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  It just didn’t feel clear.

  It felt like she’d woken up, and the nightmare was still carrying on. Something was really wrong in a way she couldn’t quite put her finger on—and then she realized. She realized so hard it kind of made her go all still. She took it in out of the corner of one eye, as though it might go away if she didn’t face it full on. But there it was, all the same: this was not her home. She was not in her home.

  She was on the floor of a windowless room in some filthy cabin.

  She went to lift her left arm and found it oddly heavy, and for a second thought she actually was hurt. Then she glanced down and there it was—a metal cuff. Not even a cuff, really.

  Someone had put a manacle around her wrist. It was an enormous and ancient-looking thing, of the type seen in terrible horror movies about haunted castles. It literally clanked when she moved. The lock seemed like it needed a creepy key guarded by something awful.

  Plus there was a chain leading off from it.

  She had been chained to the wall. For some ungodly reason, she’d been chained to the wall. The manacle wasn’t just some mistake, or maybe a fancy type of jewelry that the kids were all giving out these days. This was a real thing that was actually happening, no matter how much she tried to convince herself otherwise.

  She glanced around the room, searching for the punch line.

  But there wasn’t a punch line. If anything, her harder look around this place only backed up her first and most frightening assessment. It seemed like she’d accidentally fallen into The Evil Dead. A single, dim, unshaded bulb hanging from the ceiling provided the only light. Everything was worn and grimy, including the furniture. The chair and table in the center of the room could have been made in the thirteenth century. Thirteenth-century artisans would probably sneer at the idea of ever making something so crude and unsettling.

  Why was it so unsettling?

  Why was everything in here so unsettling?

  It went beyond her predicament. It was more than a sense that stuff needed a good scrub. Something was really not right about this place. The shadows were too deep and too thick, as though they’d lain here so long they’d started to take on forms of their own. And it was so quiet. Even the sounds she was making seemed muffled somehow.

  Apparently, this place did not accept anything other than silence. It rejected noise and movement and normality. Soon it would start to reject her, and then what? That uneven chair will come over here and eat me, she thought, but the idea didn’t make her laugh. She wasn’t certain she’d ever be able to laugh again.

  Someone was coming to make sure of that.

  They had to be. Why else would anyone have done this, if not to ruin her forever? She was already halfway there, and no one had even hurt her yet. All they’d done was chain her, but she was crying anyway. She was crying in this really weird manner—one she’d never experienced before. Usually she sobbed; she was dramatic; she tore out her hair.

  This was something else altogether. The tears just seemed to slide out of her eyes, without any unnecessary fuss. She didn’t call for help or scream, or any of the other things she’d imagined she would do in the event of something like this. All energy went toward one thing and one thing alone: getting out of this situation now.

  She had to live. She had to live.

  And there had to be a way to do it.

  She could not snap the chain—that much was clear. The manacle would never give, no matter how much she pried it or bashed it against the floor. Her only options were somehow wriggling her arm free, picking the immense lock, or levering some of the wall boards loose . . . all of which presented their own problems.

  Her hand was too big to squeeze out. She strained and strained until her skin started to bleed, but her captor had judged the size right. Even if she dislocated her thumb, she didn’t think she’d be able to get free, and she definitely wasn’t about to do that. For some reason, just the sight of her split skin was making her feel weird. Her head was spinning, and for a second everything seemed to grow so heavy she was sure she was going to pass out.

  She couldn’t pass out.

  If she passed out, it would kill any chance she had of getting free. She had to move on to the next option, despite the fact that the next option was even more terrible than the first. She had nothing to pick the lock with for a start. And just to finish it off: touching that dank little hole made her feel as funny as the blood did. She tried to put her finger in to feel around, and this terrible burning cold seemed to shoot up her arm. She actually gasped and yanked her hand away, and no amount of sneering at herself would make her go back to it. There’s probably acid in there, she told herself.

