Elyssa's eyes flew open. She flinched. The startled pilot backed up a step, his hand toward her as if he'd tried to shake her awake. "We're here," he said, offering a smile. "I guess you were dreaming."

She sucked in a breath, feeling mortified. "Yeah, I guess so."

"There's a vehicle waiting outside."

Elyssa grabbed her suitcase and descended the stairs to the tarmac. Stifling humidity greeted her in waves as she strode across the worn surface and toward what looked like a helicopter. She knew better. It was probably a slider, tantamount to a magical flying box charmed with illusion to make it look like its mundane counterpart. They didn't use them much in urban locations—at least not during the day. The strict regulations about flying in the city meant any unregistered aircraft were likely to be reported by concerned citizens. The pilot, a tanned man with black hair, sauntered forward and offered his hand.

"I'm Commander Christian Salazar," he said with a light accent she could almost place. "Welcome to hell, recruit."

"Hell?"

He grinned, showing neat white teeth. "We're only a few hours away from some of the worst supernatural scum you'll ever meet. Blood farmers, drug dealers, slavers, you name it, they're down here."

A thrill of excitement spiked Elyssa's adrenalin. Finally, a real challenge. "When do we get started?"

"We've already got an op ready to go, Recruit Borathen. Now that you're here, you'll get to see firsthand what Templars on the fringes have to deal with."

"And where, exactly, are we, anyway?"

He bared his white teeth again. "Colombia."

Chapter 16

I woke up on a muddy concrete floor with a heavy shackle around my leg. A chain ran from it to a thick bolt in the floor. I wiped crusted goo from my eyes and tried to focus on my surroundings, but a thick haze of grogginess beat back my senses and nausea sent a chill shivering through my body. I dry-heaved and banged my forehead against the rough texture of the concrete.

"Ow, ow, ow," I said, rubbing the tender spot and finding blood on my fingers.

Rolling onto my back, I was able to discern a single light bulb on a cracked gray ceiling. Gray concrete walls surrounded me on three sides and thick iron bars gave me the middle finger from the fourth. A depression in the floor revealed itself to be a rusted drain cover the same circumference as a soda can. I rotated with laborious effort to my knees and pushed myself into a kneeling position. The memory of darts sticking from my chest staggered through my brain in a drunken haze. I lifted my shirt and checked for puncture wounds.

Little red dots remained where the darts had struck me, and my muscles felt sore and sluggish. Strange. They should have fully healed by now. And what in the world was in those darts? That dude had pumped three or four into me, probably way more than an ordinary person could handle. He'd looked so confused. Panicked. He couldn't understand why I hadn't dropped from the first dart. In all likelihood, he hadn't known I wasn't quite human.

My hands trembled and another sickening wave of nausea churned its way up my guts and into my throat. Warm liquid trickled on my upper lip as I came up for breath after another round of dry heaves. I touched it and found blood on my fingers. Something was wrong. Really, really, really wrong. I was still bleeding from smacking my head on the concrete and still sore from the darts. Had it been hours since the incident? Days? I had no idea.

I tried to stand and only managed to totter on unsteady feet, hands held out for balance before my butt planted itself on the concrete and pain rocketed up my spine. The shackle dug into my leg, scraping skin already raw from the rough metal. My incubus belly gurgled and complained as my senses fought their way back from oblivion.

My sluggish brain pieced together what was ailing me and why my supernatural healing had gone on hiatus. The sheer volume of drugs pumped into my blood from those darts probably would have killed an elephant. My superhuman ability to quickly recover from trauma had been severely overtaxed, leaving me with almost nothing in the energy banks. As the numbing effect of the tranquilizer wore off, the ache in my stomach grew worse and worse.

I stared past the iron bars and saw another prison cell across from me. Was I in jail? Who in the world was the guy who'd shot me in the first place? I staggered forward, groaning like a zombie, and leaned against the bars, trying to get a good angle to peer at the hallway beyond. More cells lined the wall to my right. On the left, I saw a steel door set in a cinderblock wall. If this was a prison, why did they have shackles in the cell? I had a bad feeling they were about to open a can of third-world whoop-ass on me.

Or maybe they knew what I was. Maybe the guy who took me down was a Templar and I was in one of their holding cells. I touched the shackle, taking in the rough galvanized texture. If this was ordinary iron, it wouldn't hold me, at least not when I was powered up. When Meghan had tied me down so she could use my blood to save Stacey, she'd used something called diamond fiber. Ryland explained later Templars used the stuff because it was virtually indestructible, at least by most supernaturals. If this place were run by Templars, surely they'd use diamond fiber to hold me and not ordinary metal.

