Dark Champion (Flirting with Monsters #4) - Eva Chase Page 0,83

instant, a deluge filled the room, as if a thunderstorm had broken over it. The heavy drops rattled across the tables and gurgled down a drain I hadn’t noticed in the far corner of the floor.

The angle of the spray meant plenty of it leapt between the bars to splatter my skin and clothes, but getting soaked was the least of my worries. The door opened just long enough to admit five figures wearing plastic visors to protect their eyes from the worst of the spray. In seconds, the downpour drenched the rest of them, from their hair to their tan uniforms.

The burliest three of the bunch advanced on my cage. I braced myself, ignoring the growing throbbing in my cramped muscles. The moment one of them unlocked the front of the cage, I whipped my legs forward—and discovered my ankles were bound together with just half a foot of chain between them.

I still landed a kick, but it didn’t hit quite as hard as I’d meant it to. One of the other burly dudes grabbed my legs before I could haul them back. I punched and thrashed, not really expecting to prevent whatever they were going to do but intending to extract every bit of discomfort I could for the indignity and the pain they were no doubt about to inflict on me.

My inner fire wasn’t any help. As the thugs manhandled me over to the waiting table, water rained down on me. All the furious heat that wanted to leap from my body instead sizzled against my skin, scalding me briefly before more spray washed the boiling liquid away. Maybe a few flecks gave my captors a blister or two, but nothing that made them so much as wince.

They shoved me down on the table on my back, wrenching my arms into place at my sides. Steel cuffs snapped over my wrists, ankles, waist, and finally my neck. The edge of that last one dug into the tender skin at the top of my throat, an ache forming there when I swallowed.

The deluge was still pounding down on me, blurring my vision and filling my ears. I let my lips part just slightly to drink a little down in sips. I wasn’t going to be able to fight anyone if I let myself get dehydrated as well as imprisoned. Lord only knew when Tempest might decide to feed me.

The two figures without quite as much beef on them stepped up on either side of the table, rivulets slicking down their visors. One held a scalpel from the smaller table, the other a syringe. “Preparing to take samples while subject is conscious,” the first one said, her voice warbling through the falling water. “Bags labeled A.”

As she pressed the scalpel to my forearm, I bit back a yelp. A stinging sensation rippled over my skin. It felt as if she dug out a sliver of my flesh—she dropped a solid scrap of red into a baggie. Then she tugged up my shirt to slice into the muscles over my ribs.

My heart thumped harder. She dug the blade right between two of those ribs, and the pain splintered right through my chest. I couldn’t quite hold back a strained whine.

I hadn’t been able to shake Tempest’s resolve, but these people—they weren’t ancient monsters with no concept of morality. They were my fellow fucking human beings.

I tipped my head so I wouldn’t drown by fully opening my mouth and spat out the words. “I’m a person just like you are. I think and feel just like you do. I’m not some mindless beast that goes around ripping apart innocent people. How can you think it’s okay to torture me like this?”

The lab techs kept working without so much as a blink. You’d have thought they were deaf like the man in Crete if they hadn’t been talking to each other.

“Shin bone,” the man reminded his colleague, and she reached to pull up my pant leg. My ankle jarred against the cuff with the instinctive urge to wrench away. An even deeper pain radiated up through my leg.

“I was born in Austin, Texas,” I said into the rush of artificial rain. “When I was a little kid, I loved ice cream and watching the bats fly over the bridge. I went to school—I learned all the presidents’ names, how to write an essay, and that we’re supposed to treat each other with respect even if we have personal differences. I’ve fallen in