Page 83 of Taste of Blood
Silence.
After all the noise he made, it’s a welcome relief.
“Is he…dead?” Vamp 2 asks.
“It would appear so,” I reply.
Dante is going to love this.
As much as I’d like to go report it right now, I still have a job to do. I pick up another blade, this one a well-used Damascus claw talon knife, and approach Vamp 2.
“Tell me about the Python.”
I draw a long slice down the length of his arm. It’s not a deep cut; after the wounds in his gut and thigh, he can’t afford to lose much more blood and remain conscious. Just enough to remind him who’s in charge. “By all means, take your time. I got all night and a healthy imagination.”
I’d actually prefer he get on with it as I don’t want to spend any more time than necessary in this stinking cell.
“You can’t defeat him.”
Now he sounds like the other two I put down. I roll my eyes. “Can we skip the hero worship and get to the facts? Besides, if I get bored, I might just shoot you.”
I hear his heartbeat quicken, so I know I hit a nerve with that statement. To be honest, I’m surprised he has this much fight left in him, considering the damage he’s taken. This may take more effort than I thought.
“Your boss isn’t the king of this city anymore,” he declares.
Something about the way he says that makes me wonder about his origins. I rake the blade down his other arm. He’s shivering with need now, his veins no doubt screaming for relief. Probably on the verge of blood fever.
“How long have you been in the Clan?”
“L-long enough to know t-true power.”
So he’s not an Outlier. I don’t know if that’s good news or bad. On the one hand, it’s one less piece of shit to get rid of, but that means this Python dick is recruiting people who were once loyal to Dante. That won’t sit right with the big guy.
“So how did you hook up with him?”
“Not another word,” Vamp 1 snarls to his buddy.
I have half a mind to shoot him with the other bolt, but I might need him later. Instead, I drop the knife on the table and snatch up a large corkscrew drill bit. I stalk over to him and shove it into his eye. The ruined eyeball flies across the room when I yank the bit out, splatting against the opposite wall.
“You’ll speak when spoken to,” I warn him when he finally stops screaming. This whole session is giving me a headache. Unfortunately, I know it won’t respond to anything as pedestrian as aspirin. A few hours of sleep in a dark room would do the trick, but first things first.
I turn back to Vamp 2. “Again, how did you and the Python meet?”
When he doesn’t answer right away, I turn back to the table to look for something interesting to stick in his body. He’s already gone as pale as a sheet and his words are slightly slurred and stuttering. If he loses much more blood he’ll pass out and that’ll leave me with his less cooperative buddy.
Instead of sticking him, I settle on pain as a motivator, and pick up a large metal clamp.
“Still feeling rebellious?” I cross the room and squeeze the clamp open and shove it in his gut wound to grab onto his fleshthen release it. He shrieks in pain, calling me some very creative names.
“There’s a simple solution to this,” I offer. “Tell me what I want to know.”
“You’re g-going to k-kill me anyway.”
“True, but how much do you want to suffer first?”
“You t-think you b-belong to the sane choice?” he blubbers. “T-this is exactly why I joined him.”
It takes all my concentration to keep listening to him. “So what does the Python do? Kill people with kindness?”
