Chapter Eleven
The next three days passed in a blur. Reyna slept off and on the entire time, only waking up long enough to eat.
Even then, sometimes she couldn’t be bothered.
She could hear her brothers come in and out of her room with Meghan and occasionally Tye on their heels.
She knew they were worried about her sleeping so much.
She knew that she should get up and act like a human again, but she had never been more exhausted.
On the fourth day, Meghan went about checking Reyna’s vitals. “We’re going to have to dose you with vampire saliva.”
“What?” Reyna asked groggily.
“Or we could have someone bite you if you prefer.”
“No!”
“I didn’t give you the saliva after I drew your blood, and I took a lot of blood from you at Visage.
Harrington was taking more than the recommended amount each time, Reyna.
Then he was giving you extra-large doses of his saliva to make up for the blood he was taking.
You didn’t get any this time. The first time in weeks,” Meghan said with a weighted frown.
“I thought you were tired and that I should let you rest. I should have known better. Your body is trying to make up for the loss of blood, and I suspect it’s going through withdrawal. ”
“I’m not an addict,” Reyna countered.
“I didn’t accuse you of anything. You just went through a traumatic experience. Sleeping is perfectly normal, but I’d prefer to check you out before I let you live the rest of your life in that bed.”
“All right,” Reyna relented. “How’s Jodie?”
“Incredibly resilient. She won’t let me check her out, but at least she’s not still sleeping.”
“And Beckham?” she whispered.
Meghan shook her head once solemnly.
“Okay.” She shucked the covers off her. “Where to?”
“Medical center,” Meghan said.
“A hospital?” Reyna shuddered at the thought.
“It’s a safe place. I’ll be there with you the entire time.”
Reyna didn’t reply. It was bad enough that she had to get dosed one more time or that Meghan thought she was jonesing for her next hit. Back to hospital rooms. More hospital rooms. She hated that her body was reacting this way. She just wanted it to be over.
Meghan brought Reyna to the mess hall to eat breakfast. She wasn’t hungry, but she ate anyway. Jodie showed up as they were finishing and agreed to join them, with the caveat that she was in no way agreeing to any invasive medical procedures.
Reyna would have liked to tell Meghan the same thing. She understood why Jodie wouldn’t want another person near her. Reyna didn’t particularly want it, either, but she really felt like shit. And while she didn’t want the venom, if it helped, then she’d do it.
“No time for the official tour, but this is the workout room.” Meghan pointed out rooms as they passed. “Here we have a weight room.” She gestured to a large lifting area. “And this is everyone’s favorite: the rec room.”
Reyna peeked her head inside to find a large room containing everything from Ping-Pong to air hockey to cards to Monopoly.
A projector took up one wall, displaying six different shows at once.
Someone was arguing which one should have sound for the room, though it looked like a couple people were wearing headphones for the show they wanted to watch. Everyone looked so happy and carefree.
“Wow,” Jodie breathed behind Reyna.
“Yeah. It’s…something.”
“Overwhelming?” she suggested.
“Loud?”
“It’s a lot,” Jodie said.
Someone must have finally won the remote to change the sound to a different program in the center left of the screen.
“The news,” Reyna said.
“Ugh, don’t watch it. They’re in Visage’s pocket,” Meghan grumbled. “All they do is lie.”
“Well, at least nothing has really changed,” Jodie said.
“I’d like to know what I’ve missed, though.”
“You won’t get it from there. Harrington bought out most of the news stations.
If you want to hear the truth, you have to tune in to the underground networks and listen on the radio frequencies.
This bullshit runs twenty-four seven, and it’s all nonsense.
They focus on celebrity gossip in the midst of the world falling apart. Anything to deflect from reality.”
“I bet,” Reyna said.
Reyna was about to turn away from the rec room when her eyes narrowed in on the figures in the news frame. She gasped.
“What?” Meghan asked, then went pale when she looked up at the screen.
“What am I missing?” Jodie asked.
Reyna took a few steps into the room, ignoring the now blatant stares from the other people inside. The screen was filled with Beckham and Penelope’s smiling faces. Underneath it read, “The Engagement We’ve All Been Waiting For.”
Reyna’s hand flew to her mouth. Engagement.
Beckham and Penelope were engaged.
