17. Briar
brIAR
E lias and Dante rifle through trays and drawers with frantic precision, searching for the ring. Metal scrapes, plastic bins clatter, their voices hushed but sharp as they tear through the sterile order of the lab.
I don’t move. I can’t.
My feet feel bolted to the floor as my gaze stays locked on the vat.
Movement flickers at the edge of my vision.
Callum doesn’t search like the others. He strides straight for the tank, his jaw clenched and at a brisk pace I don’t understand.
He grabs the first heavy object within reach–a steel instrument tray–and moves just off to the side before slamming it into the frontside of the vat with a roar.
The sound rattles through the lab, sharp and violent.
He swings again, and again, like a man possessed, each of his screams vibrating through the room back to me.
A hairline crack splinters through the glass and my stomach drops.
“Stop, you don’t know if there’s any alarms attached to that!
” Elias’s voice cuts sharply from across the lab, but Callum doesn’t listen.
He hammers harder and more frantically, like fury itself guides his hands.
The crack deepens, webbing wider, until with one final swing the entire panel shatters.
A tidal rush of red explodes from it, splashing up over his boots as he jumps away.
My blood spills across the white tiles, wasted and destroyed.
Callum staggers back, chest heaving as he stares at the ruin he’s made, his silence daring anyone in the room to tell him he was wrong.
The sound of the shattering glass still rings in my ears as the rush of blood spreads in a wave across the floor.
For a moment, I can’t even breathe as I repeat the scene over and over in my head. My knees nearly buckle as the truth slams into me: it’s all ruined and Terrance will have nothing left of me to use.
A jagged inhale of breath fills my lungs then, the weight of what that means to me almost too much to process. I’ve been so focused on my survival that I didn’t realize how badly I needed to steal this piece of myself back from their hands.
For the first time, I believe what Callum said earlier about his soul rotting every day he spends here. This is proof, painted in my blood.
His gaze lifts, locking with mine across the carnage. My throat tightens as my lip wobbles with an emotion I don’t want to name and most certainly don’t want to feel toward him, but I can’t smother it.
I swallow hard, the feeling thick in my chest as I give him the smallest nod of gratitude.
“Got it!” Dante’s shout cuts through the tension, and all three of us whip toward the sound. He’s at the far side of the lab, his hand lifted high, the glint of the ruby catching the light.
My ring.
Relief surges so hard through me my knees nearly buckle, but Callum is at my side and steadying me without a word. Dante strides forward and presses the band into my outstretched palm without hesitation.
“This is it?” he asks, clipped and urgent.
I nod, breathless as I confirm. “Yes.”
My fingers tremble as I slide it onto my hand, and the moment it settles against my skin, something inside me steadies. The small connection to my family brings a light I haven’t felt since the day they dragged me here.
“Good.” Dante’s tone snaps back to command as he cuts a look at Callum. “Hold her again. From this point on, we need to be the best actors of our lives if we want to get past the upper level and every guard that stands between us and the outside world.”
Callum moves instantly, his arm firm around me once more, but Dante’s gaze lingers on me. For once, the mask slips just enough for me to see the strain etched beneath.
“I apologize in advance,” he says, his lips tightening momentarily, “for how I’m going to have to act and what I’ll have to say about you.”
His eyes hold mine, dark and steady, waiting for acknowledgment.
My throat works around the ache that’s been lodged there since the moment I saw that vat, but my voice comes out steady and threaded with steel.
“There’s no words you could say,” I tell him slowly, “that will come close to hurting the way I’ve already been hurt here.”
Dante’s jaw ticks, a muscle pulling tight in his cheek, but he doesn’t look away. For a breath, it feels like he doesn’t see me as just the captive vampire, but as a survivor staring back at him instead.
Then he gives a single sharp nod, his cold mask snapping back into place. “Good. Then let’s move.”
The stairs stretch upward once again in a spiral of cold metal, each step groaning beneath their weight.
Callum’s arms stay locked around me, every jolt of motion rattling through my body.
Elias’s steady tread follows close behind, the three of them moving like parts of a machine with me locked in the center as we emerge into the last remaining level between us and freedom for me to use the ring.
My lashes stay pressed tightly closed now, feigning complete unconsciousness to draw the least amount of attention from guards.
I let my head loll against Callum’s chest, my arms limp, but the act has me completely on edge.
I can’t see anything, leaving me at a severe disadvantage to react and protect myself.
I’m forced to trust the men surrounding me, a plight that is nearly impossible.
Boots squeak in the near distance, and a voice, sharp and suspicious, asks, “What’s this?”
The movement shifts as Dante strides ahead of us, his voice low, cold, dangerous. “These orders from above are not within your paygrade to know, Tim.”
A pause and the guard’s tone sharpens. “We should have been noti–”
The sickening crunch of bone snapping cuts the words off, the sound one I’ve heard many times during training. Someone’s nose just got crushed.
“You think you get to question me?” Dante spits, his voice so venomous it sends a chill down my spine. “I’ll call my father down here myself if you want to push me one more goddamn time. But I promise you that if you bother him, you won’t have a tongue to ask that question again.”
