TWENTY-NINE

Declan woke to a pounding on his inner chamber door.

Vincente, no doubt. He turned bleary eyes to the clock. It cannot say half past five. He’d slept almost twelve hours?

Dreamless hours in a deep black void.

He flushed with a queasy kind of shame to see the needle still in his arm. Plucking it out, he eased to his feet. Dizziness washed over him as he lurched toward the bathroom.

A single dose had rocked him. Every other day at least.

More pounding on the door.

Declan yelled, “I’ll be there in a goddamned minute.”

In the bathroom, he stopped and stared at the countertop where he’d touched the Valkyrie. With narrowed eyes, he recalled her telling him, “I can’t do this.”

Hadn’t she pulled back from him?

Yet even if she’d decided not to go through with her plan, how much of that night was real? He wondered if she’d desired him or merely reacted to a man’s touch. She’d said she hadn’t been with a man in two centuries, but surely that had been one of her many lies. …

He faced the mirror, barely recognizing his reflec-tion. Pupils dilated, skin clammy. He turned away in disgust, then stepped into the shower stall.

Under scalding water, he scrubbed his body, washing away all the traces of his hunt, of his twelve-hour stupor. He rolled his shoulders back, but couldn’t work out the tension knotting there.

When he hung his head under the spray, pressing his palms against the tile, his gaze fell on his track marks. As bad as I was in Belfast. Declan hadn’t thought of himself as an addict since then, but now there was no denying it. He could shoot up for the rest of his life, chasing what he’d felt with the Valkyrie.

He’d tasted peace with her. Somehow, she was the key. To be denied her … ?

Christ, what did he even want from her? Having never been satisfied in this area of his life, he had no idea what he needed. No target to aim for.

All he knew was that he wanted more of Regin. More time with her, more contact …

More.

He’d waited his entire life for this, comprehended with perfect clarity that he’d waited for her. I can’t go back to an existence like before. Grim. Soulless. Strain. I won’t. He’d eat a bullet first.

Which meant he had to make a choice. He either accepted Regin as his, while accepting her nature and what she was.

Or he ended himself.

He exhaled a long breath as he admitted the truth to himself—he didn’t see her as he did the rest. No longer. The Neo hunt had only crystallized what he’d already wrestled with.

When Declan looked at her, he didn’t think of her as some vile detrus; he thought of her as … his.

He could accept her. He gazed down at the scars covering his body. Regin would never accept him.

You’ve come full circle now, Dekko. How ironic.

Hating those marks so bitterly, he threw back his head and bellowed with misery, slamming his fist into the tile. Want her so fuckin’ much.

The pain in his hand felt welcome. So he did it again and again till the tile cracked and shards piled around his feet.

He raised his face to the spray. Take her, escape this place. He could make her love him. Somehow. He’d had better odds. But then he’d come back from worse ones, too.

Turn his back on his duty? On Webb, the only friend he had in the world?

Slow down… just think this over. Tonight, after he completed the interrogation, he would go running, giving himself a chance to contemplate everything. He’d cover the entire island if he had to, but he would make a decision.

He dried himself, then dressed in his fatigues, boots, and pullover. Last came the hated gloves. They were too tight today, especially over his bloodied right hand.

Everything felt confining, as if his skin itched. He loosened the strap on his watch. Ten minutes till six.

He stormed from the room, nearly leveling Vincente on his way out. As Declan strode down the corridor, the man followed.

“Magister Chase, I’ve been knocking and calling for hours.”

“Not now.” He spied Webb waiting at the door of the interrogation room.

“This is urgent—”

“Right on time, as usual, son,” Webb said, before immediately dismissing Vincente. “That will be all.”

The guard left with a cryptic glance at Declan.

“We’ve heard good things about your hunt,” Webb continued. “A pristine job, and back early, too.”

Declan had always soaked up the man’s praise. Now guilt surfaced. I’m thinking of betraying him? The man who’d given him a home, a job, purpose. “Thank you, sir.”

“We have high hopes for Slaine’s questioning. Don’t let me down.”

“No, sir.”

Webb slapped him on the back.

As Declan entered the interrogation room, he was struck anew by the massive size of the creature, by its vampire fangs and demon horns. No, Regin didn’t look like a monster or a murderer, but this large male did.

“Why have you taken me?” the demon demanded in thickly accented English, renewing his efforts to get free.

“All in good time, Slaine.” Declan felt sweat beading his upper lip. Christ, that hit was still roiling in him, and he hadn’t eaten all day. His hands shook. Would Slaine notice?

Dixon entered then, ready to collect samples from the demon.

