“Take me to Adrien,” she mumbled behind the terry cloth.
“You’re in luck. He’s still hanging from the obedience hooks.” The woman laughed once more. “These prisoners never learn.”
Lily wasn’t far from Adrien now. She could feel him, as though she already knew him, but the sensation rankled. Adrien, and all his kind, deserved to disappear from the face of the earth, so why should she care about his pain? He was a vampire, like the ones who had destroyed her family and her neighbors.
As she turned the corner of one of the high walls made of flat stones stacked neatly on top of one another, there Adrien was, just like in the vision, cut up and beaten. But because two hours had passed, he was well on his way to healing. Like the rest of his kind, he had a powerful ability to recover from the most severe wounds within hours.
He rested his head on the chains, but with his eyes closed, he held himself upright, feet planted over a foot apart.
She set the lantern on the floor. “Where does he go after a whipping?”
“Back to his stall, not much different from this. Smaller.”
With the damp cloth still pressed to her face, Lily glanced at the stone floor at his feet. He stood in a pool of dark blood, his blood, and what she assumed were layers of dried blood beneath.
She tore her gaze away and lifted her chin. The chain-based visions wanted to return, sweeping over her, but she pressed them back. She had seen enough for now.
“Leave this cave,” she said to the woman.
“What?”
“You heard me. I want to be alone with the prisoner.”
The woman opened and closed her mouth, then shrugged. She slapped her whip against her hand and muttered something about human bitches that needed to be drained dry.
When she was gone, Lily drew close to Adrien, standing only four feet away. She continued to breathe through her mouth and held the washcloth close. Even with half-healed cuts all over his body, he was magnificent, like something sculpted from marble. His brows, however, were pulled into a tight knot.
But as she stared up at him the chains hummed, and she knew a deeper truth about the vampire: He was trying to figure out not how to escape, but how to murder someone. She felt his determination as though it released in his sweat.
* * *
Adrien returned to consciousness, but he didn’t know why. He was only partially healed, and his body throbbed with pain. Usually he’d sleep for hours to complete his healing process as quickly as possible.
Yet something had awakened him, but what?
Above the usual filth of the cavern, he smelled a scent different from the vampires who usually took shifts—a human smell, one that filled him with rage.
He despised the world of humans, always taking what they wanted no matter who got hurt, or robbed, or dispossessed; the way they traded, for a few miserable dollars, the flesh of their kind into the forbidden sex-slave rings of his world, never to be seen again. And the way they illegally purchased the mineral rights of the caves Daniel Briggs stole from his fellow vampires.
And now a human was here, a woman, in the Himalayan prison.
Small sparks flew through his mind, as though part of him registered what was happening though the other part stayed sunk in denial. The muscles of his arms reacted, flexing in deep pulls then relaxing as if displaying his biceps. His abs knotted up in the same way.
With his eyes still closed, he lifted his head, leaning forward, straining against his manacles, pulling at the chains that bound him. Strength flowed into his arms, and a profound need swept through him to get out of his restraints. He needed to be free to protect his brothers from the enemy, from the human.
He groaned.
“What’s brewing, Adrien?” Lucian called to him.
“The enemy is here.” His voice sounded raspy again. He opened his eyes, but he couldn’t see very well. He’d taken a lot of blows to the head and face this time.
“You mean the human? We can smell her, too.”
He blinked several times and there she was, staring at him from a pair of large hazel eyes.
He breathed in and yes, she was very human, a stench more heinous to him than the putrid smells of the cavern. She had a lantern near her feet but he could see her easily as he adjusted his vampire vision.
The moment she came fully into view, however, he stalled out. His rage left him, flowing backward, and something else rushed toward the woman, something he didn’t want to feel. It was her, the woman in his vision.
A strange combination of desire and need boiled within him. He felt as though he knew her on some level he couldn’t explain.
Then the anger returned, at her kind, for their greed.
“What do you want?” he called out.
“Adrien, what the hell is going on?” Lucian’s voice, louder this time, more urgent, bounced off the jagged stone ceiling.
Adrien couldn’t respond, partly because he didn’t know what the hell was happening and partly because time had just drawn to a hard standstill.
His brothers called to him, but he couldn’t quite hear them. He watched the woman’s lips move, so she must have been speaking as well, but his ears had shut down.
He saw her as though sunshine cascaded over her long, light brown hair. What would her hair look like pulled up high on her head? Did she own a burgundy gown dotted with gold crystals? He wanted her. He needed her. But he couldn’t be feeling this way, not about a human.
His thigh muscles contracted and his knees bent. He tilted his head back and shouted into the heights of the cave, a sound that roared in his ears. His brothers shouted as well, joining him.
When he looked back at the woman, she’d covered her ears with her hands, her face twisted in pain, which caused him a certain amount of pleasure. She should hurt, this short-lived mortal, a representative of a race he abhorred.
He struggled harder against the chains and manacles, bruising and cutting his wrists and ankles as he tried to get to the woman, wanting her to pay.
She moved toward him, tears now running down her cheeks. Why was she weeping? His arms flailed and the chains clanked as he reached toward her. Her expression looked windblown, and he knew he needed to stop all the shouting, but he couldn’t quiet his voice, not until her hands landed on his chest.
His back arched and he cried out one last time. He took short puffs of air into his lungs, but he began to calm down.
Only then, with the touch of her hands easing him, did he realize he was in a full state of arousal.
What the hell was this human doing to him?
* * *
Lily’s heart pounded so hard that she’d grown deaf from the sound of the rhythmic rush through her ears. Her fingers felt the split of skin beneath her hands and even wetness from Adrien’s open wounds, but it just didn’t matter. All that mattered was quieting the vampire so that her ears would stop feeling like knives were slicing them up.