The door at the end of the hall creaked and opened. A short Hispanic man in khakis, a yellow T-shirt, and a gun holster strapped over one shoulder walked down the hallway with a tray piled with rice, beans, and what looked like fried plantains. My normal stomach wasn't in the mood for a meal at the moment though my demon blood probed greedily for emotional sustenance. Unfortunately, this guy wasn't giving off a happy vibe or much of anything I could use. It took really strong positive emotions for me to feed off a male, for some reason. Dad hadn't explained everything to me, but he'd mentioned feeding off the same gender required a perfect situation such as extreme happiness or lust, whereas feeding off the opposite gender was child's play.

The man set the tray on the floor outside and pulled out a notepad. "What is your name?" His voice carried a heavy Spanish accent.

I wondered why he asked me something he could easily answer by looking through my wallet or maybe even my phone. Then I remembered I'd left all that in my backpack in Alejandro's truck. "Who are you and where am I? I demand a phone call." Hopefully I could at least get out of the cell long enough to find someone I could feed off of in this police station or whatever it was. Any female would do at this point—even a hooker.

He pressed his foot down on the tray of food, squishing half of it. "You answer, or I step on rest."

I really didn't care about the food, but answered anyway. "My name is Philmore Butts."

He wrote it down. "Give me phone number of family."

Oddly enough, I really couldn't remember my dad's cell number. Why? Because it was programmed into the contacts on my phone. I hadn't manually typed in a number in ages--just like everyone else on the planet. I actually would have gladly given him the digits if only because Dad would probably bust me out of this crap hole. I tried to remember a number, any number, and failed.

"All my numbers are programmed into my cell phone. I don't remember. Why do you want a phone number?"

He scowled and stomped on the rest of the food, splattering it on the floor. "You better remember or no ransom. No ransom, you stay here or maybe we just kill you."

A bell dinged in my head as I realized what sort of situation I was in. I'd read about it on the news, though I mainly heard about stuff like this happening in Mexico. "Are you with a drug cartel?" I mimicked sniffing cocaine off my wrist like I'd seen in the movies.

He jumped up and down on the food then kicked the tray down the hallway, scattering beans and rice everywhere. "Give me number!"

I managed a laugh at his ridiculous antics. "Man, you're right out of a nineteen-eighties action movie."

That comment apparently escaped his brilliant intellect. He stormed away and back through the steel door. Amusement and no small amount of fear at this new conundrum perked my brain from its sluggishness. I took advantage of this newfound clarity, sitting cross-legged on the floor and closing my eyes in concentration. When I reopened them, I let my gaze drop out of focus until I could see the tendril of my parasitic essence drifting in the air. I sent it down the hall, sensing everything along the path and searching for a female or the magnetic draw of hot emotion.

Walls and doors were no obstacle, though my sensitivity dropped like a rock when I overextended. Dad hadn't really taught me about feeding like this, but then again, he probably hadn't expected me to be kidnapped for ransom in a third-world country either. My sense twitched like a wolf's nose. Women were nearby. Unlike men, I could latch onto women in just about any state, or so had been my experience.

But as I strained for that hot, pulsating femininity, I reached the end of my tether and the essence hovered just out of reach, tantalizing, teasing me. I pushed harder and harder. The heat just barely tickled the tip. My tendril snapped back into me like a rubber band. The shock hit like a physical blow and laid me flat on my back, head pounding in agony. Darkness crowded the edges of my vision, threatening to cast me into unconsciousness.

I had only one choice left, terrible as it was, if I were going to escape. I let the agony build into frustration. I pushed that frustration into anger, thinking about the man as he stomped my food. Elyssa was in danger. These people had kidnapped me. They thought they had some weak nom in custody. I'd teach them their mistake. I would make them pay. I pounded the walls with my fists, pulling myself hand-over-hand up the white-hot chain of rage until I hit pure fury. My headache grew in magnitude like metal shards drilling into my skull.

I was going to manifest into my demon form and show these assholes just what hell on Earth felt like. Boney spikes poked from the skin on my brow. Blue flames danced in and out of my vision. My head exploded in a final burst of agony as muscles strained against suddenly tight clothes.

Sometime later, I pushed myself off the filthy concrete floor. Miniature supernovas of blinding torment pulsed in my head. I looked around, confused. The shackle still held my foot. The cell around me remained undamaged. I found two tiny horn nubs on the floor next to me and let out a string of curse words I'd been saving for a rainy day. Either I hadn't had enough juice to manifest, or I just wasn't doing it right. Either way, I felt even weaker than before and my body trembled with hunger.