“I want to see The Doctor.”

Staring at the door, I half-expected him to come in and introduce himself. He might announce his nefarious plot to me and perhaps laugh at my situation while petting a fluffy white cat.

Okay, so I didn’t actually expect him to be Dr. No, but with a name like The Doctor it was hard not to picture him as a cartoonish movie villain. I did think he’d come in when I called for him, though.

He didn’t.

For four days I was left there, given nothing to eat or drink—they must have known I’d be able to live without water—and nothing to hint at why I’d been taken.

On the fifth day, The Doctor came.

Chapter Twenty-Five

The door opened with such ease I began to imagine they must have unlocked it at some point while I slept, otherwise how could it be opened without some jangling of keys or other noises?

At first I was convinced I was seeing things. After five days locked alone in a concrete box with no outside contact or sustenance of any kind, I was getting a little squirrelly. I’d jump at imaginary noises, and had started talking to myself so I’d remember what language sounded like.

Five days alone doesn’t seem so long of a time until you’re entombed in a private prison in hell.

I recognized his eyes first, the cold, icy blue I’d been able to spot across a dark city street. The homeless man from the Tenderloin. He didn’t look homeless now, though. Instead of matted dreadlocks and a beard, he was clean-shaven with a smartly styled haircut right out of the fifties. He had an angular face with thin lips that curved up into a cruel smile.

I could have slit my wrists on his cheekbones.

He dragged a chair in behind him, the metal legs screaming against concrete. I winced at the sound, my ears no longer accustomed to loud noises.

I curled myself into a ball, as if I could avoid him seeing me if I could make myself small enough.

“Good evening, Ms. McQueen.” He sat in the chair and placed one hand on each of his knees. He had an accent. German, or maybe Austrian. It made him sound scarier for some reason. “I trust you have been enjoying your stay with us so far.”

He was kidding, right?

Were the Germans really known for their sense of humor?

I lifted my chin and glared at him with the best approximation of defiance I could muster. I was so weak a toddler could have taken me out in hand-to-hand combat, but I’d be damned if I was going to let him make fun of me.

“You must be wondering why I’ve brought you here.”

“No…shit…Sher…lock.”

“Ah.” He clucked his tongue and wagged one finger at me. “That language. So unbecoming a pretty girl like you. While you are with me, there will be some requirements of you. My house, my rules, is that not the American saying?”

I’d have raised an eyebrow, but I didn’t have the muscular strength to spare.

“You will not swear while you are here.”

“Fuck…you.” It didn’t have the venom I was hoping for, but I think I managed to get the point across.

The Doctor snapped his fingers, and a young man wearing blue hospital scrubs came in. He carried a black object in his hand that looked like…

My eyes widened, and I struggled to get across the floor but only managed to tumble sideways and drag myself a few pathetic inches. The guy in scrubs ignored my attempts at biting him as he affixed the black object around my neck. Once it was secured, he left without so much as a backwards glance.

I was wearing a collar.

That pissed my inner wolf off to no end. Too bad she didn’t have the energy to help out in this situation.

“Very good. Where were we? Ah yes. There is to be no swearing.”

My brain said, Don’t do it. Don’t do it. He’s not bluffing, don’t be an idiot.

“Go…fuck—”

My swear was cut short by a scream. A shock of electricity tore through me with such vigor I thought I must be dead. It stopped after less than a second, and had I not already been slumped on the floor, there would have been no way I’d have stayed upright.

I wheezed, gasping for breath, and the pain continued to steal through my body like a shock wave. My hands and legs moved involuntarily as the electric current animated them, then everything went still except the rise and fall of my chest.

“I think you can now see I’m quite serious.”

The heat of electricity was replaced by the cold fingers of fear, and I trembled, looking up at him from the floor, all my fighting spirit oozing out and seeping down the drain.

“Are you ready to talk to me now in a manner befitting the lady you are?”

“Yes.” That one syllable hurt. I closed my eyes against the pain, willing my body to shut down. How could I be in such agony and still be conscious? Didn’t scientists claim the body would induce a coma-like state to protect the psyche from pain?

So why was I still awake?

This was too much. Too much.

I tried to cry, but there wasn’t enough blood in my system to allow it, making my eyes ache and a migraine bloom behind my sinuses.

“You’re going to play nice, aren’t you?”

