Chapter 5
Chapter
Five
The control he was clinging tightly to snapped, and without conscious thought, Blade had his knife held to the woman’s neck.
“You think cutesy comments are going to save you, darlin’?” he asked as he pressed the sharp blade into her skin enough to draw blood.
Instead of soothing him, the sight of her pale skin painted red stoked the fires of his rage.
All day, he’d been drawn to the window, unable to look away from the pretty blonde hanging helplessly. He should have been thrilled to have caught her, be excited about the screams that would soon be echoing through the forest, but he wasn't.
Anxiety sat like a heavy ball in his gut.
Each time he went to head outside and begin his interrogation, he found he couldn’t make himself do it.
This woman wouldn't be the first he’d killed, but she would be the first woman he’d ever tortured.
Evil was not confined to a single gender, he knew that, and yet something about her soft curves and the gentle swell of her breasts was messing with his head.
Add in those angelic blonde locks and the fact that he was a sucker for a pair of baby blue eyes, and in the end, he’d had to force himself out there.
But even then, he hadn't done what he intended.
When he was shaking up that can of soda, Blade had every intention of allowing the fizzy liquid to spray up her nose, but for some reason as soon as he popped the can open, he’d lowered it, spraying her clothes instead.
What the hell was wrong with him?
Why did this woman stir up protective urges when he knew who she was and what she’d done?
“Umm … no … I just … when I'm nervous … sometimes I say random things,” she stammered, her cheeks red like she was embarrassed by spouting out random facts he couldn’t care less about.
“Nervous, are we?” Blade pressed his knife a little deeper into her skin. More blood bubbled out, and he fought the urge to allow his tongue to dart out and lick it off her. He’d always had a bit of a blood kink, but he wasn't there to explore his sexual needs, he was there to get a job done.
“I … I don’t know … am I supposed to answer you?”
There was genuine confusion in the woman’s tone, and along with it a desire to please.
Part of having enhanced hearing wasn't just the ability to hear things from a greater distance than the average person, or to hear them with better clarity.
It was also the ability to detect all the intonations that allowed him to read more into the words someone chose and the way they spoke them than most people could.
Was the woman’s desire to please him just because she wanted to spare her own life or did it run deeper than that? There was no denying she had an innocence to her that he hadn't been expecting, possibly because she looked so young, younger even than he’d expected based on Cassandra’s sketch.
“You're supposed to scream, that’s what you're supposed to do,” he snarled. It didn’t matter how innocent she looked, how young, she was involved in Dr. Gardner’s experiments, and that made her an enemy.
Fear danced in her eyes, and he knew that he was hurting her.
While he had to be careful not to cut her neck too deeply because he didn't want her bleeding out on him before he got a chance to question her, she still didn't scream.
Just hung there, like a deer caught in the headlights, trying to figure out how to live but unable to do anything at all.
“Your boss, he likes to make people scream, too, doesn’t he?” Blade asked as he shifted his knife, moving it so the point was now pressed to her skin, right at the base of her slender neck, above the neckline of her long-sleeve sleep T-shirt.
While her breathing quickened, she didn't answer, and her gaze remained on his face, not bothering to look down at the line of blood on her skin and the knife that could end her life in a single heartbeat.
“Certainly liked to make us scream as rage assaulted our systems because of the drugs he gave us. Some days, it was all I could do not to pound into my teammates over and over again, just to get some relief from it. But they weren't really the ones I wanted to hurt.”
As he spoke, Blade edged the knife down so it began to cut through the flimsy material, now soaked with soda. Because they were pajamas and he’d snatched her from her bed, there was no bra beneath it, and he bared inches of creamy soft skin with each drag of the knife.
“How many other people did your boss make scream? How many like me and my team? Only they weren't as lucky, were they? They didn't survive what your boss did to them. They gave their lives so he could enjoy playing God.”
Her breath hitched, and tears swam in her eyes, making them seem bluer. Seemed the mystery woman didn't like being reminded of just what kind of man she worked for.
