9. Briar
brIAR
M y eyes fly open.
The first sound that rushes in is the crinkling of plastic as my body twitches in my attempt to move. A tingling numbness flows through my extremities, turning into prickling heat as I wiggle my fingers and toes.
“What the hell,” I groan, my throat feeling scratchy and raw.
The room spins as I get the strength to lift my head from the floor. I’m rewarded with a faint suction sound as my skin peels away from whatever I was passed out on. The thing I’ve been sleeping on comes into view and I swallow against the nausea that rises when I realize what it is.
An empty blood bag, and it isn’t alone. Dozens more are sprawled out around and under my body on the bright white floor. Thin smears of red beneath them are the only color in sight.
My nostrils flare as I breathe in the strange scent of antiseptic and copper surrounding me.
The ceiling is a grid of white panels that hum softly.
The walls are the same sterile white that fills the infirmary back home.
A chrome sink and a toilet gleam from a corner like polished teeth.
My bare legs that stick out from the plain white cotton shorts I have on releases from the floor in slow tugs as I shift.
Every inch of me prickles like I’ve been bitten by a million ants.
My hand lifts on instinct to drag through my hair, but a gasp escapes my lips as my fingers are suddenly free at my jawline.
For a second my brain refuses the information.
My fingers curl, searching for length that isn’t there, knuckles dragging against the ragged ends.
A few long strands brush my collarbone like threads, a cruel reminder of what used to fall to my waist. I touch my scalp and find patches of tender skin, uneven and scabbed, and a broken sound slips out.
“What happened to me?” I breathe out, on the edge of a building hysteria.
I pull my hand back down and stare at it. My forearms are freshly pink where the skin seems to have knitted itself back together, shiny and tight. The source of my itching and burning…fresh skin.
Panic continues to build until I gasp for air, shaking.
Then memory comes for me all at once.
The hotel door. Black helmets and pounding boots.
Lyra’s plea, Kael’s fear, the singed smell that bloomed as a chemical mist ate me alive.
The glass of the balcony door shattering under my shoulder.
Muscles locking in midair. The pavement meeting my skull with a crack that turned everything to nothing.
I reach for my portal ring on instinct and find bare skin.
“Shit!” I yell, forcing my trembling hands into tight fists at my sides as I stand on wobbly legs.
They took it. Of course they did.
A laugh shakes out of me, dry and wrong, like I’m on the edge of breaking out into tears instead.
I was on the cusp of getting exactly what I set out to achieve in this realm. So fucking close.
Now, I’m going to miss that appointment with Ms. Tomlinson and they’ll likely think I flaked out and changed my mind.
A shaky breath falls from my lips as I tilt my head back, staring at the ceiling.
“Mom,” I whisper, my voice already breaking at the thought of my family. The word feels like a prayer and an apology wrapped in one. “Please find me.”
Regret unfurls within my chest, hot and heavy as it settles in, taking root in my heart. My eyes fall closed and I see the gown on my bed, my mother’s neat handwriting on the note, and I hate how much I want that safe, suffocating version of my life back for the span of a breath.
Tears pool behind my closed lids, falling from the outer corners.
I made this choice because the world I knew felt like a cage, yet all I want right now is to be swept up into my parents’ arms. My hands lift to wipe at the lingering tears as I pull my gaze back to the white walls surrounding me.
Their determination and love of me fills me, chasing out any remaining grief as I think of how they’d tell me to fight, to never give up, and to remember my training.
“I’m Briar fucking Van Helsing,” I whisper softly, letting my limp hands curl into fists.
Hunger snakes through my belly, a low, steady pull that makes my gums ache as my fangs attempt to slide out. Shame rises behind it, warming my cheeks as I stare at the empty bags.
They fed me like an animal. They watched me drink while unconscious without dignity or consent, and the evidence spread around me feels like a nest of shame built for me.
I force breath into my lungs just as a whirring noise comes at my back.
My body jerks toward it and I watch as one of the walls lifts, retracting into the ceiling.
At first glance it looks like an opening into a bright corridor, a generous mistake on whoever is in charge of the security.
The corridor is the same blinding white as this cell, the floor so clean it reflects back the overhead lights in bright glares.
Two figures stand just beyond the threshold with their backs to me. For a heartbeat I wonder if they noticed the wall lifting, or if the quiet sound was only able to be picked up by my advanced hearing.
Then one shifts, their hand sliding into a pocket, and my pulse leaps.
They still haven’t turned.
Run , my brain decides. I will sprint through whatever hell I’ve found myself in until my feet bleed.
My hands flex as I try to conjure my daggers, but a haze is still present in my mind, blocking me from accessing them. A snarl rises in my throat, but I quickly swallow it. A minor inconvenience. I’m still far more lethal than these humans, even with my bare hands.
I launch toward the opening, aiming between the guards.
The first step is a little clumsy, but by the second I’ve corrected my trajectory and am soaring toward them.
Then some invisible barrier meets me with an unyielding kiss that rings my skull like a bell.
Stars burst behind my eyes as my palms slap flat against the barrier.
A low hiss leaves me as I shake my head in an attempt to clear the fuzzy black dots littering my vision now.
Both guards turn and I wonder if I have a concussion, because what I’m seeing can’t be true.
Right?
Callum stares at me. His familiar electric blue eyes collide with mine. For a single heartbeat they flare with recognition and faint surprise. Then it shutters, giving way as pity slides across his face before disgust tugs at his downturned lips.
It hits me harder than the clear barrier did, dragging a sharp intake of breath from me.
My gaze drags to Elias, but he doesn’t even bother to hold my stare. He takes me in with one swift pass from my scorched hair to my bare feet before turning back to stare at the bare wall in front of him. Like I’m nothing.
