Death of an Adept

"You really could do with a shower," she remarked over her shoulder, smiling coldly at him in the mirror as he started at the sound of her voice, "but I doubt you could manage to stand up to take one. That means it's going to be up to me to make you presentable."

Desperate to clear his head, Adam decided to test his voice. "For what?"

Angela paused to cock her head at him in the mirror.

"Why, didn't Francis tell you?" She turned off the water and slung a towel over her shoulder before sauntering back to the other bed to pick up the razor. "You have a starring role in tonight's little drama. I'm afraid we do have a very demanding Patron, but I'm sure you'll be a great success. Unfortunately for you, the production is for one night only."

He closed his eyes and turned his head away, grateful that he could manage even that, his dry throat trying to swallow down his dread. The clatter of her implements being set on the bedside table recalled him from his drifting even as she took hold of his covering and whipped it from his body. Caught off guard, he was unable to keep from flinching at the abrupt exposure.

"You are a fine figure of a man, aren't you?" she murmured as she eyed him up and down. "It really is a pity you haven't had time to father a child on that pretty sloe-eyed bride of yours - or have you, you sly devil? Is that the reason for the rather rushed incipient nuptials?''

Laughing at his tight-jawed silence, she seated herself on the bed beside him and removed his oxygen, then set to work shaving him, taking perverse pleasure in each keen stroke of the blade against his helpless throat.

"I could do it now," she whispered, her lips close beside his ear, the corner of the blade poised against the jugular.

"But you won't," he managed to reply with some conviction. "You dare not cheat your Patron. Not if you hope to survive."

She drew back, her eyes going colder, if that were possible, and the smile faded. She finished shaving him without further comment, her gaze unreadable, then proceeded to wet a fresh towel and rub him down with brisk and impersonal efficiency, loosing his restraints only long enough to turn him when necessary, sparing no part of him. The water in the sink was icy cold by the time she finished, and he found himself shivering despite his determination not to give her that satisfaction, though the cold rubdown did seem to clear his head a little - or perhaps it was the drugs continuing to wear off.

She had just tossed her towel in the sink when the door opened again to admit Mallory, carrying a tray piled with assorted items of an obvious medical nature, pre-packaged in plastic. Adam turned his face away, determined not to give the other physician the satisfaction of a reaction.

"He isn't giving you any trouble, is he?" Mallory asked, chuckling as Angela twitched the quilt back to her victim's waist and turned her back.

"Other than talking too much, no."

"I see."

Still smiling as he set his tray on the other bed, Mallory reached across to thumb shut the clamp on Adam's IV line, then popped open the packaging on a 100 cc syringe and plugged it into a sterile needle.

"You did ask to have him conscious while you prepared him," he said, fumbling at the cannula in Adam's wrist. "That suits me as well. Francis may not think it matters, but I don't like using blood that's tainted with too many drugs - and he's had quite a cocktail. This still won't be clean - but it's better than it will be after I've taken him down again. Will this be enough for you?"

"It ought to be. What about Francis?"

"I'll take care of his order next," Mallory replied.

Adam tried not to react as the young doctor withdrew the syringe, now filled with his blood, and handed it across the bed to Angela. It was harder to ignore the rustle of plastic packaging as Mallory unreeled the line from a plastic blood-collection bag and plugged it into the port from which he had drawn the first measure of blood - a far more serious bloodletting, unfortunately quite in keeping with what Adam imagined of the impending night's work.

"So, how're you doing, Dr. Sinclair?" Mallory asked, turning Adam's face toward him to shine a pocket torch in his eyes. "Hmmm, still pretty dopey, eh?"

He grinned as Adam turned his face away again, turning off the flash and slipping it into the breast pocket of his stylish suit.

"I'll be back to check him in about ten minutes," he said to Angela, before leaving the room.

Angela, meanwhile, had produced another towel, a sable artist's brush, and a small glass bowl from the leather satchel, setting the bowl on the sink while she removed the needle from the syringe and expelled the contents into the bowl. She was smiling a cold, hard smile as she came around to Adam's right again, the brush in one hand and the bowl of his blood in the other. She paused to pull the quilt lower on his loins before sitting again on the bed beside him.