  Even though part of her knew that was crazy.

  And another part of her knew something was wrong.

  People didn’t feel cold like that.

  She knew they didn’t—she was a nurse, for God’s sake. She was a nurse who suddenly felt queasy at the sight of blood. Her head was still swimming. Every time she glanced down and saw that red, she wanted to scratch at herself, as though she could make the nausea go away by peeling her own skin off.

  Yeah, that was what she wanted.

  She wanted to peel her skin off. Then when she was done doing that, maybe she could find something to stuff up her nose—because Lord in heaven the smell of that crimson liquid. It was stronger than every bit of filth in here. She could actually make out that tang in the back of her throat, even though the blood was nowhere near her mouth.

  Or at least, she thought it was nowhere near her mouth.

  She was sure it hadn’t been a moment ago. But somehow when she wasn’t looking, she’d put her hand to her lips. She could feel the ridge of the cut against her tongue, as though she’d started licking at it. She’d started licking at it, without even knowing what she was doing. Blood coated the back of her throat. It had found its way down her chin and over her cheeks—yet she hadn’t realized.

  That did not seem like a good thing.

  Not when she still had one option left to try. The boards were there, just waiting to be pried off. But instead of doing that, she was crouched on the floor with her bloody hand in her mouth. And the worst part was: she couldn’t seem to stop. Some kind of terrible compulsion had taken over her body, and no matter what she did she couldn’t fight it.

  She even found herself justifying it.

  This is what people do when they’re suffering from extreme thirst and hunger—they start drinking and eating weird things out of desperation, she told herself, despite knowing the problem with this theory. She was neither hungry, nor thirsty. The thought of a big pint of crystal-clear water did absolutely nothing for her. Her stomach wasn’t growling.

  She just wanted to do this.

  She needed to do this.

  Nothing would get in her way—not even the man who suddenly opened the only door she’d seen in the room, letting in a blast of cold air. If he tried to take the blood from her, she would kill him. If he made to stop her, she would kill him. She even hissed at him to show him she meant business, but the moment she did, she knew she was in trouble. It would have been okay if her captor was a brutal stranger, it would have been okay then. She was supposed to hiss at him then. She was supposed to think about ripping out his throat with her teeth.

  She was not supposed to do it to Zeke.

  He was sort of her friend, he was almost definitely her friend. He was probably coming to help her. Why was she doing it to Zeke? She hadn’t even recognized him for a second, as though some new lizard part of her had taken control of her eyes and her senses. And he could see it too—this lizard Cora. It was all around her mouth.

  It was all over her hands.

  “I think there’s something wrong with me,” she said, even though there were a thousand other things she wanted to say first. Get me out of here was chief amongst them, but somehow it wasn’t what came out. It was probably best that it hadn’t, however. The longer he stood in the doorway, th
e more it started to dawn on her.

  He didn’t look surprised to see her here.

  He didn’t seem scared or horrified by her circumstances.

  He simply gazed at her and gazed at her with those great, dark eyes—like he knew something so terrible she couldn’t bear to think about it. She couldn’t, yet the thought came on anyway in a rolling wave of bitter realization. It crashed against her, too enormous to take.

  He was the one who had brought her here.

  Oh God, he was the one who had brought her here.

  Him, and that friend of his. She turned her head and there he was, as still and stony-eyed as he’d been at the party. Had he been there all along, in the corner of the room? She didn’t think he could have been, but the thought lodged itself in her head anyway. Maybe that was why the shadows had seemed so thick.

  Maybe they’d birthed him, while she’d been busy trying to escape.

  Lord in heaven, she wished she’d succeeded now. This was worse, she knew. This was so much worse than if they’d been two strangers. She could tell just by looking at their faces, even though their faces seemed so closed and cold. But then, maybe that was the problem? She’d never seen Zeke without an easy smile on his face. She’d never seen him without warmth in his eyes.

