Page 5 of All Saints Day
Whathashe divulged?
That I was able to gain access to some of my parents' records, that Ibondedwith the other Saints to form a pack—but pointedly left out that we, including Frank, are fated mates.
Frank has also become incredibly paranoid that the remaining Saints will do everything in their power to find and recapture me; even if it seems like a suicide mission. Constantly, he urges Susan Lowry not to underestimate the Saints—whom the Windmill seem more than happy to have forgotten entirely due to their total disappearance and radio silence.
Susan and Frank both taunt me, saying that Quentin, Cazimer, and Sébastien have abandoned me in favor of their own personal safety. Fools, both of them. I am intimately connected to the hearts and minds of my bonded mates in a way that they cannot even conceive.
Before I’d experienced the bitten bond of fated mates, I’m not sure that I myself would have believed all I’ve seen since biting into a pack with the Saints. Not only can we feel one another’s thoughts and feelings to a certain degree across our mating bond—but we can walk in one another’s dreams. With enough of Caz’s psychotropic theta compounds; we can cross-project into one another’s waking subconscious. I know that all three of them are working closely with Dennis to try to save me.
First, they have to find me.
Despite their brutal methods,I have made a good show of resisting confession during my time in this horrible place. If I’m honest with myself, though—I know that my days of strength are numbered. I’ve started to feel myself dissolve at the edges more than once; the fingers on my right hand clumsily taped together after Susan and Frank watched Compton break them one by one early in my tenure as the Windmill’s prisoner.
I can’t tell if they’re healing properly, or at all—and the penetrating cold makes all of my joints hurt, so it becomes murkier and murkier to tell which pain is worse.
The loss of time is far more damaging, though. I haven’t been allowed a mirror, or a full REM cycle since my arrival. Sometimes, when they plunge me into perfect darkness—I can’t be sure I really exist at all.
Some part of me might just snap—desperate for any chance to escape this hell, even if it means a lobotomy or death.
I feel a shimmer along the mating bond—Caz, like a silver slice of moonlight and wind chimes; sweet syrupy poppy soothing me to the blissful silence of sleep.
“Rise and shine, Sweetheart.”
I didn’t hear the door swing open, or see him come in, but Frank’s voice draws me up and out of my light sleep with a spike of adrenaline.
My eyes fly open and I press up onto my knees on wobbly arms weak from extended time without food or water—my lips dry and feathered with dehydration as I press my bare back against the freezing concrete wall in a vain attempt to cover some parts of my many vulnerabilities.
“Go fuck yourself, Frank,” I croak out, cradling my injured hand against myselfprotectively.
“Oho!” He shakes his head with a laugh. “We've gotta get you some water, or you’re gonna be circling the drain soon.” Frank jabs a finger at the tiny touch screen on his wrist, and the food-drawer compartment in my cell door slides open—a small soft-sided plastic pouch of water with a rubber stopper inside.
“Don’t say I never did anything for ya,” Frank laughs coldly before tossing me the plastic water skin.
I’d refuse to drink it—but I’ve already tried that angle. All it got me was a few bags of saline delivered via IV line. Restrained, of course—so that I couldn’t tamper with the line.
“What’s on the docket today, Francis?” I goad him, unstopping the mouthpiece to take a small sip of cool, sweet water.
Frank kicks the water out of my hands, the shining black leather of his pointed wing-tips sending screaming pain through my already throbbing fingers. Whatever healing they’d been able to manage may well have been undone in a single instant.
“Lucky for you, good ol’ Suz wanted some time to chat with you—gotta get you cleaned up and dressed if you’re gonna have a meeting with the brass,” he sneers, leaning against the wall as the metal meal tray opens once more. This time the contents are a collapsible silicone bucket, a large plastic sponge, and a small soft-sided bag filled with what I’m guessing is a mild soap.
One by one, he throws the items in my general direction—his dark blue eyes fixed on me all the while.
Keeping one eye on Frank, I gather the trio of bathing supplies and bring the expanded bucket to my sink to fill it.
“She might ask a little nicer than I do, but she’s going to be looking for answers, Sweetheart.” Frank leers as I shrug out of the pathetic, soiled hospital Johnny—my naked body covered in gooseflesh in the biting cold, my nipples painfully hard.
“Would it kill you assholes to at least let me have hot water?” I grumble as if I haven’t even heard him—focusing instead on washing my slowly wasting body.
“Susan and the others are losing their patience,” Frank presses—his eyes following my hands as I dunk the large plastic spongeinto the bucket of water—squeezing the air bubbles out to help the big green blob absorb as much water as possible.
“I’m getting pretty fed up myself—if we’re being honest.” I do my best to put on some bravado, to banter with him, but I’m lightheaded with hunger and woozy with sleep deprivation. The room spins as I squeeze the freezing cold water over my shoulders and breasts. My eyelids droop, and suddenly the splashing sound of the water hitting the tile floor, the echoing of the drain at the center of the room, feels far away.
Just before my legs give way, and I fall to the ground, Frank is pressed against me from behind—his body rippling with radiant heat, almost as if he were raging with fever.
“Good thing I have endless patience,” he hisses in my ear, low and needy.
I let myself go slack beneath his grip—his iron hold on my forearms keeping me upright.
