Page 32 of Kiss Across the Universe
Alannah realized she was crying. It wasn’t because she wascryingcrying. The tears fell on their own. All she felt was fury at her own uselessness. Her parents would have figured a way out of this five minutes ago. She was helpless to stop the man from tying her down.
He gripped one of her wrists and yanked it down to the front edge of the chair and tied it with the tape, then sliced the tape around her arms, grabbed her other wrist before she could recover from the screaming relief and agony flaring through her freed arms, and taped it down, too.
She was immobilized.
Alannah looked at the man and hatred speared through her like hot acid. She still had no idea who he was or what he wanted with her. Right at that moment, she didn’t care.
He moved to the closet and removed a bag from it. Or perhaps it was a case. It was hard to tell. It was made of a material that looked like fabric, but the bag had structure that made her think of cases.
The man touched what Alannah had thought was a zipper on the top of the case. Her eyes grew larger as the zipper-thing opened like a budding flower. She’d never seen a suitcase like it before.
Then he began to pull out the things inside it and, suddenly, Alannah did care very much about what he wanted with her. She stared at the things he laid carefully on the bed.
A small black box, with absolutely nothing protruding or written on it that told Alannah what it could be. It was twice the size of an earbud box, but didn’t look like it opened, or had a switch. It was just blank, and black. Anonymous.
The biggest object to come out of the case was a small flesh-colored box about the size of a pint milk carton, but slimmer. It had what Alannah thought were types of controls on the top of it. The remaining items were…well, she’d never seen anything like these things before, except that they reminded her in a way she didn’t understand of the trays of surgical instruments inFar’s surgery. And Alex’s. Silvered metal, delicate and precisely engineered. But this man was handling them like they were all sledge hammers.
He tapped the controls on the flesh-colored box and ran his finger down a dark panel beside them, then flipped the unit over. The other side had a narrow opening along the length of it and as he flipped it, multiple slender metal fingers shot out of it and stuck up in the air, making the box look like a hedgehog with a mohawk. They were slightly larger than the needlesFarcalled insulin syringes, and a bit longer than one, too.
Alannah stared at the multiple metallic points, her heart unsteady.
The man picked up his switchblade once more and moved toward her. Panic made her thoughts buzz incoherently. She couldn’t think of what to do. She could only sit there, the fear gripping her throat and cutting off her breath. She was dizzy…
He moved around behind her, which was even worse. Alannah moaned, the sound muffled.
He gripped the back of her head and pushed it forward, forcing her chin down to her chest. He yanked her hair aside. Cold metal touched the back of her neck and Alannah cried out, a wordless, incoherent sound that vibrated against the tape over her mouth.
He gripped the neck of her tunic top, and sliced through it with the knife.
Alannah fought to stay conscious. She had to focus on her breathing, on staying calm, so she could breathe in enough air through her nose. Her mind careened.
The man tore the back of her top open almost to her waist. Then he ran his fingers up her spine.
There was a firmness and disinterest in his touch that told her this was anything but sexual.
He pressed against the protruding vertebrae at the top of her spine and made a sound of approval. Then he moved over to the bed and picked up the flesh-colored box with its silver needles. He touched the controls and the needles all retracted with a sharp metallic sound that made Alannah think of microscopic swords being shoved back into their scabbards.
She stared at the flesh colored box, suspicion turning into horror. Was he going to put that thing on her? On her spine?
Were those multiple needles supposed to gointoher?
Alannah fought to breathe, to stay on top of her panic, to keep her cool.Losing your head won’t help you when the shit hits the fan. Brody’s voice, lilting with amusement, while he stood at ease at the edge of the dojo, a three-quarter staff in hand, while Alannah tried to pick herself up off the mat, her own staff far out of reach.
The man held the box in one hand and delved into the suitcase with the other. He bent and peered into it, searching with his hand, his expression turning slowly to irritation.
Then he tossed the box back on the bed and muttered something that Alannah knew for sure was some sort of curse in his very strange language. He swore a few more times as he pulled a light jacket out of the closet and put it on, patted the pocket so that it jingled, then glared at her.
“I will be back in five minutes, which is not nearly long enough for you to work the tape loose, even if you could. Save your energy. You will need it.”
He didn’t slam the door behind him, but the lock thudding home made her jump, anyway.
Alannah stared at the flesh-colored box, her horror building. She knew, now, what would happen when he got back. He needed something to apply that box to her back. She didn’t know what. It didn’t matter. He’d gone to find the something he needed, and when he got back…
What did the box do? That was an unanswerable question right now. And it didn’t matter. She had no intention of letting him put that thing on her.
That was when she started working on the tape, trying to stretch it or tear it. She strained her arms and ankles, twisting them into positions that pulled on the tape, and holding them there while the tape grew taut.
He’d wound the tape around each limb at least five times. Alannah closed her mind to how impossible that would make it to tear the tape apart. Or even stretch it so that it was loose enough to pull her feet and hands through. There was nothing else she could do here. She didn’t have vampire strength, and she couldn’t jump….