  Something terrible was going to happen here.

  Something terrible might have already happened here.

  “It’s okay, Cora,” he said as he finally closed the door behind him, but she could tell he didn’t really mean it. There was a line between his brows three feet deep. His eyes seemed enormous—like they might swallow her whole at any second.

  Then as an extra little clue, Stone-eyes snapped from his corner. “Don’t coddle her. How will you control her later, if you treat her like a spoilt pet now?”

  There were many things that disturbed her about this speech. His tone was one of them—so cold it could have made the snow she’d seen falling outside. And so British too, oh the Britishness definitely made it worse. It sharpened that ice to a killer point, then slid that point beneath her skin.

  And that was before she considered the content of his words. Had he really said control her? And if he had, then what in God’s name did he mean? Why did he think she shouldn’t be coddled? Maybe this was all some kind of hideous kinky game, where the captive had to be trained into a proper slave. That was how it sounded to her, and there wasn’t a single inch of her body that liked the idea.

  It wasn’t the same as some distant and sexy book.

  This was the reality, and it was horrendous.

  They didn’t even speak properly to her.

  They spoke around her.

  “I’m not coddling, I’m calming,” Zeke said, as though she wasn’t even in the room.

  And of course Stone-eyes carried it on. Of course he did. He’d been that way at the party, so things weren’t likely to be different here. If anything, they were a lot worse.

  Now he didn’t have to pretend to be normal.

  He could say any crazy thing he wanted to.

  “And there is a difference? I hardly think so. Both are pathetic emotional reactions to her predicament. They will not help her. They will only make her believe she has a chance at surviving this intact when quite obviously she does not. Come away, Ezekiel. Come away so that you do not have to look upon her suffering.”

  Cora had no idea what to make of at least ninety percent of what he’d said. She only knew that it was all very, very frightening. He’d said surviving and not in the same sentence. He’d mentioned her suffering in a way that probably would have seemed kind, if she’d been an injured animal. But as she wasn’t . . .

  “I won’t let you hurt me,” she spat, before she’d even had a chance to think it through. “Hey, do you hear me, you snooty fucker? I won’t let you kill me. You can come here and try, if you want. But I’ll make you pay for it.” The words swelled up through her, most likely irrational and completely off the mark but so satisfying anyway.

  Even if this wasn’t what she thought it was, it would teach him not to speak as if she wasn’t there. It would make him accept that she existed and was worth something—though she was surprised as anyone to see that actually happen. He’d turned his head the second she’d spoken, eyes still cold and distant but with something else in there.

  A reluctant flicker of interest, she thought.

  One that reminded her of a man realizing a monkey could perform simple tasks.

  Either way, it wasn’t exactly a comfort. And nor were Zeke’s words.

  “Is this what you want? You want her to be angry and violent?”

  “She poses no threat to me, for all her . . . bravado.”

  “Maybe not—but she poses one to me. If you don’t at least let me explain, there’s no telling what she might do. I might get too close and then suddenly she lunges and—”

  Stone-eyes held up a hand before Zeke could finish, and it was obvious why. The idea disturbed him. It made him close his eyes briefly, and when he spoke his voice was far fainter than it had been. Still sneering, she thought, but that was only for appearances. Underneath he was scared of that possibility, and she suspected that was what made him say yes.

  Or at least as much of a yes as he was willing to give.

  “Very well. Attempt to tell her.” He then waved a hand in her general direction. Anything more and he would have to accept she was a human being, and he clearly didn’t want to do that. He wanted to stare off tightly at something else, while Zeke crouched down in front of her in a way she was probably supposed to find caring.

  She was supposed to, but she didn’t.

  “You know there’s nothing you can tell me that will make this okay,” she said, just as he was about to speak. She felt it was important he knew where he stood, before he embarrassed himself with platitudes and promises and other such nonsense.

  We’re doing this for your own good, she thought.

  And she was close to the truth of it, too. She was very close.

