Secret Unleashed: Secret McQueen, Book 6 (29 page)

Or was The Doctor already done with him?

When I’d been removed from my cell the previous evening, there were no other rooms between mine and the space I’d been moved to. I was being kept apart from the others. Did he know about our ability to communicate mentally? Had he somehow been blocking any form of psychic communication?

If he’d been studying vampires for thirty years, I found it hard to believe such a juicy tidbit would have escaped his attention, so it wasn’t surprising to think he’d found a way to put a damper on my connection with Holden.

We stopped in front of an unmarked gray door. There was nothing to distinguish it from the dozens of others, no window to show which occupant was held within, yet he knew.

On the wall next to each of the doors was a black square, and The Doctor withdrew a plain white keycard from his jacket pocket and tapped it on the black box. A red light changed to green, and the bolts of the door clicked to signal their release.

“After you, my dear.”

I pulled on the exterior handle, my broken arm protesting the effort, making me wince with pain. Every movement—no matter how small—reverberated through my broken limb, amplifying the pain to new levels.

A hissing sound accompanied the opening of the door, like the air pressure inside the rooms was different. I recalled how warm the hallway air had felt whenever someone would enter my cell, and was greeted with a chilly blast when I stepped inside Holden’s room.

The vampires were being stored at meat-locker temperatures.

The room was dark, with only the light of the hallway helping guide my way. At first I thought I’d been tricked and I was being taken to an empty cell to be starved all over again, until I saw a heap in the corner.

It looked like a sack of laundry, not a man.

The heap twitched and groaned, barely moving, but slowly a head rose from the rest, and I saw his eyes. They’d gone black, any sign of white erased by the madness of hunger, but they were still Holden’s eyes.

“Holden?”

“Ssssss…” His voice was as rough as a cat’s tongue on sandpaper. “Ssseee…”

“It’s me,” I replied, trying to give him a reprieve from his attempt to say my name.

“Ooookkkaaayyy…?”

My lower lip trembled as he shifted into a sitting position. That slight adjustment costing him, he closed his eyes, and since he didn’t breathe he looked dead.
Really
dead.

He was gaunt, his cheeks sunk in, making his beautiful cheekbones and jaw seem frightfully skeletal. The skin beneath his eyes was taut, giving a frightening glimpse to the lines of his skull where they formed the ridge of his eye sockets. He still had his hair which seemed remarkable, all things considered, but the color had begun to leach away. His clothes hung off him like he was wearing those of a much larger stranger.

His eyelids fluttered open again, and he saw me but was confused. “Seeee…”

“It’s me. I’m here.” I crossed the room in two wide steps, crouching in front of him, using my good hand to touch his face, his arms, his chest, trying to convince myself he was really there.

“You…’kay…?” he asked.

Tears slid down my cheeks, staining his shirt. “No,” I answered, unable to force a kind lie.

His gaze shifted lazily to my arm, but he didn’t react. “Hurt.”

“Yes. I’m hurt. I’m very, very hurt.” I pressed my palm to his cheek. “What has he done to you?” His skin felt so thin I worried it might turn to dust under my fingertips.

“No…food.”

He’d been starved for nine days.

I let out a sigh of relief that gutted me. I was
happy
. He was starving to death, and I felt good about it. But compared to the things I imagined being done to him, starvation was a slap on the wrist. They’d literally done nothing to him except leave him alone in the dark.

“You?” he wheezed.

“No.” I shook my head and grabbed his hand. “We don’t need to talk about that.”

A tick in his forehead suggested he was trying to frown, but he couldn’t manage the gesture.

“Hurt.”

“We
aren’t
going to talk about it.” With him in this condition, the rage would just eat him from the inside. His worry had probably done a number on him already, but I tried to put myself in his shoes. If I’d been left alone for nine days, fearing the worst, only to find out the worst couldn’t even begin to cover what had happened to my loved one?

He’d want to kill them. And his inability to make it happen would gnaw away at him until he was an empty husk inside, destroyed by his own hatred and thirst for revenge.

No, I wasn’t going to put that on him.

“It’s going to be okay,” I whispered, finding new resolve to lie now. It was a lie I wanted very badly to believe. I sat down beside him, the cold, rough floor shocking my bare legs. I pressed my left side against him and squeezed his hand lightly, trying not to accidentally break any of his bones. “It’s going to be okay,” I repeated, wondering if it might sound more believable a second time.

It didn’t.

“Don’t get too comfortable,” The Doctor scolded from the doorway. “We still have two more stops to make before it’s time for
your
end of the bargain.”

“Feed him.”

“Absolutely out of the question.”

“Feed him or I won’t show you anything.”

This gave The Doctor a moment’s pause. I couldn’t make out his features with the light of the hall behind him, but he seemed to be contemplating my words. “You’re sure you want to ask for favors so soon? I’ve told you we’re not yet done.”

It didn’t matter what he had to show me. I needed to help Holden, and if that meant cashing in whatever chips I had to play here and now, I’d do it.

“Feed him.”

“I want you to remember this, because I think in a few moments time you’ll feel quite foolish.”

I’d regretted a lot of things in my life, but getting Holden food wouldn’t be one of them.

Recalling what The Doctor had told me about blood laced with silver, I added, “No tricks. No experiments. You give him good blood. Untainted blood.”

Through the darkness I saw his smile. “Such a clever girl.”

Minutes later someone entered the room, giving me and Holden a wide berth, and threw a packet of blood at us. Knowing Holden would be unable to open it himself, I raised the packet to my mouth and gnawed through the sturdy plastic with my regular teeth. I needed blood too, and my fangs weren’t reacting the way they ought to when I was hungry.

