The Cage and the Cure (Guides For Dating Vampires #4)

Chapter One

Isaiah would not die today.

He could die tomorrow—he could always die tomorrow, if it came down to that—just not today.

Someday, he would no longer be able to postpone the inevitable; it wasn’t as though vampires were immortal.

Those myths were likely born of the terror of humans not seeing the outward physical effects of aging: the wrinkles, the sags, even the silvering hair, which came late for most vampires, if it came at all.

But Isaiah, with his body’s impenetrable immune system, calculated he had at least eighty years left of his natural life.

He just wasn’t going to reach the end of that span.

No death for him today, but maybe tomorrow. If he couldn’t take it, he could die then.

That was his promise every morning, as the basement’s too-bright fluorescents sprang to life and the technician rattled down the hall with her cart.

Isaiah couldn’t see her as she rounded the far corner, the window in his door constricting him to the most limited of views, an uncomfortable snapshot of the table where he’d soon lie, the manacles that would encircle his skin, and the machines whose purposes he doubted he’d ever understand.

He knew what the final outcome was supposed to be, though—it wasn’t like they’d hidden that from him.

He could live today, but if all went as they planned, he was sure that on some tomorrow he would die down here, either when his body gave out, or once his tormentor’s experiments had run their course, and they had to dispose of him to be rid of any walking, talking evidence to their villainy.

Perhaps that might even happen on this day’s tomorrow, if they were all lucky. But not today.

Not today, he reminded himself, listening to the bump and buckle of the cart on the grey tile and waiting for his reason to keep living.

A knock came at the door beside his, then the telltale squeak of the delivery slot opening, and the slide of the breakfast tray.

That tray would hold eggs, he figured, and avocado toast—on Tuesdays it was usually avocado toast—and a glass of juice beside a warmed bag of fresh blood.

Isaiah refused to be jealous. He kept listening, his head tilted against the whitewash of his confines as he played with the fraying edge of his medical gown.

“Ah, fuck off. It’s not even seven.”

Isaiah could hear Landon’s sleepy grumble through the thin walls, and though it meant Landon would soon hear Isaiah’s screams, he hoped Landon thought that worth it for every conversation they’d had over the months he’d been down there.

Months, compared to Landon’s years. Months of physical torment, compared to years of boredom, anger, and emotional wreckage.

Though Isaiah hadn’t been dragged in here free of emotional distress, either.

He tried not to wonder, late at night, listening to the gentle hum of Landon’s snorts across the wall, if he’d traded Justin out for a new best friend like there was nothing wrong with that. Was there something wrong with that?

It didn’t matter. Landon wasn’t Isaiah’s best friend. He was Landon’s. Landon’s only friend, fated to suffer in their place, all because their mother disliked the fangs hiding behind both their lips.

Which was why Isaiah could not die today.

He refused to put Landon through the grief of that, or the guilt.

He knew what it was like to watch someone perish in your place; he’d seen Justin’s face as their friend, Marcus, had burned in a holy silver death between them—seen his own horror and shame mirrored back. He’d held Justin after, too.

Held him, and then chosen to let go. As though anything had ever been a choice with Justin.

“Goddamn,” Landon grumbled. Trudging footsteps moved across their room. Their door compartment rattled, then Isaiah’s followed suit.

He groaned and slowly pulled himself up off the slip of mattress that made up the entirety of his cell’s furnishings.

It was a proper cell—no windows, hard floor, an exposed toilet in one corner.

Though maybe that was better than what Landon had; a cell disguised as an ordinary room, with all the trappings and sentimentality that came with that, but locked from the outside all the same.

A sharp pain shot through Isaiah’s back from leaning too long against the hard wall.

The manipulative mind-fuckery of evil mothers be damned—he would do anything to share in Landon’s proper furnishings.

And a proper meal.

Isaiah pulled his own breakfast out of the door compartment to find his regular piece of toast and hardboiled egg—not a hint of the care that was put into Landon’s spread.

At least today he had a small bag of blood with it.

He plopped back down on his mattress, poking his fang into it before squirting the dark red liquid straight into his mouth.

Stale, bland, with a tinge of maybe poison, probably bacteria, who knew what else in the aftertaste.

“Fuck, did they leave this in the fridge for a week on purpose?” he complained. “It’s almost like they’re trying to torture me.”

