The Renegade Hunter (27 page)

Yes, it definitely could have been two days, she thought now and then wondered about the defensive tone of Ernie's voice as he'd spoken. It was as if he thought he had to make an excuse for not heading out right away and she might think less of him for having to sleep. She had no idea why he'd care what she thought.

"I don't care," he snapped and then kicked the bed, making it shake violently. Jo presumed it was an effort to wake the girl in the bed, but if so, it failed. The girl moaned, but didn't wake up.

"Goddammit, Dee, wake up," Ernie snarled, bending over the bed to slap her violently across the face. The crack of sound in the room was loud enough that Jo winced in sympathy, but it worked. The girl woke up. She seemed sluggish and a bit out of it, however, and Jo wondered if her lack of body weight really was a result of heroin addiction. The woman Ernie had called Dee moaned in protest as she opened her eyes, a moan that died when she spotted the man bent over her.

"Ernie?" Dee sat up slowly, relief covering her face. "You were gone so long, three days, I thought you'd left me."

"I told you I'd be back," he growled with disgust. As reassurances went, Jo thought it was rather poor indeed, but then if what Ernie had said about not having any interest in sex was true, she wasn't his lover. It left Jo wondering just what this Dee was to him.

"She's dinner... and my servant," Ernie announced, obviously reading the question in her mind. He glanced to Dee.

"Aren't you?"

"Yes, Ernie," she answered almost absently, her eyes full of resentment as they traveled over Jo. Her voice was bitter when she asked, "Who is she? My replacement?"

"She's for my father," Ernie said shortly. "Now get up and make yourself useful. Have you eaten since I left?"

"Yes. Three meals a day as you ordered," she said quickly, slipping her feet off the bed to get up. "And I've been taking the IV blood too. A bag a day even though you weren't here."

"Good, order something else now, I'll be hungry when I wake up and you're no good to me if you're too weak to drive after I feed."

Dee nodded and moved to the phone beside him to begin punching in numbers... which told Jo they'd been staying here long enough for the girl to memorize the number of the local delivery places, but she had other things on her mind.

Turning on him with disbelief, she asked, "You have her take transfusions and then feed off of her? Why don't you just drink the bagged blood and leave her alone?"

"I don't like cold food," he said, glaring at her. "Be glad I'm not feeding on you."

"Why aren't you?" she asked at once.

"Would you give a dinged-up gift to your father?" he asked dryly.

Jo grimaced. She supposed she should be grateful, but it was hard to be grateful that he wasn't going to hurt her before he handed her over to his father to do what he would.

Ernie glanced to Dee as she placed her order. He frowned as she ordered a calzone with a side salad and then said, "Make sure it's enough for two." When the girl glanced at him in question, his eyes narrowed. "Don't question me, order it. She's eating too."

Jo glanced to him with surprise at the comment. She hadn't expected him to bother.

"Even a condemned prisoner gets a last meal," he muttered. "I'm not an ogre."

"Forgive me," Jo murmured dryly as Dee hung up the phone. "But you're hoping to buy your father's affections like a John buys a prostitute's favors by giving me to him... knowing he'll kill me. I just assumed you were a bastard."

Ernie's eyes narrowed, a growl issuing from his throat, and then he suddenly turned and grabbed Dee by the hair at the nape of her neck, yanked her head back, and sank his teeth into her throat with a violence that made Dee cry out in pain.

Jo tried to turn guiltily away, knowing the woman's unnecessary suffering was her fault for angering Ernie, but he'd taken control of her body again and she couldn't move. Her eyes wouldn't close either when she tried. He wanted her to watch what she'd brought about and she gave in with resignation, knowing it was little more than she deserved for angering him and causing it in the first place. It seemed since he didn't want to take a

"dinged-up gift" to his father, Dee was

going to pay for any temper she stirred in him.

Ernie removed his teeth and whirled to glare at Jo. "This time," he snarled, blood coating his teeth and rimming his mouth. "She paid for you this time. But bear in mind that my father doesn't know about his gift, and I can always drain you dry and go after Nicholas or one of the other girls to give to Father should you push me too far."

