Taken by a Vampire (Vampire Queen) - By Joey W. Hill Page 0,207

men’s attention went to Lord Brian. Daegan stood behind him. The Council’s assassin had his arms crossed and was leaning against one of the lab’s stainless steel counters. Out of the way, but awaiting the verdict. Earlier in the evening, when she’d first started saying Evan and Niall’s names with such determined purpose, Daegan had reappeared. Gideon sat on one of the rolling chairs at the other end of the lab, pushing it back and forth over the same yard of ground.

Brian ignored the wall of male impatience, checking the readings from her blood draw. He handed them over to Debra for a second verification. Her brow furrowed as she read the screen. Evan always watched her more closely than her Master, because it was impossible to read anything from Brian’s face. The scientist took a blood smear to a microscope, adjusted the lens, then scribbled into one of his many notebooks. He used a form of shorthand that only he and Debra knew. Evan and Niall had both shamelessly tried to translate it when he wasn’t around.

Clearing throats wouldn’t increase the scientist’s pace, nor death threats. During these twenty-two days, they’d tried all of those things, and everything in between. So Niall settled back onto his stool at Alanna’s head. As he lowered his hand to stroke her hair, there was a hesitation, a brief glance at Evan before he made contact. When she didn’t react with convulsions or terror, a sigh eased the great shoulders. Only in the last few hours had they been able to touch her without making things worse.

They’d both gone mad from her screaming, the pitiful whimpers and cries, the thrashing of her body to get away from an enemy they couldn’t see or fight for her. To make it worse, Brian hadn’t been able to use anything to sedate her. It would interfere with the experimental treatment. He’d had to put her in a soundproof room, monitoring her through machines and a window. Otherwise, she would have driven everyone but Evan and Niall out of the Savannah estate that was temporary Council headquarters. Of course Lyssa would have ordered her to be put down before that, and then Evan and Niall wouldn’t be here, because they would have had to be dead to allow that.

Well, at first. Within three days of witnessing her in such obvious agony, it was like having a preview of Hell, piped straight into the speaker system. He and Niall took turns standing outside that window, one of them always watching over her. More than once, fingers digging into the sill of the viewing window, Niall had fought the overwhelming compulsion to break into that room, to end her suffering. Evan hadn’t blamed him, for he’d fought the same feeling. Even Lady Lyssa, who’d come down to view Alanna’s condition, had compassion in her jade green eyes. The tightening of her mouth reflected Evan’s own uncertainty about this course of action, yet she’d told Brian to do whatever he could for her, to spare no expense, a high honor for the Council to bestow upon a human servant.

Evan would never forget that hasty drive to Savannah in the RV. Niall had driven the heavy vehicle like a bat out of hell, with her making those horrible hoarse, continuous screams every time Stephen regained consciousness. Daegan had used restraints that a vampire couldn’t break, put him in one of the storage lockers. Each time the captured vampire roused, Gideon would open the lid and use a pipe to knock him out again, but it was only a temporary effect. Unfortunately, once they arrived at Council headquarters and the treatment began, Stephen couldn’t be sedated for the same reasons Alanna couldn’t, and the vampire seemed determined to exercise the one power he had left, to punish her for his fallen state.

The treatment put on the back burner by Council, that Brian had been tweaking in his spare time, was the only possibility to break the mark between a servant and Master who’d been bonded beyond five years. From the first, Brian made it clear that it was untested, volatile.

“It has a slim chance of working, and even then depends a great deal on her own strength.” He’d made the case to Lady Lyssa in his lab. Evan had turned away from the window to Alanna’s soundproof room to hear his report, though Niall kept his attention on the girl. Instinctively, the men had fallen into a pattern. Evan focused on the