Shallow breaths helped tighten the muscles in my legs to stop my bladder spilling out, but I’d had that dream for a reason: if I didn’t go soon, I would definitely wet myself in front of Jason. But not yet. Not just yet.
* * *
The skeletons on the wall never talked back. I thought I saw one move once, but when I looked closer, it stopped. If they were skinless vampires, they certainly weren’t making any effort to be social.
I closed my eyes and tried to pretend this was just a friend’s basement, overstuffed with cheap decorations for Halloween. I’d wake up tomorrow, go home, and think of this sometimes, cry about it maybe, but mostly believe it was a terrible nightmare; the kind that, after you wake up, you suddenly appreciate everything in your life—even the bad things.
But the lonely skeletons of terrors past smiled down at me with gaping jaws, their hollow eyes sardonic, greeting me to the gateway of their eternal loneliness and infecting my hopes with the truth that this is no basement. This was it for me. This was my life now until I joined them. They didn’t need to talk to me, because we’d have eternity together just hanging around. I’d lay here, alone, making idle chatter with them until Jason came back to finish his list. Then, he’d hand me over to the Council and they would… they would…
My brow folded tight in the middle, liquid pooling along the outer corners of my eyes. I didn’t want to know what the Council planned to do. If those skeletons were anything to go by, it wouldn’t be pleasant. But if I wasn’t thinking about what they’d do to me, my mind wandered over what they were doing to David. He must be so worried about me, his own mind running a thousand scenarios of what I’d be suffering. And I knew his mind—for all the masochistic things he’d done in his own life—would imagine much worse than already happened. Then again, he probably thought Jason saved me.
A sudden shock of electric panic rushed through my limbs, forcing my heart into my throat as footsteps scuffed down the steep echoing staircase. I wished I could be small, invisible, so he’d come in and not be able to find me. What tool would he be carrying, what thoughts did he have in his mind right now—knowing what he was about to do, how I’d cry when he did it?
“Ah, you’re awake.” Jason peered over me and sniffed thoughtfully. “Then we can begin.”
“What’re you gonna do?”
He walked across the room with a flaming torch in hand and spread light to another one on the wall. “I need to test your instinct for survival.”
“What does that mean?”
Light warmed my face when he set the torch down on a pillar near the table of tools. “It means I need to see if you can escape when pushed to the limits.”
“Escape?”
He cupped the seat of the chair and pushed, rolling it up to sit. “Yes. When strong, the four guards I have standing at the entrance should be like tenpins to you. However, given your current state of deterioration, I doubt you’ll have much fight left in you, but I need to test it anyway.”
“Why? You’re going to kill me, what does it matter?”
“Well, we still have a while to go before we kill you. The scientists need to know what methods of restraint to use. We can’t test that in the lab, or you might destroy expensive equipment. So we do it here.”
My chest felt empty. “How’re you gonna do that?”
He stood in front of me, pushing his black sleeves up over his elbows. “Same as I would any other animal.”
“I’m not an animal.”
“Actually, you are.”
My fingers flexed when he reached for my arm. “What are you doing?”
Jason ignored me, reaching for the handle beside my wrists and wound it around a few times until the left cuff came loose. My hand flew to my lip, smearing the itchy blood away at last with the soothing, ice-cold of my fingertips, then moved to scratch my head, my neck and my knees, like a flea-infested animal.
Jason stared at me with one brow arched, his fingers hovering over the other cuff. “Feel better then, do we?”
I nodded and watched him wind the crank, rolling my scabbed wrist between my fingers as the second cuff came loose. “Why are you doing that?”
“Because I’m going to hit you, and you’ll need your hands to fight back.”
“Hit m—Ah!” The dull clap of flesh on bone thundered through my head, knocking me back in the chair, pain turning to tears in my eyes. I bawled, wiping a shaky hand across my suddenly blocked nose.
“Break free!” he growled.
