I hesitated, not knowing what I should tell him. I should probably warn the guy who he was trapped in a room with, but I also didn’t want to have him hate me. It was nice having someone to talk to. So unlike my lonely time at the academy.
Besides, he really did look like a chiseled statue of masculine perfection. Every line of him was purposeful and handsome, all hard angles and smooth features. I wanted to enjoy his company for a little while at least, without him looking at me like the monster I was.
“What kind of demon did they put in you?” I asked, turning the subject around on him.
For a moment, I thought he wasn’t going to answer me, but then he shrugged. “I was an earth elemental. The gargoyle demon latched onto me right away. I suppose it was a congenial attachment, since we both have power over soil and stones.”
My eyes swept over his body. “A gargoyle, huh? That makes sense. So can you turn back, or are you always…” I trailed off, not knowing if that sounded rude.
“Am I always solid stone?” he asked with a smirk.
I nodded my head, and then his body rippled with change. His once solid onyx mass changed to smooth, dark skin. His cock was still hard, heavy and full against his hip, and I had to snap my eyes away from him before I humiliated myself.
“Neat trick,” I said.
“Hmm. It has its perks.”
I ignored the obvious one jumping against his leg. “You mean like smashing out of your cell and tossing around the guards like they’re rag dolls?”
“Yes. But I’m sure they’ll make me pay for it during training,” he said with obvious disgust.
“What sort of training?” I asked.
“They like to see how impenetrable my skin is. It started with knives. Needles. Poison. Then guns. Rockets.”
My mouth dropped open in shock. “Does it hurt?” I asked.
“What do you think?” he gruffly replied. “Just because my skin is stone, doesn’t mean I don’t feel.”
They were torturing him. Fucking torturing him.
“I’m so sorry.”
“Why? Is it you doing all those things to me?”
I looked at him, horrified. “No, of course not.”
“Then you have nothing to apologize for, beautiful.”
I blinked in surprise at him calling me beautiful. No one had ever called me that before, and I was almost pissed that it was wasted on such a dour moment. I was in a white hospital gown stained with bloody broth from the cafeteria, my hair was knotted, and I had chapped lips and webs stuck all over me. I did not, in any way, look beautiful.
But still. It was nice to hear.
“We have to get out of here,” I mumbled, but there was no power in my words. Our situation felt dismal at best, and I didn’t think there was a way out of it.
“Yeah, that’s not going to happen,” he said, echoing my thoughts. “The best you can hope for is a few days in the tank. At least down here, they won’t bother us. Try to think of it as a vacation from their tests and trainings.”
I looked around the concrete cylinder we were in. Nope. My imagination was not good enough to pretend that this was any form of vacation.
“How’d you end up with Spector anyway? You didn’t go to Thibault.” I didn’t recognize him from any of the students, and he also looked slightly older than me.
“Is that where you new lot came from?” he asked, scrubbing a hand over his jaw. “I wondered. So what are you, eighteen?”
“Nineteen. Just graduated the night before Spector came, actually.”
He made a disgusted grunt. “Those fuckers are taking students now?”
“I guess. I don’t know how long it’s been going on. I’d never even heard of Spector before I got an invitation to join their secretive internship.”
He chuckled humorlessly. “Gods, they’re getting arrogant and bold.”
“So how did they get you?”
“I worked as a janitor at the elemental city’s headquarters. There was an opportunity presented to us, probably similar to what they invited you to. A new program, they called it,” Tomb said, his glossy lips turning downward. “I thought I was signing up for a security position. It would’ve been a hell of a promotion from scrubbing toilets. But they did the ritual on me. Apparently, I fit their credentials. No family, no prominent position in society. Someone no one would really miss.”
I had someone that would miss me though, someone that relied heavily on me. Aunt Marie was probably worried sick, but I had no way of communicating with her.
“That doesn’t fit the narrative of Thibault students, though,” I replied thoughtfully. “All of them are high-society supes with powerful families.”
“All of them?” he questioned.
“Yeah, them. I’m just a bastard scholarship student. But I still have family. My Aunt Marie is probably freaking out, not knowing where I am.”
“Hmm, then that just shows how arrogant and bold they really are getting. They must be done with testing it out on low-class nobody supes like me. They’re going for the young and powerful so they can mold their new little army.”
I stiffened. “Is that what they’re doing? Building an army?”
Tomb shrugged. “What else could they want from a small force of supes with unmatchable powers?”
I shook my head, his words swarming my mind. “That’s insane. If the public knew about this, there would be a war.”
“Which is why it’s a secret still. They need to make more of us.”
A frown drew my brows together. My father was involved in all of this. Stiles was involved in this. It made me sick.
“I feel like I don’t even know what happened to me. I don’t understand how they’re even doing it.”
He looked steadily back at me. “There was a lot of trial and error. When they did it to me a couple of years ago, I was