“His blood’s been drawn,” Declan told her. “The second your lab’s done, you’ll destroy it.” If a mortal drank that blood …

“But his orders—”

“Destroy it!”

She nodded, but she wouldn’t look him in the eyes. Paranoia flared again.

Once Dixon collected the vials and left, Slaine said, “What do you want with me?”

“There’s much interest in you. In your genesis. Today, you’re going to tell me all about it. And tomorrow, my physicians will examine you, to see what makes you faster, stronger.”

“So you can make more like me?”

“So we can make sure your kind is never miscreated again.”

“Maybe you should just … cry?” Natalya said as she sat on the edge of Regin’s bunk.

Regin lay on her side, curled up as much as the ghastly wound allow. Under her shirt, pasty skin had swelled up around an angry line of seeping staples. Her skin was dim all over. “Leave me alone,” she said in a deadened tone. With effort, she turned to her other side away from the fey.

Ignore the metal wire holding your ribs together, ignore the staples in your skin.

Natalya was undeterred, actually beginning to stroke her hair. “Crying can be therapeutic. Or so I’m told. Never have done it myself. But I do know the pain will fade soon.”

Regin wasn’t afflicted only with physical pain—though that had been worse than any she’d ever known; humiliation seethed inside her as well. For her entire adult life, she’d been a creature with which one didn’t fuck. Now she was defeated, and at the hands of a man who should’ve defended her.

How the demons and vampires in the ward had gloated!

“Did they put every part back under the hood, Valkyrie?”

“Nice piercings.”

“Surgical steel’s your color.”

Both allies and enemies had witnessed her at her lowest. Even the ones who hadn’t seen her still knew how intensely she’d reacted. As Natalya had told her, “You were like a nuclear reactor. Your lightning and thunder shook the building.”

Regin had yearned to be strong, had been resolved. Which was why her reactions had stunned her. After a thousand years of knowing herself, suddenly she’d been altered.

In that operating room, she’d behaved in ways she’d never anticipated. Like a stranger might. Not like a stalwart Valkyrie would.

“Chase promised me I would beg,” Regin muttered. “He was … right.” A Valkyrie, begging mortals for mercy. Shame scalded her.

“The magister was there?”

“He ordered it but didn’t have the stones to show. Fegley was there smirking. Dixon, of course.” Regin would never forget the doctor’s eyes behind those freakish glasses—studious and calm as she’d probed and sawed. There was no hate, no patent sense of righteousness.

Because Dixon truly believed Regin was no more than an animal to be utilized in the pursuit of science.

In the background, her fellow surgeons had carried on a casual conversation as Regin had screamed in agony. …

When she shuddered, Natalya laid her hand on Regin’s shoulder. “There’s one thing that’ll make you feel better—and strike fear in the hearts of your enemies once more.”

This demeaning ordeal wasn’t merely an ego check. Anytime a Lorean was perceived as weak, others called open season. If Regin ever did escape this place, she’d be endangered from this defeat. “And what would that be?”

“A trophy. Taken from Chase’s body and carried on your person. Like a fashion accessory. I’m going to own a memento from Volós before I die.”

Despite her pain, Regin grew curious. “What did he do to you?”

“He tortured me for a couple of years, mainly as court entertainment. Then I was largely forgotten in his vile dungeon for about six years. Until his nephew visited.”

“The one you killed.”

“Correct.” In a faraway voice, Natalya said, “Every night in that cell, I sat plotting revenge. With every rat I caught and ate raw for sustenance, with every lash of a barbed whip, I only grew harder, losing myself in fantasies of killing Volós.” Black veins forked out across her irises. “And before I destroy him, I’m going to tell him to send his nephew my regards. I can see it playing out so clearly in my mind.”

“We’ve got to escape this place first. And I’m not feeling particularly bullish about our odds right now.”

“You’re feeling downtrodden because you’ve been dwelling on what Chase has done to you. Instead you should think about what he’ll soon surrender to you. Come, Regin, tell me. How would you kill him?”

Regin gritted her teeth and sat up. “A sword stroke from his gullet down to his balls. It’d be just deep enough to kill him, but not outright. There’d be enough time for realization and horror to set in. Naturally.”

“Naturally. And Fegley?”

“Cut off the tool’s tool. Then nick his femoral artery.”

“For Dixon?”

Regin was liking this game. “I’d force her to swallow razor blades. Let them slice her body open from the inside.”

“Now you’re talking! That notorious Valkyrie pride is surfacing—I can see it. Think of it, Regin. Retribution is within reach for both of us. Let’s make a pact to help each other get our revenge.”

“I’m in.” Regin swiped her sleeve over her eyes. “Hey, Natalya?”

“Yes?”

“I’m really glad we had this talk.”