by Sierra Dean
“That’s enough.”
“I know. You’re not the only one who can see other people’s secrets, Doctor.”
He got to his feet slowly and came around the table so he was standing behind me. I knew I’d made a mistake the moment his hands rested on my shoulders. I shouldn’t have played the Peyton card, shouldn’t have let him know what I knew.
His fingers grazed the sharp points of my collarbones, pressing into the skin, making me aware of how little protection there was between the surface and the bone.
“Put your hands on the table, please.”
I didn’t want to. I held them in my lap, fingers trembling, wondering if an apology would work.
“Put your hands on the table,” he repeated, and this time he didn’t say please, stripping away any illusion it had been a request rather than a command.
I did as I was told, putting my hands palm down on the smooth linen tablecloth.
“Let me tell you some things I have learned over the thirty years I have been studying. Would you like that?”
No. “Okay.”
“I have learned a werewolf confined to a small space during the full moon will not survive a shift. I kept one in a very tiny box once, and she became irreversibly deformed. Perhaps she and her wolf fought for supremacy over her body. Neither of them won.”
He kneaded my shoulders, his deft fingers avoiding interaction with the collar yet somehow reminding me it was there.
“I’ve learned what happens to a vampire if you lace their blood supply with silver. They quite literally melt from in the inside out. It’s quite grotesque.”
Sliding his hands lower on my arm, he stooped closer, pressing his lips against my ear. His breath was warm, but the words chilled me when he whispered, “Do you know what I’ve done with your vampires?”
“You said you’d take me to Holden.”
“All in good time.”
He stood straight again, his chest solid against the back of my head. “I want to tell you one other thing I’ve learned first. For the average vampire, it takes about forty minutes to an hour. The typical werewolf…a little over a day.”
“What?”
He lifted my right arm off the table with such delicacy for a moment I thought he was going to kiss my hand. Then he squeezed my wrist and braced his other hand against my shoulder. When he bent my arm backwards at the elbow, I still didn’t believe what he was doing.
The bone snapped, and I screamed, falling out of my chair, trying to wrench my arm free of his grasp, but he held firm, giving my elbow an extra twist to drive home the pain.
I saw nothing but white spots, my hearing went hollow, just buzzing noise to blot out the sound of my own screaming, but through the haze I heard him say, “I wonder how long it will take for you to heal a broken bone.”
Chapter Thirty-One
After he dragged me to my feet and I finally caught my breath, The Doctor outfitted me with a makeshift sling he constructed from a torn dinner napkin. He tied it around my neck with such tenderness I was agog.
He was careful not to touch my elbow, but he’d had to bend it back the right direction—which hurt as much as the initial break—and when he was done, he patted my cheek. “There we go. You’ll be good as new.”
Using the napkin from his place setting, he blotted my cheeks, inspecting the white cloth when it came away pink.
“Interesting.”
Vampires cried blood. Werewolves cried tears. Mine met somewhere in the middle.
“Are you ready to see your friends now?”
I was ready to die. Ready to sit down in the middle of the floor and tell him to get it over with. Instead of yielding, though, I nodded. Even the tension of such a small movement sent sparks through my broken arm, making me feel like the whole limb was on fire.
Something nagged at me. If I was going to see Holden, was that the last piece in Calliope’s prediction for my death? I’d believed I couldn’t die here because I was meant to die next to someone I loved. But wherever The Doctor was taking me, I’d be with a man I loved.
I was going to die.
I was going to die.
The stark, chilling reality of that slammed into me, and I was torn between needing to see Holden and wanting to avoid him so I could live a little longer.
But live how? This wasn’t living. I was nine days into my captivity and wondered what else this man could conceive of doing to me if I stayed longer. How many more tests were there? How long did his average subject last?
I didn’t think I could manage another day, let alone another week. Or a month. He would cut me just to watch me bleed, break me just to watch me heal. There was nothing outside the realm of possibility, but my imagination could only take me so far before my brain stopped it. There were things he could do I couldn’t think of because my brain considered them too horrible.
If I couldn’t imagine them, how was I going to survive them?
“I want to see him.” Fuck it. If I was going to die, I wanted to see Holden again. I’d rather die next to a lover than die alone with this psycho.
“Very good. And you let me know how that arm is healing, won’t you? I’m interested to see how you do.”
So many doors.
It was what struck me first as we walked down a nondescript hallway with dim lighting, not unlike that from Sutherland’s dream. With the exception of how plain these doors were, it was startlingly close to what he’d shown me in his mind.
Was he in one of these rooms?
Or was The Doctor already done with him?
When I’d been removed from my cell the previous evening, there were no other rooms between mine and the space I’d been moved to. I was being kept apart from the others. Did he know about our ability to communicate mentally? Had he somehow been blocking any form of psychic communication?
If he’d been studying vampires for thirty years, I found it hard to believe such a juicy tidbit would have escaped his attention, so it wasn’t surprising to think he’d found a way to put a damper on my connection with Holden.
We stopped in front of an unmarked gray door. There was nothing to distinguish it from the dozens of others, no window to show which occupant was held within, yet he knew.
