Caged Kitten (All the Queen's Men #2) - Rhea Watson Page 0,109

to be the same.

And I tried.

Damn it, I tried.

As the panicked whitecoats lumbered toward the walls and out of the way, more warlocks in black uniforms poured in from various doors. Dozens of hands found me, wands shocked me, and inch by precious inch, they hauled me toward the operating table. Teeth gritted, I flailed and fought and snapped my fangs at anyone within reach.

Overhead, mirrored panels slanted over the room—

An observation deck.

My torment was for public consumption, apparently.

Against my best efforts, they forced me onto the table—strapped me down with cuffs spiked with wood on the insides. As soon as the little pinpricks broke skin, their sedative effects kicked in. My muscles relaxed. My head flopped onto cold, merciless metal. Restraints were added at my ankles too, shoes removed, and another wave of weakness washed over me as more teeny, tiny wood stakes pierced my flesh.

Humans had loads of dumb mythos about vampires, but a wooden stake to the heart? Devastating. One of the few natural elements that could well and truly kill us.

“W-what is this?” I forced out, tongue thick and heavy, my words slurred. All around me, the organized chaos resumed, masked men and women in scrubs wheeling trays to my bedside, one even dragging a punishingly bright light directly over my face.

“You should be honored, Rafe O’Dwyer.” A face suddenly blocked the piercing whiteness. I blinked hard to shirk the spots dancing through my field of vision, only to wince at the waft of garlic that came with the new arrival’s breath. One of the myths that wasn’t true: garlic had no effect on a vamp, but it was an absolutely pungent odor that fused up your nostrils for weeks. Not detrimental—just a nuisance.

Slate-grey eyes peered down at me, cold and assessing, flitting about my face like they were trying desperately to see the value in it. The voice was familiar, even to my sleepy mind, my fading senses, and soon, each blink became a fight, my lids like lead.

“W-warden Guthrie?”

He offered a barbed grin, looming over me in a fine suit, hair perfectly coifed. His pocket square was silk—a deep maroon patterned with white crosses. Really going for the pop culture jugular, eh? While his mouth twisted in a smile, his steely gaze raged.

“You’ve been selected as the first inmate volunteer in our experimental partnership with—”

“Fuck you,” I hissed, clinging to consciousness just enough to remember that I hated him. This piece of shit had put me here. He trapped Elijah’s inner dragon. He dragged Katja out for meetings that always made her cry. He bled Fintan’s accounts dry, taking more than half already to fund the fae’s illegal detainment.

If I could just move my arms, I’d snap his neck.

I knew it. He knew. And the gobshite with all the power just grinned down at me, exhaling that garlicky carbon dioxide all over my face. Slowly, as the clamor around the room picked up, he lowered himself just enough that his breath warmed my ear, leaving me at the mercy of the overhead light’s relentless glare.

“You bit her,” the warden sneered, his rasp bone-chillingly pleasant, “and I understand. My kitten is so lovely… But after tonight, you’ll never be able to taste her again—or anyone else for that matter.”

He withdrew and patted my chest, the edges of my vision slowly fading to black, my body paralyzed from the neck down.

“He’s all yours, boys.”

Then the darkness spread, muffling the clinking surgical tools and the beeping machines, blocking out the white light and the masked men, my facial muscles slack.

And a heartbeat later, I was gone.

21

Elijah

Where the fuck was Rafe?

A full twenty-four hours had crawled by since they took him, and, having just returned from supper with Fintan and Katja, his cell remained empty. Tully had taken up the head of his cot in our absence, seated on his pillow in the shadows, waiting. Even Katja’s reappearance hadn’t inspired movement out of him; her familiar seemed infatuated with the vampire—not that I could blame him. This was the longest I had gone without talking to my best friend in months, and it didn’t help that they had dragged him out of here for fuck knows what.

Hell, he could have been permanently relocated to solitary—or another cellblock. That was Fintan’s working theory, that they had decided to punish us further for reasons unknown by splitting us up. Deimos’s group, meanwhile, remained strong, outnumbering us by one extra today. The demon had goaded me from the moment we left