Not so damn helpless.
But instead of finishing me off, Benson gave me a pleased smile. “You know, Gin, I was rather disappointed when you showed up on the bridge and even more so when I realized that you’d managed to get your sister and her witness to safety after all.”
I kept my face blank, even as my heart lifted at his words. His men hadn’t found Bria and Catalina. With any luck, they’d made it to Xavier, and the giant had driven them far, far away.
“But then I realized that this small setback didn’t matter,” Benson continued. “Not really. After all, I can always find and kill them later. They won’t be able to hide for long. Not in Ashland, not from me.”
That was all too true, and it was one of the many reasons that I needed to figure some way to get out of this chair. Or at least make sure that Benson was bleeding out before I took my last breath. Too bad I had no idea how to make either one of those things happen.
“But then, when my men captured you, I realized what a unique opportunity I had been presented with,” he continued.
“Oh, really?” I drawled. “And what would that be?”
“To further my studies.”
A chill slithered up my spine. “Studies? What studies?”
Benson straightened back up and swept his hand out to the side. “My observations on human nature, life, and especially death.”
For the first time, I realized that my chair was facing the wall in the front of the room—a wall made out of one-way glass.
People sprawled on couches and pillows. Smoke spiraling up into the air. The ceiling fans spinning around and around. I could see into the drug den next door as clearly as if I were in the other room, although I couldn’t hear any noise coming from that area. This room, maybe both of them, must be soundproof.
“Is that why you have all these people down here in your dungeon?” I asked. “So you can drug them up and experiment on them?”
“Of course.” Benson beamed. “Like any good businessman, I have to keep on top of current market trends to meet customer demand. Have to keep growing, changing, and . . . innovating. I wouldn’t want my products to get stale. That’s when sales start to dip, and well, we just can’t have that. Not these days, when there’s such a nasty power struggle going on in Ashland.”
I gave him another disgusted look. “You mean you have to keep coming up with new poisons to push on people to keep the cash rolling in.”
He chuckled. “Ah, Gin. That’s where you’re wrong. I don’t push anything on anyone. The first hit is always free.”
“Yeah,” I snarked. “It’s all the others they pay the price for.”
He shrugged. It didn’t matter to him what his drugs did to people—only that he profited as much as he could from their pain and suffering.
“Tell me, how many of those folks are on your newest recreational hit? What’s it called? Oh, yeah. Burn.”
“Quite a few,” he said in a cheerful tone. “It’s been quite popular, more popular than I thought it would be, actually. I’ve made a tidy little sum on it, although not as much as I would have liked, since I’ve had to import it from out of town.”
He gestured at the metal table. The glass vials with their cheery red, orange, and yellow powders reminded me of sugar sticks that kids might eat.
“But I’m reverse-engineering the formula, and I’ve almost got it, except for one small component. It’s always more profitable to make products in-house, rather than contracting them out.”
Benson kept staring at me, and I focused on him again. Maybe he thought that he could intimidate me with his steady gaze and faint smile. Please. If I got upset every time someone looked at me that way, I’d never get out of bed in the morning.
“You are amazingly calm,” he said. “Your heartbeat has barely spiked this whole time, not even while you were attacking my man. It’s fascinating, really, considering the situation you’re in.”
“And what situation would that be?”
He grinned, showing me his fangs. “In my mansion. In my lab. At my mercy.”
I matched his toothy smile with one of my own. “I imagine that you’re rather like me in that mercy isn’t exactly a popular word in your vocabulary.”
His grin widened, and we fell into our silent staring contest again. Silvio stood off to my right, his hands clasped in front of his body, watching Benson and me watch each other, patiently waiting for his boss’s next order.
“I find it interesting that you can be so very calm,” Benson said. “But your disposition is exactly what I’ve been looking for to conduct my latest experiment. It involves Burn. You’re going to help me test out a theory I have about it.”
My stomach twisted at the casual way he said experiment, but I forced my gaze to stay on his. “Really? What’s that?”
Excitement flared in Benson’s eyes, making them gleam an electric blue behind his glasses. “Burn is one of the most potent drugs I’ve ever come across. It gives everyone an incredible high—humans, vampires, giants, dwarves. But it seems to affect elementals the most, and the stronger they are, the harder and faster Burn works on them.”
That was more or less what Bria and Xavier had told me the night Troy had been murdered.
“Because elementals have such an unusual reaction to Burn, it’s easier to hook them on it, and they crave it more than any drug I’ve ever seen before,” Benson said. “I’ve made more money selling Burn than I have with any other product I’ve ever produced, including oxy and meth. We’re talking millions, Gin. And that’s just in the few months that it’s been available.”
“So that’s why you want to reverse-engineer it,” I said. “You want to cut out your supplier and make it yourself so you don’t have to share any of the profits.”
“That’s part of it,” he admitted. “But this drug? It’s going to help me finally take my rightful place in this town.”
“And what would that be?”
He scoffed. “Pushing pills to bums, hookers, and gangbangers in Southtown is one thing. But I want to move up to a higher level of clientele. Northtown is where the real money is. Why, just think how much cash I can make getting all those rich Northtown elementals hooked on Burn. I’ll make more money in six months than I would in ten years with my normal products in Southtown. Mab kept me locked away down here for years. Well, now that she’s gone, I plan to take what I’ve wanted all along.”