53
I look up, frowning, from my work as I hear voices at my tent door.
I’m alone in here, Valérie having been released earlier this morning and Silke refusing to share a room with me.
So far we’d been in Australia four days, staying in what were supposedly luxuriously appointed tents, each with a deck, spa, private bathroom and unobscured ocean views.
This tent, though, had been commandeered by the medical staff, and I hadn’t managed to enjoy the view or had any visitors willing to tell me what it was like outside.
I had, however, managed to explore the interior thoroughly and secrete a scalpel and a vial of sleeping tablets.
And I have my eye on a number of other things that might come in handy in future too. Security is very lax here.
The voices begin to get louder, and I strain to hear what’s being said.
“No, you know you can’t film in here. Mr Dott,” the Viscount says firmly. “Don’t you have enough to do with getting ready for tonight’s challenge?”
“But Catriona’s technically still part of the group date. She couldn’t attend it, so you’re visiting her.”
“This is her bedroom. You don’t film in bedrooms.”
“But, but it’s more like a hospital room…”
“Gerry, you’re irritating me more than usual. That’s not a healthy pursuit. I said no. Need I remind you that if I should marry this woman the world would have seen inside her bedchamber? That is completely unacceptable.”
“Do you think she’s the one, Viscount?” The director asks. “What about Evelyn? You seemed very close with the American during the date. Perhaps a brief interview while I have you about how you’re feeling?”
I don’t hear the bachelor’s growled response, but I can’t help smiling as I hear footsteps head away and, putting aside the small sketch book I’d been permitted due to my confinement, look up to see Jaguar enter the room alone.
He’s wearing jeans, runners, and a white, long-sleeve shirt made from some kind of stretchy material — I hadn’t seen him in anything other than a suit up to now, and I’m momentarily distracted by how handsome he is.
Self-consciously I try to smooth down the tangle of curls I’m sporting, not having taken any care of my appearance for more than a week. Had I been informed he was coming I would have tried to brush my hair, even though reaching up is still painful.
Despite the twinges in my side, my mind’s now clear of the painkilling drugs I’d been on previously.
The gunshot wound was clean; no organs had been damaged.
And there was no debris that had to be removed from my body.
The stitches are doing their job, and while my lungs will take time to recover from the drowning I’m at no risk of fever or infection now.
In a day or two I should be out of here.
‘At least I’m still wearing the ribbon.’
“Hello, Catriona.”
“Viscount, no one said you were visiting.”
“It was spur of the moment. Are you keeping occupied?” He nods to the sketchbook as he pulls up the chair next to my bed. “Or is this part of your therapy?”
I laugh at his sarcastic tone. Valérie, Miranda, and Silke had all required visits from the show psychologists after witnessing the bachelor kill the fake doctor. Their therapy had been conducted in here with me, even though I told the medical team I didn’t want it.
“I didn’t need therapy,” I snort, “but I think you know that.”
I’m about to mention the other doctor, too, the beautiful one who’d freaked me out, but I don’t get the chance. He clearly wants answers, and he’s not going to get sidetracked.
“You didn’t seem at all shocked at my violent intervention, Catriona. Why is that? Your background?”
“Not especially. I mean, I probably didn’t react because I was drugged on something, if you recall, and relieved you’d just saved my life.”
“Still….”
“I didn’t grow up watching people get killed, Viscount. I’ve seen orders for it to be done, heard my father discussing it. But our blood-red hands are always gloved, if you know what I mean.”
‘Not mine though. Mine are stained; there was no other way.’
“I do,” he nods, “others do the dirty work. Although you appear to be the exception.”
“Yes,” I keep my eyes on his. “And what you did to that fake doctor… to tell you the truth, I’ve imagined myself doing much, much worse.”
“Your vengeful heart?” He raises an eyebrow.
“Sì,” I sigh, adjusting my pillow to sit up higher to speak to him, “and I guess since you told me you kill for food, and you bit me so brutally, I knew you had that capacity for violence too.”
“Isn’t that what you want?” he asks quietly. “A T-Rex?”
“Yes,” I nod.
He keeps his eyes on mine.
“But your roommates…?”
“You blew their minds,” I snort. “Valérie in particular.”
He shakes his head.
“This Game brings home truths for all of us.”
