11. Briar
brIAR
H e circles the table holding the weapons with the lazy patience of a predator who already believes the kill is his.
“Answer me this and I’ll skip today’s session,” he murmurs softly, piercing me with his pale eyes. “What is your last name?”
I think back to before I knew there was a false wall in my cell and I’d whispered my name like a prayer for strength. I’m lucky it was too soft for the brothers to hear, or any video surveillance I’m sure they have running.
My eyes flutter shut for a moment. I need to be more vigilant.
I open my eyes and give him nothing, holding my silence like a weapon.
His smile slants. “No answer? Then maybe we’ll start simple so you have an idea of what your confession will save you from.”
He flexes his hand, admiring the curl of his knuckles as he approaches me. “Sometimes it feels good to just use these.”
I steel myself and his fist comes toward me, slow compared to that of a vampire, giving me time to avert my head slightly.
He aimed for my eye initially, but instead, pain blooms across my cheekbone.
The pain is dull compared to the training blows I’ve taken from countless vampires.
We never held back, knowing we’d heal quickly.
A laugh rasps out of me as I spit the small amount of blood from my fang scraping my inner cheek to the floor. I can only hope I manage to get a few drops on his shoes.
“Is that it? I’ve taken harder hits from young vamps just learning how to swing. You punch like a baby.”
His jaw ticks once. The smile stays, but it’s tight now and stretched thin.
If I’m going to endure this, I’m going to get some semblance of satisfaction through it, no matter how small. The glint in his eyes tells me it wouldn’t help if I was quiet instead. The same pain is coming for me no matter what.
“You think that makes you brave?” His tone drops, low and meant to be intimidating, I’m sure. “It makes you stupid, welcoming further pain.”
I do my best to shrug with the restraints holding my wrist in place. “Or maybe it’s just a truth you’re too fragile to hear. Your fists will never hit hard enough to matter.”
For a moment his eyes darken and I feel the tension in the air twist tighter. Then he exhales, slow and measured before turning toward the gleaming tray of tools. His fingers trail the handles like a man savoring his collection.
“Be that as it may,” he murmurs, more to himself than to me. “Best not to waste time. This isn’t the only thing on my schedule for the day.”
I don’t miss a beat.
“Ah, yes, the supervillains and their busy schedules.” My tone turns mocking, knowing the condescension in it is the only thing that riles him. “Don’t forget to change your shirt before you go to church to cleanse yourself of your sins. You already have a blood smear on your cuff.”
He doesn’t look at me when he mutters, “You are lucky your blood makes you of any value to me.”
“Yes, I’m just so lucky to be in your presence…” I trail off before pursing my lips, looking like I’m deep in thought. “I’m sorry, what’s your name? No one has said it, so it must not be of much importance.”
His hand closes around the hilt of a blade swiftly, and the blunt end of it is driven into the corner of my mouth. My head snaps sideways, my teeth vibrating and aching from the direct hit to them. An odd choice.
Does he think he can break my fangs, or something?
“That’s it, once again?” I spit fresh blood across the floor. “My mother would call that a love tap.”
I see the moment my barbs send him off the edge.
A snarl tears up his throat, but he reins it in, tossing the knife onto the tray. It clatters heavily against the metal and other weapons.
“Words are easy when you’ve got teeth left to spit them through. Can you grow those back like your hair? I was rather enjoying the bald look.”
The reminder of everything he’s taken from me lands sharply, but even so, I twist his words as my gut churns. “I’m lucky to be able to pull off any look, with my beauty.”
I will not let this man see me shrink away from his words or weapons.
He plucks a scalpel and wordlessly drags it to slice through my shirt and across my collarbone. Immediately I feel the warmth of my blood soaking into the fabric around it. He presses harder as I refuse to show any pain. The sting grows sharper as he ends at the other side of my collarbone.
I refuse to meet his eyes as he leans in to whisper, “You’ll tell me what makes you different. In fact, by the time I’m done, you’ll beg to tell me who your family is.”
