But my eyes locked onto the centerpiece of the room: a large white padded dentist’s chair outfitted with silverstone arm, leg, and neck shackles.

And I realized that this wasn’t anything like a doctor’s office.

It was a lab, and I was the rat.

“Strip her,” Benson ordered, going over to one of the sinks along the wall and washing his hands.

The two vamps grinned at me, showing off their fangs. One of them pulled out a switchblade, flicked it open, and cut off my clothes with it. My vest, my long-sleeved T-shirt, my jeans, my underwear. The bastard even sliced off my boots and socks.

I tried to move my arms and legs, so I could grab the knife and slice open the vamp’s throat with it before turning the blade on his buddy. But the sedative was still working its way through my system, and I couldn’t even muster so much as a snarl.

Silvio stood off to one side of the lab, calm and composed as ever. He stared at me, his face completely unreadable, then pulled out his phone and started texting on it. If I could have, I would have broken his thumbs, grabbed the device, and force-fed it to him through his f**king teeth.

Benson finished washing his hands, then stood by and watched the whole damn thing. He even pulled out his pen and pad and took notes, although I had no idea what he thought was so interesting about my pale, na**d body.

When I’d been stripped, Silvio put his phone away, reached into one of the cabinets over the sinks, and drew out a white hospital gown. The two vamps held my hands out, sticking my arms through the holes, while Silvio wrapped the gown around my body and tied it together in the back. He also attached a series of electrodes to my head and chest, along with an oxygen monitor on my left index finger, then hooked everything up to a couple of machines standing next to the metal table and flipped them on.

“Put her in the chair,” Benson ordered.

The two vamps picked me up and plopped my ass in the chair.

Clink. Clink. Clink. Clink. Clink.

They snapped the silverstone restraints around my arms and legs, shackling me to the chair, before cinching the final one around my neck. I felt like a dog wearing one of those damn cone collars.

After he snapped the restraint around my neck, the vamp with the switchblade, the one who’d cut off my clothes, pinched my cheek with his fingers.

“How does that feel, honey?” he crooned. “Not so tough now, are you?”

Instead of verbally responding to his taunt, I snapped out with my teeth and caught the tender web of his hand in my mouth.

He screamed and tried to pull away, but I ground my teeth together as hard as I could. Coppery spurts of blood filled my mouth, and the vamp slapped at my head and face, but I ignored the blows. When he realized that I wasn’t going to let go without a fight, the second vamp stepped forward and punched me in the stomach. Despite my best intentions, I couldn’t help but cough as all of the air was driven out of my lungs. The first vamp finally wrenched his hand out of my mouth and stumbled away, clutching his wounded appendage to his chest.

For a moment, everything was quiet, except for the vamp’s and my own gasps for breath, along with the steady beep-beep-beep of the machines monitoring my heart rate.

Then I turned my head to the side as far as it would go and spat a wad of his blood out onto the floor, ruining the glossy shine of the white tile. I grinned, knowing that my teeth were as bloody as, well, a vampire’s after a quick sip of O-negative.

“Not as bad as that feels,” I drawled, answering his earlier question. “You should watch where you put your f**king fingers.”

Benson regarded me with an almost amused expression, as though my injuring his minion was somehow entertaining. Maybe it was to him.

The wounded vamp screamed again and lunged at me, but Silvio stepped in front of him, thwarting his attack.

“Enough,” Silvio said. “That’s enough. You know the boss doesn’t like it when you damage his . . . subjects.”

The injured vamp kept glaring at me, but he didn’t try to push past Silvio. He was too afraid of Benson to do that.

I puckered my mouth and made a kissy noise at him.

The vamp’s face turned as red as the blood dribbling down his wounded hand, but the second man grabbed his shoulder, spun him around, and marched him out of the lab, closing the door behind them.

That left me alone with Benson and Silvio.

“Well, then, let’s get started,” Benson said, a high, excited note in his nasal voice.

