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If I couldn’t imagine them, how was I going to survive them?
“I want to see him. ” Fuck it. If I was going to die, I wanted to see Holden again. I’d rather die next to a lover than die alone with this psycho.
“Very good. And you let me know how that arm is healing, won’t you? I’m interested to see how you do. ”
So many doors.
It was what struck me first as we walked down a nondescript hallway with dim lighting, not unlike that from Sutherland’s dream. With the exception of how plain these doors were, it was startlingly close to what he’d shown me in his mind.
Was he in one of these rooms?
Or was The Doctor already done with him?
When I’d been removed from my cell the previous evening, there were no other rooms between mine and the space I’d been moved to. I was being kept apart from the others. Did he know about our ability to communicate mentally? Had he somehow been blocking any form of psychic communication?
If he’d been studying vampires for thirty years, I found it hard to believe such a juicy tidbit would have escaped his attention, so it wasn’t surprising to think he’d found a way to put a damper on my connection with Holden.
We stopped in front of an unmarked gray door. There was nothing to distinguish it from the dozens of others, no window to show which occupant was held within, yet he knew.
On the wall next to each of the doors was a black square, and The Doctor withdrew a plain white keycard from his jacket pocket and tapped it on the black box. A red light changed to green, and the bolts of the door clicked to signal their release.
“After you, my dear. ”
I pulled on the exterior handle, my broken arm protesting the effort, making me wince with pain. Every movement—no matter how small—reverberated through my broken limb, amplifying the pain to new levels.
A hissing sound accompanied the opening of the door, like the air pressure inside the rooms was different. I recalled how warm the hallway air had felt whenever someone would enter my cell, and was greeted with a chilly blast when I stepped inside Holden’s room.
The vampires were being stored at meat-locker temperatures.
The room was dark, with only the light of the hallway helping guide my way. At first I thought I’d been tricked and I was being taken to an empty cell to be starved all over again, until I saw a heap in the corner.
It looked like a sack of laundry, not a man.
The heap twitched and groaned, barely moving, but slowly a head rose from the rest, and I saw his eyes. They’d gone black, any sign of white erased by the madness of hunger, but they were still Holden’s eyes.
“Holden?”
“Ssssss…” His voice was as rough as a cat’s tongue on sandpaper. “Ssseee…”
“It’s me,” I replied, trying to give him a reprieve from his attempt to say my name.
“Ooookkkaaayyy…?”
My lower lip trembled as he shifted into a sitting position. That slight adjustment costing him, he closed his eyes, and since he didn’t breathe he looked dead. Really dead.
He was gaunt, his cheeks sunk in, making his beautiful cheekbones and jaw seem frightfully skeletal. The skin beneath his eyes was taut, giving a frightening glimpse to the lines of his skull where they formed the ridge of his eye sockets. He still had his hair which seemed remarkable, all things considered, but the color
had begun to leach away. His clothes hung off him like he was wearing those of a much larger stranger.
His eyelids fluttered open again, and he saw me but was confused. “Seeee…”
“It’s me. I’m here. ” I crossed the room in two wide steps, crouching in front of him, using my good hand to touch his face, his arms, his chest, trying to convince myself he was really there.
“You…’kay…?” he asked.
Tears slid down my cheeks, staining his shirt. “No,” I answered, unable to force a kind lie.
His gaze shifted lazily to my arm, but he didn’t react. “Hurt. ”
