Time is lost to an endless cycle of light and dark. She comes and goes without warning—always her and no one else. I doze; she wakes me. I find no rest between our sessions, no respite from the anguish of her torture. She is creative in her methods. Meticulous in drawing blood. Expert in causing pain. In another life, I may have respected her for it. Today I despise her.
The mattress is soaked with blood and sweat and urine, and it sticks to my skin. Their fetid odors mingle with the wrenching stink of vomit. Burnt flesh lingers on the edge of my senses, but those wounds are old. Fire seems like days ago, though I know it is only hours. Lights come on and the pain resumes. Lights go off and the throbbing takes over.
I think of Wyatt in those brief moments alone. The soft caress of his hand on my breasts. The fullness of him as he slides in and out of me, loving me. He will come for me. He must be searching. I don’t care if the Triads find me first. As long as the suffering ends.
The door swings open. I squint, waiting for the light assault. Kelsa stands in the doorway, backlit. Behind her, something shifts.
“You intrigue me, Evy Stone,” she says. “You endure so much, and yet you don’t ask why. You don’t demand a reason for your suffering. Many lesser women would have broken long ago. I admire you for that.”
“Go fuck yourself,” I hiss.
She laughs. “You just don’t see it, do you?”
“Don’t wanna. Don’t care.”
“Of course you do, Evy. You care about him.”
A chill worms down my spine. Shivers ripple across my stomach, harden my nipples. She can’t say it. If she says she has Wyatt, too—
“Don’t worry, child; he’ll find you. Just as he’s meant to, but it will be too late to save you. Too late for the poor, lovesick fool.”
She’s going to kill me and leave me for Wyatt to find. God, this will destroy him.
Kelsa enters the room, but her shadow remains in the hallway, just out of my sight. She crosses to the foot of the mattress and squats. Unlocks the shackles around my ankles. My legs are too weak to use against her. I want to kick, but find no strength in the torn and broken flesh. She drags a nail along the sliced sole of my foot, and I shriek.
“You’ve been such a good sport, I hate for our time together to end,” she says. “The next step needs tending right now, but don’t fret. I’m leaving you with a friend.”
Leaving me? But why? I haven’t changed hands since falling into Kelsa’s. Is this lurking shadow the buyer who has yet to claim his prize?
She waves her hand. The backlit figure shambles forward. Bile scorches my throat, threatens to spill down my lips. A goblin male leers above me, his oily skin shimmering in the hall light. He is naked, the hooked tip of his penis dangling low between his crooked legs. His eyes dance with lusty fire, and I understand. There is no buyer. He’s here to kill me.
Only once in my career did I serve a warrant on a goblin for the rape of a human female. I’ll never forget the blood, or the frozen horror on her terrified face. For two weeks after, she haunted my dreams, the misery of her fate burned into my memory. The creature that killed her became one of Kelsa’s groin-to-sternum victims. I took great joy in killing it.
I close my eyes. Kelsa’s familiar footsteps whisper across the floor.
“Good-bye, Evy Stone,” she says.
The door closes with a thump. A lock snicks into place. The mattress shifts as weight is added to it.
I think of Wyatt and cling to his memory as my world descends into agony like I’ve never known before.
Chapter 17
47:18
My fists closed over warm flesh, twisting and squeezing and trying to push it away. Blood filled my mouth, metallic and hot. I screamed, but no sound came out. My throat was hoarse, raw. I pushed, but he wouldn’t let go.
“Evy, stop! It’s Alex.”
The familiar voice finally invaded my foggy mind and pushed away the last remnants of memory. The small room in the basement of the train station faded, replaced by the luxury of the Sanctuary. Incense replaced urine; warmth replaced cold. The agony fled as well, leaving me empty. Shivering.
“Evy, it’s okay, I’ve got you.”
I fell against Alex’s chest, letting strong arms fold me into his embrace. I pressed my face into his neck and sobbed. I cried for the woman who had died in that room, tortured and left for dead. Only one, final piece of the puzzle was missing—my rescue and moment of death.
It would come, just as the other memories had. It was only a matter of time, and I didn’t want to remember any more today.
Alex stroked my hair and whispered. I couldn’t hear him, but it didn’t matter. The words were not important. I just needed his strength until I found my own again and the memories drifted back into the past. As I brought my emotions back under control, the torrent of tears subsided. My head ached. My nose was stuffy. My entire face felt swollen, but I could think straight.
“I am sorry,” Isleen said. “I did not realize how overwhelming your memories would be.”
“It’s okay,” I rasped. “I needed to do that. I had to remember it.”
“You said things while you were in the trance, Evangeline. You mentioned the name Istral. What does that mean to you?”
I studied Isleen’s face. The intensity in her stare surprised me. I realized why she had seemed so familiar at our first meeting. It wasn’t because we’d met before, but because I’d seen someone who looked just like her. “Istral was your sister, wasn’t she?”
Isleen nodded. “She has been missing this past week. I have feared for her.”
“I’m sorry, Isleen, the goblins killed her. I was there; I saw it.”
She bowed her head, and I found myself torn between wanting to comfort her and not caring for her pain. She was a vampire, for crying out loud. Maybe my ally today, but she could easily be my enemy tomorrow.
“The goblins were holding me on purpose,” I said, putting the clues in a row, trying to make sense of it all. “The female told me as much. They wanted Wyatt to find me, to know what had been done to me, but why? Why incite his hatred?”
“To divert his attention, maybe?” Alex offered.
“Maybe, but they should have picked a better target. I wasn’t exactly the poster child for the Triads, at that …” A scenario presented itself, one I had briefly considered that morning with Rufus. One that pointed to so many truths I didn’t know how to face.
“What is it, Evy?”
“What if it
“It makes sense, save one part,” Isleen said.
“Which part?”
“The part about making him crazy. Goblins do not understand mental illness or grief, but they do understand the concept of revenge. Hence your treatment under their care. They wanted Truman to find you, but not to grieve for you or to lose himself in that grief.”
“Then, what?” Her explanation made sense, but she hadn’t given me an alternative. “They wanted him to seek revenge for me?”