I wriggled my toes. “How?”
“Break free!”
“I can’t.” I traced the walls desperately with my gaze until it met his. “My feet are tied. How can I possibly—”
“Then we do this again,” he said, and my mind slammed shut, forcing me into an imaginary black cave with the crack of a deep blow across my brow.
Crunching vibrations, like biting sand, resonated out through the back of my head, ringing in my ears. My mouth opened, but only saliva came out, gathering in the corners of my mouth before mixing with blood as it dribbled down my chin. I pressed both hands to my temples, howling silently.
“Come on, Ara,” he demanded, “I’m giving you a fair chance here. Get up. Fight.”
A fold of my lip flapped when I shook my head. I touched my fingertips against it, drawing them away when I felt a wide gash.
“Open your eyes,” he ordered. “Now! Or I will hit you again.”
Fighting against the pulsing tightness in my brain, I forced my eyes open. Everything was blurry, and though I could only hear a rushing of white noise, like wind through a seashell, I knew I was crying aloud—really loud.
“Stop whining. Fight!”
“No.” Shielding hands flew to my face at his sudden movement, my eyes closing tight, but he didn’t strike. I inched one eye open cautiously, laying my hands in my lap. Where did he go?
“It’s not over,” he said, squatting by my feet, fumbling with the cuffs there. “This only gets worse until you fight me.”
I looked down at my trembling hands, so bony and weak. I barely had the strength to stand. How could I fight a hundred-year-old vampire?
Jason tore the last cuff away then stood and grabbed my wrist, shouting “Get up” as he swung me toward the stairs.
My weak legs failed though and I stumbled into the wall, but the oozy slime attacked my grip and sent me sliding down, jolting my head back as my nose grated a brick. Blood burst out over my chin, slithering behind my teeth before I even hit the ground.
“Get up. Escape this room.” Jason stood over me. “Show my guards how strong you are.”
With my forearm against the smarmy wall, I managed to clamber to my knees, taking a second to fold the flesh of my severed lip back in place. Please, Jason. They’ll hurt me if I go out there.
“I’ll hurt you if you don’t.” He ripped my wrist away from the wall, forcing my shoulders into a violent spin, the ground ending it against my back. My arm came up and Jason dragged me behind him, my lungs tight with the position I was in. Jagged pieces of rock ground into my hips and spine until he ditched me against the corner of the room. I cried out as my face meshed with hard-packed dirt, filling my gashed lip with grime. My mouth dried so bad I could only cough the dust from the back of my throat, rolling it out in a messy clump with my tongue and licking the compacted dirt deep within the cavity of my gashed lip after.
As I pushed up on my hands, Jason grabbed my arm again.
“Please don’t.” I rolled over, hiding behind my wrist. “Please, just stop hurting me.”
“Not until you attempt escape.” He threw me, spine against the wall, then stood up and grabbed the flame torch from the mount.
“I can’t, Jason. I never knew I had the power before. I don’t know how to call on that now,” I cried, my lip stinging with each word, especially the ‘p’.
“Then you are not only weak of body, but of mind.”
My hands went up in search of something to grab, my body slidin
g down the wall and landing under Jason’s, his shins pinning my arms, his knees holding my temples in place.
“Do you know how hot the oil in this torch is, Ara?” He rested his thumb to my brow, forcing my eye open under the heat of the nearby flames.
“Oh, God! Please, please don’t.”
“I’m going to give you one last chance, Ara.” The heat came closer, its hot light glowing orange against his face, making moisture break out across mine.
“I’m trying.” I dug my feet into the ground, turning my head from the choking fumes of kerosene and smoke.
Jason sighed, tipping a few droplets of sizzling oil onto the dirt beside my cheek. My eyes followed it. “Last chance.”
