Page 21 of Bitten By Desire

“This one’s different. It’s a slow injection of liquid silver into his veins. We’ve been looking for someone to test it on, and between you and me, I was hoping not to waste Tomas.”

The vision of Julian strapped down and being slowly tortured to death forced a gasp from my lips. My body went limp in the major’s grasp, and she tsked.

“And what of the incubus?” she asked. “Do you care for him as well?”

“I do,” I said, barely paying attention to her words as I searched desperately for a reasonable escape plan.

“I think I’ll keep him for a bit while I question him,” she said. “But if you don’t behave, we’ll find a way to torture him as well.” She released me.

I crashed to the ground, and she knelt over me to untie my ankles.

“Get up. We’re going to the lab. We could use your professional assistance.”

Climbing to my feet was awkward without use of my hands, but I managed it.

“I’m not helping you,” I said.

“I can make you,” she taunted and pressed her fingertip to my nose then shoved.

I stumbled back but caught myself. I had a mind to bite her finger off if she did that again. She was right, though. She could make me, and that terrified me.

“Deciding whether to threaten you with more torture for your friends or simply order it is a difficult decision. Follow me,” She commanded, and I trailed dutifully out of the cell behind her, down a long dark corridor and up winding stone steps that made me believe we really were in a castle, chateau, or something similar. Were we even still in France?

The moonlight filtered through the windows when we reached the ground floor, so it had been at least a day, if not longer, I’d been asleep. We continued past several rooms while I counted nearly a dozen workers, all in uniform, in varying places. Some of them ignored us, some shot me curious looks. Finally, she led me through a set of double doors and down a few steps into an enormous laboratory set up with tables of colorful, glowing potions and gleaming, silver machinery all around. The sharp scent of heavy chemicals hung in the air and several people in lab coats, masks, and goggles worked at different stations, moving with such speed and purpose, I wondered if they were under deadline.

The major led me to the corner station where a tall man whose bulging muscles could be seen clearly through his coat paused to look at us. His deep grey eyes narrowed as she shoved me toward him, and the pupils slanted inward until they were shaped like squashed diamonds.

“Snake, watch her. If she manages anything suspicious…well, no permanent damage. Understood?”

Snake’s eyes flashed, and I realized he was some form of shifter from his chaotic aura. Was he an actual snake? I took a step back.

“Wh…what are you working on?” I asked.

“Snake is going to perfect our suggestion elixir,” Marcia said. “It works well enough, but we want it strong enough to work on anyone. Ah. Here is this evening’s entertainment.”

My breath caught as I turned to find Julian being dragged in, still unmoving, and laid on one of several examination tables set up in the center of the room. I knew she was watching me, but I couldn’t tear my eyes away from him as they strapped his half-naked body to the table with silver bands that sizzled audibly against his pale skin.

Chapter 7

The Sting of Silver

“You drained him.” It was a statement, not a question. The last time I’d seen him so pale was when they’d done that to him before, purposely starving him.

“We extracted what we could use for testing purposes. Why waste good vampire blood? It may finally give us an excellent healing elixir.”

Hate boiled beneath my skin as she sauntered over to look down at Julian, brushing his curls from his forehead. I wanted to grab her hand and twist it behind her back like Daphne had taught me. I longed to bring her to her knees. The command “Don’t touch him” was on the tip of my tongue, but I knew it would do no good as long as they kept my magic suppressed.

Wait. Was there an antidote somewhere in this lab?

I forced my gaze away from Julian and around the room. Now that I looked, it was obvious that each section had a different—elixir, she’d called them. Three in particular felt familiar to me, and I suddenly realized why.

In fact, the green one in front of me matched one of the unusual little bottles I’d found on Lorraine’s bathtub perfectly. I scanned my memory, searching for a match.

Suggérable means suggestable, Julian had said. That’s exactly what Snake was working on. Maybe I didn’t need to use my own powers to get us out of this.

“Make yoursssself useful and hand me some of the ssssoftening powder,” my lab partner hissed as he snapped apart the bonds on my wrists then smacked me on the bottom.

This operation was less lab and more witch’s experiment. I reached for the pink powder I recognized from Mama’s potion ingredients and focused again on Julian. Marcia watched with arms crossed as another woman in a white coat hooked a bag filled with brilliant silver to his IV stand. They’d already prepped his arm while I’d been thinking.

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