Page 83 of Witch Unbound
I strode around the screen, studiously avoiding looking at the gurney, and into the room beyond. It was darker in here. I spotted some kind of control panel lit up with lights and a mirror on the back wall, but it was the large glass chamber occupying the center of the room that demanded my attention. Unlike the others, this one wasn’t filled with fluid, but therewasa figure inside it. One with icy blue eyes and a smile that stretched across his face, too wide, too awful.
Motherfucker! “Razor Smile?”
His eyes fixed on me. “Get me out.”
Well, this explained why we’d been unable to find him.
“Get. Me. OUT!”
He lunged at the glass and was thrown back into his seat by an invisible force. As much as I liked to see the bastard subdued, the fact that he was in the Order’s clutches was a bad, bad thing.
“Shit,” Rune said.
We didn’t have time to dither. “You.” I jabbed my finger at the lab guy. “Get the people out of the chambers. Now.”
He looked at me, wide-eyed. “I can’t do that.”
“Why the fuck not?”
“Because if I do that, they’ll die. They’re mid-transition.”
“What?” Ursula sagged. “The children…”
The man had the grace to look sorry. “Yes, even the children. I’m sorry. So sorry.”
“And what about Jamie?” Ursula snarled, and pointed at the gurney. “What did you do to him?”
To give him credit, the man looked like he was about to puke. “Not me. Them. Faerie didn’t work on him. They wanted to know why. Turned out he wasn’t human. Not fully.”
“And the children are witches,” Ursula pointed out. “Not human either, so why take them?”
“The fluid was modified for them based on what they found by dissecting…” He swallowed and looked away, guilt evident in the slump of his shoulders. “I didn’t ask for this.”
He was a pawn. Someone the Order had strongarmed and manipulated. He was also our only source of information.
“Childrensies can’t be saved?” Wren asked.
“No…” Ursula clenched her jaw. “They can. Open the chambers.”
“They’ll die,” the lab dude said.
“Better to be dead than allow the Order to turn them into…whatever they plan to.”
The man nodded grimly, then hurried to the control panel and tapped keys. “Done.”
Ursula left the room, probably to be with the children as they slipped away. My chest ached with sorrow and burned with rage, but the people I needed to take it out on weren’t here.
The man studied Wren with interest, then shook his head as if to dislodge a thought. “They’d love to get their hands on one of those. We need to go before they come back.”
“Hold up,” Rune said. “How does he fit in?” Rune jerked his chin in Razor Smile’s direction. “Why do you need him?”
The vampire growled.
“I don’t know,” the man said. “They told me to watch him. To keep him…fed.” He tugged at his sleeve almost unconsciously, and I noticed the spots of blood on the white fabric for the first time.
“You’re feeding him your blood?”
He looked sheepish. “I had to.”