Good.
She needed the reminder.
Despite everything she was a part of, there was still a shred of humanity left in her.
It was why she’d put her own life on the line to try to warn them.
Which made no sense considering he was there now and she hadn't spoken a single word to him. She hadn’t asked for mercy, offered intel in exchange for her life, or reminded him she’d turned on her boss.
All she’d done was just spout out some random facts and then try to find out how she could please him.
With her top now split from top to bottom, gaping open to reveal a set of small but perfect breasts, he pressed the tip of his knife into her belly button.
“He likes playing God, doesn’t he? Creating life.
Only he thinks his own creations are abominations.
Monsters. Animals, I think he told his sister we were.
But you know all of that, after all, you chose to work for him, right? ”
A small whimper emanated from his pretty little captive.
She didn't like being reminded that she worked for a man who had so little regard for human life. But at least he could take that as affirmation she was indeed one of Dr. Gardner’s employees and not just the man’s daughter, or some other innocent caught up in the whole mess.
Not that he’d ever really thought that was the case. If she weren't involved, she would have come clean with him about how she was connected to the man as soon as he dragged her from her bed.
It was her own guilt that kept her silent.
Moving to stand behind her, Blade reached up and grabbed the end of the left sleeve of her ruined T-shirt, dragged his knife through the thin material, and then repeated the process with the right sleeve.
Ripping the clothing from her body, he was about to start cutting through her pajama bottoms, about to taunt her about other ways to create life, possibly imply he might be down with raping her—not something that was on the table, he had his limits and that was one he wouldn't cross, not that she knew that—when he froze.
Hell … her back.
The entire thing looked like someone had branded it, not just once but over and over again.
Starting up near her left shoulder blade, there were those little bundles of five lines people did when marking things off, four lines side by side, then one crossing over them, tally marks.
There were five lots of those marks in a row, and then five rows beneath, for a total of six rows, then beneath the sixth was a seventh that had two complete bundles of five and one with two lines.
Those last two marks were bright red as though they had been recently inflicted.
Someone had used this woman’s back as some sort of sick tally board.
Who the hell would do that to her?
Running the pad of a finger over the bumpy marks, he knew enough about different ways to torture people to know that these were brands.
Someone had seared this woman’s flesh repeatedly.
But why? What did the marks mean? And why the hell hadn't she told him that she hadn't just worked for Dr. Gardner, she’d been tortured by him?
“What do they mean?” he growled as his finger circled the newer, redder lines, but didn’t brush over them since he wasn't sure if they were still painful.
Instead of answering, she just whimpered, and once again Blade felt his control snap.
Closing a hand around her throat, he pressed up against her until her back was plastered across his chest. “You better tell me what the hell is going on, who burned your back like you're some kind of scorecard, why you broke rank to try to warn me and my team, and what your involvement is, or I'm going to make what was done to your back feel like a massage in comparison to what I'm going to do to you.”
January 11th
5:17 P.M.
“I'm the one who created the drug, so I have to bear the marks of each person who didn't survive the treatment,” Whitney shrieked, terrified of what this man would do to her if she didn't tell him what he wanted to hear.
She barely survived the burning pain in her back each time one of the test subjects didn't live through the process. The smell of burning flesh as she was branded, knowing it was her own burning flesh, made her throw up every single time.
There was no chance she could survive worse than that.
Like she’d destroyed whatever control Blade had left with a single sentence, the hand around her neck tightened until she could no longer draw in any air.
The knife, which had tormented her and then cut her top from her body, was suddenly poised on her chest above her heart.
While he didn't push it into her flesh deep enough to cause her any serious injury, he did allow it to dig into her skin, and she felt the trickle of blood trail down her stomach, the liquid icy cold in stark contrast to her suddenly overheated skin.
“You? You did this to us?” He snarled, his breath hot against her ear.
Was she supposed to reconfirm what she’d just said?
Backtrack and pretend he’d misheard her?