She didn’t want a healer, which sounded very new age and probably wouldn’t be of much use. She wanted a medical doctor, an emergency room, painkillers. And what did he mean, preternaturally charged?
She nodded, but she didn’t know what else to say. She’d entered an extremely sadistic world, an experience that had begun with her abduction, moved on to a strange woman with curly red hair sending shards of pain through her br**sts, and ended at an auction with Reyes controlling her through the shackles he was now removing.
He repeated the process with the other manacle, and she screamed again. And just as Reyes had said, the removal of the shackles still left her arms feeling as though fire burned up to her shoulders.
He turned and went to work on her ankles. When she heard the punch of the tool against the shackle, the same electrical charge ripped through her leg so that she screamed all over again, then started sobbing.
The last tap of the tool sent pain flowing through the rest of her body. She writhed and screamed. “I hurt. Oh, God, I hurt.”
“Master?” Another woman’s voice this time.
“About time you got here. Dammit, help her.”
“Yes, master.”
Reyes drew back to allow the new arrival to take his place. She had light-brown hair and pinched gray eyes. She knelt beside the bed the way Reyes had done. The moment she put her hand on Angelica’s head, however, sudden warm waves started passing through her; like magic, the fire in her arms and legs drifted away as though it had never existed.
The relief was so great that Angelica sobbed all over again.
But the woman continued to work on her, releasing some kind of healing touch with her hand so that in slow stages, even the terrible pain in her head eased up.
Angelica finally started to breathe again, deep draws into her aching lungs. She lay on her back so relieved that for a long time she couldn’t even speak. Finally, she managed a weak “Thank you.”
The woman nodded. “How do you feel?”
“I’m very tired, but my arms and legs no longer hurt and my headache is completely gone.”
“Good. I’m happy to have been of service.”
She rose to leave, but Angelica grabbed her arm and pleaded with her. “You have to help me. I’m a prisoner here.”
The woman met her gaze, removing Angelica’s hand gently at the same time. “I’m sorry, mistress, but I treat a lot of slaves. I can’t do anything for you other than to tend your wounds. Have the master call me again if you have any other difficulties.”
“Please, I can’t stay here. I’ll die if I have to live under this roof.”
At that, the woman bowed to her, a strange, formal movement, but averted her gaze. “I have to go now. I wish you well.” She then turned and hurried out.
“Please don’t go.”
Reyes appeared in the doorway, thunder on his brow as he slammed the door shut. “Don’t ever do that again. Don’t ever try to enlist either my servants or anyone else who comes into this house to help you to escape.”
“I won’t stay here. I promise you I’ll never stop trying to get away from you.” Her whole body shook as she spoke, but he ought to know the truth: that she wouldn’t remain a victim, that she’d never give up trying to leave.
“You intend to just walk out the door?”
“That would make the most sense.” She’d walk out, then she’d make her way to the nearest police station.
“And where exactly do you think you are that you can just open a door and leave?”
She looked around, then up at the ceiling. She blinked several times at an intricately carved flow of rock, beautiful in its way, but like nothing she’d ever seen before. She kept having her thinking knocked sideways at unexpected moments, and this was one of them. Other parts of the room looked quite normal: flat walls made of drywall, painted up, trimmed with baseboards and molding around the doorways.
Though the door was closed, she remembered seeing the hallway when Reyes had brought her into this room—she’d had a glimpse of another intricately carved rock wall. She’d seen similar walls while moving from her prison cell to the backstage of the theater.
She knew then she wouldn’t find a door to the outside anywhere in this house. Reyes had built a very large mansion in the middle of a cave.
Finally, her gaze returned to him. “Where am I? What is this place? And how did we get here?”
He only shook his head, still very grim as he stared down at her.
A terrible sensation descended on her that she was in a place even worse than the prison cell she’d inhabited for the past week and the large room where she’d been auctioned.
She met and held his gaze as she leaned up on her elbows. “Tell me…please.”
“The Como cavern system, in Italy, deep underground. Miles underground.”
For the first time since she’d awakened in her cell, she felt truly and completely trapped. She stared for a long moment at her captor, a man she’d thought she’d known well enough to want to take him home with her, yet he lived underground. She’d never heard of such a thing. Other things that didn’t make sense returned to her. “You said the chains had a preternatural charge.”
He nodded slowly, holding her gaze, his expression solemn.
“One of my jailers spoke of wanting to take a draw from my throat. What did she mean?” The word hovered just at the edge of her consciousness, but she couldn’t bring herself to think it.
He seemed almost angry as his jaw worked. But a moment later he parted his lips. She didn’t at first recognize what she was looking at until his nostrils flared and his upper lip curled back.
Fangs. Like the ones he’d shown while making his bid and yelling at the other man. Fangs. They were real.
“Vampires,” she said barely above a whisper. “Oh, God, this is a vampire world.”
“A very secret one.”
The room seemed to grow warm and even spin a little. She leaned her head back against the pillows once more and closed her eyes. This couldn’t be true, couldn’t be happening.
For the past week she’d tried to assimilate the horror she’d landed in, but her mind had refused to catch up. Instead she’d operated on some kind of raw instinct that had kept her from knowing the truth, from understanding where she was and what exactly had happened to her.
“Angelica.”
When she opened her eyes, Reyes stood right next to the bed, his blue eyes dark in the dimly lit room. At least his fangs had disappeared.