Page 38 of Monsters Like Us
“W–where are we?” My voice is hoarse, my tongue thick, the drug still dragging in my blood.
Vale tilts his head, amused. “I don’t like repeating myself,so we’ll wait until your boyfriend—” He pauses, his smile sharpening. “Oh. There he is.”
Micah’s eyes snap open, dark and blazing. He snarls—a sound so raw it raises goosebumps on my skin—and yanks at the chains holding him. Iron bites but doesn’t break.
Vale’s grin widens, the predator showing teeth.
“Now I can make it official,” he says, his voice low and gleaming with malice. “Welcome to your new home in Black Hollow.My personal haven.” He lets the words linger before the final knife twist. “You two are now officially my newest pet projects.”
The door creaks behind him, the wood groaning as though the house itself disapproves. Another figure steps into the dim light.
“Ah,” Vale says smoothly, the predator turning into a host. “Meet Corinne. My wife.”
She glides forward in pale blue scrubs, her blonde hair twisted in a bun, her face calm where his is sharpened. A tray rests in her hands, containing leather straps, clamps, and a syringe that glints with a clear liquid. She sets it on the metal table with practiced ease, the clink echoing too loudly in the room.
Corinne’s smile is soft, almost kind. “Evening,” she murmurs. Her eyes move over me with clinical precision. “I’ll take good care of you.”
My stomach knots. The words sound like comfort, but the way her fingers brush the straps says otherwise.
Micah’s chains rattle, metal screaming against metal, but he doesn’t speak. His silence is louder than any curse.
Vale’s grin sharpens. “Isn’t she wonderful? So capable.”
Micah rattles the chains harder.
He tuts under his breath, as if amused by his own thoughts. “Much as I’d enjoy staying, I have other matters upstairs to tend to.” His smile tilts, cruel and patient. “Structured therapy, we’ll call it. Corinne will take care of you. You’ll learn your roles soon enough.”
Vale steps toward the door, pauses to look at us one last time, and then leaves with slow, deliberate footsteps. The lock scrapes shut behind him. Corinne stays where she is, a soft, practiced smile on her face.
Micah doesn’t spit curses the way I expect. He doesn’t lunge or threaten. He just… stares.
His jaw is tight, the muscles in his arms standing out like cables against the chains. His eyes stare at the door through which Vale disappeared with a focus that chills me more than his fury ever could. He looks like a blade sheathed—silent and sharp, waiting for the perfect moment to cut.
I don’t understand it. Every instinct in me screams to fight, to claw, to scream—but he’s still. Coiled. His silence terrifies me more than his snarl did.
What the hell is going on with him?
Corinne busies herself. She grabs a key from her belt loop and opens a small closet door. She disappears inside, shutting the door partially behind her, as though she doesn’t want us to see what’s inside. I look over at Micah, but he’s busy staring at the closet door.
She slips back out, shutting and locking the door. “Things are almost ready. I have some things to do upstairs to prepare.” She gives us a smile that should be comforting, but it seems like there’s a glimmer of something else beneath it.
“I’ll see you soon, children.”
Then she heads upstairs, leaving us chained in this dim, concrete, monstrous lab.
CHAPTER 33
Micah
The room smellslike antiseptic and old oil—clean and rotten in the same breath. A single fluorescent bulb burns above, throwing shadows that make everything look sharper than it has a right to be.
Even with the drug still riding through my veins, I catalog the space. This isn’t a cellar for storage. It’s a lab. Glass vials in a rusting rack, coils of tubing like pale intestines, a steel table bolted to the floor with clamps, instruments that glitter with intent. Charts are tacked to the walls—handwritten notes, smears of something dark. Jars line a shelf, each filled with cloudy liquid and neat labels that smell faintly of chemistry and menace.
Katana and I are chained to a broad metal pipe that runs from floor to ceiling—industrial and immovable. The iron bites my wrists; the cold spikes up my arms. At the far end, wooden stairs vanish into blackness. Above, the house breathes: a distant clock, the groan of old boards settling. Vale made sure this place had privacy. No easy exits.
I watch Corinne as she goes into a closet, noting the keys hanging from her belt loop that she uses to unlock it. She slipsthrough the door, closing it partially behind her so we can’t see inside.
She slips out, closing and locking the door behind her like she wants to preserve the secret inside. “Things are almost ready. I have some things to do upstairs to prepare.” She gives us a smile that I catalog as attempting to come off as reassuring, but I don’t trust it. Sometimes, the worst humans pretend to be nice until they can no longer hide the monster inside.