Jo's gaze slid to Dee. Ernie was still holding her head back by the hair at what appeared to be a painful angle. It left her wound exposed, and Jo swallowed as she peered at the ragged, angry-looking bite mark. In his anger, he hadn't just punctured her neck, he'd torn it somewhat, and the two wounds were seeping blood.

Ernie glanced back to Dee and released her abruptly, snapping, "Take care of your neck."

Dee stumbled a couple of steps and then caught herself and moved into the bathroom. The moment the door closed behind her, Ernie turned back to Jo, and she found herself walking to the small two-person table and chairs beside the bed. She heard a drawer open and close behind her, and when her body sat down in the chair in the corner without her input, Ernie was walking toward her, rope in hand.

"Just so you don't get any ideas about trying to escape while I sleep," he commented, moving behind her chair, and jerking her arms back painfully to tie her wrists together. "I'm afraid if you did try to escape, Dee would probably club you over the head and kill you. She doesn't like you," he confided, seeming amused.

Jo didn't have to ask how he knew that. She supposed he'd read it in Dee's thoughts, and said through gritted teeth, "She doesn't know me."

"She's jealous," he said with amusement as he jerked on the rope, tightening it painfully around her wrists. "She wants me to turn her and she's afraid you might be a threat to that."

"So tell her I'm not a threat," Jo suggested as he finished with her wrists and moved to work on her ankles, binding them together now as well.

"Why?" Ernie asked, and seemed truly surprised at the suggestion. "I'm her master. I do what I want and she has to accept that whether she likes it or not. As will you." He finished with her ankles and stood to survey her with displeasure.

"Nicholas should have made you aware of your status. You are inferior. We feed on you, milking you like the cows you are. We can control you, make you do anything we want. We are faster, smarter, stronger... we are superior."

"If you're so superior, why do you run around with greasy hair and in filthy clothes?" she asked dryly.

"Because I can," he said coldly. "I do what I want."

Jo stared at him, the thought running through her mind that she was in the hands of a very dangerous, snot-nosed, spoiled, petulant, little pissant. She supposed she shouldn't have been surprised at the fury that suddenly covered his face. But after a lifetime where her thoughts had always been her own and private, it was hard to remember that this was no longer true and he could read her mind. When his hands balled into fists and one raised, Jo steeled herself for the blow about to come, wondering if she would make it to Ernie's father or die here in this room. A moment passed, but no blow fell, and Jo opened her eyes warily to find the hand back at his side and relaxed. The man was even smiling.

"I'm not going to kill you," he said calmly. "I'll leave that to my father."

Jo forced the tension from her muscles and merely peered at him, thinking it really made no difference. Here now, or later at his father's hands. It was all the same. Dead was dead.

"Oh no, it's not the same," Ernie assured her solemnly, picking up on her thoughts. "My killing you would be a mercy. My father will cut you to pieces as slowly and painfully as he can. He's a nofanger."

"You say that like I should know what it is," she said with false indifference.

"Don't you?" he asked with surprise.

Jo shook her head.

Ernie frowned, and then apparently deciding she wouldn't be sufficiently scared if she didn't know what she was in for, he explained, "Nofangers are immortals without fangs, a result of the first trials with nanos. One in three don't survive the turn and those who do... well." He smiled cruelly. "Half of them come up mad and mean and completely unfeeling. They keep mortals like the cattle they are and slice and dice them whenever they want a meal."

"And your father is one?" Jo asked slowly.

"Oh yes. He's the oldest nofanger known to be alive." Ernie said with what sounded like pride and not a little glee, and then added, "And the older they are, the more powerful and cruel they are."

Jo considered that and then tilted her head and asked, "But you're not a nofanger?"

"No," he muttered, some of his glee waning.

"Why not?" she asked. "If your father is nofanger, surely you-"

"My mother was immortal."

"So if the mother is immortal and the father is nofanger, the baby can come out immortal or nofanger?" she asked curiously.

"The baby will always come out whatever the mother is," he said with disgust. "The father only ever passes the sperm.

The blood makes the baby. If the mother's immortal, the baby's immortal, if the mother is nofanger, the baby is nofanger.

