Page 91 of Tell Me Why
“Are you okay?” Tina asked, then something bit her in the side and she was scrambling to swat at it and get rid of it.
There was something there.
Something big.
It had bitten her, and her body was reacting viscerally and primordially, wanting to find it crush it, make it stop. The pain wasn’t that much, but the surprise and the disgust of it was intense, and that her handsfoundsomething, she was tearing at it and throwing it away before she’d even registered that it had happened, and the moment it left her hands, she regretted throwing it.
It had been a dart.
And while herfirstreaction had been to get itawayfrom her, hersecondreaction was to lay hold of it and use it to stab the person who had shot it at her. Repeatedly stab them.
She was confused where it had gone, though, and then there were hands on her, a rope around her that felt like it wasn’t so strong that she couldn’t tear it apart, but it was spongy and malleable, and no matter how she thrashed against it, she couldn’t find anything to actually grab and tear.
It made her angry.
There were voices around, hands, bodies, force, her feet skidding across the drive, but she couldn’t bring herself to actuallyengageit.
The net held her, and it made her angrier and angrier. She was using her teeth, trying to rip at it, lashing at everything that bumped into her, unable, unable, unable.
Maybe she should have wondered what had happened to Leonard.
She didn’t.
Maybe she should have wondered where she was going.
She didn’t.
She fought like an animal with no sense of time until the sun found her and finally put her down.
The floor was hard,but the sun was distant.
All day, she’d known that she was held, as the effects of the dart had worn off, but she didn’t know where, or evenwhy, with certainty.
Obviously it wassomethingto do with the vampire-parts network, but was it that she’d been kidnapped as product? was she being taken out of the equation to motivate Tell? was this a reaction from Leonard to her saying no? That last one seemed awfully abrupt, but she couldn’t rule it out.
He’d gotten hit, too, hadn’t he?
There was no light at all, when she’d eased her eyes open from time to time, and no clear or close sound of any utility. Everything was muffled through thick walls, but it sounded solid, almost industrial, rather than of the characteristic motion-noises of people.
When she finally sat up, she knew scant little more than she had when the dart had hit her, the night before.
She hadn’t heard breathing, and she was chained to the floor, she found. They’d put a cuff on each ankle and short chains were bolted to the floor nearby. She couldn’t get her fingers down through the cuffs, they were so close-fitted, and the chains had a devastating, heavy feel to them that made her feel very unlikely to be able to break them by feat of strength or wit.
She could find one wall, but couldn’t reach the ceiling or any additional wall on the length of leash she had.
This was all.
The dark was complete enough that she couldn’t make anything else out, either.
“You awake in there?” someone asked from… beyond a wall or a door or something, and Tina put her back against the wall, braced to fight.
The lights came on.
She was in a white box, chained to the floor. The ceiling was perhaps twenty feet over her head, and there were eye-bolts on the floor for another five prisoners, though she was here by herself.
A heavy door opened and a man came in, looking at her with… passive pity. Or evaluation.
He came toward her, and Tina readied herself for whatever attack she had available to her. He shook his head.
