“This way, girl.”
The brick tunnel loomed. The shadows created from the lantern-light twisted the length of it, making it bend and warp. Or perhaps that was simply a lasting effect of the potion. She allowed the uniformed man to lead her forward, taking shallow breaths against the pain.
“You’re awful quiet. Head hurt? I’ve been there myself.” His hand came up to squeeze behind her ears, and she gasped. He laughed again. “You know, you probably deserve this more than anyone I’ve done this to. For some time anyway.” He shrugged, enjoying the sound of his own voice. “The mayor won’t mind. If fact, he’ll thank me. He’ll thank me for breaking you, just a bit.”
Lux trudged on.
She questioned what Shaw had said. She didn’t hear any—
Screams. They ricocheted through the air, pummeling into her, and her heart flew into a wild pattern. Guttural. Agonized.Tortured.Then, light. It beckoned ahead, calling to her with a false sense of hope.
For once, she yearned for the darkness instead.
The Shield pushed through double doors where the resulting brightness blinded her. Her head pounded harder. Vomit threatened its way up her throat.
Though it wasn’t her pain this time that caused it.
A bone-chilling scream filled her ears again, and Lux couldn’t look away from him. The man strapped to the table. So muchwhite: the table, the sheet, the surgeon’s coat, the linens he used to sop away pooling blood.
“The body has always intrigued the mayor. He used to use cadavers, but we’ve found a better method. It loosens most tongues. If they survive, that is.” A low chuckle filled the air between them, and when an exceptionally large clot of crimson fell to the stone with a splat, Lux emptied her stomach along with it until she wheezed. Tears tumbled down her cheeks.
The surgeon glanced up from behind a blood-splattered white mask, only to resume his work as if she didn’t exist. The prisoner appeared to have passed out. Either that or he’d died from shock. With blurred eyes, Lux watched a scalpel slice deeper into his insides.
Her feet grew roots as the guard at her side rocked on his heels. Eager. The surgeon crudely stitched the man’s abdomen closed, a thick needle and even thicker suture. Once complete, he reached forward. Felt for a pulse at the neck.
He didn’t find it. But his eyes did find Lux’s. They creased at their corners.
Tossing off blood-soaked gloves, the surgeon strode to a table, selecting a vial. Moving back to the body, he procured a new scalpel. Longer, but thinner. It flashed beneath rows of lamplight.
Peeled back eyelids revealed fixed pupils, staring forever upward. Lux gasped, horrified, as the scalpel sliced deep into one then the other. Thin, watery liquid trickled from the wound. The surgeon waited for it to slow and then pressed a vial to the incision.
The Shield dragged her around, hauling her into another room. One much darker, but much less terrifying. For Lux knew she didn’t imagine the gleam of silver as a thick substance oozed from the body.
The mayor had, indeed, learned to harvest lifeblood.
And so had Shaw.
Chapter twenty-seven
Slit pupils.
Rapists. Abusers. Murderers. That’s what he had said.They don’t deserve to see the afterlife. Even if it is Hell.
Liar.
Lux didn’t flinch as the man before her shoved her into a hard-backed chair. Didn’t move as her wrists and ankles were shackled to it with thick, leather straps. The buckles clicked closed.
Her parents’ deaths had shattered her. Broken, the pieces remaining were then scattered to the wind beneath the treatment of the mayor’s family. And as much as she wanted to, she didn’t trust Riselda. She couldn’t. Something held her back.
But, against her better judgment, she had begun to trust Shaw.
Fool.
Ghadra was rotting.
Let it.
Lux rested her head back.
