20. Crypt Keeper #2
Motherfucker.
Fire flooded my veins. My body weakened, but the rage stayed, burning bright.
The Doctor watched all of it with that same quiet curiosity.
“Remarkable protective response,” he finally observed with a touch of awe.
“She’s a child,” I snarled.
“She is proof.” He sounded almost excited.
“Of what?”
“That female Rougarous are possible.”
The room tilted on its axis. Not from the drugs. From the words.
The Doctor stepped closer again.
“Male Rougarous are rare, which I’m sure you’re well aware. Females were considered biologically impossible. Your line changed that.”
“My line?” What the fuck was he talking about?
The Doctor grinned like I’d finally asked the right question. “Your mother’s blood fascinated me long before you were old enough to shift.”
The world narrowed. My mother. My dead mother. The one who never knew.
The one who raised me until another man came along, and she walked away from her own child for him.
No, not just a man. My little brother recently discovered his father had been something much darker than a man in a motorcycle club.
Regardless, death had taken her and left my father to finish the job alone.
“What did you do to her?”
“Not a thing,” he assured me, and somehow that was worse. “She was observed. Her records acquired. Her bloodline traced. Quietly. Respectfully, even.”
“Respectfully,” I repeated incredulously, my tongue beginning to feel thick. It was getting harder to hold my head up, and I could feel the edge of the metal collar pressing into my neck.
“You would be surprised how much can be learned from hospital records, coven archives, old vampire ledgers, demon genealogies,” he prattled on as he seemed to study me.
He walked back and forth as he looked at me from all angles.
“Your parents were well compensated for their participation. Yet that didn’t work out exactly as I planned.
He wasn’t supposed to fall in love with her.
It’s why I stopped using voluntary subjects—things get too messy. ”
Well compensated?
Before I could dig into that, he paused when he got to my side. His eyes dropped briefly, and I could tell it was to the marks along my spine. They tingled as if he had touched them.
I went rigid. Too late. He saw. His face changed.
For the first time since he entered the room, something like surprise flickered through his expression.
Rafael noticed immediately. “What?”
My neck cracked as I turned to watch the Doctor as he stepped closer, eyes fixed on where the mate mark crawled down my back beneath torn fabric and dried blood. He was silent for several seconds. Then he whispered to himself, “That should not be possible.”
A cold blade of dread slid through me.
Rafael’s gaze sharpened. “What should not be possible?”
The Doctor looked at him. Then back at me. “The demon female?”
Katalina.
No.
My wolf surged again.
Rafael smiled slowly. Not the Doctor’s curious smile. This one was darker. Triumphant.
“You mated her.”
I said nothing. But my silence was answer enough.
Rafael’s smile widened. “I wondered why she hesitated.”
My vision pulsed red. “Leave her out of this.”
“Oh, I’m afraid that’s no longer an option,” the Doctor explained as he circled back into view, still staring like he’d discovered a new law of nature.
“Demon-human mate marks are rare,” he murmured. “Demon-shifter bonds should be impossible. Unless…” His gaze locked on mine again. “Unless the amplifier trait stabilized the bond.”
Rafael’s expression turned thoughtful. Dangerously thoughtful. “Meaning?”
“Meaning,” the Doctor explained slowly, “he may not simply stabilize offspring.”
My blood ran cold. Hairs stood at attention all over my body as a chill washed over me.
“He may stabilize incompatible bonds.”
Silence. Heavy. Awful.
Rafael looked at me like I had just become something far more useful than a prisoner. The Doctor looked at me like I had just become the answer to a question he hadn’t known he needed to ask.
“Do you know how many failures came before you?” the Doctor asked softly.
The words sank hot and heavy beneath my skin. Failures. The room beyond the glass. The restraints. The blood. The claw marks in concrete.
Zara.
I wasn’t the first attempt. Just the first successful one. The thought should have broken something inside me. Instead, it sharpened me. Because I was beginning to understand, this wasn’t about one child. One facility. One asshole demon with ambition.
This was bigger. Older. Rot running under the foundation of the supernatural world.
Rafael wanted power. The Doctor wanted answers. Or perhaps he wanted to play God. Either way, both of them thought I was the blueprint.
The sedative dragged harder through my body. My limbs weakened. My vision blurred at the edges. The Doctor stepped away, speaking to someone I couldn’t see.
“Blood first. Tissue samples. Bone marrow if he survives the draw. Keep him sedated but not unconscious. I want reactions.”
Rafael looked at me one last time. “Your mate will come for you.”
I forced my eyes to stay open. “I hope she does.”
His brow lifted.
I let my mouth curve. “She’ll kill you slowly. And if you get away, she will hunt you down.”
For the first time, Rafael’s smile faded. Not much, but enough. Perhaps because he knew Katalina. He knew I was right.
The darkness crept closer. My wolf raged helplessly inside me.
Katalina. Zara. The club. They weren’t safe. None of them. But if Rafael thought dragging me into some mad scientist’s lab made me helpless, he was dead wrong.
I was SAA of the Kings of Anarchy.
I was Gideon Dallas Bourque.
I was Crypt Keeper.
And monsters should know better than to put another monster in a cage. They always find a way out.
The last thing I heard before the drugs pulled me under was the Doctor’s quiet voice. “Begin extraction.”