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As he turned to give the guy the coffin nail, he did a double take. The wall they had stepped out of was set with pairs of pegs, between which brown stains made their purpose self-defining.
“That’s where they were punished,” V said.
“Yes, at this location.” The male—Mayhem? Yeah, that was the name—took what was offered and put it right between his front teeth. Talking around the hand-rolled, he said, “Back at the old camp, there was another setup where we were tortured.”
“Fucking hell.” V Bic’d up and extended the little flame. “Well, that shit’s over now.”
“We need to stay here,” the male said as he lit the hand-rolled and exhaled. “This facility has beds and a kitchen, has a clinic. Don’t move us, please. A lot of the prisoners didn’t survive the trip here in the first place.”
V glanced around. The long hallway had doors opening off of it, and he could smell the cocaine and the heroin.
“Show me everything.” He started walking forward. “I want to see it all.”
Unsurprisingly, the rest of the place was grim. The workrooms where the drugs were packaged were forced labor lockups, the very definition of a toxic environment, and the kitchen was a repurpose of a nineteen seventies facility that was filthy. But the worst was the sleeping quarters. As the male led him down a set of stairs, he could smell the corporeal decay and old sweat and infection already. Then he discovered that prisoners were relegated to sleeping pods that were barely big enough for dogs, the males and females slotted into the cramped spaces, most of them lacking the energy to care when V walked down a room as long as a soccer field.
At the far end, he turned around and couldn’t believe what he was looking at. But what the fuck did he think it was going to be like?
“We’re going to need even more medical help,” he said to himself as he put his hand-rolled out on the bottom of his shitkicker.
“I know someone,” Mayhem said, “who’s going to be invaluable to us. She’s the best of the best, and the prisoners already know and trust her.”
As Nadya re-formed in the back of the prison camp, she was escorted into the facility by the biggest, most beautiful blond male vampire shehad ever seen—who introduced himself as the Black Dagger Brother Rhage. And when she entered the private quarters of the head of the guards, she stopped at a puddle that was…
“Yeeeeeeah,” the Brother said, “whoever that was had a bad night.”
Something in the scent of the remains drew her down to her haunches, and that was when she recognized the tool belt, the uniform, the boots.
“It’s the head of the guards,” she murmured as she stood back up. “The female who… well. I’m going to sleep better during the day, at any rate. She wasn’t too fond of me.”
“Something tells me that’s a compliment.”
Nadya looked across the room to a bedding platform—and her breath caught in her throat.
A female she didn’t recognize, who was wearing the white coat of a human physician or nurse, was taking care of Callum, the wolven, while Apex sat aside, watching with an intensity that she’d seen before. It reminded her of the way he’d been with Kane…
And oh, no. Apex had a head wound that was still bleeding. From time to time, he wiped at it with a hand towel in annoyance. No doubt he had refused to be treated until Callum was.
Underneath his hard exterior, he was a male of worth, loyal and true. And, oh, God, what had happened to the wolven? He looked like he was in some kind of coma.
“Are you the nurse here?”
She glanced over her shoulder. Another member of the Black Dagger Brotherhood was striding into the chamber. With a goatee and tattoos at his temple, and those telltale black daggers strapped, handles down, under his leather jacket, he was intense, and that was before she met his icy eyes.
“Yes,” she said to him. Then she cleared her throat, the sense that her life had been leading up to just this moment hitting her with a rush of purpose. “I am the nurse here. I’ve come because… well, it’s a long story.”
“You don’t have to explain, but we got patients for you.”
Okay, Nadya, she told herself as she took a deep breath.It’s time.
“If we’re dealing with the prison populace,” she said with authority, “it’ll be wiser to take the drugs and supplies from my clinic up to the sleeping quarters. We’ll be looking at skin, bladder, and respiratory infections, but also tooth abscesses and malnutrition. I have a stock of antibiotics and painkillers, and there are enough opiates down the hall to treat half the continental United States. No, there are no records of identities that I’ve ever found, verbal accounts are going to have to suffice to establish a census and start to create files. It goes without saying that I am happy to take orders from anybody. I just want to finally be able to treat my patients the way they deserve.”
The male with the goatee stared at her. Then he inclined his head with a sly smile. “I think you’re going to be giving the orders, ma’am. Let me introduce you to our docs.”
“Thank you,” she murmured as she bowed. “I’m eager to meet them.”
The rest of the night passed in a blur. She and the other medical professionals, who were great, worked together in the sleeping quarters, triaging the prisoners, providing food, starting to develop a list of names and conditions. Meanwhile, the Brotherhood continued to secure the premises, changing locks, confiscating keys to the vehicles out back, establishing a safe zone.
Mayhem and the Jackal were a great help, hauling supplies up from the clinic and helping to establish the triage and treatment area, and Lucan and Rio arrived to aid the effort just as dawn was arising.
