Wow, my mind is sharp as a diamond. No wonder I couldn’t solve the case earlier. After months of sleep deprivation, I was a shadow of myself. I resist the urge to smack my forehead. Why did it take me so long to kick vampire blood? Given my work with insomniacs, I know better than anyone that lack of sleep can lead to impaired thinking, memory problems, and eventually even death.
Here’s how bad my memory had become: I’d forgotten about my lockpicks. I still have them in my pocket from when I broke into Bernard’s apartment. My hand slaps my pocket—yep, still there. I dash over to the rusty padlock on the door of my cell.
Oh yeah, I can handle this. Hopefully.
The lock puts up a small fight but eventually yields. I slide open the bolt on my side and open the cell door. Now what?
If I’d done this before I realized Hekima was the murderer, I would’ve had to escape from a heavily guarded castle and elude Enforcer vampires for the rest of my life—a venture with almost zero chance of success. But now, armed with my new discovery, I only need to locate someone from the Council and tell them what I know.
Assuming Hekima doesn’t stop me.
And assuming they believe me.
Still, better chance now than before.
I take a dozen hurried steps down the corridor before Filth rounds the corner, beady eyes locking onto me.
Puck. The last thing I need.
“I figured out who’s been killing the Councilors,” I say quickly. “It’s Hekima. He—”
“Don’t care.” Filth smiles nastily, and his eyes turn into mirrors as his voice shifts to glamour mode. “Freeze, stupid blood bag.”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
I wriggle my toes inside my shoes. I was right—they’re wriggling away. His glamour didn’t work. The vampire blood has left my system and my resistance to glamour is back—or Filth simply isn’t as powerful as Kain when it comes to penetrating my defenses.
I pretend like I am frozen, though, and frantically ponder my next move.
Filth takes a syringe out of his pocket. “I’ve been designated as your executioner. The Council wants me to provide you with a choice between euthanasia”—he waves the syringe in the air—“or starvation.” He nods at the room behind me.
Inside my chest, my heart is jackrabbiting, but I do my best to keep my face placid, as if frozen by glamour.
“I’ll simplify it for you, though.” He turns the syringe needle downward and presses the plunger until all the poison is on the floor. “I’ll drink you dry, then toss your body out for Nessie to munch on. As far as the Council is concerned, you opted for starvation and then proved dumb enough to try to escape via the sewers.”
He’s thought this through. Anyone who doesn’t know me well might even believe him—never mind that I’d sooner starve a hundred times before I’d jump into that excuse for a toilet… even if there weren’t a monster lurking in the sewers.
Filth stalks toward me.
I furtively position the lockpicks to stick out of my fist and wait for my moment. This is a vampire, and no martial arts training can overcome the fact that even a skinny, weaselly specimen like him is ten times stronger than I am, and impossibly fast. The element of surprise is my only hope—and a faint one, if I’m honest with myself.
“I could command you not to feel anything,” he says when he’s within striking distance, “but I won’t. This will hurt.”
He’s right. It will hurt.
Him.
Without warning, I smash my fist into his face. With a disgustingly squishy sound, the lockpicks enter his right eye.
He staggers back, roaring in pain. I fight the urge to heave, and kick him in the groin. He roars again and strikes me with the back of his hand. My head jerks sideways, and stars explode in my vision.
He throws a punch at my jaw. I somehow dodge it, moving purely on autopilot. By now, I’ve recovered enough to hit him, only he moves preternaturally fast and I miss. Before I can block, his elbow crashes into my midsection. My solar plexus explodes in pain, and I bend over, wheezing.
He grabs me by my shirt and effortlessly tosses me into the air. As I fly through the hallway, I spot a ray of hope down the corridor.
Thud. I crash into the iron bars with my back, and the two molecules of oxygen left in my lungs escape with a whoosh. The pain tries to drag me into unconsciousness, but I fight it with my whole being. I need to stall in case that ray of hope wasn’t a hallucination of my rattled brain.
Gulping in greedy breaths, I look up at Filth pleadingly and raise my hand as if I need to say something.
He doesn’t look like he wants to talk. His eye hasn’t healed. Some vamps have better recuperation abilities than others, and his is clearly on the lower end of the spectrum.