Chapter 6

A loud, droning sound assaulted her ears, bringing back memories of the personnel carriers that traveled back and forth from the storage depots of New Eden to the great ship parked in the center of that hollow, little world.

Her body still tingled from the violent destruction of her sexual organs after Jake had raped her, as she lay helpless and broken on the ground. She felt fresh and renewed. A frigid wind whipped briskly across her naked body and up through her hair. For some reason, though, she couldn't move her arms. 'I must still be half-asleep... '

She opened her eyes. The world fell away a mile beneath her into bleak and utter darkness! On the horizon beneath her feet were thousands of lights, slowly getting closer. 'My feet are tied together! I'm in some kind of net! My arms are tied behind me! My wings ... Oh, God! My wings... '

Her wings were wrapped and folded unnaturally behind her, caught as her captors rolled her up in the netting that was binding her. 'Oh, God ... They're still broken... '

Beth closed her eyes against the dizzying display of lights that were now passing beneath her. She figured out she was tied to the bottom of some kind of aircraft. 'These must be the people who made me sick at Tanya's apartment. How did they catch me way out here?'

She was still a little angry about being poisoned while she was asleep. The fact that someone was probably spying on her while she and Jake were playing their sex games made her even more angry. 'They're just going to keep coming back and pestering me until I convince them not to. What could they possibly want with me, anyway?'

She decided to stick around and find out. The two in the aircraft were just hired help, not really understanding what they had captured. She could feel it in their minds. 'They're just lackeys. They do what they're told and they get rewarded with the comforts of life.'

Beth looked at the image of where they were taking her. Somebody called 'the Chief' was going to meet them and take over their 'package'. 'That means me... ' Then they were expected to rest for the remainder of the night before they returned to spy on Jake's cabin!

'That's how they caught me! It's a good thing they didn't go after Béla while she was alone. They might've hurt her baby before she killed them!'

Beth nervously watched the landing pad rushing up toward her and mind-linked with the female pilot so she could tell what was going to happen. Then the noisy little craft was on the ground and the rotors were shut down. The pair climbed out of the craft and, one at each end, unhooked the netting containing her. A third man was driving a platform out to meet them. Beth was tossed unceremoniously onto the platform as it arrived beside the little craft. It took a lot of effort not to grunt or cry out as she landed. 'They think I'm dead, after all ... No reason to upset them with reality.'

The ride across the asphalt was slow and bumpy. Beth had landed face down and couldn't see where she was going. She closed her eyes, putting her body to sleep, and dream-walked out, looking around carefully.

'There's a large door in the side of a building. Wow! The door is the size of the entire building! My body's being moved into a metal wagon ... oh. A truck; he calls it.'

She raided the mind of the driver to find out where they were taking her. It was a place called Evan Stephen Hospital and Institute for Genetic Research. The trip would take about fifteen minutes. The package, 'that's me, ' would be taken deep underground to a secret research facility, 'whatever that is. My God! They plan to carve me up into little pieces!'

She woke up and tried to get her wings loose. They were still painfully broken and still wrapped up, folded unnaturally into the netting she was wrapped in. 'Okay, I'll just have to kill them all!'

Beth didn't even consider trying to escape. People who hunted other people rarely gave up unless they themselves were incapacitated or killed. Escape would mean that Béla and Jake would still be in danger. 'After I take care of this little nest of vipers, I'll go after those guys that are spying on us!'

The truck braked to a halt. Beth lay still while the rear door was opened and the netting containing her was dragged back to where she could be lifted out. She could feel the minds of the people around her. There were two people that alarmed her. One could only be 'the Chief'. The other was a doctor/scientist.

At least, that's what he believed himself to be. As Beth raided his mind, she realized that the doctor was certain that he was the only living being in the entire universe who mattered and that everyone else existed either to torment him or was there for him to experiment on.

The excitement of those two as she was carefully unwrapped increased dramatically as more of her body was revealed.

"I thought this creature was supposed to have been shot to death with a projectile weapon," she heard one say. "There doesn't seem to be much tissue damage..."

"If this ... bird girl ... is supposed to be dead, why is she still warm?" one of her handlers asked.

There were a few seconds of silence, then Beth opened her eyes and tried to get out of the way. If her arms, (my wings!) had been healed and didn't get snagged in the netting, she might have been fast enough...

The hiss of a needle gun was the last thing she heard.

Jake Hedron was looking at the tiny image of 'Grandpa Frank' as his words filtered through the fifteen national security problems he was already dealing with and impacted against his mind.

Three days ago, the vampire Beth disappeared into the mountains near his namesake's cabin. The other (original) vampire girl, Béla, was pregnant and her pregnancy was disrupting her (powers?) and her natural ability to detect her sister's location. (Well, telepathic messaging between twins has already been proven, so, it's possible she isn't a sham... )

" ... and Grandma has determined that Beth was abducted by the same people that bugged our apartment and drugged Beth before. It's likely that they were watching Uncle J ... your father's cabin and followed them into the mountains. Your grandmother's rarely wrong about stuff like that. Her intuition is why our own business has been so successful all these years, you know.

"With the scenarios we've come up with, we've determined that Beth is either too drugged to escape, or she's ... Well, we're hoping that's the case."

"Well, Gramps, I've been keeping Chief Blacker on a tight leash and monitoring all his reports, but his reports are suspiciously overdue, right now. In fact, I was going to inquire into his slacking on that subject, but now, it's obvious why he hasn't contacted me. If that is the case and he has her, I'll find out in the next twenty-four hours, maybe even less. I'll be in Albuquerque by late evening."

Frank smiled nervously and signed off. Frank didn't like bringing his grandson in on what should be a private case, but this was also a family matter. Beth was Béla's sister, and Béla was the reason why the Tabors were who they were.