Ten
I come to in a different room, lying on my back in bed. A bright overhead light shines in my face, so I turn my head while blinking fast. My eyes focus on a metal counter full of surgical tools. The white walls of the place mock me with their sterile cleanliness; all I feel is dirty.
Used.
Rotten.
Infected with the touch of Grubs and Sadist and all the other men who raped me.
Hating the feel of being on my back, I go to stand. As soon as I sit up, I find my hands and legs are strapped down with thick padded cuffs. A chill runs through me as I glance down at my body. I’m naked and tied to a hospital bed by my wrists and ankles. The surgical tools finally register, and my heart jumps into my throat. I need to get out of here.
Sadist and the others were experimented on.
I tug against my binds.
My skin burns from the pain.
I grit my teeth and pull harder.
My skin rubs raw.
I twist and yank and fucking curse.
But the cuffs still bite into me, deep and unyielding.
Fuck!
Breathing hard, I give up trying to free myself. Fighting against the impossible will just make me break faster. I am not naive enough to think I’ll never break. That I’ll survive this place with my mind intact. It’s the number one rule to torture: everyone breaks eventually. Whether during their time of captivity or afterwards.
So I need to keep my goals realistic, need to give myself something I “can”
control. I can’t get out of these binds, but I can keep my dignity. I can take whatever they do to me today. I can survive until tomorrow.
I can learn valuable information – like what was done to the fourteen men who raped me, if they’re still undergoing experimentation, and who does it. I can use that to build a rapport with them, a shared hatred, a shared pain. Then I can work on manipulating them. Get them to see me as more than a pussy. Maybe even get a few of them to help me escape…
The idea of that, of playing nice to the men who raped me curdles my very soul. But I’ll do what I need to in order to survive.
The door opens, and a man with short black hair comes in. He doesn’t smile at me or glare at me with cold malice. He doesn’t look at me at all as he moves over to the counter with all the medical tools.
“I’m going to fucking kill you,” I snarl.
I don’t need to ask him who he is; his face is one I will never forget. This bastard is the one who helped Antonio portal me here. He was the one who stepped on my hand as I reached to hold my little girl for the first and last time as she lay in a puddle of blood – a mixture of both mine and hers. He stole that moment from me, and so I will steal his life.
It won’t be easy though. He knows transportation magic, so that means he’s a strong witch, intelligent, and fucking crazy. Given he’s also the guy who experimented on all the wolves, though, is a good thing. Maybe I can convince them to help me kill this fucker in between raping me. I’m not trying to leave you, Grubs. I just want to beat the shit out of Eduardo and then shove his face into his excrement until he chokes on it.
He picks up a bone saw and comes over to me. It takes everything I have not to tug against my bonds. Show no fear.
“Are you right or left handed?” he asks.
Goosebumps spread across my body. “Go to hel.”
He leans in and strokes his free hand down the side of my face. “This is hel,”
he whispers, “and I’m your god here.”
Lunging forward, I clamp my teeth down on his nose. He screams as he jerks back – all defense; he isn’t a fighter. He is a coward who hurts people tied down or drugged. I’m going to enjoy killing him, making him feel all the pain he inflicts.
I shake my head hard, like a dog with a hare. He screams as he tries to shove me away. I lock my jaw. Swallow the blood. He finally starts to hit me with his fist. Pain explodes in my skull. I don’t let go. He picks up the saw, but with a last wrench of my head, I tear his nose free.
Eduardo howls as he stumbles back. Dropping the tool, he clasps both hands to his face as white light streams from his fingers. He can stop the blood gushing down his face, but he cannot clean the stains off his shirt, cannot erase the evidence of my insult to his masculinity.
That’s only a temporary reminder though, gone when he changes clothes.
I want him to remember what I’ve done to him every day of his fucking life, what little of it remains.
I want him to fear what I’ll do next.
Fighting back my nausea, I start to chew. He looks up at me with murder in his eyes. He can’t immediately regrow the nose I’ve taken, but he can reattach it.
“Give it back!”
he screams. He doesn’t advance. He’s too afraid. Too cowardly.
I look him in the eye as I swallow.
My gut churns, but I beat back the urge to retch it up.
Snarling, he bends down and grabs the saw. He takes one angry step towards me, his foot slapping hard on the tiles, and I wonder if I miscalculated. Antonio doesn’t want me dead, but he isn’t here, and this guy has a god complex with anger issues. All it’ll take is one snap moment for him to kill me by “accident.”
“You want to make a fool of me, bitch?”