“No!” I screamed out, a rolling growl the only fight I could offer. I had no power. I couldn’t break free. I was useless, stupid and weak. I thrashed about savagely like a child throwing a tantrum. If I could just get my thumbs up, I could stab him in the groin—but he was too heavy, and my puny, pathetic arms couldn’t shift his weight.
“Time’s up, Ara,” he said and moved his hand so his thumb rested at the base of my eye, the other one spreading it open from just below my brow. “You were warned.”
The heat burned my icy cheeks while my corneas shifted nervously. No. Not the eye. Anything but the eye.
“You know what you need to do to end this,” he said, tipping the torch.
I screamed, my desperate cry cutting the air like acid on metal. Get off me. Let me go. Let me go.
He leaned closer and peeled my eyelid a little further open. I rubbed the base of my skull sideways against the dirt. I had to get free, I had to…
The light of the torch moved away and my skin tightened with the sudden cool.
Slowly, I opened my eye, the other one rolling back from its absence behind the socket, confusion making them both smaller.
Jason glared down at me, his green gaze focused, then he took a quick glance over his shoulder.
Was that it—was he going to do it, or was this just another horrible, tortuous anticipation?
He dropped the flame pole to the ground and rested both thumbs to the inner corner of my eye, cupping my temples with his fingers.
What are you doing? “Ow!” A sharp and quick sting ripped through the skin between my eye and my nose.
“Get up.” Jason jumped off my chest.
I sat bolt upright, holding my eye against my knee, watching the torch of terror still rolling around on the ground. “Why did you do that?”
The vampire grabbed a handful of my dress and, before the tension spread through my legs, ripped a wad of lace from the base and offered it to me. “Put this over your eye.”
I looked up at him, question marks filling the air around me.
He groaned and shoved the lace into my palm, releasing my hand into a tight spring back to the safety of my body. “Put it on your eye,” he ordered again.
The fabric felt cool and soft over the nip, soothing it a little. “Why didn’t you do it?”
Jason placed the torch back in the mount on the wall, his shoulders dropping with a breath.
“Answer me,” I demanded.
“Because, Ara…” He looked over at the red light on the camera, speaking in a lower voice. “There are some things even I’m not even capable of.”
“So you… You…”
“Enough.” He reached down for my hand and hoisted me off the ground. “We need to hurry. The Council will return to the viewing room soon and they will want to see this next test.”
I stumbled feebly to the chair by guide of his hand on my arm and fell heavily into it, holding my severed lip in place with my top teeth. A heady wave of nausea rippled my insides when I tasted my blood. “Jason?” I closed my eyes and let the world spin.
The thick metal cuff clamped my wrist again, tight and warm still. “Yes.”
“My throat’s really dry.”
“And I should care?”
“Please.” The crackle of my voice forced me into a cough, the tight cuff tugging my wrist, ripping the skin further as my body convulsed.
Jason stood, waiting until I caught my breath again. “Put your other hand in place.”
The chair felt moist and sticky under my elbow with the sweat, blood and probably tears eternally belonging to the wood, but I obeyed anyway, too silly and too weak to do anything else.
“Where’s that music coming from?” I asked, looking around.
“What music?”
I strained to hear it then, blinking tightly. “It’s—can’t you hear it?”
He paused for a long moment. “No.”
“It sounds like that song—the one in the box.”
“The box?”
I nodded, feeling heavy, exhausted. He rolled the chair back and I closed my eyes, the gentle hum of that melody taking me to my room, to the night before I married David. “Yeah, the box.”
“Ara?” He appeared over me, his hand on my brow. “Ara?”
I opened my eyes to his insistent tone. A tense version of Jason stared back at me, reading my face, I think, his thumb resting just between my brows.
“What?” I said, closing my eyes again.
“Yes,” he said, and space followed. “I think she might be sinking down.”
Sinking down? I turned my head to look at him—on his phone, across the room.
“I’m not sure how much longer she’ll last. She’s delusional.”
Delusional?