Landon’s dry laugh echoed, tinny where it passed between their external doors and a dark, steady thrum where only the wall separated them. “Torture?” they said. “In such an upright establishment as this? Fuck off.”

Isaiah snorted. “How’s the avocado?”

“Fucking terrible.”

They were lying, of course. But Isaiah smiled anyway. “I bet it’s arranged like a flower.”

“The most asshat pretentious flower in all existence.”

Isaiah could hear the smile in their voice, even if he’d never seen it.

His mind conjured it all the same—a sharp mouth set in the face of a fighter, dark hair wild around their intelligent eyes.

He thought their hair had to be dark, anyway, like their mother, and wild because it had only been cut by her once in the time in which Isaiah had been here.

Landon had tried to punch her for it, and her security had stepped in to restrain them.

Regardless of what the woman claimed, what had followed hadn’t sounded protective, but predatory.

“Does it have that stupid drizzle of tahini on it too?” Isaiah asked.

“And a whole-ass soft-boiled egg, like I can even eat that properly without a knife.”

“Hey, I support the no-knives policy,” Isaiah chimed in before taking a bite of his toast, trying to dissuade his stomach from clenching up, his heart beating a little faster. He just had to get through today. They both had to get through today.

“Yeah, yeah,” Landon bemoaned.

“You’re getting out of here, you bloody princess. And not by stabbing anyone.” Most of all not themself, Isaiah pleaded with the universe. “That’s what I’m here for.”

“Whipping boy,” Landon grumbled. But it was a different tone: darker, angrier.

Isaiah tried his best to pull the conversation back to something lighter, sighing dramatically. “Oh, god, if only. I haven’t cum in three months.”

“Because you have a camera in your cell, too?”

“If you think that would be a con and not a—”

“Shut up before I kink-shame you.” But Landon was laughing again; still dark, still pained, but a flicker of genuine joy in the mix. That joy—that was all Isaiah needed to keep breathing. One more day. Just to see them free.

“I’m not ashamed of my kinks.” Isaiah grinned, hoping the lift of his chin and the straightness of his shoulders made it into his voice. “I wear them like a badge of honor.”

“Bitch.”

“You bet.”

“Bitch Queen.”

“Nah, that’s you, princess.”

And Landon, impossibly, laughed again.

The quiet lingered then, leaving Isaiah alone in his empty cell, one piece of toast and an—ugh, overboiled—egg left. He shoved the rest of the egg into his mouth, almost choking on it as he swallowed. And there were so many other, better things to choke on, too.

As he chewed on the last of his toast, he could hear the soft tap-tap of leather shoes emerging down the hall, followed by the thud-thud of heavy boots.

So, it began again. Isaiah stretched his arms over his head, looping them behind his three-month-old locs, the tiny black coils ragged near the roots from lack of attention.

He yawned, watching his single view of the outside world as though he could care less what came from it.

His heart rate would not rise. He would not sweat. He wouldn’t dread the pain. He wouldn’t die today.

He wouldn’t.

So instead, when Dr. Anthony Hilker’s tired face appeared in the door’s window, Isaiah stared blankly, one fang lazily bared. “You’re early.”

“We’re exactly on time, as always,” Hilker replied, looking about as fazed as the devil with a mortal audience.

The graying brunette had the long parts of his hair pulled back into a bun, making it all the more apparent how long and ragged his undercut was becoming.

“Are you going to come quietly, or do I need Varsity to get you?”

Months ago, Isaiah would have seen Hilker’s face and hated him for the ways he’d fucked with Justin toward the end of their professional correspondence, but since the day he’d been dragged into this lab and found that, by some cruel coincidence, a shocked Hilker was staring back at him from behind a clipboard, Isaiah had far more intimate set of reasons to resent him.

“Punch him in the dick!” Landon shouted through the wall. “Punch them both in the dick!”

Despite his self-talk, Isaiah’s heart did beat just a little faster. He felt his breakfast turn in his stomach. He forced himself to breathe. “Depends. How much pain are you planning for me today?”

“Don’t be like that.” Hilker had some fucking gall; his expression took a turn toward pity. “Everything I do is useless without the influence of holy silver. It’s not my choice.”

“It’s just the science,” Isaiah mocked. A science that needed Isaiah’s body brought to the verge of death by a metal designed specifically to torture and kill vampires.

Anthony’s claims of science seemed ironic, considering the holy part of holy silver came from legends that it was commissioned by the Catholic church.