I gather the blood in my mouth before spitting it directly at him. Red drops spatters across his cheek and jaw, with a few paint flecks along his lips. He scrambles back, quickly using his sleeve to wipe the blood near his mouth away.
My eyes meet his once more as I let the full weight of my love for my family fill me. “You know nothing about family if you think anything you do will make me give mine up.”
A feral growl rips from him as he grabs at pliers and falls to his knees.
Apparently loving my family is a sore spot for him.
I feel the pliers line up with my finger nail and I clench my jaw, knowing this is going to fucking hurt. He rips the first one free of my nailbed and I clench my hands shut instinctively, yanking against the metal restraints, as I force myself not to scream.
“You can hide those from me, not to worry,” he whispers before I feel the pliers line up with one of my toenails. No amount of curling them can stop him from accessing those. “Just give me a name.”
A defiant whisper falls from my lips. “You’ll never know the depth of love my family holds for each other. Not with all the money in the world. So do your worst.”
Those are the last words I utter as he lets out the depraved side of him that grins with every slice to skin, every bone that snaps beneath his hammer, and any small groan that manages to break through my wall of silence.
Blood trickles warm down my chest to my stomach. I feel it dripping from my fingers and toes as well, the soft splatter against the floor a reminder of the precious resource he wastes.
I keep my chin high, but the scent of my own blood is thick in the room as he continues to try to break me into submission.
I never look at him through it all. I look past him and it pisses him off, twisting his face into an ugly sneer.
The head of his hammer lines up with my knee and I turn toward the brothers for the first time, needing to see their reaction to this.
Callum stands to the left, arms folded so tightly his knuckles are stark white as his fingers dig into his biceps. His jaw grinds, clearly tense, but he doesn’t move. Elias stays distant and unmoved, but I watch the way his eyes cut away as the hammer strikes, crunching bone.
Time ticks by until my body is trembling from the pain that each passing minute brings.
I’ve begun to zone out in an attempt to dissociate from it all, but a shadow moves at the edge of my vision.
The broad guard with the gold chain. He steps forward, not to stop this, but to place another tool that was yelled for into the waiting hand of the man cutting into the flesh on my thighs before peeling it off with his fingers.
But the whole time, his eyes never glance at me.
He stares at the floor, at the wall, anywhere but at the body he’s arming this man to carve.
I had to have imagined the soft rumble of laughter in his chest when he carried me, because the man in front of me now looks like he’s built to not have any feelings.
Pain sears down my leg, sharp and fresh. My body jerks against the restraints, but I drag my mind elsewhere. Away from the white walls and away from the blood.
I picture my mother’s hands, elegant and steady, brushing my hair before a gala. The faint smell of her cherry blossom perfume clinging to her skin as she smiled at me in the mirror.
My father’s laugh breaking loose when I once tried to scare him in his office with a mask I’d painted at school.
Lyra and Kael squabbling over whether I should sneak into a private meeting with Aunt Jade and my parents.
The memories come fast, overlapping, and I cling to them with everything I have left. Each one is an anchor against the pain. Each one proof that I’m more than what this man tries to reduce me to.
I’m not the monster this man paints me as and I’m not a prized animal to hold captive and drain of blood.
I’m a daughter who is loved beyond measure.
I’m a woman with her entire life ahead of her once I find a way out.
I’m the vampire that’s going to rip the heart out of the men in this room.
The pain doesn’t stop, but it doesn’t own me either.
I lift my eyes to the ceiling as blood trails from my mouth.
Each time his hand closes around a new tool, I fall back into myself. Back into memory. It’s the only way to keep from crumbling.
The burns come next, hot iron pressed against my flesh until my body arches off the slab. The screams tear from my throat before I can trap them, but in my head I’m somewhere else.
My papa’s study at the academy. His voice floats through my mind as he tells me I’m clever enough to run the world if I want to. His radiant smile, proud and certain.
Movie nights with Dad, where we’d make friendship bracelets together and force the others to wear them the next day.
One wave of pain folds over the next until every passing second that I force air into my lungs is misery.
I don’t know how long it’s been. Minutes. Hours. Days.
All I know is that the light overhead has never dimmed, and the man circling me has never stopped smiling.