My mother was immortal, so I was too," he muttered.

"You don't sound too happy about that," she pointed out quietly.

Ernie shrugged, but then scowled and said, "Why should I be? Most immortals are weak and softhearted like Lucian and his gang. They protect mortals rather than farm them as we should. They give us all a bad name," he added with disgust.

The bathroom door opened then and Dee came back out. Jo tried to twist in her seat to see her, but Ernie hardly glanced her way, merely turning on his heel and moving to the bed.

"Feed her when the food comes," he ordered, dropping to lie on the bed.

"And make sure she doesn't get away. Wake

me when night falls."

Ernie closed his eyes and completely relaxed, seeming to drop off to sleep at once, and then Dee moved into view beside Jo. The girl was looking toward Ernie, watching as his breathing became slow and steady, but Jo was looking at the girl's throat. All there was to see was a large, neat bandage covering the wound on her neck, and then the girl turned to look at her. If Ernie hadn't already told her Dee didn't like her, the look she gave Jo then would have told her so. Dee's eyes were lasers of hatred, slicing her to ribbons.

"He's mine," Dee hissed, glaring at her.

"You're welcome to him," Jo said solemnly, keeping her voice low. "In fact, if you want to untie me, I'll happily get out of here."

Dee hesitated, and Jo felt a moment's hope, and then Dee glanced to Ernie.

Jo did as well, her heart sinking when she

saw that his eyes were open and focused on them.

"If she escapes, you die, Dee," he said calmly, and then closed his eyes again.

Dee's breath hissed out and she scowled at Jo and then moved to the dresser, opened the top drawer, and retrieved something. It wasn't until she turned and headed back to the table that Jo saw it was a gun. She watched the other woman drop into the seat across from her and set the gun on the table. Jo stared at what to her appeared to be a very large gun barrel pointing in her direction, and then glanced to Dee and asked, "Yours?"

"Mine now," Dee said defiantly, and picked it back up to examine it briefly as she said, "We got it off a cop on the way out of Texas. He stopped us for speeding."

"You don't sound like you're from Texas," Jo said quietly.

"I'm not. I'm from here." She set the gun down again. "We were just passing through Texas on the way back to Canada."

"And the policeman you took the gun from?" Jo asked.

"He won't need it anymore," Dee said with a shrug, and then added defiantly, "He was an arrogant prick anyway. He shouldn't have insulted Ernie."

"Right," Jo said on a sigh, trying not to imagine some poor police officer stopping a car on a lonely road at night, never knowing it would be the last car he'd stop. Forcing the image away, she asked, "So how did you end up traveling through Texas with Ernie if you're from here?"

"His father took me south," she muttered.

Jo felt herself tense. Ernie's father was who she was being taken to, and it did seem smart to learn all she could about him. "Why did he take you south? What's he like?"

"He's crazy mean," Dee said quietly, beginning to rotate the gun slowly on the table. "He and a couple of his sons showed up at our farm earlier in the summer."

Jo blinked in surprise, not at the news that Ernie's father and his brothers had shown up at Dee's farm, but that she actually came from a farm. With her piercings and dress, Jo would have guessed she was a city girl.

"They came in the middle of the night, killed my father, kept cutting and feeding on my mother, sisters, and me for a couple days, and then they killed my mother and two of my sisters and took my younger sister and me and headed south. They fed on just the two of us on the journey, occasionally dragging in another person to feed on. Usually a girl.

They seem to prefer girls, but then probably because they didn't always just use us to feed on. Ernie's father mostly left us alone except to bleed us, but his brothers..." She swallowed and shuddered. "They liked to do other things too."

Jo didn't need her to spell out what those other things were. Ernie had said some of his brothers weren't past the sex stage. She could figure it out. "I'm sorry," she said quietly. "It must have been awful."

"It was," she said in a vulnerable voice that made her seem much younger than Jo had at first thought she was, and then she suddenly straightened and sounded much stronger as she said, "But then we got to Ernie's place."

"Where was that?" Jo asked, but Dee shrugged.

"I was pretty weak the last leg of the trip. I slept a lot when they weren't bothering me. All I know is I'm pretty sure it