Silvio went over to a wooden stand in the corner and plucked a long white coat off it. Benson held out his arms, and Silvio helped his boss into the jacket, just like he had the night Benson had murdered Troy. Silvio even grabbed a stethoscope from the table and hung it around the vamp’s neck, like Benson was a real doctor, instead of just a sadistic bastard.

When the vamp was properly attired, he reached into his shirt pocket, pulled out a pen and his pad, and started circling around me.

Squeak-squeak-squeak. Scribble-scribble-scribble.

Squeak-squeak-squeak. Scribble-scribble-scribble.

He moved behind me, so I couldn’t see him, but the squealing of his sneakers on the floor mingled with the scratching of his pen on the paper.

“You know, most people would be crying and pleading for their lives at this point,” Benson said.

I didn’t respond.

Suddenly, Benson leaned forward. He must have drunk some blood recently to amp up his speed, because I never even saw him move. One second, he was behind me. The next, his face was so close to mine that he could have reached out and kissed my cheek if he wanted to. Instead, he buried his nose in my grimy hair and sucked in a deep, audible breath.

“Mmm . . . rage,” he murmured. “One of my favorite snacks.”

Benson’s own scent filled my nostrils, the same alcohol-and-lemon stench that permeated the lab. I glared at him out of the corner of my eye. That was all I could do, given the cuffs and the fact that I still couldn’t quite grab on to my magic. Even if I could have reached it, my Ice and Stone powers were useless in this situation. Sure, I could harden my skin, but I’d still be stuck in the chair, and since my hands were tied down, I had no hope of using a pair of Ice picks to open the locks on the restraints.

Right now, Benson could do anything he wanted to me—torture me any way he wanted to, for as long as he wanted to—and I was powerless to stop him.

Completely, utterly, absolutely powerless.

For once in my life, I couldn’t fight back, and that hurt me more than anything else.

Benson bent down in front of me so that his face was level with mine. I met his gaze with a flat one of my own, even though I was mentally counting down the seconds to my own death. Because it would be all too easy for him to reach out, touch my cheek, and use his vampiric Air magic to drain my cold rage—and the rest of my emotions—from my body.

I wasn’t particularly scared of dying. I’d been too close to the end too many times to worry about it much anymore. When it happened, it happened. But I’d always hoped that I’d at least go down fighting. Not like this. Not so trapped.

Not so damn helpless.

But instead of finishing me off, Benson gave me a pleased smile. “You know, Gin, I was rather disappointed when you showed up on the bridge and even more so when I realized that you’d managed to get your sister and her witness to safety after all.”

I kept my face blank, even as my heart lifted at his words. His men hadn’t found Bria and Catalina. With any luck, they’d made it to Xavier, and the giant had driven them far, far away.

“But then I realized that this small setback didn’t matter,” Benson continued. “Not really. After all, I can always find and kill them later. They won’t be able to hide for long. Not in Ashland, not from me.”

That was all too true, and it was one of the many reasons that I needed to figure some way to get out of this chair. Or at least make sure that Benson was bleeding out before I took my last breath. Too bad I had no idea how to make either one of those things happen.

“But then, when my men captured you, I realized what a unique opportunity I had been presented with,” he continued.

“Oh, really?” I drawled. “And what would that be?”

“To further my studies.”

A chill slithered up my spine. “Studies? What studies?”

Benson straightened back up and swept his hand out to the side. “My observations on human nature, life, and especially death.”

For the first time, I realized that my chair was facing the wall in the front of the room—a wall made out of one-way glass.

People sprawled on couches and pillows. Smoke spiraling up into the air. The ceiling fans spinning around and around. I could see into the drug den next door as clearly as if I were in the other room, although I couldn’t hear any noise coming from that area. This room, maybe both of them, must be soundproof.

“Is that why you have all these people down here in your dungeon?” I asked. “So you can drug them up and experiment on them?”