Apparently I’m not even worth the dignity of meeting my eyes. Somehow that hits deeper than Callum’s disgust. My broken pride swells within my chest, my nostrils expanding as I draw a deep breath in.
I don’t know how the hell I missed any signs that they were hunters. There was nothing in me that screamed to get away from them. If anything, I’d been drawn to them.
I remember them as they were that night. Callum’s smirk bright with a contagious energy, Elias’s quiet gravity, both of them so nuanced and intriguing. To think I’d felt so bad for them that I’d fallen asleep with a heaviness in my chest at chasing my own dreams while they couldn’t.
Now all of that dissolves against the glass wall between us. The boys who made me feel something more than fear for my new life are gone. In their place stand strangers, one recoiling, and the other already turned away.
My forehead drops against the barrier before I can stop it. My breath fogs it in small puffs, vanishing as soon as they form, leaving me with nothing but my own fractured reflection.
How could I have been so gullible and naive?
The sound of my hammering pulse in my ears swells, a roar I can’t separate into anger, humiliation, or grief. Only that it’s too big, too alive, and it tears through every seam I have left.
And then Callum’s gaze finds me again.
It should feel like another rejection, but something flickers in the blue depths that isn’t pity this time, or disgust. Confusion seems to pinch his brow as his mouth parts with a question he doesn’t seem to know how to ask. His eyes linger longer than they should.
My body trembles, breath fogging the barrier, but I don’t look away. I can’t. The confusion is mine as much as his, and for one suspended moment it feels like we’re both standing in the wreckage of something neither of us understands.
“What the fuck is going on?” My voice scrapes out, too full of grief I don’t mean to show them. I steel my spine and tack on, “My parents will be here any second, and when they are–”
“Any second now?” Elias’s voice cuts quiet, flat, and without a single note of warmth. He doesn’t even bother to turn as he laughs. “You’ve been out for a week and they haven’t shown.”
My palms, slick with sweat, slide down the glass until they fall to my sides, all of my internal fight tempered with that fact.
A week.
How is that even possible?
The chemical tore through me, wrung me dry, left me sprawled in this room while strangers fed me like an animal in a zoo containment.
A week without the sound of my mother’s boots padding to my door each morning, without her calling my name in that clipped, perfect way to come down for breakfast. A week without a single hand from my dads reaching for me to pull me into a hug before bed, reminding me of how much they love me.
I’d taken it all for granted.
I’d shoved them off of me some nights, saying they don’t need to tell me every single night.
My lip wobbles before I can trap it between my teeth. Heat pricks at my eyes, warning of the oncoming waterworks. I turn away from them, giving them my back pressed against the glass.
I swallow the welling emotions down, letting my head rest against the barrier.
“They’ll find me,” I say. Whether it’s for myself or for them is unclear. “They will.”
The silence that follows presses against the back of my neck, heavy, suffocating.
And then Callum speaks. “Why would a vampire care about college?”
He knows why it matters to me. Why is he asking this?
The question echoes in my skull, as if he’s daring me to admit that everything I said that night was a lie, that I’m nothing but the monster they see surrounded by blood bags.
For a long moment I can’t formulate a response. I focus on the rush of air dragging through my lungs, shallow, uneven.
“Everything I told you that night was true,” I manage to say around a growing lump in my throat. “All of it. I wanted to find myself away from the world I knew. I wanted more than the path laid out for me there.”
Silence follows and somehow it pisses me off further. As if it’s the last thing he expected to hear. But they are the ones who played me.
My lips pinch together at the thought.
“What was it for you then? A game?” My voice sharpens as I turn back to him, holding his stare even though it stings to do it. “The minute you climbed into that car, were you already planning this? To hand me over? To smile and play along before you ran straight back to your uncle?”
No answer.
My fists curl at my sides, nails biting into my palms as my anger swells higher. “Why didn’t you just do it yourselves then? Too weak to do it without help?” The words twist into a sneering taunt, but they taste like ash in my mouth.
Because the truth cracks me open.
That night…the smirks, the banter, and the heat in Callum’s gaze. Elias’s steady weight beside me. It had all felt real. Real enough to cling to. Real enough to spark something I thought I’d never feel for humans.
But now, with their silence pressing down on me, all I can see is a facade and it makes me feel so incredibly stupid.
My chest heaves once with a breath as my throat tightens. I hate this. I hate the way I let them impact me like this.
My voice drops lower as I ask, “Was it all just a show?”
“We didn’t know what you were.”
The admission makes my inhale stick in my throat. Before I can answer, Elias speaks, his tone like steel that smothers Callum’s softness. “Our uncle is the only one who saw you for what you are. You played us, Briar. Not the other way around.”
My mouth opens, fury ready to tear from my throat, but another voice cuts through before I can.
“Ahh,” a male voice purrs, rich with delight, “I see our guest has healed enough to return to a conscious state. Finally.”
The hairs rise on my arms before I even see him. Then he’s there, sliding between the brothers, laying a hand on each of their shoulders like he owns them too.
“I expect this development won’t change our agreement, boys.” His voice is smooth, but the aggressive undertone is clear.
Both Callum and Elias nod. “It won’t.”
My stomach lurches and a fresh wave of disgust pools. I knew this man was dangerous the first time I laid eyes on him. I knew. But seeing him here, standing with his hands on their shoulders like a puppeteer with his strings, drives hatred through me so sharp I taste blood.
It shouldn’t bother me, but it does.
I snarl, the sound ripping from my chest, unrestrained as I bare my fangs at him.
His head tilts, those slimy eyes finally finding mine. Pure, unfiltered glee stares back at me.
“Now that you’re awake,” he says slowly as a grin reveals his pearly white teeth, “it’s time for the real fun to begin.”