Her stomach heaved. Her eyes went blurry, and she couldn’t hear a word the news reporter was saying. All she could see was the fuzzy picture of Beckham and Penny. What the fuck?
“Reyna, come on. Don’t look at that,” Meghan said.
“He’s engaged,” she whispered.
“Let’s get out of here, okay?” Meghan said, using her nurse voice.
“He’s…he’s engaged.”
Reyna wasn’t seeing or hearing a thing. Her world was spinning. She was upside down.
Meghan reached for Reyna’s arm and tugged her toward the entrance.
Reyna took one last look at the glowing faces on the screen and then forced herself to turn away.
She didn’t know what she was feeling right now.
Sick and twisted up in disbelief. But also…
angry. Beckham and Penelope were engaged?
It wasn’t even possible. She had seen them together at the ball and known that was his cover.
She had said in her mind that she was letting him go.
But that was before she had escaped and seen all that he had done for her.
That he had been planning to get her out all along.
But an engagement was a whole other thing.
She ground her teeth together and followed the girls to the medical center.
“Look, it’s a trash news network,” Meghan said. “I told you from the start that everything they say is a lie.”
“You think they’re not together?” Reyna asked her pointedly.
Jodie snorted next to her as they finally came to a stop.
“What’s your problem?” Meghan asked.
“I’m just saying that I got a good look at that girl. No one is forcing a man to be with her.”
“Can we just get this over with? I don’t want to talk about him anymore.”
“Great. Thanks for that.” Meghan shook her head at Jodie, who shrugged.
Reyna needed to pull herself together. After everything she had been through and everything she’d endured, she wouldn’t fall apart now. She was finally free. Right now she needed to concentrate on getting better and trying to acclimate.
“You know,” Meghan said as they walked away, “we have a therapist who works here, too. It might help if you two talk about what happened with someone.”
“We don’t want to talk about it,” Jodie cut in.
Reyna wasn’t even upset that Jodie spoke for her.
“I understand,” Meghan said at once. “I was just offering so you knew you had the option.”
Reyna wasn’t about to talk to a therapist about anything. Not about Beckham or Harrington or Roland or the needles or the venom or the prison cell. Or…or B. Revealing what had happened at Visage meant reliving it, and she definitely wasn’t prepared for that.
She’d do better trying to move on and find a new place for herself in Elle.
Her brothers had already done it. She might not like their path, but at least they had one.
She hadn’t been content in Beckham’s penthouse as a cooped-up doll, and she wouldn’t be useless here, either.
After everything she’d gone through, it would be nice to have something to do again.
Reyna sat in an all-too-familiar chair inside a sterile white medical facility. Jodie paced relentlessly around the room like a caged animal. Reyna’s own fear should have spiked at the setting, but the only thing she really felt was numb.
She had been here before. Not this building, of course, but it was set up much the same as the Visage rooms. The chair was less comfortable, straight-backed and forbidding.
Harrington wasn’t going to walk through the door, but the equipment was the same.
The gentle beeping of the machinery was the same.
The sounds and sights and smells… It was all the same.
Meghan trotted around the room as if her two patients weren’t ranging between feral and catatonic. “Let me get the saliva and we’ll be good to go.”
“Venom,” Reyna corrected.
“What?”
“I call it vamp venom.”
“Fitting,” Jodie chimed in.
“Vamp venom it is, then.”
Jodie was opening drawers and picking up various scalpels and syringes and then putting them back. Over and over.
Meghan put her hand over Jodie’s. “Leave it.”
Jodie threw her hands up and stalked into the corner.
Meghan sighed softly before disappearing into a giant walk-in refrigerator.
“This place is the same, huh?” Jodie asked.
Reyna nodded. “Same company probably built and outfitted it.”
“Probably so.” Jodie poked the heart-rate monitor. “You okay about your boy?”
Boy. Reyna almost laughed at that. She didn’t think anyone had referred to Beckham as a boy in a very, very long time. He was a hulking, brooding, vicious vampire. He’d earned his reputation with fear and intimidation and murder. The innocence of childhood was long gone.
“I don’t even know what I expected,” she confessed.
“Obviously that he wouldn’t propose to some chick behind your back.”
Reyna couldn’t help her laugh then. “Yeah. That. I mean, I was only gone eight weeks.”
Jodie’s eyes widened. “Eight weeks is a lifetime in there.”
It was.
“How long were you there?”
