Blood-Bonded by Force by Tracy Tappan Page B

grunted. Impressive . She herself was fast, but the crumpet was blinding fast.
    He jabbed a hypodermic needle into her arm.
    Oops . Hard cheese for him. Drugs didn’t knock her out, just made her go Rău. Vicious. Powerful. Unbeatable.
    But then…
    The landscape teetered and grew heavy, pushing her lids closed. What the devil …? Well now…Turned out she might be in a bit of a pickle here, after all.

    When next Pändra opened her eyes, she was surrounded by inky blackness and the smell of oil, petrol, and the distinctive aroma of Vârcolac. She heard the steady hum of an engine plus the monotonous whap-whap-whap of rubber tires over asphalt.
    She was in the boot of a car.
    Testing her wrists, she found that her arms were bound behind her back, both with hard plastic spot-ties and metal handcuffs.
    She almost laughed. She’d wanted to find herself some trouble, hadn’t she? Wonder what’s in store ?
    The vehicle slowed, easing forward over a bump, then stopped. The engine shut off, and she tensed, preparing herself for battle. The double whammy of security around her wrists would be a piece of piss for her to break. She just needed more space than this boot provided.
    Helpful to know the vamps had no idea who they were dealing with, though.
    But battle didn’t come.
    A cacophony of peculiar noises started up instead: the slithering whisk of a bicycle chain derailing and the reverberating clank - clank of a wrench hitting a pipe. Then Finn MacCool—the giant from her childhood fairy tales—mumbled in his sleep, the steady mum-mum signaling movement again, this time downward. Down? Right odd, that. She kept herself at the ready, waiting. Seconds ticked into minutes and minutes ticked into a small eternity. Where the feck were they heading? Into Hell itself?
    She had plenty of time to ponder how the crumpet had managed to trank her. Nothing existed that had the super-capabilities of rendering a half-Rău unconscious, not that she knew of. So had she been dosed with an enchanted drug? But none of the Vârcolac possessed the power of enchantment. Did they?
    Finally, with a jolt, they stopped. The bike chain whisked again. The car roared to life and drove slowly forward, maneuvered, then stopped once more. The engine shut off. For good this time, it seemed. Car doors slammed and voices spoke, one sounding urgent. Footsteps pounded off and faded. Keys rattled at the boot.
    Pändra pulled in a long breath, bringing her power into focus.
    As the lid swung upward, she snapped her elbows wide, flinging her bindings off, and exploded out of her confined space like a dynamite-activated Jack In The Box. She landed light on her feet with her fists up.
    The man who’d opened the boot swiftly stepped back and settled into a sure-footed fighting stance, too. He had long, swooping teeth tattoos running the length of his forearms and jet black hair. He was some breed of Om Rău by the look of his black eyes.
    She flew at the man like a deranged character spawned out of Mortal Kombat, a lifetime of martial arts training turning her into a blitzing machine of kicks and punches—spinning back kick, hammer fist, back fist, roundhouse kick, knife hand, elbow strike.
    Her opponent blocked everything, moving as fast as she did.
    Breathing roughly, she large-stepped back out of his striking range and stared at him. Now what? She’d kept him on the defensive the whole time, stopping him from landing any offensive blows, but she hadn’t sorted him out, either. No headway was being made here.
    “You done?” her Om Rău opponent drawled nastily, his voice sounding like it came directly out of Hell.
    Shite, how far down had they traveled into the earth?
    She sensed movement behind her and whirled, planting a brutal fist right into the chops of some dodgy black-haired Vârcolac.
    He stacked it backward onto his arse, then clumped the rest of the way to his spine, completely buggered out. Blood welled up into the chalice of his mouth and gushed