to realize how lucky you are to have them. Until then, you better stay the fuck away from me.” I smash Silva’s head against the desk, and he crumbles to the ground, out cold.
“What the hell, Vinna?” Bastien yells from the front of the barn.
Good. He and Valen can deal with their fucked up uncle. I’m already across the room and gripping the door knob that leads to the dirt room, whose purpose I couldn’t figure out until five minutes ago. I push the door open, and sure enough, exactly as I feared, there is a lamia that’s bruised, battered, dripping blood, and tied to a chair.
He looks up toward the doorway as I step through it, and I throw a hand over my mouth to stop the sound of a gasp from traveling too far. Brown hair, olive skin, and stunning crystal-blue eyes look up at me. I recognize him instantly. It’s the lamia that was with Sorik that day on Silas’s pack territory.
How the hell did he get here?
16
“What are you doing here?” hisses out of both of our mouths at exactly the same time.
I step toward him, taking in his state, and I tear off my shirt and press it against the deep cuts lining his right arm. He throws his head back and hisses in pain when I apply more pressure, and I apologize as I look for any more damage to his body that needs immediate attention.
“By the stars, what was he doing to you?” I ask absently as I take in all the bruises.
“We graduated from beating to cutting about an hour ago,” he informs me.
Rage simmers inside of me, and I hope the twins get Silva the hell out of here, or I might press for a round two with him. I run my eyes over the chair the lamia is strapped into, and it looks like Silva or one of the others made it. Pieces look welded together and constructed just for this purpose, and my stomach roils when I wonder how many lamia they’ve done this to.
“What the fuck?” Knox asks from the doorway before he rushes forward to help.
“They were still doing it,” I tell him, shaking my head as we search for a way to release the constraints.
Blood is starting to soak through the shirt I have wrapped around this lamia’s arm, and I notice that he’s just sitting here, watching me warily.
“Knox, I need your shirt. Do you know anything about lamia, like how to stop them from bleeding to death?” I ask.
Knox whips off his shirt and hands it to me, and then he starts messing with a chain under the arm on his side of the chair. Enoch, Kallan, Nash and Sabin pour into the room, and everyone but Sabin’s eyes harden when they take in what’s going on.
“Vinna, what are you doing?” Enoch asks me, stepping forward and reaching for me. Sabin grabs him and stops him from pulling me away, and they start arguing.
“I need something that’s going to dilute the shifter venom that he put in all of my cuts and that I’ve been dosed with since I was brought here. Then I need to feed, so I can start to heal,” the lamia informs us.
“I can put something together for the toxin,” Knox tells me, and then he motions for Sabin to come over and take his place. Sabin steps in and starts working on the same chain that Knox just was.
“Are you guys crazy? Are you forgetting that lamia kidnapped us, Vinna, and killed your friend?” Nash asks from the corner of the room he’s standing in as he takes in everything with disdain.
I shoot him a glare. “Not this lamia, Nash. He didn’t take us.” Nash shakes his head in obvious disapproval, and disappointment wells up inside of me. “I was taken by casters, too; should I also assume every caster I meet is bad and deserves to be tortured and brutalized?” I ask him casually. I turn to Enoch who I can see is having the same issue with this situation as Nash. “I refuse to generalize a whole species based off the actions of a few.”
“That’s probably because you have very limited experience with this particular species,” Enoch grumbles.
“Well, being that I’m alive and pretty much everything that I am today because of a lamia, I’m going to say I probably have more legitimate experience than you do,” I argue.
I turn back to the crystal-blue eyes of the