My body sags against the restraints, every breath thin and shallow. I dangle on the edge of unconsciousness, weightless, caught between wanting to sink into the dark and clawing to stay above it.
Still, even broken, bleeding, and barely clinging to my conscious state, I spit blood onto the floor the second there is a slight reprieve in fresh pain.
“Done already?” I rasp out.
A growl echoes through the room as my eyelids droop.
A new voice cuts through it. “Father.”
The word rolls through my mind and my head tips weakly, eyes dragging toward where the voice came from.
I find the one who carried me here. He’s no longer just a shadow moving around, offering tools. He’s the son of the true monster in this room.
“The longer her blood oxidizes, the less valuable it becomes. We should collect what you need and send it to the lab.” His voice is measured and deliberate as he continues, “If today’s samples aren’t fresh enough, then it may be best to stop here. Let her heal enough to produce more for tomorrow.”
For tomorrow.
The words carve into my chest.
His father stills in my peripheral vision, seeming to be caught between his hunger for more and the voice of reason. His jaw ticks until a vicious sneer is turned on me.
“I should wring you dry,” he mutters, voice rough with lingering fury. His hand twitches at his side, like he aches to strike again, to prove he can. But then he exhales through his teeth, sharp and impatient.
“Fine,” he snaps, not looking at me now but at the tray of gleaming tools. “But know this,” his gaze flicks back to me, wild and fevered, “tomorrow, we begin again. I’ll make sure you beg for the end you’ll never get.”
The man’s fury simmers, boiling at the edges of his control. For a moment I think he’ll ignore his son and tear into me again just to prove he can, but then his lip curls, disgust twisting his mouth.
“Collect the samples,” he orders, clipped and dismissive. “I’ll send in the clean-up crew.”
His footsteps echo as he leaves, steady and unhurried. I hear the door open and close, signaling he’s gone.
My body collapses at that knowledge, knowing I don’t need to show bravado or strength to anyone else here. They’re just henchmen that mean nothing.
The table groans to life, and every shift as I’m tilted back jars through broken bones and split skin, making me hiss.
His son steps forward, the gold chain at his throat swaying as he steps closer and leans over me.
His hands move around me with methodical precision as he works.
He takes vials, presses them to the worst of my bleeding wounds, catching the flow.
The sound of liquid filling glass is quiet to them, but loud to my own ears.
He sets each one onto a waiting tray with a soft clink, lining them in perfect rows.
Not once does he look at my face.
When the last vial is placed, he doesn’t leave. Instead, he takes a fresh cloth, dips it in a bowl of water, and begins to wipe the mess from my skin. He’s careful and steady. The cloth slides across my cheek down my forearm, and then across damaged fingers.
The touch is simply a damp cloth against ruined skin, yet my body jolts as if I’ve been struck. Because it’s too careful for someone who should only see me as an experiment.
I turn my head, searching his face in an attempt to try to read the blank mask he wears.
His jaw is rigid, but there is still a gentleness in his hands that betrays him.
The cloth lingers a moment too long at the hollow of my throat before he finally stills.
For the first time since coming over here, his gaze lifts to meet mine. The impact is sharp and unexpected.
His voice is softer than when he spoke with his father, barely a whisper, but my advanced hearing picks it up with ease. “We are going to step out. The mist will come again.” A pause, his eyes steady on mine. “Remember that it won’t hurt you. It might actually help soothe you this time.”
The words rattle through me, confusing as they are soft.
A warning? A kindness? I can’t tell.
Maybe he just doesn’t want to feel any pity for me if I have another panic attack.
“Let’s go, Dante,” Elias’s voice cuts across the room, flat, impatient.
Dante.
The name slides through me, settling with the image of him.
Mist whispers from the vents above seconds later, curling like smoke through the room. My chest locks with the fear of it burning, but then eases as it just helps drag me toward unconsciousness.
My eyes drag shut without a fight from me and I wonder if the softness in Dante is real…perhaps something I can use to my advantage.
Or perhaps I’m just a fool for believing a monster’s son could ever offer me help.