“My ideas were not well received,” Louis continued, as if he hadn’t just been silent for the past five minutes. “It was the primary reason my advisers steered me away from a more mainstream medical career. They thought my views were extremely unacceptable.”
Samantha considered pointing out that those advisers had obviously been correct when a loud noise at the far end of the basement caught her attention. She jumped up, moving close to the door of her cage and wedging herself against it so she could see what was coming, fearing the worse. In the cage next to hers, Shaylee did the same.
Samantha’s breath caught in her throat when she saw Kyson walking in with Trey’s body slung over his shoulder, Rogi behind him. The big man moved across the basement, his face expressionless as he gently placed Trey on the stainless steel table over by the rack full of electrical gear. Her heart started thumping harder as Trey remained completely motionless on the table. There was blood running down the side of his head, soaking his hair and the collar of his shirt. Trey’s skin was pale and sallow, like he was wiped out.
“What the hell did you do to him?” she shouted, banging the palm of her hand against the metal grating of her cage. “Is he alive?”
The three men ignored her, which only freaked her out even more. Kyson moved over to stand near the inclined table he’d been strapped to earlier, his eyes slanting momentarily toward Shaylee before staring straight ahead again. When Rogi came over and strapped him down on the rack a moment later, Kyson didn’t resist at all.
Samantha didn’t bother trying to get Kyson to tell her anything because she knew that would be useless. Instead, she focused all her attention on Trey, praying she would see his chest rising and falling. She was still holding her breath for such a sight when there was more movement over by the door. A moment later, Nadia strolled into the basement as if she were walking into the break room at the institute. She didn’t bat an eye at the sight of Trey lying on the table bleeding, or the hulking Kyson strapped in place near the wall.
When the woman cupped Trey’s jaw in one of her small, long-fingered hands and turned his head to the side to check the wound at his temple, Samantha started to hyperventilate a little. Her hand had been the one that had held the cloth to Samantha’s mouth and nose and chloroformed her last night.
Hugh might not be involved in this mess, but Nadia sure as hell was. Crap. How was this even possible?
“What did you do to him?” Louis asked harshly, grabbing one of Trey’s wrists to take his pulse, looking straight at Rogi the whole time. “If you’ve damaged him so much that I can’t get any use from him, I will eviscerate you. And you’d better believe I will make sure you live long enough to experience every agonizing second of it.”
Rogi turned a pale shade of green, shaking his head the entire time. “Okay, okay. I may have tapped him in the head with a baseball bat, but I wouldn’t have had to do it if the asshole hadn’t spouted frigging fangs and claws. He damn near killed us.”
Fangs and claws?
For the second time in the span of a few minutes, the air seemed to freeze in Samantha’s lungs. It only got worse as she listened to Rogi and Nadia go into detail as they told Louis about what they’d seen. If the things they were describing didn’t match up so perfectly with the wounds she’d found at various SWAT crime scenes over the past two years, Samantha wouldn’t have believed them. Strangely, Louis didn’t seem surprised by anything they told him, making her wonder exactly what he’d seen during the fight between Trey and Kyson at the Cedar Ridge Preserve the other night.
Louis glared at Nadia as he shoved a syringe into one of Trey’s forearms and drew blood. “I’m assuming you’re responsible for his unconscious condition. How long did you feed on him?”
Feed on him?
Samantha jerked her head up. She had no idea what Louis was talking about, but she knew it couldn’t be good.
“You knew?” Rogi demanded, his normally small beady eyes wide in shock as he threw a terrified look in Nadia’s direction. “You knew she was…whatever the fuck she is, and you sent me out with her anyway? What if she lost control and decided to feed on me instead of him?”
Louis didn’t say anything as he moved over to the counter and began to use the blood he’d taken from Trey to prep slides for the electron microscope.
Nadia laughed as she motioned toward a still unconscious Trey. “Trust me, Rogi. There will never come a day when you have to worry about me feeding on you instead of him. Why have cold cuts when I could have wagyu beef?”
Rogi bristled at that even as Nadia turned and looked at Louis. “And don’t worry about how long I fed on him. Like I told you before, Officer Duncan is extremely strong. I fed enough to render him unconscious, but I have no doubt he’ll wake up soon enough. Probably a lot sooner than we’d like, too, so I suggest you complete your examination as quickly as possible. We don’t want him coming to before we’re ready. Not unless you want me to feed on him again.”
Samantha spent the next hour shouting questions at Louis and Nadia, receiving few if any answers in return. Her former boss was too intent on whatever he was doing to Trey and his blood, while her former coworker seemed far more interested in torturing Samantha about getting a taste of her man. It drove her crazy that she still had no idea what the whole “feeding” thing was about, but if she was picking up properly on the occasional comment, it seemed like Nadia was somehow able to absorb energy from Trey by touching him. Simply thinking something like that made Samantha feel like the world was tipping off its axis, but it was the only thing that made sense based on what she’d heard.
Samantha winced as Louis pulled a scalpel out and sliced open Trey’s arm. The wound was deep and bloody, and she slammed herself against the door of her cage in an attempt to get free. It was useless, of course, but she couldn’t stop trying to get to Trey. She was so freaked out she almost missed the awe in Louis’s eyes when the wound stopped bleeding and began to scar over in seconds. She’d seen that same thing before, when Trey had cut his hand on the piece of broken coffee mug, but it was still too incredible to believe.
Muttering something to himself that sounded like, “Fascinating,” Louis picked up a knife and stabbed Trey in the chest.
Samantha screamed. Even from where she stood, she knew Louis had deliberately missed Trey’s heart, but that didn’t make the agony of seeing the man she loved in pain any less, not even when that wound healed as easily and quickly as the one on his arm.
She was given a few moments of distraction when Nadia released Shaylee from her cage and handed her a plate of food. Samantha wondered for a second why they hadn’t simply slid the tray into the cell with Shaylee until she saw the girl walk over and stand beside Kyson, straining up on her toes to slowly feed him bit by bit with her tiny hands. Samantha had no idea why, but seeing a man as gigantic as Kyson eat so carefully and gently from Shaylee’s hand struck her as the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen. Even Rogi, who was standing a few feet away, leering at Shaylee, couldn’t ruin the tender moment.