“Shut her up!” one of the guard’s demanded.
Hands covered my mouth, but I sunk my teeth into my attacker’s rancid flesh. Twisting and turning, fighting, clawing, screaming, I tried everything to get away. None of it worked.
And then sharp pain struck across my temple.
And the world went black.
Chapter 25
My eyes cracked open with exhaustion. I could smell the rusty scent of blood in the air. It coated my tongue, covered my face. A steady flowing wound fell from my temples, and my wrists burned where they were bound.
I looked down, noting the relics tied to my skin and burning away the flesh there. My feet were chained to concrete cinder blocks on the ground.
“Motley? Wh-where am I?”
I snapped my attention up and forced my blurry vision to settle. I was in a dark room, and ten feet away, my aunt was sitting on the floor beside a pile of empty blood bags.
“D-did I have another frenzy? I don’t remember,” she said while scratching her long black nails down her face. She was in a Spector hospital gown, and her normally groomed red hair was tangled and frayed, spilling out of her head in electric waves. Her eyes were locked on the bags of empty bags, her nostrils flaring as her pupils began to dilate.
“Aunt Marie? How did you get here?” I asked, though emotion clogged my throat. This wasn’t what I wanted. If she was here, then that meant…
“I don’t know. I don’t know where I am,” she began while standing up. Her thin legs looked so frail. She shook with each step, circling the room in wide-eyed terror. “Do you smell that?” she asked. Her button nose tipped up and sniffed at the air, like she could pinpoint the scent. I recognized each body movement for what it was.
She was falling into a daze of bloodlust.
“Aunt Marie, you have to get out of here, okay? Can you unchain me?” I asked, though I knew she wasn’t paying attention. She padded around barefoot, her toes dragging on the concrete with each shuffled step.
“Yes, yes,” she began. “But do you smell that?” she asked again before turning her body to me. “I’m so hungry.”
I winced the moment her eyes landed on my bleeding wounds. She transitioned between taking in the pity on my expression and licking her lips at the holes in my arms. She was at war with her nature, fighting to make sense of what was happening while desiring the dripping crimson substance I was coated in.
“Aunt Marie, listen to my voice,” I coaxed as she slipped closer.
She tripped on a groove in the concrete, landing with a painful jolt, and then started crawling on her hands and knees, scraping up her porcelain skin with each staggering movement.
“You’re bleeding, Motley,” she said in awe, though she sounded far away.
“Aunt Marie, we have to get out of here,” I pleaded. It was a special kind of cruelty, using the person I loved most in this world to torture me. Though my head pounded with anxiety, I knew that Spector put us together as punishment.
“We have to get out of here,” she repeated robotically.
Once at my feet, she licked her lips before reaching out with her index finger and pressing on the relic burning into my skin. Hot blood bubbled up and oozed out of the wound. Her eyes widened.
“Aunt Marie, it’s me. It’s me,” I pleaded.
She leaned closer, pressing her cold cheek against my skin. “Blood,” she croaked.
Slowly, Aunt Marie got to her feet. I watched in horror as the woman that raised me, the woman that rocked me to sleep and sang me lullabies cocked her head and stared at me with predatory intent. I closed my eyes and imagined us in her kitchen, baking blood cookies and dancing to music. I imagined her braiding my hair and cussing out my no-good father.
I refused to see her like this. I refused to let Spector warp my perception of the woman that gave up her life to raise me. Her head came down to my arm, and I felt her teeth scrape against my skin.
“I love you, Aunt Marie,” I whispered.
Fangs punched through my skin, and I let out a little stuttered cry as I felt her hands latch around my arm to hold me in place as she drank.
I didn’t fight her. I didn’t try to pull away.
“I love you, Aunt Marie,” I repeated, feeling her take another long pull from my veins.
She paused, and I cracked my eyes open. Were my words helping? I spoke my affections even louder. “I love you, Aunt Marie.”
She unlatched from my aching arm and looked at me with blood trickling down her chin. She blinked. Once. Twice. The third time, she let my arm drop and took a step back.
“I love you, Aunt Marie,” I practically yelled, hoping that I could break through the haze of her addictions and bring her back to me—to us.
“M-Motley?” she croaked, her eyes holding a newfound clarity that wasn’t there before.
A wrecked sob escaped me. “Yeah, Aunt Marie. It’s me.”
She looked around, frowning at the dark cell and the mess of blood all over the floor. “Where am I?”
Gods, I didn’t want to lose her to the bloodlust again, and I wasn’t sure how much longer we had. I knew exactly what Belvini’s intentions were. I’d acted out of line when I told the truth at the demonstration. I’d made him look bad, and now he was punishing me for it by using her against me.
“Aunt Marie, listen to me—” I said as calmly as I could.
“You have puncture wounds on you,” she interrupted, looking at my arm with worry.
“That’s not important right now,” I said, moving my arm to block the wound from her view. “Try to focus, Aunt Marie. I need you to try to get me out of these bindings.”
She
