Secret Unleashed: Secret McQueen, Book 6 (25 page)

He began undoing the front of my shirt. Each hook and eye being separated felt like a bit of my soul being stripped away. “What are you doing?”

“I can’t very well do what I need to with you dressed like this, now can I?”

“
What are you doing?
” I screamed, trying to move out of his reach, which was a pointless effort since I was pinned down.

“If you think this is going to be sexual, you can put your mind at ease.”

For some reason that
did
allay a few of my concerns. But if he wasn’t removing my clothes to molest me—and I was grateful he wasn’t—then why? What possible need could he have for—?

He reached out of sight, and when his hand came back into view, he was holding a scalpel.

“Now, dear, this is going to hurt tremendously, and I understand if you feel the urge to scream, I really do. But please remember it will do you no good, and will only draw from your energy.”

My eyes were open so wide I was surprised they didn’t roll right out of my head. I saw the knife, and I heard his speech, but all the same I still asked, “What are you do—?”

The scalpel tucked into my flesh, and the blade was so small and sharp at first all I felt was a faint sting. Down the center of my belly was a red line at least a foot long. I stared at it in shock, wondering why he was drawing lines on me.

Until he stuck his hand inside me.

The pain was tremendous, and I couldn’t have screamed if I wanted to. I was used to external pain, the kind caused when the nerves on the surface of my skin were in charge. Inside my body there were a million new nerves, and I couldn’t compute what I was feeling. It wasn’t pain like a cut or a gunshot. It was an invasive, squirming agony. My whole body wanted the unfamiliar presence of his hand
out
but could do nothing to stop his exploration.

I gagged, unsure if the clenching in my stomach was a reaction to what I was seeing, or if he’d physically done something to it. He made two other incisions before peeling back my skin and whispering, “Marvelous.”

When he stuck his hand under my ribs, my brain decided enough was enough, and the room went black.

A sharp scent snapped me back into reality, though I had no idea how much time had elapsed. The Doctor stood over me, his bare hands covered in a thick coating of my blood, reminding me precisely where he’d just had them. A nurse backed away with a bottle of smelling salts still clutched in her hand.

Glancing down in panic, I was relieved to see my stomach wound had closed, the angry red lines of his incisions beginning to heal.

“It really is fascinating to watch your kind patch themselves back up again.” He was staring the same place as I was, watching the skin regrow, building itself over the wounds until nothing was left but pink irritation marks which would soon fade away as well. “But you’re different. Different from the rest of them.”

He stepped out of view, and the only sound in the room was running water and my pulse loud in my ears.

When he returned, his hands were clean, but he was holding another scalpel.

“Don’t. Please, please…
please
.”

“How wonderful. You’ve learned some manners after all. Who says you can’t teach an old dog new tricks?” He winked at me, but of all the things he’d said to me since I’d met him, none had been half as scary as that idiom.

He knew what I was.

When my gaze met his, he must have seen something in my expression—shock, perhaps, or comprehension—because his smile turned into something almost comforting and paternal.

“You will be my greatest discovery,” he whispered, squeezing my shoulder. “Take comfort in that.”

He rested the scalpel on my chest between my exposed breasts, and I stared at the point of it aiming up at my chin.

“Subject was able to heal a series of fine incisions in a matter of thirty minutes. All major organs appear to be normal size and are identical to a human counterpart. Subject’s stomach is below average size for a human woman of her same build and apparent age, but this is likely an evolutionary advancement due to her mainly liquid diet. We’ve taken samples from the subject’s stomach, liver and kidney to assess whether any unique traits exist within, but I hypothesize they will resemble those of a normal vampire.”

He stopped speaking and stared down at me again, reclaiming the scalpel. “Next we will have a look at the heart.”

Chapter Twenty-Seven

My reward for not dying was a pint of blood and the cool reprieve of my cell. Since my bustier had been discarded I was given a thin blue scrub top like those the nurses were wearing. At some point prior to the surgery I must have been prepped, because my hair was no longer matted with blood.

It was a small favor, one I couldn’t fully appreciate right then.

I had a graphic imagination when it came to torture. Though I didn’t enact my plots often, I had come up with a few doozies in my time. More than once I’d fantasized about ripping someone’s heart out and showing it to them before they died.

Never again.

Not now that I’d seen it. The Doctor had cut open my chest cavity, split my rib cage open…

He’d lifted my heart without severing the arteries or veins, and he’d held it in his bare hands just high enough I could see.

I whimpered, rubbing my still-healing chest with the tips of my fingers. I’d lost consciousness seven times, and every time I’d been forced back so he could run his experiments on me while I was awake. Healing was the only thing he didn’t seem to need me alert for.

He’d cut out my heart.

My whimpers became sobs, and I wrapped my jacket tighter around myself, grateful it had been left for me. It felt like decades ago Dominick had given it to me. Since then, it had been to hell and back with me.

If a jacket could survive my life without falling apart, surely I could too.

I huddled in the corner, relieved to finally be able to cry. I knew it was a useless waste of energy, but I needed it. I’d spent days with no sign of rescue, no word on Holden or Maxime. If they were dead, how would anyone find me? The council would be looking, but what would they come up with if they went after me? Was there any trail to follow from the Winchester Mansion to wherever we were?

Since I hadn’t the faintest fucking clue
where
I was, I couldn’t imagine anyone else having an easy time locating me. My sleeps had been near comatose, and I hadn’t dreamed once. The psychic energy it took to reach out to someone was exhausting. In the past I’d been able to see things, communicate with my loved ones when I’d thought the end was near.

