“It will do no good to ask questions, my dear.” He sighed. “Now,” he said right into my face, pushing my forehead back with his hand. “This is going to hurt—just a bit.”

I shook my head, muttering a long-sounding “No” through pursed lips.

“Don’t make this harder, Ara.” He slipped a cold, stiff finger between my teeth and forced them apart, quickly jamming a block as a wedge to keep my mouth open.

Tremors rose up from my elbows with voiceless panic and shook my jaw as the big needle disappeared from my line of sight, headed right toward my lips. “Ah.” I thrust my arms against the cuffs when a bone crunching pop jolted into the deepest cavity of my skull; my gum feeling pushed and bunched.

“Stop wriggling.” He held my head with one hand. “Goddamn it, Ara, if you don’t stop I’ll have to do this all over again.”

As a flowing, cold sensation flooded from deep within my gum, like sipping iced water through a thin straw, I cried out, finding my voice further under the drowning, sludgy liquid in my throat; my nails burned—digging into the splintering wood of the chair, but I did not still. I couldn’t hold still. What a stupid thing to ask of me.

“Quiet down.” Jason gripped my cheeks firmly, stopping my cry, leaving the needle flailing around between my lips. “Those who can hear you scream will not help you; and those who would help you, cannot hear you scream.”

Someone will hear me. Someone will help me.

Hot tears cascaded down the sides of my face.

Jason. Please stop? Please? You loved me. Just love me again like you did that night. Please.

“It’s okay, Ara,” Jason said as he slid the needle in one slow, grinding movement from my mouth; my skull seemed unwilling to release, giving a small pop as it scraped out past my teeth. “Only three more to go.”

“Isn’t there another way?” I took a breath, running my tongue over the empty swelling in my gum. “Like they do with snakes? Please? I’ll give you the venom—just—just don’t hurt me anymore.”

“This is the only way to extract vampire venom, Ara. If there was another way—” He shook his head, closing his eyes. “This is the ruling of the king,” he yelled. “Now be quiet, or he will order much worse for you.”

“No—no. No!” I screamed again as he walked toward me with another needle.

Chapter 22

A nagging ache in the back of my neck, resonating from within the deepest cavity of my jaw, pulsed, waking my mind with every beat. Somewhere on the other side of the darkness, a constant drip, like an artificially-generated water drop, stirred dormant irritation. “David?” I said, too heavy to move. “The tap.”

He didn’t answer.

“David? I’m so tired. Please can you—” I tensed, white shock melting through me, becoming dread as I tried to roll over and felt the pull of metal against my raw wrists.

It wasn’t a dream. None of it. It’s real. I’m here. I’m cuffed, aching. Oh, God. I closed my eyes, rolling my head back a little, as if to send my tears to the heavens.

David’s not here. He’s not here.

My plan to roll over and snuggle into his chest, feel his fingers in my hair as I recalled my dream, suddenly fell away, leaving me with only jagged sniffles, too deep to become tears. But all self-pity stopped, like a door being slammed shut, when something tickly, small as the head of a dried flower, crawled into the cup of my palm. I held a tight breath, my eyes slowly growing larger when the crawly thing showed itself, scampering purposefully across my elbow, up my arm, into the dip of my armpit; its fat black body then disappearing.

My tummy muscles and spine fought back—stiff and sore, trying to keep me flat—but I rolled my neck up, searching my torso for the creepy little bugger. My hands had been locked up so tight for so long that the pulsing and gathering of blood around the muscle under the thumb made it completely numb, the numbness tightening with the pressure of my arching body.

When the spider finally re-emerged, rising to the ceiling on an invisible string, I flopped back, laughing breathily.

As soon as I get my hands free, the first thing I’m gonna do is wrap them around Jason’s neck—after I scratch my lip...and maybe my knee, and my nose.

I wriggled my nose, shifting my lips one side to the other to make it move, but the itch stayed fast on my skin.

Above me, my wriggly friend showed himself again, probably planning to spin a web on my immobile body. In the dark, I could only see him every few seconds when his abdomen turned against the dim red glow of the torch across the room. I wondered if he had friends—if there could be more like him scuttling around on me. Maybe I could get him to crawl onto my nose and scratch it.

As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I breathed out slowly, making soft, foggy clouds of frost in the air above my lips. It was like someone had left a door open somewhere, letting the chill in, or as if someone had died in here and their ghost was haunting the air. Although it was a kind of fresh cool, it also made me even more exhausted, my lungs strained to draw a full breath and my blood felt like honey, thick and sludgy. But the bangle of dried blood and grated skin under my cuffs, where I’d tugged so hard to get away, hurt like ice on a scratch, dragging my attention to the imagery—the red ring of chafing, flaking skin. I closed my eyes again and focused on the tingling in my lips.

“Need a bathroom break?”

“God, yes,” I said and sat up, swinging my legs fast over the side of the chair.

I ran to the white door beside me and shut my eyes tight as bright sunlight burst through the window. All I could make out through the tears was a polished porcelain throne, waiting in the middle of the room. I lifted my dress and sat down, feeling instant relief.

But when I looked for the toilet paper, found only cuffs on the walls—my hands suddenly bound, leaving me exposed, half bare on a toilet seat, my knees slightly apart.

Screaming out, I tried to break free, but darkness overtook again and my eyes flashed open to the fat body of the spider, spinning his web over my body.

I rocked my ankles, taking shallow breaths, tightening the muscles in my legs to stop my bladder spilling out all over the chair. Across the room, the white door I ran through was gone—or it was never there in the first place, and the urge to pee burned so bad I’d soon willingly relieve my bladder. But not yet. Not just yet.