Chapter 17 #2
He showed me a small tool, and I watched him open a sterile package and put a tiny needle into it. “Just on the side of your finger,” he said. “A few drops.”
Drink from the tap. Did that mean she wanted to bite me? Fuck. I didn’t want her to have my blood in any way, though. Direct or indirect, so I shook my head.
He looked… scared. I’d never seen that look on him before, and that served to scare me.
“You can’t be allowed out into the world with this knowledge,” Magnum told me. “Not unless you’ve been magically bound to the secret, and I think nearly all magical ceremonies or rituals or whatever involve blood.”
“Three drops of my blood will not turn you into a vampire, nor will it affect your DNA or your energy in any way,” Brooke said.
“You and I each take in a few drops of each other’s blood, and you will promise to keep our secrets.
If you fully mean it in every way when you say it, the magic will bind you to the promise.
The wording will keep you from sharing it any way — written, oral, and you won’t even be able to hint about it.
A few more minutes, if you cooperate, and we can take you back to land. ”
“And if I don’t cooperate?”
“When you work on video,” Brooke said, “you mark the beginning and end of a section you wish to cut or delete, yes?”
I didn’t like where this was going, but I nodded.
“I put a marker in your memory when you stepped onto the boat. If you do not follow through, I will delete everything from that point forward and replace it with a hazy memory of Gears telling you some names in his head — names he does not remember, but I can see in his memories. I’ll share those names with you either way.
Those families deserve to have some closure. ”
My blood went cold. Delete everything.
She’d put an in-point in my head like my memories were footage on a timeline to trim, and she could just…
cut everything I’d seen, everything I’d heard, every face, every name, every piece of the story that mattered.
Gone, and replaced with filler. Delete the clip, and everything downstream shifts to close the gap, so there’s no seam, nothing that would ever tell me something was missing.
I’ve done it to video a thousand times — a stutter, a bad take, an accusation without facts to back it up. But I didn’t take the words and memories from those people, I just chose not to air them.
Magnum had said Brooke was scary powerful, but I hadn’t understood what that meant. Fuck.
My memories are who I am. My entire career is based on finding the truth, and I finally had it, but this… vampire could fuck with my mind and take it from me, so I’d walk off this boat with nothing. No proof. No memory that any of this had ever happened. I wouldn’t even know what I’d lost.
I breathed through my terror and did my best to sit still and consider my next actions.
I considered the facts: This creature had somehow violated my mind and dropped a marker in, mid-scene, without asking, the same way I’d flag a cut point on a rough draft nobody’s seen yet.
My memory wasn’t mine while I was in her presence, and possibly even when she wasn’t anywhere close.
I had no way of knowing that, so I stuck to what I knew — she owned every memory that’d happened since I stepped onto this boat.
Everything from that point forward existed on her terms, subject to her judgment about what stayed in the final cut — and if I said the wrong thing, or felt the wrong way, or even fucking thought the wrong thing…
a single choice she didn’t approve of, and she’d make this entire conversation quietly, permanently, never have happened.
She could erase the last hour of my life as easily as hitting delete on a keyboard, and she’d said it as if it was just another day for her.
Nothing special. Completely normal in her world.
“I’m not interested in reporting the paranormal,” I told her.
“And I have no idea what this means for me and Magnum, but I can’t imagine ever wanting to bring him into the light of day.
” I looked around at the rest of the boat.
“Or the rest of his club, who I’m guessing are all…
” I blew out a breath. “Not human. It’s hard to even say that, but I saw Squatch change into a wolf…
” I narrowed my eyes at her. “If you can delete memories and add them back in, then it’s probably possible for you to make me think I saw him change into a wolf, but that would prove that you’re a vampire, so…
” I shrugged. “Doesn’t make sense for you to have done that. ”
No one said anything, and I went back into question mode. It’s what I do.
“Why are we doing this on the boat?”
“For me,” Mason said. “My therapist has discovered I get more stressed talking about my captivity indoors. We do all our sessions outside now. This hasn’t been about me, and I’d have been fine inside, but Gears decided we needed to do it outside.”
“I believe it was also for me,” Brooke said. “I’ve enjoyed the boat ride, and I’m hoping Magnum will agree to take me again.”
“Certainly,” Magnum said from beside me. “I’m sure Squatch and Kitty will enjoy bringing you, and perhaps Dev can come as well.”
She smiled. “Yes, he can bring his owl, though maybe we’ll leave the cougars at home.”
The wolf huffed, and Brooke smiled at him. “You’re welcome, dear Squatch.”
She looked back to me. “Let Magnum put a few drops of your blood on the saucer, so I can lick them off undiluted.”
I stared at her while Magnum used the pressure injector on the side of my finger, squeezed a few seconds and wiped the blood on the saucer, then put a piece of cotton over the hole.