I nod and watch as he looks around the tent, seemingly bored with the conversation, or wanting to change the subject.
“When will you be released?”
Not in time for whatever tonight’s challenge is, thank God. They said I’ll be out of here by tomorrow or the next day, but in the meantime they won’t give me a television or any other kind of amusement.”
“So you draw?”
He points to the sketchbook I’ve pushed half-under my blanket.
“Is that commonality why you and Thorun get along? She paints, and you draw? Or is it because you’re both optimists?”
“Thorun paints colourful renderings of the seashore,” I shrug. “I draw black and white buildings. We don’t have anything in common.”
He turns his head to the side quizzically and holds out his hand for the book, and I shake my head, but he isn’t taking no for an answer.
Sighing heavily I hand it over and wait uncomfortably as he flicks through my sketches.
Nobody has ever looked at my drawings before, other than my lecturers, and even then those were specific drawings for assessments, not my own personal drawings.
It feels strangely intimate to have the bachelor look through them now.
“These are really very good,” he says quietly as he studies each one. “You have an eye for detail and clearly a talent for capturing the intricacies of buildings.”
“Yes,” I nod.
“Yet your background dossier says you studied political science.”
Silently, I thank God that my father forced Mirabella to study the exact courses I did.
“I was made to study that,” I shrug, “but I took on a double-major so I could also pursue my passion.”
“Architecture?” He smiles as he hands me back the notebook.
‘How could you know that just from seeing these sketches?’
“Yes.”
“And that’s what you planned to do as a career?”
‘I wish.’
I shake my head.
“I appreciate historical buildings. I dreamt I might work in that field of, you know, helping people sympathetically restore and preserve. But I never really anticipated any future in that field.”
“Because of your family commitments?” He presses.
‘Because I was going to be forced to marry a rapist and have children after graduation.’
“Yes.”
He leans back in his chair and crosses his arms, his eyes meeting mine.
“I still have questions.”
‘Of course you do.’
“An answer for an answer,” I shrug.
“Very well. You asked me back in Seville why I entered this show to find a wife when I could find one outside the Game at any time. I owe you the truth. I was forced, through a commitment, a vow, to enter and find a bride. If I hadn’t done so the society I sought would be forbidden to me.”
“By society, I have to assume you mean the Courts?”
“No,” he shrugs, “but my friends are royal, so by extension, yes.”
“And is that what you want? To spend your time doing royal duties?”
“I don’t have any duties,” he shrugs, “not now the wars are over. I simply have to stay under the radar of The Families and live my life.”
“The Families?”
I play dumb, but I know exactly who he’s talking about, although they obviously play a role I was unaware of.
“Yes, the royals who make our laws and rules. The same royals who sanction these games and the death and destruction they perpetrate.”
‘The same royals my kind enable to rule and farm humans for food.’
“Which you don’t support,” I murmur. “So, in a way we’ve both kind of been forced to be here.”
“Yes.”
“You have The Families to deal with and so do I — we’re not so different after all.”
He raises an eyebrow. “So we are talking about the Cosa Nostra?”
‘I wish.’
“Something like that,” I meet his intense stare, my expression hardening when I realise my slip-up.
His visit, while a welcome distraction from the boredom of solitary confinement, is also difficult in that there’s so much I can’t tell him, and every question could be dangerous for us both.
My time isolated here has given me plenty of opportunity to ponder why my family would again attempt to take me violently rather than just use their powerful connections to extract me from the Game.
The answer was glaringly obvious once I hit upon it.
If they let the royals know I was in the Game it would reveal that one of us had broken the covenant.
God only knows what ramifications that might bring, especially in light of the new information I had about vampire diets.
‘Far better that my kind should just try to recover me secretly.’
I imagine the fake doctor plot was to knock me out and wheel me away quietly. This would have been my father’s plan, because Valentino is more the ‘smash and grab’ kind.
‘And he hadn’t succeeded twice now. Oh, Merda.
This can only mean my father has stepped in and taken over the operation.
He’s banking on the fact that the producers would never air that a contestant had been kidnapped; they’d just explain away my absence as me having been eliminated.
I would return to the family and do as expected.
And the royals, even if they got wind of something odd having happened, would never learn who I really was or what had really happened.
But the other woman, the other doctor? Had the royals learned what I am?
My blood type would have been on that chart she read.
