Page 84 of Skin Trade

It didn’t matter how hard she tried, how hard she wanted to, she couldn’t keep the shock from her face.

“Well look at that. Maybe she does remember after all.”

She didn’t, did she? There was something familiar about it. A familiar strange place. Like Seth. When she’d first seen him, that was what he was, a familiar stranger.

“Should I show you a fantastic trick?” Alexander asked, his body almost giddy like a child’s on the eve of Christmas. “I think you might like it.” He pushed Payton out of the lift and along the corridor. It wasn’t steel walls she had seen, but a form of glass, thick and protective, peering in on the room beyond them. This was a facility, some secure place deep underground, under the governing building. It was the kind of place that in the movies would have hidden spaceships or the bodies of alien specimens. From the view of the windows, this place hadn’t been used in a long time.

Not that Alexander gave her time to figure it out. He nudged her towards the door--two big doors airlocked together commanding everyone’s attention. Beside them a small comms machine stuck out. “Give me your hand,” Alexander said to Seth.

The five men held Seth, shuffling like a giant ball of arms and legs surrounding him. “What do you think this is going to achieve?” Seth asked. “To screw with her mind even more. You won’t get what you want. I won’t--”

A tight hand on Payton’s nape and she let out a gasp, tried to reach for Alexander where he held her so she could loosen his grasp, but he took her arm away, held it at her side. Bony fingers dug in at either side, making it so her legs buckled and the only thing holding her up was Alexander. “I’ll give you a second to put your hand on that panel, or I open the doors by other means.” He lifted Payton, putting her face next to his. “Be a shame to ruin such a pretty face.”

For the first time, Seth seemed lost. She’d seen hints of things in his gaze before, but not like this. Not so raw and full of pain. Given no choice, he said, “You do not have to do this.”

But his words were nothing to Alexander. Just another notch in whatever this was. “We’ve already established I do. You took something from me, now I want it back. Open the door.”

Reluctantly, Seth lifted his hand, but before he moved it, he focused on Payton. If he wanted to say he was sorry or ask for forgiveness again, she didn’t know. He said nothing, gave nothing. A second later, he put his hand down on the panel in front of him and the comms unit came into life, scanning his palm.

“No. How did that--”

“Welcome Dr S R Thatcher,” the mechanical voice said from the speakers, cutting Payton off and answering her question. “Doors opening.”

Alexander let Payton go at that moment, let her go fully and walked past her to get into the room. The men holding Seth didn’t do the same. They dragged him in, putting him firmly inside and in front of Alexander.

“I don’t understand,” Payton said as the doors closed behind her and locked themselves back into place.

Alexander smoothed his suit down, adjusted the arms, the sleeves and cuff links. “There’s nothing to understand, is there Seth?” As fast as he had at Lush, Alexander swung an arm back and planted a fist right in Seth’s gut, making him buckle forwards. Vampires might have been immortal, but they weren’t impervious to pain.

Seth hissed with the blow, doubled over as much as he could with Alexander’s goons holding him in place.

“No.” Payton rushed towards him, but Alexander put a hand up to her, knocked her back and then went for a second hit against Seth. Harder this time, deeper, bringing out an oomph from Seth as he fought to stay up. If it wasn’t for the men holding him, he’d have gone down with that one.

“Stop it,” Payton cried. “You’ve made your point.”

Alexander laughed. “You didn’t do a very good job of teaching this one silence, did you. Maybe I should do it for you?”

“Leave her alone,” Seth said, his voice breathless. Alexander nodded to the men and they dropped Seth like a sack. He crumpled to the floor, arm across his chest. But he didn’t go all the way down. One knee bent, the other ready to launch himself up. Payton went to him, hand on his back.

“I wonder if she’ll stand so close to you in a minute? Do you recognise anything?”

“No.”

It was just a laboratory, a room of science. The place was a wash of white dusty sheets that had been draped across many pieces of equipment she couldn’t even begin to name.

Seth stood, and he put himself in front of Payton.

“Look around,” Alexander said. “Maybe something will come back to you.”

She wanted to. There was something here she couldn’t quite figure out. “You used to work here? For my father?” she asked Seth.

Seth’s face had gone pale, paler than usual. As pale as the room itself. “The name at the door. Dr Thatcher. That’s you?”

It was the same surname that was on the headstones in Seth’s basement at Skin Trade.

“It’s true, isn’t it? Whatever this is?”

Seth’s focus wasn’t on her. It was on the room, on the vampires surrounding them, but mostly, on Alexander. “This used to be my laboratory,” he said. “A long time ago now.”

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