From somewhere outside – a playground maybe – came the muffled laughter of a child. It seemed the essence of irony, considering this cunt would probably hurt me if I thwarted him.
“So, promise me we will have that talk you deprived Andy of, and I’ll get you untied. I will get your head looked at.”
The zip ties weren’t coming off without a cutter, and I was severely outnumbered. “Sure. We can talk.”
“Do it.” He whistled to his henchlings. “And get that doctor in here. She said she needed to check his thick head.”
One of his men went behind me and reached down to snip the plastic.
“Note.” Ted raised the beer and wagged it at me. “No monkey business. None of this hypnotizing. No fucking around. The doc may be a woman, but she’s leaving as soon as she checks you. Mac will escort her out, drive her home.”
“Okay.”
That made it difficult though delayed command was not impossible, if they left me alone with her.
A woman in long tan pants and a black, tailored, business shirt entered with another of Ted’s henchmen. Her hair showed streaks of gray and her eyes swam with fear when the man by her side – Mac, I assumed – growled some words to her ear.
She opened a rectangular case on the floor, pulled out some gear, and checked my eyes, my forehead and my scalp, and to get me to do some things like follow her fingers, grip her hand, and generally tell her what hurt where.
While she was packing away her stethoscope, I curled over and leaned on my knees for a few seconds. It wasn’t a ruse. I felt like shit.
“Concussion, though mild.” She rummaged among the drawers she had concertinaed up from the depths of the long box.
Medicine and pills were shuffled around, picked up, rearranged, until she found what she was looking for. “I can’t give you much. That cut is shallow, and antiseptic is enough for it. He really needs monitoring at a hospital.”
“No,” Ted said gruffly.
“Okay. Just painkillers then.” She began rattling off details about what to take when that I barely listened to, and writing on a sticky label – then seemed annoyed when I wouldn’t give her a name to write on it.
As if I wanted a label with my name on it. Even Ted grinned at her protests.
By then though… by then they had dragged in Red by the hair with her hands bound behind her. By then I had seen the sample sheet of Keppra pills.
At the sight of Red, the doc had paused, mouth gaping, still clutching that bottle of analgesics while she watched them manhandle Red onto her knees.
Red looked a mess – not that I’d left her looking pretty and perfect. They had actually pulled the top of her dress into place, so in a way she was improved upon. The come had been cleaned from her legs too, I thought. I wasn’t sure… things were going blurry.
Keppra. I flicked my gaze back to the case, zeroed in on them.
This was the drug Wolfe had given me. The one that made mesmers less powerful and less dangerous. The one I’d left alone for years as proof of my willpower. The drug I avoided like Superman does kryptonite.
Tonight, today, I could die, so could Red. I frowned.
What did it matter? What did I really want? That itch to seek something more scratched at me again. Was this my kryptonite or was it a necessary correction, as Wolfe had insisted?
“Get her out. Leave the bottle,” Ted said.
She nodded and leaned in to pack the box, then tossed in the excess pill packets.
“I need the Keppra!” I spat the words before I could think more on this.
Why?
Because.
Flustered, the doc pulled a slim packet, with one sheet of pills inside, from her supplies. She offered it sans label, sans verbal instructions. Her face was flushed, and she bit her lip as I took the packet from her.
“Hey! Why?” Ted echoed my own thoughts. “What for? What’s Keppra?”
“It’s an anti-seizure drug.” She folded down the case. “If he knows he needs it, I’m assuming he knows what he should take and why.” Eyes down, she clicked the last latch, showing every sign of a woman who wanted to run from a situation that frightened her.
“Yes. I do.”
Lies, of course.
Ted looked skeptical but let her leave, with Mac at her elbow. Only when some distant door banged shut did he nod at the pills in my hand. “You get the painkillers, but now you tell me why this other stuff.”
I stared at the half-open packet. What did I want to tell him? The less truth he had the better.
“Do her. Fuck her silly.” Ted smiled as he snapped his fingers and instructed his men. “You promised you’d talk. Lying gets me cross.”
“Cross?”
“Cross. Angry? Yeah. This girl is yours? I have the info Andy had. You let other guys screw her when you felt like it. So she’s not a big deal but she is yours? Wrong. She’s mine now. Least she is until you talk.”
Fuck. No. I glared through the red streaks flashing across my field of vision, though reacting like a monkey with a banana waved before it would be enormously wrong. Ted would get more ideas.
I braced myself, even as I seethed. She was mine. If I dirtied her up that was my choice.
My stupefied brain ran through all sorts of possibilities. None of them would succeed. A. Because my feet wouldn’t work, let alone my fists. B? Because I had no females to tell to rip the heads off these men. C. Because they had guns.
I could quieten her though. Leave Red in Lalaland while they did
