Page 18 of Sergi
When she tugged on her hand again, he released it. Then, without another word, he stormed out. He wasn’t giving up. There was still one last option.
The icy water woke him from his dream.
He shook his head, and the pain that had been forgotten in sleep returned tenfold. The multiple wounds he’d suffered healed slower than they had the day before. He wasn’t sure which was worse—being a prisoner in the lab or locked in the memory of mistakes he could never change.
They were both hell.
“Sorry to wake you.” The vampire grinned with even, white teeth, the tip of his fangs showing. He rubbed his stomach. “I’m on my way to breakfast but wanted to stop in to say good morning.” He gripped Sergi’s hair and pulled back until they stared into each other’s eyes. “This is only day three. The blood you most likely gorged yourself with before coming here won’t heal your wounds for long. In fact, when I return later for our next session, we’ll be moving on to phase two. I have a special treat for you. Until then, go back to sleep or ponder how you will die here. Whatever makes you feel better.”
Sergi held the vampire’s stare. They’d wondered what had happened to this male, where he had gone. Now he had his answer.
Boris Gheata was alive and well in Venizi’s underground lab.
Sometime later,Sergi woke and glanced around the dank-smelling cell. He’d nodded off again, but this time he hadn’t dreamed, and he was grateful to avoid those dark memories. His stomach grumbled. Three days without food or blood.
He’d gone longer, so he wasn’t worried yet. With how long he’d been alive and the number of battles and infiltrations that had gone wrong, this was far from the first time he’d been captured and tortured. Though the last time had been long ago, the body remembers. It remembers the pain, and it remembers the quest for survival.
When he’d first woke in his cell, and the drug had worn off, he’d found himself in restraints. His legs and arms were numb, and the silver band across his chest burned.
If his captors planned on leaving him like this, there would be no hope for escape unless someone unlocked the restraints or Devon massed a rescue. The second was more likely, but small teams wouldn’t work. A full attack force would be needed. Devon would consider it, but unless Rafael survived, he’d be working under the same insufficient intel that had plagued Sergi’s team. He had to believe that Rafael’s wit, training, and penchant for being unpredictable would give him the advantage over three vampires.
He glanced at his arm and wondered if the tracker was still there. They could have discovered it and cut it out while he was drugged. His arm would have healed before he woke. Even so, Devon would know his last location.
On the first day, they’d mostly left him alone. He was given water, though most had dribbled onto his chest. What he’d assumed to be late that same day, the door burst open to show the outline of someone. Even with the weak light from the hallway, it was easy to tell it was a male. He stood as tall and wide as the doorway. He didn’t enter. He watched for several long minutes. If his performance was meant to intimidate, it wouldn’t work.
The effectiveness of breaking someone didn’t come from the size of the opponent. It came in the form of both physical and mental torture. And though he had no idea who this male was, this interrogator would understand Sergi’s resolve and would do whatever it took to break it.
The second day a different male started the torture. He was thick with muscle but not near the size of the first male he’d seen. This male wore loose sweat-style pants made of a rough fabric and no shirt. When he turned his back to roll out a leather-wrapped bundle, the heavy scarring was easily visible in the light of a single lantern only used for the torture sessions andcleanup. The male had been whipped many times by someone who understood torture.
When the tools within the bundle were revealed, Sergi focused his mind elsewhere and ignored the male. Until he stepped in front of Sergi. One whiff was all it took.
A shifter.
He’d laughed at the time. It made sense. In most cases, shifters and vampires didn’t get along. Then he understood. This male’s scars had been from a vampire, and Sergi was a payment of sorts.
The session had been long and painful. His breathing increased as he held in the pain as his face reddened and spittle flew, but he’d only screamed once. In the end, the session was nothing. Mostly cuts to make him bleed, removing as much blood as they could to weaken him and bring on the beast.
They would have to work harder. And when the big male he’d seen in the doorway arrived on the third day and revealed himself to be Gheata, Sergi had known the worst was yet to come.
I must be honest.There wasn’t any reason to be scared of other shifters, but it wasn’t like we all knew each other and had some secret handshake that made us all simpatico. The shifters on level three were here because they couldn’t be tamed. Yet, they were shifters. My people. Other wolves who were only trying to survive.
But S-272’s words came back to me. The vampires had been known to capture wildlings from the nearby forest. Wolves who were more beast than man and had no regard for the more civilized shifters. So, when I stepped into the first cell, my eyesdarted around the room, searching for the shifter. After a few seconds, while my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I found him in the corner.
He wore a thick collar around his neck, and a heavy chain ran from it to a metal ring bolted into the floor. The chain wasn’t long, only permitting the shifter to move a couple feet from where he huddled, his legs pulled into his chest. The bucket was on the other side of the ten-by-ten cell. The dinner tray lay close to the door, the bowl empty except for the plastic spoon.
The shifter kept his eyes on me, as I did him, while I picked up the bucket with one hand, uncaring of the atrocious scent of bodily waste, and picked up the tray with the other. I scurried out as quickly as possible, emptying the bucket and placing the bowl and tray on their appropriate racks. Once I refilled the tumbler and set it next to the door, I backed out of the cell. Before I took the last step through the doorway, the shifter, his eyes wild with fear, his scent filled with anger, he caught my gaze and held it.
I had no reason to do it, but I smiled at him and gave him a brief nod.
Then he did something I hadn’t expected. He made the slightest of nods that barely registered, and the guard, who stood outside the door, wouldn’t have seen it.
But I knew it for what it was. He hadn’t given up. Wouldn’t give up until his last dying breath. He was ready to fight.
I moved through the rest of the cells with practiced motions. The task was too simple to dawdle. In each cell, with every shifter, I smelled the same anger, and the fear in their eyes turned to fire. It was as if they weren’t chained to a wall like some backyard mutt who’d been forgotten. They only waited for the word to be given.
But how long before they were nothing but another failed experiment?
Once the last door was closed, I counted the trays again. Twenty-one. One more cell to go. But when I glanced around, there weren’t any more cells in this corridor. I turned to Dallas.
