Every touch is agony.
Every jostling step makes me wish for death.
I’ve never been more relieved to be dumped on a cold, damp cement floor before. A heavy door locks behind me, and then I’m alone—just me and the endless, ceaseless pain.
Chapter Twenty-Five
I don’t know how much time passes.
The change sweeps through me like cold hunger, like a feverish glacier. Sweat freezes on my skin only to melt away again as a fresh wave consumes me. I hear things, but the sounds are all either indistinct or too sharp, and I can’t make sense of any of them.
I smell food.
No, not food—people.
No, water.
Or steak.
It all seems to be one scent, but I don’t know what it means anymore. Then my own sweaty stench overwhelms everything else and I’m alone again, deaf, blind, and helpless, isolated in my pain.
I’ve heard that childbirth and broken femurs are the most painful things humans can experience, because everything worse kills the nerve endings or the person before the brain can register anything else. I’ve never given birth, but I broke my femur once getting thrown from a horse.
It hurt, but it was nothing compared to this.
The walls seem to expand and then close in, pulsing in time to my agony. They’re plain, earth-stained stone walls, black from three feet up to the floor. Sometimes the black part smells like blood and pain and terror. Sometimes it smells like shit.
Right now, all I can smell is a man—a clean man.
Part of me recognizes him, but not the part that’s on speaking terms with my brain at the moment.
He’s coming closer, and I have the sudden urge to find a long wooden stick. A sharp one. Fury explodes in my head that I can’t find a stick and couldn’t move to look for one even if I wanted to. The anger is followed by a wave of confused frustration as my free-wheeling mind struggles to latch on to anything that makes sense.
What do I need a stick for? Why am I even here?
The wall in front of me moves, but this is different than the strange pulsing movements I’m used to. After a few seconds, my addled mind pieces together that it’s not the wall that’s moving. It’s the door, and it’s opening.
Blinking hard, I force the small room I’m locked in to come into better focus. One of the walls, the one with the door in it, is made of thick metal bars. The other three are stone. I’m sprawled out on the floor, and from this vantage point, I can see two feet approaching me.
Someone is here to see me. But why?
What else could the vampires possibly do to me?
I struggle to stand up, but the room tilts before I even reach my knees. I pitch sideways, landing hard on one hip.
Bracing my upper body on my hands, I press against a floor that seems to want to run from my touch. I suck in a few deep breaths, wondering why the person who opened the door hasn’t said anything yet. I can smell him, but like everything else, the scent doesn’t make any sense to me at first. It isn’t until I raise my eyes to look at him that it all clicks into place.
“Bas… Bastian,” I breathe. My words are slurred and come out in a whimper.
Something changes around his eyes, but I can’t tell if he’s pleased or concerned. I pull myself together and force my gaze to meet his, anchoring myself to his eyes.
“Bastian, please. I… don’t… want this.”
His face doesn’t change, but one of his hands curls into a fist.
Yes, hit me. Hit me hard enough to break my neck and kill me before the change makes it harder. Before it becomes almost impossible.
But I don’t think his gesture is aimed at me. He’s holding tightly to his self-control. I don’t know what brought him down here, whether it was pure curiosity or the urge to gloat at my discomfort, but I’m hoping I can convince him to finish me off. He’s a killer by nature, after all.
“Help me,” I plead, the words coming out harshly through my raw throat. “Kill—me. I can’t be—this.”
There’s a flash in his eye, a glint of anger.
Shit. I’ve offended him, dammit.
I can’t afford to offend him. I need him. He needs to understand why I can’t live like this. No, that’s wrong. “Live” isn’t even the right word. I’m already dead. I can’t come back, not from the kinds of injuries Tyresius gave me when he tore into me. Not from that much blood loss.
There are only two options in front of me now.
Oblivion or eternity.
I grope around inside my addled mind for what to say, some way to bargain for the right to my own death. I need Bastian to see me, just like I see him.
“You told me that the thing you remember most is your parents being slaughtered in front of you by vampire hunters,” I tell him quietly. My voice has grown stronger. That should be a good thing, but I know what it means. It won’t be long now before my mouth sprouts fangs, and I become the one thing in the world I hate the most. I suck in a breath, but it doesn’t help.
“I know what that feels like,” I continue, my voice shaking.
Bastion frowns at me, the offended look on his face deepening.
I shake my head. “You don’t believe me, but it’s true. My parents were torn apart. Drained dry. They were killed by vampires while I watched through the slats in the closet. I was a child, Bastian. Barely old enough to understand what I was seeing.” I laugh bitterly, choking a little on the air that rattles from my lungs. “So you see—we have something in common. Losing the people we love to violence and not being able to do anything about it.”
He takes half a step into the small dungeon cell,
