Page 66 of Forbidden Devotion
“Help!” he cried. “Someone help. Let me out. Help.”
Footsteps echoed from farther away, and Sinclair’s anxiety spiked. Maybe he shouldn’t have called out. He should have tried harder to escape before resorting to pleas.
Oh well, too late now. He lifted his head as much as he could. The door opened, and two human men walked in.
Humans? What were they doing here?
“Well, look who’s finally awake,” the taller of the two said. He was middle-aged with drawn features and short brown hair. His scowl looked like a permanent feature etched into his face.
“Please,” Sinclair said. “Let me go. I need to find my family.” Mitchel, his parents, his pack. Were they hurt? Were they alive?
“Why would we let you go when it was so much trouble to get you here?” his jailor sniped. “Men died today.”
So these humans were responsible for the explosion. Killers. He couldn’t wrap his injured mind around it. If some of them had died, they had no one to blame but themselves. And who knew how many innocent supernaturals they’d killed?
“Why did you do it?” Sinclair asked, his voice gone shaky.
“Why?” the man repeated, mocking him. He laughed, an ominous sound. “You’ve been hiding from us, you freaks! Using us as your food supply.”
Sinclair paled. “That’s not true.”
The man raised his voice. “Controlling our money. Some of us had suspicions, but now the world knows. And you expect what? Amnesty? Not on my watch.”
“What happened?” Even as he asked, he could imagine it. A leak. They’d all suspected it would happen eventually.
“You don’t know? Some freak who could fuckingflywas on CNN. Said there were witches and werewolves and vampires. Said a lot of other things too. About how you manipulate the economy, how you own our banks.”
“We don’t own your b—“
“And here we find out you’re all enjoying a fancy peace get-together? Probably jerking each other off on our tax dollars.” The man stepped forward and loomed over Sinclair. His spittle rained down as he ranted. “Well, not anymore. That ended today.”
He narrowed his eyes, making Sinclair squirm. “What kind of freak are you, anyway? Not a very good one, obviously. You were easy to catch.” He prodded at Sinclair’s ribs.
Debating the pros and cons of admitting his species, Sinclair didn’t have a good answer. When he said nothing, the man slapped him hard across the face, stinging the skin and bruising the bones beneath.
“Answer me!”
The hit rattled his brain. His jaw ached. He was barely holding it together.
“Vampire,” Sinclair blurted out, afraid to be hit again. He couldn’t take more blows like that. “Just a vampire.”
“Ya hear that, Russel? Caught ourselves a vampire.” One man gloated to the second. Hopefully, the silent man was more level-headed. “Prove it.”
Prove it?But how?
His captor’s hand reared back.
“Wait,” Sinclair begged. “Don’t hit me. I’m…I’m not the kind of vampire you’re thinking of. You could kill me, and then you won’t have a hostage.”
The man didn’t hit him, but he didn’t believe him either. That much was obvious from his expression. “How do you know we don’t plan to kill you anyway, smartass?”
“I guess I don’t,” Sinclair admitted. “But I don’t want to die, please.” He blinked hard and forced himself to continue. “I don’t know if I can prove it, but I will try to explain it if you let me.”
How was he going to convince this pair that he was, indeed, a vampire, but that if they wanted to keep him alive, he’d need food and water and to use the bathroom as if he were human? What could he say to keep them from killing him? He had to come up with something, but he was having trouble thinking straight.
Stay alive, Sinclair. For Mitchel. For your parents. For yourself.
The man crossed his arms. “Start talking.”