Oh, Jesus, if she was a vampire I’m really in deep shit. ’
The bachelor leans back in his seat, studying me and obviously misreading my fearful expression as my revelation hits home.
“You don’t need to fear the mafia, Catriona. They’re small fry allowed to swim only at the discretion of the sharks.”
“And the sharks are…?” I leave the word hanging.
Once, I would have thought it was the families I was born into.
Now I realise I know nothing about how the world really works.
Nothing at all. Because it seems whatever deal was made between my kind and vampires all those centuries ago, there’s only one at the top of the food chain — and it isn’t us. “Vampires,” I sigh.
“Yes, we’re the sharks.”
“In which case, you and I are perfect for one another. After all, I was brought up amid violence and wealth, as were you, albeit on a bigger scale. I’ll make a good wife and fit into your society.”
“If you say so,” he shrugs.
“You should choose me.”
“I told you,” he shakes his head, “your fate is your own. If you win, you gain my hand.”
‘Yes, and I will win. Providing I can outsmart all the other competitors, my family and fucking royal vampires!’
I clear my throat and try to change the topic.
“So, how did your group date go?”
“As well as can be expected,” he shrugs, his tone bored. “Evelyn tells me most of the competitors consider you the chief threat in the Game. I apologise if I helped bring that about.”
“I doubt it,” I shrug, “Evelyn already despised me and likes to make shit up.”
“Yes,” he nods, “but you did kill two competitors in cold blood.”
“We’ve already ascertained we both have the capacity for violence. I shouldn’t need to remind you that it’s the nature of this Game, Viscount. Every one of my opponents must die, from the biggest threat to the least, if I’m to win.”
“I’d like you to call me Jaguar.”
“OK. Well, don’t try to make me feel guilty for trying to survive, Jaguar.”
“I’m not trying to do that,” he says quietly, “I’m just trying to better understand you.”
“What’s to understand? I took out someone who’d already assaulted me in the first contest; I was justified in that.
Natia, I shot in self-defence and hadn’t anticipated killing, but either way her team was going to come last, so I was responsible for her annihilation in that sense.
And I guess since Starlen was the one who sucked the losers to death I, at least, spared her that disgusting end. ”
“Yes,” he sighs. “You felt justified in shooting Khutulun, but given our previous discussions I do wonder why you didn’t also eliminate at least one of the Zurich twins.”
I frown. “They haven’t shown their hands yet.”
“One did try to drown you.”
“Pardon?”
“Were you unaware?” He raises his eyebrows. “One of the twins had hold of your leg, preventing Thorun from bringing you to the surface of the river.”
“No one told me,” I scowl.
“Would that have changed your strategy?”
I think about it for a moment before shaking my head.
“No, I had a plan.”
“That’s what I thought.”
Rising, he looks down at me, his expression thoughtful.
“Did you kill your best friend outside the Game, Catriona?”
“Who told you that?”
“That’s irrelevant. Given how you’ve justified your targets in the last contest, and our previous talk of honour, I’m going to assume your friend deserved his or her end?”
“Her,” I nod. “And yes.”
He gives me a long, long look.
“And do you have many friends outside this Game?”
“I think you already know the answer to that,” I snap. “Since it seems my temporary teammates can’t keep their mouths shut.”
“And if I asked you why?”
“I’d say I’ve answered enough questions.”
“As I mentioned before, my friendships are what drove me into this Game,” he says quietly, “I’ve lived a long, long time without them, here and there. Most recently thirty years, in fact, and I know how lonely life can get without the society you crave.”
“If your friends drove you into this Game then they can’t be worth your time,” I scowl. “No one can be trusted. The only person you need to answer to, and the only person you can ever really count on, is yourself.”
“Thorun risked her life to fight off the twin and pull you from the river,” he says quietly. “She told me she considers you a friend. I think she’s proven herself to be someone you can trust.”
“Thorun is a competitor,” I sigh. “And stupendously naive. If I hadn’t needed my team to get to the finish line I would have shot every one of them without compunction.
If I considered her a threat I would have ended her before now.
She’s not my friend. Is that helping you to understand me, Jaguar? ”
“Yes,” he nods before turning to make for the door, “but I still have questions.”
“Who have you asked on the one-on-one?” I ask quietly as he reaches the doorway.
He answers without turning.
“Thorun.”