Dark Obsession (Vampire Royals of New York #3) - Sarah Piper Page 0,21
and adrenaline flooding her bloodstream until he hardly recognized her scent.
Please, he thought, recalling Sasha’s bright blue eyes, her smile. Please let this be anything but that beautiful, vibrant girl…
“Dorian.” Charlotte gripped his arm, her body trembling as they reached the lower floor and the situation came into view.
A long work table covered in papers and books and supplies. A high-backed wooden chair. A cabinet of jars and bundled herbs. Two squat, grimy windows near the ceiling, hidden from the outside with brush and debris.
And there, in the back corner of the room, a cage.
Behind the metal bars, he saw the pale shapes in the beam of Charlotte’s flashlight, stark in their utter nakedness. Two bodies huddled closed together, their backs to him, flesh blackened with bruises and burns. Broken ribs protruded from the skin. On the floor beneath the cage, a pool of blood and piss shone wet in the darkness.
“Grays,” he said softly. “Just grays.”
A stifled sob escaped Charlotte’s mouth. Dorian couldn’t tell whether it was one of horror or relief. Maybe both.
The grays could’ve just as easily been her sister—starved and beaten. Tortured.
Dorian pulled her close, and she buried her face against his chest, warm tears soaking his shirt. “It’s all right, love. It’s not her.”
“I thought… Just for a minute, you know?”
“Wherever Sasha is, we must keep the faith that she’s unharmed, and that we’ll find her very soon.” He pulled back and cupped her face. “Can you do that for me? For Sasha?”
Charlotte nodded resolutely, blinking away the last of her tears.
Certain she was all right, Dorian turned and knelt before the cage, his stomach twisting at the sight.
He had no idea how long they’d been there, but they were both emaciated and broken, cowering before the flashlight beam. They didn’t have the strength to break free. Didn’t have the strength to even try.
The first time Dorian had encountered the grays, he and his family were living under House Kendrick’s rule. The vampire king—Evie’s father, George Kendrick—ruled his sirelings with an iron fist. He kept his own cages of brutalized grays—a personal petting zoo whose captives were regularly trotted out to torment the new Redthorne slaves. Sometimes, he’d set them loose in the woods, allowing them to chase Dorian and his brothers while he watched from atop his favorite stallion. Other times, he’d use them as a warning. This is what becomes of the Kendrick sirelings who disobey me.
He’d forced Dorian to torture them. To make them bleed. To make them suffer.
Only then would his brothers receive fresh blood. Only then would the Redthorne vampires be allowed to survive another day. Another week. Another year.
And through it all, his father watched in silence, never once criticizing the king’s methods. Never subjected to them himself.
To Dorian, the grays had always been monsters.
But now, looking at these poor, broken creatures through the rusty bars of the cage, how could he see them as such?
They weren’t monsters. They were him—what he would become in his purest form, absent the magic of a bonded witch and a steady diet of fresh blood.
With a deep sigh, he rose and grabbed the wooden chair, shattering it against the floor. Picking through the broken pieces, he dug out the sharpest, gripping it in a tight fist.
“Turn around, love,” he said, and Charlotte did as he asked.
Kneeling once more before the cage, he staked one, then the other, swiftly ending their misery. They vanished into a pile of ash, falling on his shoes like the season’s first snow.
“It’s done,” he whispered.
Charlotte joined him at the work table, and together they searched through the pile—pages of handwritten notes and sigils, ingredient lists, spells.
Witchcraft.
Dorian picked up a cracked leather grimoire and thumbed through it. There was a dedication spell engraved on the inside cover; its author had signed her name in blood.
“Jacinda Colburn,” he said, tossing the book onto the table as if it burned his skin. “Duchanes’ bonded witch.”
“The one who made the poison that nearly killed you?” Charlotte asked sharply. “And the resurrection amulets for the grays?”
“It would appear this is her laboratory. One of them, anyway.”
“Why would Jacinda do such a thing?”
He recalled what Duchanes had said the night he’d attacked Dorian and Charlotte in Tribeca.
Witches can be rather clever when sufficiently motivated…
“I’m… not sure she had a choice,” Dorian said. But before he could further speculate on Jacinda’s motives, his cell phone buzzed.
“It’s Cole,” he said, scanning the text.
No deal yet. Apparently Estas is having a party tonight. I’m invited, but