“Doesn’t matter.” Jodie turned her back on Reyna. “He was pretty and all, but maybe you could hook up with a human this time. Find one who doesn’t want to eat you for breakfast.”
Jodie was probably right. Things would be easier if Reyna wanted someone other than Beckham. The problem was that she had never wanted anyone like she wanted Beckham.
Meghan returned, fit the venom to the IV, and prepped Reyna’s arm. Reyna tensed as she waited for the inevitable needle. Jodie blanched at the sight and disappeared from the room.
“I am so glad that I was working that day you came in for testing,” Meghan said, drawing Reyna’s attention back to her face.
“I was the nurse who ran the test on your blood and found out how special you are. I changed your file from Rh null to O negative. We’d been looking for you for so long.
It was perfect timing, too, since Beckham had to take a permanent escort and he’d been putting it off.
It was the first day I learned he worked for Elle. ”
Reyna’s mind was whirring to life with the new information. A sharp prick jolted her back to reality.
“Needles,” she groaned.
“Don’t worry. The worst is over.” She glanced at Reyna. “So, I don’t know all the details about what’s up with you and Beckham. Only that Elle placed you in his custody for protection.”
Reyna’s eyes swept to Meghan’s. “So, the whole thing was a setup? Beckham knew about my blood type?”
“Well, yeah. Otherwise you would have ended up with Harrington right away. We would have brought you straight to headquarters, but we hadn’t vetted you yet. We wanted Beckham to vet you and then bring you in. Perfect, really.”
“So that’s why he didn’t drink from me,” she said.
“In theory, all vampires can drink from you, but no one wanted to test that theory, either. It doesn’t always work for vampires to drink other blood types.
Like even if O negative can be used for transfusions for other blood types, that doesn’t mean vampires can drink it.
A lot of times it makes them more animalistic still. It was safer for him not to try.”
“Oh.” Reyna bit her lip. “But he did.”
“I know,” Meghan said softly. “And then you were kidnapped.”
Reyna sank back in the chair as Meghan turned on the machine to filter the venom into her system.
All this time, she had wondered why Beckham wouldn’t drink from her.
She’d assumed for so long it had been because he didn’t approve of the new permanent escort program, and in rebellion he’d continued to drink from Penny, who was also his blood type match, instead.
Beckham had known all along that they didn’t match.
Though she was a true universal donor, he hadn’t wanted to risk her. Only he had risked her.
Her mind muddled as the venom took ahold of her. She wanted to think the best of Beckham. Yes, he was a good actor. He had to be to play double agent. But she didn’t want to think that their relationship had been a ploy, too.
Her heart raced. Her stomach clenched. Her eyes drooped.
And she was floating away.
Voices broke through her subconscious. She couldn’t figure out who it was or what was happening. All she could do was giggle.
“How is she?”
“How would you be?”
“That bad?”
“Worse. She saw the news.”
“So soon?”
“Unfortunately.”
A hand touched her forehead and brushed her hair off her face. She didn’t know where the hand had come from or why it was touching her. She didn’t know if she should even care.
“We’ll have to take it easy with her.”
“I don’t think anything we do is going to help.”
A sigh. “I told Beckham to be gentle with her heart.”
“As if he listens to anyone.”
“As if he’s ever gentle.”
No, Beckham wasn’t gentle. Definitely not with her heart.
…
Reyna awoke with a start. Her hand flew to her chest, which was heaving up and down. Her eyes flew around the room, taking in the bed and the closet and the pictures.
Elle.
She was at Elle. She wasn’t back at Visage. She wasn’t with Harrington. She wasn’t being turned into B. She’d had a nightmare. That was all. Just a nightmare.
Tension released from her shoulders. A headache was blossoming pretty spectacularly in her temples, though. The venom always left her with a headache. She’d forgotten all about it. Someone must have gotten her back to her rooms after she was dosed.
Her hand moved to the nightstand. She flicked on the lamp, ready to get out of bed and try to find something to curb the pounding in her head—but then she felt it. A prickling at the back of her neck. As if she wasn’t completely alone.
She pressed herself against the headboard as fear crawled through her. A figure sat in a darkened corner. All she could see were long fingers steepled in front of the person’s face and shiny black shoes. Her eyes drifted over the mysterious figure as fear turned to awareness.
“Hello, Little One,” Beckham finally said.