Caged Kitten (All the Queen's Men #2) - Rhea Watson Page 0,108
dough from his nails. Meanwhile, the rest of the cellblock cunts smirked and whispered to each other, guards and inmates included. Christ. None of it made me want to leave Katja, but so long as Elijah was still here, his strength unmatched and his resolution like steel, I could breathe a little easier.
If I needed to breathe, of course.
And Fintan had a few qualities I came to admire with each passing day. Tonight, when I reluctantly abandoned my post in front of her door, the fae shifted his stance so that his body—lean and wiry, made for swift movements, a warrior’s frame that delivered the killing blow like a dance—blocked the majority of the opening.
As I marched over to the awaiting trio, three unnecessary wands trained on me, I couldn’t help but wonder if they had finally found me a work assignment. Sure, solitary seemed more likely given recent events, but Xargi Penitentiary worked its inmates to the bone. With vampires sequestered away from the sun, the small population in red jumpsuits were essentially useless—a drain on resources and manpower. They should have been looking for ways to put our strength, speed, and manual dexterity to work ages ago.
Hands clasped in front of me, I let the warlocks lead me out. Through dim stony corridors, they marched me on a familiar path to the stairwell that brought us to the cafeteria. Intense fluorescents haunted my every step, bright and offensive to eyes so accustomed to the shadows. When we bypassed the dining hall and continued lower underground, my suspicions spiked, my hands gripped each other tighter, and the warlocks suddenly moved faster.
Five floors beneath the earth we descended, going deeper than solitary; each guard had the nerve to point it out, to show me the door and tell me to consider myself fortunate that I wasn’t headed in there. Please. I spent just about all my time in solitary while the others worked. I was a creature of the night, an orphan vampire without the protection of a coven; I was accustomed to pits and holes and dark, depressing places.
Until Elijah.
Until his cottage and his company.
Until fireside conversations and laughter and trips to the village pub.
Until Katja and her smile, her blood glittering like starlit rubies—
We stepped out of the final stairwell into a completely different world. Shock shivered down my spine at the bright white walls and glossy floors replacing familiar dusty stone blocks. Metal doors that gave off the faint scent and pulse of iron peppered the corridor, and all three warlocks really put their back into shoving me along when my feet dragged and my knees locked. Six doors down, one of the fuckers tapped his wand on the iron panel—which I noticed had no doorknob, accessible only by magic—and it opened soundlessly.
Cold whooshed out just as hurriedly as I was shoved in, met by a sterile operating room with the brightest lights yet. Men in white lab coats puttered around, some with face masks, others preparing equipment with their backs to me. Seized by panic, my chest constricted with fear sharp enough to crack every rib. My mouth dried up. My fingertips went numb. My brain turned sluggish on the uptake, slowly digesting my new surroundings.
And my eyes…
My eyes locked on the metal operating table in the middle of it all, outfitted with spiked wooden cuffs just for vampires. Like iron incapacitated fae and silver poisoned shifters, shove a bit of wood into a vamp’s body and they were screwed.
I shook my head and pushed back, only to have a wand jabbed into either side of my neck just below the collar. A good shove and a jolt of something fiery had me shuffling forward at a snail’s pace, driven toward the table by the three unknown guards. Fuck. Fuck. Outmanned and outgunned—not ideal, but maybe…
As soon as I looked beyond the operating table, my brain short-circuited. Men in white coats clustered around a flat-screen, and seconds later X-rays plastered across it—skulls. Skulls with fangs. One of the bastards even circled the fangs with his wand, tapping at the markings for emphasis, and the purpose of this room became abundantly clear. I reared back, fighting with earnest now, fear quashed deep down in favor of fire. For a bloodthirsty creature of the night, I rarely gave in to violence. In fact, Katja’s assault was the first instance where I had lost my shit and relied on my hands, not my words, to send a message.