I wanted to nod, to save myself from the pain of speaking again, but my head was listless and unresponsive. “Yes,” I said, once I understood movement wasn’t going to happen.

“Good.” He clapped his hands, and the sound was louder than a shotgun. “I’ll be back for you in a few days.”

I was more animal than human when he returned.

It had taken more than a day for me to be able to sit up, and I’d only managed to prop myself back into the corner. With each new sunset I got weaker, and I was beginning to suspect I was sleeping well after moonrise.

How much longer could I do this before I stopped waking up altogether?

A full-blooded vampire could last centuries being shackled and starved, and I now understood why it was the perfect punishment. I could feel my vitality being leached away with each new evening. Strands of my hair were beginning to fall out whenever I touched my head, so it was a small favor I was no longer able to lift my hands that high.

Each night was a new struggle to keep my eyes open, to keep my chin from lolling down to my chest.

He left me for three days after our introduction before he came back. His arrival in the room made me feel equal parts terrified and elated.

There was a strange hope in seeing the face of another person, even if he was my captor. When he came, the door opened, and with it a sip of air from the outside, a glance of hallway. Signs of freedom. They were tiny embers, but it was all I had to go on.

I wanted to ask him about Holden and Maxime. I had dozens of questions but lacked the ability to ask any of them.

Again the scream of metal on concrete sounded his presence in the room. I raised my eyes, barely able to lift my chin anymore, and gazed up at him. He smiled his cruel smile and folded his hands in his lap, looking pleased as punch to be sitting across from me.

“How are you feeling today, my dear?”

I lolled my head back, smacking my skull hard against the wall. Feeling pain right then was preferable to feeling nothing at all.

“Where…Hol…den?”

“Your vampire lover?” The Doctor leaned back in his chair, balancing one foot on his knee and lacing his fingers together over his belly. “What an unusual choice he was for you to make.”

Was. Past tense. I closed my eyes, trying to block him out, the familiar ache of uncried tears building behind my eyeballs.

“Alive?” My fingers dug into my thighs, poised to hear the worst-case scenario.

“He is a vampire, dear girl. Of course he’s not alive. By their very definition vampires are dead. Undead. Whatever that means. Undeath, as if something so final could ever be undone.”

Unable to keep my head upright, I let it slump down again, my chin pressing hard into my chest.

“You look terribly unwell, I must say.” He was ignoring my question. A question it had taken all my available energy to verbalize. “Would you like something to drink?” He played the part of a perfect host, asking a dinner party guest if they might want their wine topped off.

I raised my gaze, not able to do much else. I couldn’t feign disinterest with a casual shrug. I couldn’t nod.

“Well?”

“Yes,” I hissed, the word rattling out of my lungs like a cough.

“Yes what?”

Was this guy for fucking real? I squeezed my eyelids shut, imagining I might be able to count to ten and this whole place would vanish. I might wake up in a hotel room in Holden’s arms, discovering this had been another nightmare.

It had to be a nightmare.

“Yes what?” he said more forcefully when I didn’t reply right away.

“Please.”

“Good girl.” He snapped his fingers, and a man with scrubs arrived. I couldn’t recall the face of the one who had put the collar on me, so I didn’t know if this was the same man or a new one. It didn’t matter. If I lived long enough to get out, I’d see them all burn.

But for now, I loved this man. I loved him more ardently than I was sure I’d ever loved another human being. My heart sang for him.

He was carrying a plastic bag of donor blood, which he tossed onto my lap before leaving the room. I reached for it, but my arms wouldn’t respond. My brain—still somewhat sharp—shifted all my focus onto the small red bag in my lap, demanding some as-of-yet-unused synapses to fire and give me the push I needed to grab it.

My hand flopped limply beside it, unable to take hold, let alone lift it.

I sobbed.

It was a loud, guttural noise, and I surprised myself to find I still had it in me to make such sounds. I’d thought for sure my lungs had begun to shrivel up.

“Would you like some help?”

I didn’t bother trying his patience this time. If I was the lab rat, I’d already learned his maze. “Plea…se.”

He rose from the chair, his movements full of liquid grace like a dancer or a feline shifter. When he crouched over me, straddling my outstretched legs, my mind filed through a thousand different ways I could kill someone who was that close to me. I fantasized ripping his throat out with my bared fangs until I was soaked red from swimming in his blood. I wanted to bury my hands up to the wrist in his chest and squeeze his heart until it burst in my fist.