  “I know that,” he said, in the most earnest voice she had ever heard anyone muster. “Obviously I know that, which is why I’m going to start with ‘I’m so sorry.’ I’m sorry that I felt I had to do this to you. I’m sorry that things can’t be . . . what I would like them to be. I wasn’t supposed to do this, and you’re going to pay the price for that.” His expression was all sad sincerity, and he even put out a hand to her. But no matter how he stated it, the fact remained. They had kidnapped her. They had told her weird and frightening things.

  She couldn’t just accept what he was saying.

  “Do what, Zeke? Will you just tell me what—or is it too horrifying for my tiny mind to comprehend? I am a pet who should be coddled, after all.”

  He closed his eyes briefly, in a way that reminded her of the same reaction from his friend over there. She couldn’t tell why this time, however. What had she said that could have possibly hurt him? She was only repeating the things Stone-eyes had pointed out. If Zeke didn’t like them, then maybe he should let her go.

  But he didn’t. He simply kept on with this nonsense.

  “There was a gas main explosion. Can you remember?”

  “I remember a dream about one,” she said, though the second she’d spoken in that sneering tone she found herself wondering. The wondering felt like someone running a cold finger down the back of her neck. If it was a dream, how did he know about it? And things got worse from there.

  “It wasn’t a dream. It really happened, and you were badly injured. You lost your arm, and most of the right side of your face. There wasn’t a single chance that you would have survived—do you understand what I am saying?”

  “I understand that you have gone insane. If I lost my arm, what’s this attached to my shoulder? How am I still breathing and talking and moving around?”

  She laughed as she said it, but strangely the laugh didn’t seem to take. It came out all hollow through the middle—and so did her gestures. She waved the nonexistent arm
around in a way intended to be funny, yet somehow it lacked conviction. After a moment she let it drop back into her lap, and once she had, she didn’t want to look at it.

  That cold finger on the back of her neck was getting colder.

  “I saved you,” Zeke said. “I saved you in the worst possible way someone can be saved.”

  Though she wanted to say something here, she couldn’t. Instead she glanced fearfully from Zeke to Stone-eyes and back again. He seemed to mean it so much, that was the thing. He seemed to really believe it.

  His voice actually cracked when he continued. “I felt I had no choice. You would have died, and I couldn’t have borne that.”

  By the time he was done, she was on the edge of her metaphorical seat, in spite of herself. What did he mean, dear God what did he mean? Was it possible this was real in some way? Had he done something to her . . . some medical thing to bring her back to life? That sounded crazy, yet she couldn’t help entertaining the notion.

  The memory of fire against her face forced her to entertain it.

  But just as she started to, Stone-eyes interceded. He stepped forward, all scorn and sharpness, and slowly dismantled all of Zeke’s efforts.

  “Oh such noble sentiment, darling boy. How sweet and romantic of you! I’m sure she will thank you once you’ve arrived at the point. Or would you rather I deliver the cruel part of this little love poem? That way she may continue to make dreamy eyes at you, while despising me to the depths of her soul,” he said, and though it sounded bitter rather than truthful, she saw Zeke stiffen. The knife in his words had clearly found their mark. He wanted to be the good guy, while Stone-eyes played the villain.

  And he played it well, she had to say.

  When he finally turned on her, his gaze was near venomous. If he could have killed her with a look, she felt sure he would have done it. He hated her, he hated her being here, and most of all he hated having to tell her what he then did.

  “He has infected your blood with a disease, human. He has poisoned you in the foulest manner possible. Of course I’m sure he was about to dress it up as something else—that is the fashion, these days. We’re supposed to glitter like diamonds and flitter about in flowery fields. But the truth is we are disgusting insects, unable to control our base urges. We are blood-guzzling, lust-driven things, little better than beasts. And you may shake your head, but in a short while you will see. Being a vampire is not all it’s cracked up to be.”