Secret Unleashed

My wine was teasing me, coaxing me to drink it. I needed something to keep me from going stark raving mad in here, but I knew alcohol would only hinder me. I had to stay sharp.

“How did you make the leap from deformed babies to vampires and werewolves?”

“Is it not a natural progression to look at what humanity deems monstrous and wonder what is a real monster? I wondered what it was about ugliness or cruelty that would make someone call another human a monster. So I began to search for the real monsters. It wasn’t difficult, not when you really look. Especially in cities like Moscow or Berlin. Big cities always have what you need, as long as you know which rocks to turn over.”

“What about Paris?”

He went still, his smile shriveling up faster than a deflated balloon. “I didn’t mention Paris.”

“No, but you lived there, didn’t you?”

His silence was all the answer I needed.

“You had someone there to help you find your monsters. Didn’t you?” I’d been thinking a lot about Peyton while I’d been locked up, playing out the ways he’d have known The Doctor and how he would have been able to convince a man like this to take me. My capture had been a risky one, not just picking up a single wolf or vampire in the night. I’d had protection.

“That’s enough.”

“I know. You’re not the only one who can see other people’s secrets, Doctor.”

He got to his feet slowly and came around the table so he was standing behind me. I knew I’d made a mistake the moment his hands rested on my shoulders. I shouldn’t have played the Peyton card, shouldn’t have let him know what I knew.

His fingers grazed the sharp points of my collarbones, pressing into the skin, making me aware of how little protection there was between the surface and the bone.

“Put your hands on the table, please.”

I didn’t want to. I held them in my lap, fingers trembling, wondering if an apology would work.

“Put your hands on the table,” he repeated, and this time he didn’t say please, stripping away any illusion it had been a request rather than a command.

I did as I was told, putting my hands palm down on the smooth linen tablecloth.

“Let me tell you some things I have learned over the thirty years I have been studying. Would you like that?”

No. “Okay.”

“I have learned a werewolf confined to a small space during the full moon will not survive a shift. I kept one in a very tiny box once, and she became irreversibly deformed. Perhaps she and her wolf fought for supremacy over her body. Neither of them won.”

He kneaded my shoulders, his deft fingers avoiding interaction with the collar yet somehow reminding me it was there.

“I’ve learned what happens to a vampire if you lace their blood supply with silver. They quite literally melt from in the inside out. It’s quite grotesque.”

Sliding his hands lower on my arm, he stooped closer, pressing his lips against my ear. His breath was warm, but the words chilled me when he whispered, “Do you know what I’ve done with your vampires?”

“You said you’d take me to Holden.”

“All in good time.”

He stood straight again, his chest solid against the back of my head. “I want to tell you one other thing I’ve learned first. For the average vampire, it takes about forty minutes to an hour. The typical werewolf…a little over a day.”

“What?”

He lifted my right arm off the table with such delicacy for a moment I thought he was going to kiss my hand. Then he squeezed my wrist and braced his other hand against my shoulder. When he bent my arm backwards at the elbow, I still didn’t believe what he was doing.

The bone snapped, and I screamed, falling out of my chair, trying to wrench my arm free of his grasp, but he held firm, giving my elbow an extra twist to drive home the pain.

I saw nothing but white spots, my hearing went hollow, just buzzing noise to blot out the sound of my own screaming, but through the haze I heard him say, “I wonder how long it will take for you to heal a broken bone.”

Chapter Thirty-One

After he dragged me to my feet and I finally caught my breath, The Doctor outfitted me with a makeshift sling he constructed from a torn dinner napkin. He tied it around my neck with such tenderness I was agog.

He was careful not to touch my elbow, but he’d had to bend it back the right direction—which hurt as much as the initial break—and when he was done, he patted my cheek. “There we go. You’ll be good as new.”

Using the napkin from his place setting, he blotted my cheeks, inspecting the white cloth when it came away pink.

“Interesting.”

Vampires cried blood. Werewolves cried tears. Mine met somewhere in the middle.

“Are you ready to see your friends now?”

I was ready to die. Ready to sit down in the middle of the floor and tell him to get it over with. Instead of yielding, though, I nodded. Even the tension of such a small movement sent sparks through my broken arm, making me feel like the whole limb was on fire.

Something nagged at me. If I was going to see Holden, was that the last piece in Calliope’s prediction for my death? I’d believed I couldn’t die here because I was meant to die next to someone I loved. But wherever The Doctor was taking me, I’d be with a man I loved.

I was going to die.

I was going to die.

The stark, chilling reality of that slammed into me, and I was torn between needing to see Holden and wanting to avoid him so I could live a little longer.

But live how? This wasn’t living. I was nine days into my captivity and wondered what else this man could conceive of doing to me if I stayed longer. How many more tests were there? How long did his average subject last?

I didn’t think I could manage another day, let alone another week. Or a month. He would cut me just to watch me bleed, break me just to watch me heal. There was nothing outside the realm of possibility, but my imagination could only take me so far before my brain stopped it. There were things he could do I couldn’t think of because my brain considered them too horrible.

If I couldn’t imagine them, how was I going to survive them?

“I want to see him.” Fuck it. If I was going to die, I wanted to see Holden again. I’d rather die next to a lover than die alone with this psycho.

“Very good. And you let me know how that arm is healing, won’t you? I’m interested to see how you do.”

So many doors.

It was what struck me first as we walked down a nondescript hallway with dim lighting, not unlike that from Sutherland’s dream. With the exception of how plain these doors were, it was startlingly close to what he’d shown me in his mind.

Was he in one of these rooms?

Or was The Doctor already done with him?