Page 48 of Escaping Hallow Hill Academy
But Rue doesn’t say anything. He leans forward and presses a kiss to my forehead. His lips linger against my skin, my soul reaches out for his, and I grasp flashes of anger and murder. I want to ask what he plans to do, but I don’t get the opportunity.
“Sleep now, ma chère.” Something sweeps over me following his words. A bone-deep tiredness I suddenly feel, and it’s so easy to give in to it that I don’t argue when he lays me back against the pillows.
His command is a hypnotic thing that lowers my lids and calms my mind.
And it’s his words, Reaper words, that follow me into a deep sleep:
“I’ll take care of everything.”
It’s the last thing I hear as my mind slips away into a nightmare and a memory.
“There is magic in your blood.”
Drip. Drip. Drip.
I feel it run from my open wounds and slide into glass containers.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
“I’ll extract the belladonna from it first. All the possibilities of the world in the strands of your DNA. . .”
That vile voice makes me feel fear like I’ve never felt before in my life. I try to open my mouth and respond, but all that comes out is a terrible croak.
“I’ll need more samples after you recover, of course,” the slimy voice whispers. It’s like he’s talking both to himself and to me. Like I’m not strapped down to a table with wounds gaping open. He wants to see if my body will heal itself. Like vampires. Like shifters. But I am a witch, and I rely on my magic. Without it, I can do nothing for my injuries. I tried explaining, but he doesn’t listen.
He can’t.
He’s too far gone into his own madness.
“I’ll have to cross-mix your blood with the blood of others to see how compatible you are with different, weaker races. If we can’t see it in our lab, we’ll have to test you in other ways. The other ways are much more fun, I promise.” A hand touches my bare skin, and a pathetic little whimper comes out of my throat. I barely recognize the sound, barely recognize that it’s coming from me.
“Don’t worry, Miss Lucero,” the memory of the doctor’s voice whispers like the cold of death brushing across skin. And then I feel something. Metal and cold against my body, burrowing beneath my skin like an animal burrows into the earth. I scream, and through the piercing pain, all I hear is his toxic voice mingling with Rueren’s. “I’ll take care of everything. . .”
Chapter Thirteen
Days pass in quiet emptiness. No one has come to demand I attend classes, and no one has ordered me to kill again. I’m completely alone. Rue, Sia, and Styx give me space at my request.
Kira hasn’t returned.
My mind drifts to worried thoughts of her in between trying to process what happened to me.
My body was violated, my freedom taken. I was cut open and abused, and there is nothing worse in the world than feeling powerless to stop those bent on hurting you. All my life, I’ve been attacked for what I am, and I was always able to protect myself. The violence and hunting didn’t matter because I had the power. I’ve always been strong enough to protect myself. Things are different now, and I wonder if death would have been better than enduring this.
The nightmares that plague me each night are memories of what had happened. It’s going to happen again. Dr. Hyde is going to strap me down and poke and prod me until I’m nothing more than a husk of a witch. Or he has other ways that I can’t even begin to imagine.
I’ll be a shell.
Just like Sialen.
Tears sting my eyes, and instead of releasing them, I release the anger building in my chest. The scream tears from my lips like wrath and rage, and I don’t want to contain either one of those feelings in this moment. Even as my arms jut out, and I fling the textbooks and papers on the nightstand to the floor.
The work goes tumbling to the floor with a wafting thud of crumpled pages and wide-open books.
But it isn’t enough.
The lamp on the table near my bed is cooling my palms in a matter of seconds. I arc the weight of it high above my head and slam it down with an angry crack as it shatters against the helpless little nightstand. Over and over and over again, I swing it like an axe. So many times that I’m just faintly aware of the heaviness of my breath, the wetness streaming down my cheeks, of the broken bits crumbling in my palms and making me bleed.
And still I feel like a fucking rat in their trap.
