Secret Unleashed

“He is a vampire, dear girl. Of course he’s not alive. By their very definition vampires are dead. Undead. Whatever that means. Undeath, as if something so final could ever be undone.”

Unable to keep my head upright, I let it slump down again, my chin pressing hard into my chest.

“You look terribly unwell, I must say.” He was ignoring my question. A question it had taken all my available energy to verbalize. “Would you like something to drink?” He played the part of a perfect host, asking a dinner party guest if they might want their wine topped off.

I raised my gaze, not able to do much else. I couldn’t feign disinterest with a casual shrug. I couldn’t nod.

“Well?”

“Yes,” I hissed, the word rattling out of my lungs like a cough.

“Yes what?”

Was this guy for fucking real? I squeezed my eyelids shut, imagining I might be able to count to ten and this whole place would vanish. I might wake up in a hotel room in Holden’s arms, discovering this had been another nightmare.

It had to be a nightmare.

“Yes what?” he said more forcefully when I didn’t reply right away.

“Please.”

“Good girl.” He snapped his fingers, and a man with scrubs arrived. I couldn’t recall the face of the one who had put the collar on me, so I didn’t know if this was the same man or a new one. It didn’t matter. If I lived long enough to get out, I’d see them all burn.

But for now, I loved this man. I loved him more ardently than I was sure I’d ever loved another human being. My heart sang for him.

He was carrying a plastic bag of donor blood, which he tossed onto my lap before leaving the room. I reached for it, but my arms wouldn’t respond. My brain—still somewhat sharp—shifted all my focus onto the small red bag in my lap, demanding some as-of-yet-unused synapses to fire and give me the push I needed to grab it.

My hand flopped limply beside it, unable to take hold, let alone lift it.

I sobbed.

It was a loud, guttural noise, and I surprised myself to find I still had it in me to make such sounds. I’d thought for sure my lungs had begun to shrivel up.

“Would you like some help?”

I didn’t bother trying his patience this time. If I was the lab rat, I’d already learned his maze. “Plea… se.”

He rose from the chair, his movements full of liquid grace like a dancer or a feline shifter. When he crouched over me, straddling my outstretched legs, my mind filed through a thousand different ways I could kill someone who was that close to me. I fantasized ripping his throat out with my bared fangs until I was soaked red from swimming in his blood. I wanted to bury my hands up to the wrist in his chest and squeeze his heart until it burst in my fist.

I stared at him, and he met my gaze unflinchingly.

Without glancing away he lifted the baggie from my lap and removed a small pocketknife from his trousers. He carefully cut away a hole at the top of the bag, then held it to my lips, tipping it upwards so the liquid would pour into my mouth.

When the first drops dribbled from my lips before I could swallow, he took my chin firmly in his hand and forced my head back. Blood filled my throat—cold and probably old—but nothing had ever tasted so good. The only thing I could have imagined being better would be drinking it straight from this man’s artery.

“There. Good girl.” He patted my leg as I struggled to swallow, and when it was all gone, he wiped away the stray drops from my mouth with his thumb.

I wish it had been enough. I wish one bag of blood after over a week without food had been enough to give me a sudden rush of strength and power. Enough that I could have grabbed him by the throat and yanked his windpipe out with my fingers.

He touched my cheek, and I was able to hold my chin up on my own. Small victory.

“If you behave yourself, we will feed you. Not daily, of course.” He grinned the way I imagined the snake in the Garden of Eden had leered at Eve. “But enough you won’t feel so bad. Does that sound fair?”

“Where’s Holden?” It still hurt to speak, but my lungs no longer felt like deflated balloons. I didn’t feel strong or powerful, but I wasn’t a useless bag of bones anymore either.

“Why do you care about someone else, when you should be worried about yourself?” He sat down in the chair, pulling it a few inches closer to me, leaning forward on his knees so our faces were almost level. “Do you know how much trouble you are in, Secret?”

Trouble? Tell me something new. This was the same shit of my everyday life in a different pile. At least that’s what I was trying to convince myself.

The truth was, the longer I was here, the more I related to the hopelessness and fear of my father’s dream. Each passing night it stopped being the memory of someone else’s hell and started becoming my own.

I didn’t want to think about it too long, because if I did, a nagging voice started to whisper, Calliope was wrong. You’re going to die here. Alone. Forever alone.

Chapter Twenty-Six

On the ninth day, when I awoke, I wasn’t in my room.

My first thought was, Salvation!

Except I didn’t think salvation would come in the form of wrist and ankle restraints. I squirmed, attempting to sit up or roll over, any movement would have done, but I was bolted firmly to a table, my waist cinched in place by a metal band.

Bright spotlights popped on overhead, blinding me from any view I might have had of the new room I was in.

The Doctor’s face blotted out the light for a moment as he loomed over me, and I blinked to chase away the ghost lights in my vision so I could focus on him.

“Do you feel well rested, my dear? I hope the blood has helped, because today is going to be…difficult for you. There’s no way around that I’m afraid. Best you steel yourself for it.” He patted my cheek.

“What?”

“I couldn’t test you the way I wanted when you were at full strength—you would have fought me, struggled too much—but having you near death wasn’t going to be any fun. These sorts of tests are much more informative when the subject is alive.”

He began undoing the front of my shirt. Each hook and eye being separated felt like a bit of my soul being stripped away. “What are you doing?”

“I can’t very well do what I need to with you dressed like this, now can I?”

“What are you doing?” I screamed, trying to move out of his reach, which was a pointless effort since I was pinned down.

“If you think this is going to be sexual, you can put your mind at ease.”

For some reason that did allay a few of my concerns. But if he wasn’t removing my clothes to molest me—and I was grateful he wasn’t—then why? What possible need could he have for—?

He reached out of sight, and when his hand came back into view, he was holding a scalpel.

“Now, dear, this is going to hurt tremendously, and I understand if you feel the urge to scream, I really do. But please remember it will do you no good, and will only draw from your energy.”

My eyes were open so wide I was surprised they didn’t roll right out of my head. I saw the knife, and I heard his speech, but all the same I still asked, “What are you do—?”

The scalpel tucked into my flesh, and the blade was so small and sharp at first all I felt was a faint sting. Down the center of my belly was a red line at least a foot long. I stared at it in shock, wondering why he was