was highly prized—a sip a day kept death away, or so the saying went. It wasn’t quite true. You couldn’t become immortal from drinking their blood. But you could delay aging. A small amount every day for years built up in your system, and you’d age slower and slower over time. There was anecdotal evidence of people living to two hundred years with vampire blood.
Nita didn’t put much stock in nonscientifically tested rumors, but most people did, and vampire blood was a booming industry. A vampire at full health could heal its body for up to a week when blood was being constantly drained from it before it died. If you occasionally fed it? Well, it could be in your blood-draining factory forever. Plenty of blood for you to live an extra century, and plenty of blood to sell online.
Her mother hadn’t drained any vampires Nita knew of. Too much of a time commitment, too much of a hassle to feed. But Nita had dissected and packaged more than a few for sale, since eating their flesh was said to have a milder but similar effect. Probably from the residual blood in it.
Nita crossed the room and checked on her container. Filling up nicely. Plenty of extra cash when this was over. If she was going to capture a vampire anyway, and needed to keep it weak, she might as well earn a bit of money off it as well. She certainly wasn’t going to just throw the blood out. What a waste that would be.
Zebra-stripes grunted on the bed, trying to speak through his gag, and Nita went over to him and looked down at him as she shed her disguise. Off came the gray wig, and she tightened her skin back up until she looked like herself again.
Zebra-stripes’ eyes widened in recognition, and Nita smiled down at him. “We meet again.”
His eyes narrowed.
Nita sat down on a chair beside the bed. “Don’t worry, I’ll take the gag off soon. I just wanted to make it clear how things were going to go here first.”
He glared.
“See, I really just wanted to murder you at first. I’m not really the forgive-and-forget type. But then I realized that you probably have a lot of answers that I need, and I have a lot of questions. So here’s the deal: answer my questions, and I’ll let you go.”
He snorted and rolled his eyes.
“You don’t believe me, that’s fair,” Nita agreed. “But what have you really got to lose? If you don’t answer them, I’ll just kill you. If you do answer them, I might be telling the truth and will let you go.” She paused. “Obviously I won’t let you go while I’m in the room. I’ll be long gone. But I’ll call whatever number you want to have someone come to find you.”
He tried to speak through the gag, and Nita leaned over and plucked it from his