“No, not exactly,” said Gavriel.
Tana shuddered and looked back toward the window and her car with longing. The Thorn of Istra? She’d once seen a late-night special called Piercing the Veil: Vampire Secrets from Before the World Went Cold. On-screen, two guys in tweed jackets talked about their research into how vampires had stayed hidden for so long. Apparently, in the old days, a few ancient vampires held sway over big swaths of territory, like creepy warlords, with more vampires who were basically their servants. Vampires took victims who wouldn’t be missed, killing after every feeding. But if a mistake was made and a victim survived long enough to drink blood, it was a Thorn’s job to hunt down that newly turned vampire and to kill anyone it bit during its short, savage life. Being a Thorn for one of the old vampires seemed to be half a punishment and half an honor.
On the program, the tweedy men had chuckled over how desperate those Thorns must have been once Caspar Morales started his world tour, all of them scrambling to put down an infection that had already spread out of control.
The Thorn of Istra had, apparently, been driven mad by it. The special showed a grainy video of a meeting beneath the Père-Lachaise Cemetery in Paris. And while elegantly dressed vampires conducted business around him, the Thorn had been in a locked cage, his face and body streaked with blood, laughing. He’d laughed even harder when they found the videographer and dragged him up to the cage, howling wildly just before he bit out the man’s throat. She’d seen the expressions on the pale faces of the other vampires. He’d frightened even them.
“The Thorn of Istra’s hunting you?” Tana asked. The thought of the Thorn out of his cage was chilling. “But that’s no problem?”
Gavriel was silent.
Maybe she should leave him. Untie Aidan and get the hell out of there, even if it meant leaving one chained-up vampire to fend off however many were on the other side of the door. Even if it was unfair.
She took a deep breath. “Last chance. Are you in need of rescuing?”
His expression turned very strange, almost as if she’d struck him. “Yes,” he said finally.
Maybe it was that nearly everyone else was dead and she felt a little bit dead, too, but she figured that even a vampire deserved to be saved. Maybe she ought to leave him, but she knew she wasn’t going to.
She walked over to Gavriel, her gaze tracing the configuration of his heavy chains. One was looped around the foot of the bed frame. His wrists had been manacled together in front of him with thick iron cuffs, those chains linked to the ones attached to another pair of cuffs, these on his ankles.
The easiest way to free him would be to lift the bed, something he could probably have done if his arms weren’t restrained, but she wasn’t sure she could do it. She was certain she couldn’t do it with Aidan still lying on the mattress, weighing the whole thing down.
“Do you think you can keep from biting me?” she asked him.
Aidan was silent for a long moment. “I don’t know.”
Well, at least he was being honest.
She grabbed Gavriel’s gag from a heap of things on the floor and climbed onto the edge of the bed. “You’re not so far gone yet. Try,” she told him. Bending down, she tied the cloth around Aidan’s mouth as quickly as she could, double-knotting it on the back of his head so that it would take a while to work free. At least she hoped it would.
He stayed still and let her. When she was done with the gag, she started unhooking the bungee cords restraining his legs. That went fast, at least; there were no knots. It did involve climbing over him in the bed, and despite the fact that he was Cold, despite the fact that they were in danger, Aidan still managed to cock an eyebrow at her and smirk.
She was about to say something quelling when, on his left ankle, she found twin puncture marks with slight bruising around them, the blood itself taking on a bluish tone. She inhaled sharply but didn’t say anything, didn’t touch them. They seemed horribly private.
Then, because there was no way around it, she untied Aidan’s arms. He sat up, pushed himself back against the headboard, and rubbed at his wrists. His chestnut hair hung in his face, tousled, as if he’d just woken up.
Get them in the car, she told herself. Lock them in the trunk, get away, and figure out everything else from there.
“If you try to take off the gag, I’ll hit you with this tire iron,” she warned him, fetching it from the floor and waving it in what she hoped was a menacing way.
Since Aidan couldn’t talk, he made a sound that Tana hoped was agreement.
“Okay, now you’re going to help me detach Gavriel’s chains from the bed,” she said.
Aidan shook his head vigorously.