Silence follows, heavy and suffocating as my heart beats erratically. The only sound that comes is the thud of boots retreating.
Dante’s voice whips out, “Does anyone else want to question whether I’d risk my life for a blood-sucking bitch?”
My stomach twists, bile rising at the venom in his tone, even though I know he warned me it would come. Even though I know it’s a bluff.
The silence that follows is absolute. No one answers. Not a breath, not a shuffle of boots.
“That’s what I fucking thought. Now move out of the way,” Dante spits, cold and final.
I hear the faint rustle of uniforms shifting, the squeaky hinge of a door being pulled open.
As Callum carries us forward, my head stays lolled against him, every muscle in me screaming to open my eyes and see.
A sharp beep pierces the silence, followed by Callum stepping forward without hesitation. I heard Elias’s steady tread close behind and force myself to take small, steady breaths as I hear the mechanical groan of doors closing.
Please let this be the way up.
The floor lurches beneath us, the sudden upward pull jerking through our bodies. My head tips harder against Callum’s chest with the motion, and relief floods me so fiercely it almost cracks me open.
We’re ascending.
For the first time since I woke in this hell, my path carries me closer to freedom instead of toward torture and confinement.
The hum of the ascent vibrates through the walls, a steady pulse that matches the frantic beat of my heart.
Then Dante’s voice cuts softly into the quiet. “When we reach the main floor, there are more guards,” he murmurs, the grit of command still threaded into the hush. “But they’re not aware of what happens below the surface. Play along accordingly.”
The words slither down my spine like ice. My body stays limp against Callum, my lashes pressed shut, but inside I’m coiled tightly. I can’t afford to falter, not when the wrong twitch of movement could unravel everything.
The elevator dings, sharp as a blade, and the doors slide open. Callum strides forward with me still draped in his arms.
“Bring a car around,” Dante snaps, his voice booming through wherever we are. “We need to get the boss’s favorite plaything to the hospital. Our fucking doctor was drunk off his ass when we called him to come treat her collapsed lung.”
I know exactly what it feels like to suffer through that particular injury and instantly begin to put a strained wheeze into my breaths, loud enough to be heard even by human ears.
“Get an SUV to the front entrance!” someone shouts, overlapping with another voice calling, “Do you need a driver?”
Dante barks out a laugh, dark and cruel, the sound scraping over my skin. “No. No one else will drive like their life depends on it like I will. It’ll be my head if my father finds out I let her die.”
The room falls to silence under his words, the air thick with obedience and fear.
The word plaything threads down my spine. My stomach knots, rage sour on my tongue even as I keep my body slack in Callum’s arms.
What the fuck do these guards think is going on here if that’s just a casual thing to say?
Not one of them questions it. Not one of them dares.
The thought curdles in my stomach.
“SUV’s ready!” a voice calls, boots pounding across the floor.
Dante’s sharp bark of approval snaps the group into motion, “Let’s move!”
Callum adjusts me higher in his arms as we push forward in a swift jog. The air shifts as we near the doors, and the current of something not pushed from a ventilation system brushes across my face.
Wind.
It hits me sharp and cool, carrying the faint scents of wet asphalt. My chest seizes as I suck it in quietly, a greedy rush that almost makes me dizzy. It’s been so long since I felt anything unfiltered, anything that wasn’t laced with chemicals and blood and the stink of my own filth.
Hope flares, bright and dangerous, expanding in my ribs like it might lift me clear out of Callum’s arms.
My eyes burn with the tears gathering behind my lids.
The last time I felt wind was standing on the balcony of my motel room, the night air brushing across my skin as I thought about all the years of art school ahead of me, and all the choices that were still mine to make.
How na?ve I was.
The memory tastes bitter now, acrid in the back of my throat. The woman I was then on the balcony didn’t understand the cost of breathing that air.
The woman breathing it in now knows all too well.
The SUV waits, its engine rumbling low, vibrating through the ground beneath Callum’s steps as he carries me closer.
I let my eyes stay shut, pressing my cheek to the rise of his chest, clinging to the illusion of my unconscious state.
The creak of leather sighs beneath us as he lowers us onto a seat and I dare to open my eyes just enough to see Elias sliding in beside us with a muted thud as he pulls his door shut.
Outside, voices call out, muffled but clear enough to scrape through.
“Good luck!”
“Drive safe, Sir!”
We did it.
My heart kicks hard against my ribs, each beat a spark catching fire until it spreads like heat through my chest.
I breathe it in with the soft churn of tires shifting against asphalt, the low growl of the engine coming to life.
My eyes fall shut of their own accord as my body begins to shake lightly at the weight of freedom as it presses in.
Callum’s hand softly strokes my skin, and this time I don’t bite back.
I let out a heavy breath and bite my lip to try to hold back the tears.
This nightmare is ending.
Then a voice rips through the night. “Stop them!”
Terrance’s voice is like a chain yanking tight around my neck.
My eyes snap open fully, heart slamming into my throat, as the fragile hope splinters.