“Of course.” Benson beamed. “Like any good businessman, I have to keep on top of current market trends to meet customer demand. Have to keep growing, changing, and . . . innovating. I wouldn’t want my products to get stale. That’s when sales start to dip, and well, we just can’t have that. Not these days, when there’s such a nasty power struggle going on in Ashland.”

I gave him another disgusted look. “You mean you have to keep coming up with new poisons to push on people to keep the cash rolling in.”

He chuckled. “Ah, Gin. That’s where you’re wrong. I don’t push anything on anyone. The first hit is always free.”

“Yeah,” I snarked. “It’s all the others they pay the price for.”

He shrugged. It didn’t matter to him what his drugs did to people—only that he profited as much as he could from their pain and suffering.

“Tell me, how many of those folks are on your newest recreational hit? What’s it called? Oh, yeah. Burn.”

“Quite a few,” he said in a cheerful tone. “It’s been quite popular, more popular than I thought it would be, actually. I’ve made a tidy little sum on it, although not as much as I would have liked, since I’ve had to import it from out of town.”

He gestured at the metal table. The glass vials with their cheery red, orange, and yellow powders reminded me of sugar sticks that kids might eat.

“But I’m reverse-engineering the formula, and I’ve almost got it, except for one small component. It’s always more profitable to make products in-house, rather than contracting them out.”

Benson kept staring at me, and I focused on him again. Maybe he thought that he could intimidate me with his steady gaze and faint smile. Please. If I got upset every time someone looked at me that way, I’d never get out of bed in the morning.

“You are amazingly calm,” he said. “Your heartbeat has barely spiked this whole time, not even while you were attacking my man. It’s fascinating, really, considering the situation you’re in.”

“And what situation would that be?”

He grinned, showing me his fangs. “In my mansion. In my lab. At my mercy.”

I matched his toothy smile with one of my own. “I imagine that you’re rather like me in that mercy isn’t exactly a popular word in your vocabulary.”

His grin widened, and we fell into our silent staring contest again. Silvio stood off to my right, his hands clasped in front of his body, watching Benson and me watch each other, patiently waiting for his boss’s next order.

“I find it interesting that you can be so very calm,” Benson said. “But your disposition is exactly what I’ve been looking for to conduct my latest experiment. It involves Burn. You’re going to help me test out a theory I have about it.”

My stomach twisted at the casual way he said experiment, but I forced my gaze to stay on his. “Really? What’s that?”

Excitement flared in Benson’s eyes, making them gleam an electric blue behind his glasses. “Burn is one of the most potent drugs I’ve ever come across. It gives everyone an incredible high—humans, vampires, giants, dwarves. But it seems to affect elementals the most, and the stronger they are, the harder and faster Burn works on them.”

That was more or less what Bria and Xavier had told me the night Troy had been murdered.

“Because elementals have such an unusual reaction to Burn, it’s easier to hook them on it, and they crave it more than any drug I’ve ever seen before,” Benson said. “I’ve made more money selling Burn than I have with any other product I’ve ever produced, including oxy and meth. We’re talking millions, Gin. And that’s just in the few months that it’s been available.”

“So that’s why you want to reverse-engineer it,” I said. “You want to cut out your supplier and make it yourself so you don’t have to share any of the profits.”

“That’s part of it,” he admitted. “But this drug? It’s going to help me finally take my rightful place in this town.”

“And what would that be?”

He scoffed. “Pushing pills to bums, hookers, and gangbangers in Southtown is one thing. But I want to move up to a higher level of clientele. Northtown is where the real money is. Why, just think how much cash I can make getting all those rich Northtown elementals hooked on Burn. I’ll make more money in six months than I would in ten years with my normal products in Southtown. Mab kept me locked away down here for years. Well, now that she’s gone, I plan to take what I’ve wanted all along.”

“Her spot as the head of the Ashland underworld.” I didn’t have any problem sketching in the outlines of his dream.