Page 96 of Tell Me Why
Finally, minute by minute, she felt the sun begin to set, felt the pressure and the pain ease off, and she forced herself up off of the floor, just to own the civility of humanity rather than the animal pain.
Tell was still gone.
She didn’t expect she would have missed him, even in the midst of everything, but the room was yet dark and there had been this vague hope that she had managed to fail to notice the door opening or Tell being brought back in.
The room was empty, by scent and by sound.
He’dsaidhe was coming back.
He’d said he wascoming back.
But he wasn’t here.
She was alone.
The lights came on and the door opened.
She nearly sprang at the man who came in.
One cup.
He set it down out at the edge of her range of motion as she snarled at him from against the wall.
“Won’t be much longer, now,” he said, looking her up and down, then nodding and leaving.
Tina crawled out to get it, sniffing it once, then settling back down against the wall with the cup in her lap.
She’d never been so hungry.
Texas.
Tell had hated Texas before he’d ever set foot there, and he hated it more, now.
He was far enough from the facility that he couldn’t see it anymore, but that was as far as he’d gotten before the sun had finally gotten so intense that he had to find shelter.
He could move through the first few hours of the day, under normal circumstances, but the sun was intense, here. He only got a few hours where he was functional, then he had to settle in and wait.
Tell wasn’t a warrior. He was barely even a fighter.
The reputation he had in certain circles was… deserved, but imprecise.
He was a snake.
Dangerous, angry, and difficult to lay hold of.
He would fight them again, if they managed to find him, and maybe they would take him and maybe they wouldn’t, but he’d gotten himself out.
The problem was that there was no way he could get Tina out, as well.
She didn’t have the strength and the power to do what he did, nor the reaction time necessary to defend herself from theweapons they had to bring to bear. Maybe he would have gone another hour before reaching his limit, if not for the dart theyhadmanaged to hit him with.
The facility was both intended to keep vampires in, as commodity stock, but also to keep attackers out, because finished vampire parts were too valuable to leave in an undefended warehouse.
Tell could slip out with speed and cunning and a good lot of luck, but he couldn’t break in, couldn’t make his way around and through the place to find Tina and get her out as well.
He’d known that the moment he’d hit the door and kept going.
Known that Tina’s only hope was his finishing the job for Keon and Keon sweeping through in a surge of retributive violence with Tell at its back, hoping to find her in the key moment between the two forces before they crushed her.
