Whatever will be, will be. I sure as hell wasn’t in a position to stop something that had developed over thousands of years.
Plus, I liked having the ability to reach out to Holden and Bri during my resting hours.
When Brigit had died, I’d felt the severed tie like a physical blow. In spite of her immortality, I’d known she was gone when she slipped away. Seeing her in my dreams now was just my psyche’s way of mocking me.
“I don’t know what to tell you, Max. I saw the door. I know what we’re looking for. You’re going to have to trust me.”
Neither of them had much of a choice. If I said we were going, we were going. Since I was a Tribunal Leader—regardless of which coast my throne sat on—they would have to listen to me.
Some vampires got a foul taste in their mouths having to take orders from a breather, but the ones back home had learned to hide their disdain. So far, aside from marveling at my pulse the first time we met, Maxime had shown no signs of disapproval towards me. He followed my instructions and was always helpful.
Now, he nodded, accepting my request. He released my elbow so I could start walking again.
“What are we looking for?” he asked.
“It’s an interior door—though in this place who the hell knows—and was yellow, with an ochre trim. No windows, simple brass knob.” It was a pretty basic description and could have referred to several of the doors we’d passed on the main level, but I suspected we were in the right place being closer to the Tiffany window.
When one hallway yielded no results, I reversed my course and went down the opposite hall. We were beginning to run low on time, and I felt certain our guide must have noticed our absence by then. I had to find the door now.
Stepping over the threshold of a bedroom, I could tell even in the darkness the colors were familiar. The buttery yellow and rust tones matched those of the door in my dream. Aside from the entry I’d come through there were two closed doors in the space. One had glass panels, ruling it out, and the other appeared to belong to a closet.
Clutching the key between trembling fingers, I advanced on the closet door. I was alone in the room but didn’t pause to wonder about Holden and Maxime. They were likely keeping an eye out for new tour guides, and I wasn’t worried about getting hurt opening a closet door.
I slipped the key into the lock and turned. The tumbler clicked in a profoundly satisfying way, and my heart thumped. Twisting the handle, I opened the door and saw what was waiting for me.
On the floor of the closet was a broken window, shards of stained glass catching the dim moonlight. Circular prisms sat amongst the bits of broken wood. It was hard to be sure in the darkness, but it looked an awful lot like the Tiffany window we’d just seen in the hall.
“What the hell?” I asked to no one in particular.
“Such a foul mouth,” a voice behind me replied. “We’ll have to do something about that.”
Before I could spin around a hand clamped over my mouth and fingers pinched my nose shut. I writhed, struggling like an angry alligator attempting to go into a death roll.
As oxygen stopped filling my lungs, the dark room grew hazy and my strength waned.
The last thing I heard before it all went black was, “Don’t worry, Secret. The Doctor has you now.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
My blood had a distinctive scent.
The way some people could recognize the perfume of a lover, I was able to smell my own blood.
Waking up facedown in a pool of it might have helped narrow the options somewhat, but the blood staining the concrete floor and smeared on my face was definitely mine.
I sat up, and a wave of nausea smacked into me, making my stomach roil. Gagging back the urge to vomit on the floor—never a pretty picture when all you ate was blood—I cradled my head in my hands and waited for the feeling to pass.
When I thought I might be able to move without heaving, I raised my gaze to see where I was. Cell was the best description of the room I was in, although there were no metal bars. Four blank gray walls surrounded me, with an obnoxiously bright blue door set into one. Otherwise, there was nothing in the room except for a drain in the center of the floor.
My blood had begun to seep towards it while I was out, leaving a mean, red river across the concrete. Streaks of rusty water stains marred one wall, and the room smelled dank, like mold. If I had to bet money, I was in a basement. And since I was in California, that basement had probably sustained some serious structural damage over the years.
I scrambled away from the blood puddle and pushed myself into one of the back corners. Scanning the ceiling for signs of a video camera, I was genuinely surprised not to see one, but who knew with technology these days?
Thinking of cameras reminded me of my phone, and I patted my pockets with foolish hope. Of course I’d been left with nothing. My guns were gone, my phone was gone. I unzipped my boot, and sure enough they’d found the knife I kept hidden there.
“For fuck’s sake.” I kicked out at the floor as if I could retaliate against my abductor that way.
The Doctor.