On the wall next to each of the doors was a black square, and The Doctor withdrew a plain white keycard from his jacket pocket and tapped it on the black box. A red light changed to green, and the bolts of the door clicked to signal their release.
“After you, my dear.”
I pulled on the exterior handle, my broken arm protesting the effort, making me wince with pain. Every movement—no matter how small—reverberated through my broken limb, amplifying the pain to new levels.
A hissing sound accompanied the opening of the door, like the air pressure inside the rooms was different. I recalled how warm the hallway air had felt whenever someone would enter my cell, and was greeted with a chilly blast when I stepped inside Holden’s room.
The vampires were being stored at meat-locker temperatures.
The room was dark, with only the light of the hallway helping guide my way. At first I thought I’d been tricked and I was being taken to an empty cell to be starved all over again, until I saw a heap in the corner.
It looked like a sack of laundry, not a man.
The heap twitched and groaned, barely moving, but slowly a head rose from the rest, and I saw his eyes. They’d gone black, any sign of white erased by the madness of hunger, but they were still Holden’s eyes.
“Holden?”
“Ssssss…” His voice was as rough as a cat’s tongue on sandpaper. “Ssseee…”
“It’s me,” I replied, trying to give him a reprieve from his attempt to say my name.
“Ooookkkaaayyy…?”
My lower lip trembled as he shifted into a sitting position. That slight adjustment costing him, he closed his eyes, and since he didn’t breathe he looked dead. Really dead.
He was gaunt, his cheeks sunk in, making his
beautiful cheekbones and jaw seem frightfully skeletal. The skin beneath his eyes was taut, giving a frightening glimpse to the lines of his skull where they formed the ridge of his eye sockets. He still had his hair which seemed remarkable, all things considered, but the color had begun to leach away. His clothes hung off him like he was wearing those of a much larger stranger.
His eyelids fluttered open again, and he saw me but was confused. “Seeee…”
“It’s me. I’m here.” I crossed the room in two wide steps, crouching in front of him, using my good hand to touch his face, his arms, his chest, trying to convince myself he was really there.
“You…’kay…?” he asked.
Tears slid down my cheeks, staining his shirt. “No,” I answered, unable to force a kind lie.
His gaze shifted lazily to my arm, but he didn’t react. “Hurt.”
“Yes. I’m hurt. I’m very, very hurt.” I pressed my palm to his cheek. “What has he done to you?” His skin felt so thin I worried it might turn to dust under my fingertips.
“No…food.”
He’d been starved for nine days.
I let out a sigh of relief that gutted me. I was happy. He was starving to death, and I felt good about it. But compared to the things I imagined being done to him, starvation was a slap on the wrist. They’d literally done nothing to him except leave him alone in the dark.
“You?” he wheezed.
“No.” I shook my head and grabbed his hand. “We don’t need to talk about that.”
A tick in his forehead suggested he was trying to frown, but he couldn’t manage the gesture.
“Hurt.”
“We aren’t going to talk about it.” With him in this condition, the rage would just eat him from the inside. His worry had probably done a number on him already, but I tried to put myself in his shoes. If I’d been left alone for nine days, fearing the worst, only to find out the worst couldn’t even begin to cover what had happened to my loved one?
He’d want to kill them. And his inability to make it happen would gnaw away at him until he was an empty husk inside, destroyed by his own hatred and thirst for revenge.
No, I wasn’t going to put that on him.
“It’s going to be okay,” I whispered, finding new resolve to lie now. It was a lie I wanted very badly to believe. I sat down beside him, the cold, rough floor shocking my bare legs. I pressed my left side against him and squeezed his hand lightly, trying not to accidentally break any of his bones. “It’s going to be okay,” I repeated, wondering if it might sound more believable a second time.
It didn’t.
“Don’t get too comfortable,” The Doctor scolded from the doorway. “We still have two more stops to make before it’s time for your end of the bargain.”
“Feed him.”
“Absolutely out of the question.”
“Feed him or I won’t show you anything.”
This gave The Doctor a moment’s pause. I couldn’t make out his features with the light of the hall behind him, but he seemed to be contemplating my words. “You’re sure you want to ask for favors so soon? I’ve told you we’re not yet done.”
It didn’t matter what he had to show me. I needed to help Holden, and if that meant cashing in whatever chips I had to play here and now, I’d do it.
“Feed him.”
“I want you to remember this, because I think in a few moments time you’ll feel quite foolish.”
I’d regretted a lot of things in my life, but getting Holden food wouldn’t be one of them.
Recalling what The Doctor had told me about blood laced with silver, I added, “No tricks. No experiments. You give him good blood. Untainted blood.”
Through the darkness I saw his smile. “Such a clever girl.”
Minutes later someone entered the room, giving me and Holden a wide berth, and threw a packet of blood at us. Knowing Holden would be unable to open it himself, I raised the packet to my mouth and gnawed through the sturdy plastic with my regular teeth. I needed blood too, and my fangs weren’t reacting the way they ought to when I was hungry.