My stomach growled in protest as I removed the bag from my mouth without drinking and placed it at Holden’s lips. At first it sat, trembling in my awkward left-handed grip, then he licked the opening. Once the first taste of blood hit his tongue, he drank the contents of the bag with greedy ferocity, yanking it from my hands. I’d thought he was done until he tore the plastic open and began to lick the inside of the bag.

Why hadn’t I thought to do that?

It wasn’t enough to fully restore him, not even close, but as the blood coursed through him his face lost its skull-like visage, his eyes became less black, to the point I could see their natural brown again, and he became more like Holden.

A weaker, less robust version of the vampire I knew and loved, but Holden nevertheless.

“What did they do to you?” he asked once his mouth worked properly. “What happened to your arm?”

“We’re running a test on Ms. McQueen at the moment, to see how her unique anatomy adapts to outside influence.”

“He broke my arm to see how long it will take to heal.” I kept my tone flat. I didn’t want to let any of my fear or rage show, so I had to keep a level head. “He knows what I am.”

Holden’s face was mobile enough to register shock. “How is that possible?”

“Peyton,” I said. The Doctor already knew I was on to him, knew I was aware of his connection to the rogue, so I saw no sense in keeping the information quiet now. Besides, Holden already hated Alexandre Peyton. Giving him another reason wasn’t going to change anything.

“Time’s up,” The Doctor told us, coming to offer me a hand to my feet.

Holden snarled, but our captor was unmoved, clucking his tongue as he pulled me into a standing position. “None of that, please. I’ve been very gracious to you this evening, but if you don’t behave, my hospitality won’t continue.”

If this was him being a good host, I shuddered to think what would happen if we made him
in
hospitable. “It’s okay, Holden. I’ll be fine.”

“You’re not fine,” he said, unable to force himself off the floor.

He was right, and he knew me well enough he was able to see through my lies. I saw the anger on his face and realized I’d failed to do the one thing I set out to do—keep him calm.

“I have to go,” I told him.

We stared at each other for the few seconds we were allowed, and my heart swelled up into my throat, trying to get free for the second time in two days. My lips parted, and a small sob bubbled out. I didn’t know if I was ever going to see him again.

“I love you,” I choked out.

He looked momentarily stunned, and then the gravity of my words hit him, and I saw the understanding in his eyes.

I wasn’t really telling him I loved him.

I was telling him goodbye.

Chapter Thirty-Two

There wasn’t anything in my stomach to throw up, but I managed it anyway, a pink foam soiling my shiny new ballet flats.

“I did warn you,” The Doctor said.

Crouching down, I cradled my head in my good arm, trying to obscure my vision of the room, but where Holden’s had been dark, this one was as brightly lit as a grocery store.

Maxime was strung from the ceiling, bound at four points, caught like a jumping jack in midair. He was stark naked and had been slit down his torso, with almost everything that should be inside him now on the outside.

The only blessing I could see was he was unconscious.

“
What the
fuck?
” I screamed, realizing my mistake a moment too late. The shock from the collar zapped me, making my whole body spasm uncontrollably.

I collapsed to the floor, landing on my broken arm.

I had nothing left as far as screaming or wailing went. My body was spent, and now lying here, looking up at Maxime’s ruined form, I felt my soul shut down. I’d never believed I could feel my soul as a tangible entity, but I did in that instant.

All the hope leached out of me, going down the drain with the vampire’s blood. I lay on the concrete, breathing hard as my arm throbbed in agonizing protest beneath the weight of my body, but I couldn’t make myself move.

“We know complete regeneration is impossible,” The Doctor said, his tone still the same warm, charming one he’d used whenever we spoke. “But I did want to see how long it might take a vampire to heal this kind of wound. The organs are all still there.” He gestured to the trail of intestines spilling out from Maxime’s belly. “I wanted to know if his body would just suck them all back up. Like spaghetti.”

He laughed.

Dragging me to my feet in spite of my efforts to remain a dead weight, he rubbed my back in slow circles I suspected were meant to soothe me. “I did tell you it would get worse.”

He was right. Holden was on a beach vacation compared to what The Doctor was doing to Maxime. I didn’t want to regret getting Holden much-needed blood, but a nagging voice told me I could have saved Maxime from this if I hadn’t been so rash.

“I’m so sorry, Max.” I don’t know why I bothered saying it. If I had any pull with whatever higher powers might be out there, right now I was praying he wasn’t hearing or feeling any of this. His body, at least, had the common sense to shut down mine clearly lacked.

He was better off dead, as much as I hated to think it.

“Come on, then. One last stop.”

“No.”

“You asked for this. You wanted to see your friends, I’m showing you your friends.”

I turned my back on Maxime, not able to look directly at him anymore, the tableau too grim, too hopeless.

“I don’t want to see anything else.”

“I think you’ll like this last one.”

There was only one other vampire he might have who he’d assume I had an interest in, and that was my father. I’d never met Sutherland Halliston, and after this week I wasn’t sure I was ever going to meet him. But if I had any say in the matter, my first introduction to my biological father would not be in this madhouse. I wasn’t going to have that be my first and last memory of him.

“
No,
” I said.

“Does that mean you’re ready to show me what you promised?”

I nodded, choking back a new surge of bile burning the lining of my throat. “I’m ready.”

“Good girl.”

“But not here.”

He glanced over my shoulder to the suspended form of the vampire, then smiled at me. “I suppose that’s a reasonable request.”

Back in his dining room I found myself staring at the seat I’d occupied during dinner. The tablecloth was still rumpled from where I’d placed my hands, and the chair had been knocked over when I fell out of it. It remained on its side on the Persian rug.