That’s what he’d called himself right before I’d passed out. Hadn’t Sutherland used the same name? Didn’t he tell me The Doctor had him?
I gnawed at my thumbnail while trying to get a grip on the situation. For a wild, crazy moment I wondered if there might be a way for me to get out through the drain, but common sense reminded me I was a werewolf, not a mystical shapeshifter, and a wolf wasn’t going to fit through a drain pipe.
I’d thought my days of being kidnapped had ended when I joined the Tribunal. The title alone should have kept people from making attempts on me since there wasn’t much point in kidnapping a Tribunal Leader. The only intelligent thing to do was to kill us. Kidnapping was stupid, because once I was returned, the kidnapper would be disemboweled by the council. Not much chance to enjoy the spoils of whatever ransom might be requested.
Killing me would assure someone my throne, though.
Maybe I wasn’t here to be ransomed. Maybe this was my killing floor.
I stared at the blood, touching my cheek tentatively to assess any damage. My hair was tacky with congealed plasma, and I pulled the strands free from my face. I must have been injured for that much blood to have come out, but I didn’t feel hurt. Aside from the nausea I was fine.
What had happened to Holden and Maxime?
My chest hurt when I thought Holden might have died to protect me. He hadn’t been in the room, and he’d been so careful to stay by my side since Peyton had been freed. He wouldn’t have let me out of his sight unless…
No. I refused to believe it. There was no way anything had happened to Holden. I’d been the target here, not him. But still, worry gnawed at me.
Whoever had taken me had been able to incapacitate two vampires without me hearing it. He’d been able to grab me without my being able to overpower him. And yet the man who’d taken me—The Doctor—he’d smelled human. I had no doubt he’d been a mortal man.
But what human could overpower three vampires?
I got to my feet and immediately regretted it. My head felt as light as a helium balloon. Again the urge to vomit struck me, and I bent double, bracing my hands on my knees. This time I wasn’t able to keep the nausea down and threw up on the floor, my stomach churning angrily.
I stayed bent over for a long minute before moving again, but I had to check the door. Even though logic told me it would be locked and I wouldn’t have the physical strength to open it, I still had to give it a shot.
The knob was cold to the touch, almost painfully so, making me jerk my hand back in surprise when I first grabbed it. I’d been raised in the Canadian prairie though, and a little cold metal wouldn’t be able to deter me for long.
I latched on to it a second time and tried to turn it. Of course it didn’t budge, didn’t even rattle, but that didn’t stop me from using all my strength to attempt twisting it.
When it became clear I couldn’t turn the knob, I made it my new mission to rip it right off, bracing one foot next to the door and tugging. A normal knob would have yielded with no work on my part. The amount of strength I was using was enough to rip a man’s arm clean off, but the door was unmoved.
I threw my weight against it a few times, but the only result of those efforts was a bruised shoulder.
Physically spent from my useless exertion, I returned to the back of the room—avoiding my puke on the floor—and slipped back down the wall, burying my head in my hands.
This was not where I was supposed to die.
I could accept going down nobly, fighting my way to the finish, but I wouldn’t die in an ugly gray room.
Calliope had seen my death. She’d told me I was going to die standing next to someone I loved. I held her words like a precious gift, letting them cast a hopeful glow on me. Calliope was an Oracle, and she could see the future. If she said I was going to die next to someone I loved, there was no way this was the last stop for me.
I ran my hands through my hair, snagging my fingers on the bloody strands. My kingdom for a hair elastic, I thought, trying to keep my foul mood from making the situation any worse.
Wrapping my arms around my thighs, hands tucked behind my calves, I propped my chin on my knees and waited. All the while, I reminded myself, You won’t die alone. You can’t die alone.
For several hours I watched the door, expecting it to open any moment. Sunrise came and stole my consciousness, but I couldn’t fight it, not without fresh blood in my system.
I awoke at nightfall, and the floor had been cleaned, the room stinking to high heaven from pine-scented cleanser. Rather than feeling assured or relieved that I’d been untouched during the cleaning, I got paranoid. They’d had a perfect opportunity to kill me, yet hadn’t.
What the hell was going on here?
“Hello?” The raspy voice surprised me, and had I not known it was my own, I wouldn’t have recognized it. How long had it been since I’d last said anything out loud? “Hello?”
No reply, just my own rough voice echoing back at me off the walls.