“Yes. She mentioned him a few times while sleeping. I’m not sure, but I don’t think we have time for that. I’ll see what I can do. Just make it quick.” He rubbed his brow. “I said make it quick! She’s… yes, I’ll be handing her over soon. Just hurry up.”
A soft, nearly hysterical laugh jiggled through me. I almost felt like I was sitting on the teacup ride at a fair, rocking in a circular motion. It felt nice, soothing, while the music made my hairs stand on end, surrounding me as if a melodious ghost was making rings around the chair.
“Ara, why are you laughing?”
“I—” I burst out again at the torturer’s concerned eyes. “Y—you’re so serious.” I sobered and put on my best ‘Joker’ face, delivering a line from the last Batman movie I saw.
Jason didn’t find it funny. He closed his eyes for a second, then glanced over his shoulder. I looked too, seeing the little red blinking light on the camera the coward king used to watch his dirty work be done for him.
“Why do you keep looking at that?” I asked. “Who else is watching us?”
He looked back at me and leaned closer, a small white flashlight in hand. “No one—not right now, anyway.”
“Then why is it so fascinating?” I didn’t even flinch when he shone the light right in my eyes, as if I couldn’t even see light anymore, like my eyes were dead.
“When it’s green,” he whispered so lowly I almost didn’t hear.
“When it’s green what?”
“It means the Council are—”
“It’s green,” I said, and he stood back, stiffening. I burst into laughter again. “O. M. G.,” I said, like a teenager. “You are so funny. You look like a deer in the line of headlights.”
“If you know what’s good for you, you’ll stop laughing.”
“Why?” I said, laughing louder.
“Because as soon as the Council decides you’ve lost your mind, they will transfer you to the lab.”
“The lab?” I rolled my shoulder, heaving with giggles. “Vampires have a lab?”
He looked like an agitated kitty, tired of the string, about to attack the hand. “The lab, Ara”—he grabbed my face in one hand. I stopped laughing—“is a white room, steel bed, no clothes, strapped down, several men towering over your conscious body, cutting, probing, removing organs.”
I gasped, the air catching my dry throat and making me cough again.
He released my cheeks. “You think what I’ve done is brutal, wait until you’re transferred to the Council and their scie
ntists, Ara. You won’t know suffering until you’ve spent an hour with them.”
I swallowed. “Why do they need to do that, you’re already conducting tests?”
He ditched a tool on the table beside my chair. “These medieval experiments don’t tell us much. They need a full examination.”
“Examination?”
“Yes.”
“Will I be dead?”
“No.” He pressed a straw to my mouth. “Ara, drink.”
“No.”
“Drink.”
“No.”
The cup came away and he shook his head as the light on the camera went from the red I hadn’t noticed, back to green. “You are your own worst enemy, Miss Thompson.”
“Kill me?”
“If I do that, I will sit where you do.”
“God!” I huffed, feeling giggles rise again. “This is so fucked up.”
“Language please, Ara.”
“Oh, right, sorry, Dad. Didn’t realize my manners were relevant in this situation.”
“Manners always are.”
“Good, then please will you release me so I don’t have to be cut open and pulled apart while still breathing?”
His phone buzzed. He lifted it only an inch from his pocket then sighed. “Come on.”
“What are you doing?”
He cuffed my feet into place. “We should’ve had most of this done by now. I have to hurry.”
“Will they let you keep me if you haven’t finished the tests?”
“No.” He stood beside me again with his arms folded. “Did you really not know?”
“Know what?”
“What you are.”
I shook my head. David didn’t either.
“I’m not surprised. You don’t taste or smell that different to a human, and you clearly don’t have any powers yet.”
We stared at each other for an intense, wordless breath, then he drew back with a sigh and reached out to the table, grabbing a black clipboard. “Now”—he flipped the paper—“next on the list is…”
I waited, my breath warm in my stomach, my chin itching from blood, and my eye stinging where sweat dripped from my brow. “Jase?”
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