My stomach growled in protest as I removed the bag from my mouth without drinking and placed it at Holden’s lips. At first it sat, trembling in my awkward left-handed grip, then he licked the opening. Once the first taste of blood hit his tongue, he drank the contents of the bag with greedy ferocity, yanking it from my hands. I’d thought he was done until he tore the plastic open and began to lick the inside of the bag.
Why hadn’t I thought to do that?
It wasn’t enough to fully restore him, not even close, but as the blood coursed through him his face lost its skull-like visage, his eyes became less black, to the point I could see their natural brown again, and he became more like Holden.
A weaker, less robust version of the vampire I knew and loved, but Holden nevertheless.
“What did they do to you?” he asked once his mouth worked properly. “What happened to your arm?”
“We’re running a test on Ms. McQueen at the moment, to see how her unique anatomy adapts to outside influence.”
“He broke my arm to see how long it will take to heal.” I kept my tone flat. I didn’t want to let any of my fear or rage show, so I had to keep a level head. “He knows what I am.”
Holden’s face was mobile enough to register shock. “How is that possible?”
“Peyton,” I said. The Doctor already knew I was on to him, knew I was aware of his connection to the rogue, so I saw no sense in keeping the information quiet now. Besides, Holden already hated Alexandre Peyton. Giving him another reason wasn’t going to change anything.
“Time’s up,” The Doctor told us, coming to offer me a hand to my feet.
Holden snarled, but our captor was unmoved, clucking his tongue as he pulled me into a standing position. “None of that, please. I’ve been very gracious to you this evening, but if you don’t behave, my hospitality won’t continue.”
If this was him being a good host, I shuddered to think what would happen if we made him inhospitable. “It’s okay, Holden. I’ll be fine.”
“You’re not fine,” he said, unable to force himself off the floor.
He was right, and he knew me well enough he was able to see through my lies. I saw the anger on his face and realized I’d failed to do the one thing I set out to do—keep him calm.
“I have to go,” I told him.
We stared at each other for the few seconds we were allowed, and my heart swelled up into my throat, trying to get free for the second time in two days. My lips parted, and a small sob bubbled out. I didn’t know if I was ever going to see him again.
“I love you,” I choked out.
He looked momentarily stunned, and then the gravity of my words hit him, and I saw the understanding in his eyes.
I wasn’t really telling him I loved him.
I was telling him goodbye.
Chapter Thirty-Two
There wasn’t anything in my stomach to throw up, but I managed it anyway, a pink foam soiling my shiny new ballet flats.
“I did warn you,” The Doctor said.
Crouching down, I cradled my head in my good arm, trying to obscure my vision of the room, but where Holden’s had been dark, this one was as brightly lit as a grocery store.
Maxime was strung from the ceiling, bound at four points, caught like a jumping jack in midair. He was stark naked and had been slit down his torso, with almost everything that should be inside him now on the outside.
The only blessing I could see was he was unconscious.
“What the fuck?” I screamed, realizing my mistake a moment too late. The shock from the collar zapped me, making my whole body spasm uncontrollably.
I collapsed to the floor, landing on my broken arm.
I had nothing left as far as screaming or wailing went. My body was spent, and now lying here, looking up at Maxime’s ruined form, I felt my soul shut down. I’d never believed I could feel my soul as a tangible entity,
but I did in that instant.
All the hope leached out of me, going down the drain with the vampire’s blood. I lay on the concrete, breathing hard as my arm throbbed in agonizing protest beneath the weight of my body, but I couldn’t make myself move.
“We know complete regeneration is impossible,” The Doctor said, his tone still the same warm, charming one he’d used whenever we spoke. “But I did want to see how long it might take a vampire to heal this kind of wound. The organs are all still there.” He gestured to the trail of intestines spilling out from Maxime’s belly. “I wanted to know if his body would just suck them all back up. Like spaghetti.”
He laughed.
Dragging me to my feet in spite of my efforts to remain a dead weight, he rubbed my back in slow circles I suspected were meant to soothe me. “I did tell you it would get worse.”
He was right. Holden was on a beach vacation compared to what The Doctor was doing to Maxime. I didn’t want to regret getting Holden much-needed blood, but a nagging voice told me I could have saved Maxime from this if I hadn’t been so rash.
“I’m so sorry, Max.” I don’t know why I bothered saying it. If I had any pull with whatever higher powers might be out there, right now I was praying he wasn’t hearing or feeling any of this. His body, at least, had the common sense to shut down mine clearly lacked.
He was better off dead, as much as I hated to think it.
“Come on, then. One last stop.”
“No.”
“You asked for this. You wanted to see your friends, I’m showing you your friends.”
I turned my back on Maxime, not able to look directly at him anymore, the tableau too grim, too hopeless.
“I don’t want to see anything else.”
“I think you’ll like this last one.”
There was only one other vampire he might have who he’d assume I had an interest in, and that was my father. I’d never met Sutherland Halliston, and after this week I wasn’t sure I was ever going to meet him. But if I had any say in the matter, my first introduction to my biological father would not be in this madhouse. I wasn’t going to have that be my first and last memory of him.