But this was real. This was the end of my days reaching out to me with arms spread wide, and I couldn’t talk to anyone. If I couldn’t find Holden now when I needed him most, I feared that meant the worst. He would stop at nothing to find me, to reach me by any means possible, but if he was dead, his fight for me was over.

If he was dead…

I didn’t want to think about it, but it made sense.

Unless The Doctor was holding him, starving him the way he starved me. Holden was a full-blooded vampire and could last infinitely longer than I could without blood. If he was being starved, it stood to reason he wouldn’t be able to reach out to me, or me to him. Two nearly dead batteries can’t complete a circuit, not the way fresh ones could.

A starved vampire was an appalling sight. It was considered a fate worse than death for most, but right then I was wishing that fate on Holden. I wanted him to be starved, prayed for him to be in agony.

I didn’t want him to suffer, but if he was suffering, he wasn’t dead.

All alone, with enough blood to be lucid, I started contemplating what I knew about the man who held me captive. I’d seen him before he took me, dressed as a homeless man, so it was possible he’d been following me for a long time, disguising himself to avoid recognition. But how long? Was it just in California, or did this go back longer?

Was he acting alone, or had someone hired him?

Sutherland had told me in his dream he’d been taken by The Doctor, which I believed now that I’d experienced those blistering emotions for myself. I understood why he’d told me to stop looking. Was he still here somewhere, or had this room been his first, until The Doctor finished with him?

I zipped my jacket up to my throat, like the leather could protect my chest from further penetration.

The entire time he’d been cutting me open, he prattled on, making notes and comparing my parts to those of other creatures. He seemed fascinated by my normalcy in a lot of ways, commenting on how similar my organs were to those of a human.

What did he want from me? Did he want to open the hood to see how the gears worked before sending me on my merry way? It was unlikely.

I suspected once he got bored of timing my healing process, he was just going to dismantle me entirely. And I couldn’t fight back. Between the minimal amount of blood I was being given—barely enough to recover what was being lost in the surgery—and all the healing my body was forced to do over and over, I didn’t stand a chance. I couldn’t best him in a fight.

I might be able to land a few blows, but he had a full staff with him as far as I could tell, and he only spent time alone with me when I was weak or incapacitated.

He was smart, and had obviously perfected a system to keep supernatural beings from getting the best of him.

But for what?

Science?

Was he trying to create a real Dungeons & Dragons monster guide, some sort of ultimate physiological compendium of how we beasties ticked?

If that was the case, I could respect how rare a specimen I was for him. I didn’t empathize, because the guy wanted to filet me, but I kind of saw how I might appear to him. A white whale of sorts.

But how…
how
did he know about me?

The pocket of people who knew what I was had grown over the past couple of years, but they were all people I trusted, people I’d relied on. If one of them had spilled the beans on my condition, it had been under duress.

Unless it hadn’t been a friend at all.

Two people who knew what I was wanted me dead.

My mother had known from day one, and she’d abandoned me because of it. She’d worked closely with Alexandre Peyton in an effort to overtake the city, and though I don’t think she’d ever told him what I was, she hadn’t hidden what
she
was.

Peyton had spent years alone with only his thoughts, and in that time I was willing to bet he’d thought about me an awful lot. Enough for him to realize a girl with a werewolf mother who was half-vampire had to be hiding something.

They both hated me, but my mother wanted to see me die in front of her eyes. I knew that because I wouldn’t be satisfied with
her
death unless it was by my hands, and she and I were cut from the same cloth in a lot of ways.

So this torture? This starvation and pain?

This was all Peyton.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

I paced the cell in a tight circle, glad to have use of my legs for however long the blood allowed it. I wanted to run—my body craved the adrenaline—but I wouldn’t get a chance to run any time soon.

The longer I thought about my captivity and the way in which I was being treated, the more certain I became Peyton was responsible. Like my mother I’d thought he would prefer to kill me in person, but he was pragmatic too. He was a smart, cunning vampire, and if he hadn’t gone rogue, he would have risen far in the council ranks.

He had what it took to be in my seat, if he hadn’t been bat shit crazy.

A man as smart as him would know how hard it would be to get to me once he was free. I was pretty sure he’d tried through Grendel, and it had almost worked. But
this
was sheer genius.

I wasn’t sure how he’d managed it. He’d have had to know I was coming to California, which meant he still had friends within the council. My trip hadn’t been a secret from the other vampires, but he’d have needed someone inside in order to find out.

So he had a mole. We’d suspected it, but now I knew for sure.

Would he have come to California himself, wanting to be present for my capture and to witness what The Doctor was doing to me? Or was he hiding somewhere else, anywhere in the world, watching footage sent to him?

I slapped the wall with my palm, the gritty surface stinging my skin. The last thing I needed right now was another wound to heal, as my aching chest could attest.

How was I going to get out of this?

It would be one thing if they were trying to get me to share secrets, but this was experimentation, plain and simple. The Doctor wanted to know how I worked, the same way a mechanic sought to understand a car engine. Without any information to offer him, he was only going to take me out of the cell when he wanted to poke around inside me.

There had to be something, some way I could have him release me from the room without being bound, and convince him I needed my full strength.

I looked at my hand pressed flat against the wall. My brittle, cracked nails seemed to be telling me something, and I didn’t think that something was
You need a manicure
.