Chapter 26
Chapter Twenty-Six
Dear Dahlia
Dahlia had cried for so long there were no more tears for her puffy eyes to shed.
Not long ago, this used to be her favorite place.
There were steel tables set in rows, cabinets full of medicine, bandages scattered along the back shelf, and surgical instruments stored beside the ice box.
It wasn’t stuffy in here like most doctors’ offices.
The embroidered rug and sunlight streaming in from the small windows helped with that.
Until recently, most patients had been animals. It was why Papa had kept a few cages in the treatment room—where Fang had her locked away. For now. He’d dragged her here, and everywhere else he went. She felt like his pet.
Presently, he was sitting at her father’s desk in his human form, eating Peaches—Mrs. Cloretta’s frozen cat.
He’d snapped off the hind limb and gnawed at the thigh meat as if it were no more than a lamb shank.
The dead pets in the ice box were for crematory transfer, not snacking.
Fang’s behavior was all-around sickening.
When the black-haired, jagged-toothed shifter cracked off the cat’s testicles and threw them against her cage, she flinched. “Your father was a thief, little girl.”
“He was not.” She gripped the fork in her pocket—the one she’d been keeping since the night her parents died. It was all she had left now. No pea.
Fang stood, kicked back her father’s chair, and swaggered towards her. “Is there a reason you speak? Your voice is … irritating.” He knelt by the cage and took another bite from Peaches’ thigh.
“Sir, this is everything.” The auburn-haired male who was always near shuffled in with a basket of herbs.
“Well done, Sylas.” Fang’s dark eyes, full of ire, steadied on hers. “I need one more of your father’s injections. Just one. This is everything he used, which means you have exactly what you need to make it.”
“You want me to do what?” Did this shifter know she was sixteen?
He started pacing. “Do you know what your father babbled on about every single time I came in here?”
Just the mention of Papa brought tears to her eyes. Why would he call her father a thief? She shook her head, unsure how to answer that question.
“You,” he continued. “What a wonderful animal doctor you would be. That you would spend hours here after school and come on the weekends just to help him. Now, make me my elixir or die with him.”
Dahlia gripped the silver fork harder, the edges daring to split the skin of her palm. She wanted to stab him. She’d thought about it plenty, but the truth was she couldn’t. Not yet. If she acted rashly, he’d kill her first. So instead, she bought herself some time.
“I’ve never made anything without my father’s help. I haven’t gone to school to learn how to do that yet.”
He huffed and puffed across the office like he was going to blow the whole place down.
She’d emphasized the word yet in hope that this werewolf had a remnant of a soul.
Immortals had one thousand years to live, surely they understood how precious a short lifespan was?
Maybe they didn’t care about the humans.
However, that wouldn’t make sense. The werewolves in Elmwood had never caused harm.
In fact, they were known to help prevent it.
It begged the question she’d been stewing over since he’d taken her.
Why now?
At her captor’s command, Sylas unlocked the cage. He wrapped a clammy hand around her upper arm and pulled her out. His slimy hair and slick skin made him hard to look at.
“Pick up the testicles,” ordered Fang.
Dahlia did as she was told out of respect for poor Peaches. Her captor sank back down in her father’s chair, licking the frozen thigh like it was a lollipop now.
Sylas dragged her to a steel countertop and she placed the testicles beside all the herbs scattered atop it.
“Get to work,” he hissed.
She eyed the random assortment. “What am I supposed to do with all of this?”
Fang barked orders from behind her. “Mix, mash—make the elixir.”
“Mix this?” Her father often made and delivered his own remedies to patients, but what would he ever create with body parts? “You’re saying my father made you a combination of rosemary, thyme, and testicles?”
Sylas pressed the pad of his thumb into his canine, then held it over the herbs. Blood dripped in fat scarlet droplets. “And this. A lot of it. You’ll use mine.”
What?
Dahlia dropped her elbows on the table and pressed on her temples. “And if I don’t help you?”
Her captor cleared his throat. “Dear Dahlia, your father always told us how smart you were. No need to pretend you don’t know what will happen if you disobey me. It’s time to work now, like a good human does.”
She was unbearably tired of this half-toothed creature who locked her in cages and fed her table scraps. “At least tell me what I’m making.”
He smirked. “They call it an Elixir of Life.”
“An elixir of what?”
“You haven’t noticed your father standing for longer periods than before? Having more energy than years prior? He’s been taking tips from a private doctor in the big city, who discovered a way to improve male stamina.”
She looked through the glass panes of the medicine cabinets, wondering what secrets her father had been keeping. There had to be a way out of this. “What you’re describing, I’ve never made anything like that.”
He smacked the rock-hard cat against his father’s desk, startling her. “Stop making excuses and get to work. My veins are waiting.”
Dahlia raised an eyebrow. So, this wasn’t taken by mouth; it was intravenous.
Fang dropped his arm on the table, flicking his elbow crease. Her jaw dropped. There was a smattering of small bruises, and his vessels looked like black spiders. How many injections had he received? By the looks of it, at least a dozen.
What had her father done?
“Sir, what if the injection isn’t ready in time for tonight’s battle?”
“Battle?” asked Dahlia. Was that what all of this was for?
“Mix and mash, little girl. I’m not taking any more questions.” He bounced his gaze to his accomplice. “Stop distracting her and we’ll have plenty of time. The elixir needs to be fresh. That’s what her father always said.”
Dahlia took a strengthening inhale, then stormed over to her father’s desk and shimmied behind it. Here was where the stock of surgical supplies were stored. “Then I’ll need a scalpel.” How else would she chop up frozen testicles?
Fang moved, taking Mrs. Cloretta’s dead cat with him.