“It’s not like you need help.”
I lean over the side of the bed towards him and bare my bloody teeth. He can’t reach my arm without getting in range of my mouth.
So he goes for my feet.
Grabbing my right one, he starts to hack at me just above my ankle. “I’ll show you a fool!”
he shouts as he drags the saw over my skin.
The first slice is bearable. I have been cut enough times. Pain and I are old friends. “I can already see you, dipshit,”
I grit out as he makes the second slice.
He’s rough, inefficient, and powered by rage. The cuts aren’t together, one neatly on top of the other. They are a crisscrossing mess of blood and flappy flesh. The pain turns into agony, and it’s harder for me to keep my head together. I fall back on the bed, fighting the urge to scream.
Right as he reaches my bone though, the door behind him opens. I catch sight of a blurred streak, then Eduardo is being yanked off me. The bone saw is pulled from his grasp and flung across the room hard enough to embed into the wall like a spear.
“Heal her,”
Antonio snaps as he shoves Eduardo back towards me. He keeps one hand on the back of the witch’s neck, ready to crush it if he so much as hesitates.
“She bit my nose off!”
he whines, but he raises his hands instantly. White light streams from his fingers. A warmth spreads through my limb as he repairs what he destroyed.
As soon as he’s done, Antonio shoves him away. He does not need to tell him to hide in the corner and stay quiet. Eduardo’s enough of a coward to do it on his own.
“My hero,”
I say sarcastically as I sit up to face the alpha of the werewolves. Sweat trickles down my face, and despite my newly healed leg, my body still trembles from the earlier pain.
Antonio stands at the foot of my bed, his arms crossed. His biceps bulge against the sleeves of his simple black tee. His golden eyes are sharp with intelligence and a desire to break me. “Who was the father of your child?”
he demands, and a wave of sheer rage pushes out my lingering pain.
“Fuck you.”
“You fucked someone else to complete the blood bond. Who was it?”
“None of your fucking business.”
“Tell me, or I’ll let Eduardo take your leg.”
My jaw locks. I glare at the fucker in front of me. That wasn’t a bluff. I don’t need my foot to get pregnant. But I can’t tell him Varius is the father.
If the Shadow Domain finds out he’s a hybrid, Antonio won’t even need to destroy our Family himself. They’ll turn on him like a starving pack of wolves. If Khalid doesn’t kill him, all of our allies and associates will. Or perhaps they’ll just jump ship, moving to do business with our enemies. We will be attacked by every fucking sewer rat wanting a piece or street cred, and our Family, a multi-billion dollar empire, would crumble overnight.
“Aleric,”
I spit out, my voice one of disgust. There’s no way Antonio will be able to hold him here. Although, he’s taken other born vampires who had the ability to phase, he forced them to breed with werewolves. They were poisoned day after day, their body melting from the inside out. They had no chance of escape.
But a witch’s bodily fluids aren’t poisonous to vampires. If he brings Aleric here to fuck me, he might as well release me himself.
Antonio studies me like he doesn’t believe me, but I don’t waver from his gaze. Nor do I offer up any more details to “sell”
the lie. The only time I’d tell him shit willingly was if I was lying, and he knows it.
“Is the bond completed?” he asks.
“Yes.”
If he knew the truth, he’d kill me. I’m of no use to him if I can’t make it to term, and the bond, as much as I cherish it, is a ticking time bomb.
Although Varius and I shared a lot of blood yesterday, I have also lost a lot. I can barely feel him now. It’s like he’s a word on the tip of my tongue or a shadow just on the edge of my peripherals. I can’t feel his emotions raging inside me anymore. Can’t feel where he is. I reckon I only have four, maybe five months left before the bond demands blood in one way or another.
I expected Antonio to be concerned about the bond being completed though. If Varius can find him wherever he is, he will have to move me constantly. The added stress of being on the run nonstop, combined with the increased risk of me escaping during transit should garner some sort of reaction, but he doesn’t look concerned at all.
“I’m bait,”
I say with a mental curse.
He smiles for the first time.
“Tell me about the Shadow family, and I’ll put you with the other women,”
he says. “You’ll have a room to yourself, and you’ll only be bred during certain hours. Refuse, and you’ll room with the men you’ve already met, available to them twenty-four seven. Then I’ll force the answers out of you anyway.”
I lean forward as far as I can. “Fuck. You.”
He stares at me for a moment, then turns to leave. “Draw her blood,”
he says to Eduardo. “Then put her in with the men.”