“I’m going to drain her dry of her blood and her cum. Until there’s nothing left over for Feral by the time he gets his fangs into her.”
“Sterling will bake your ass if you harm so much as a hair on her head.”
I cringed at the word now that I knew what it meant. Even if this was real, Sterling wouldn’t have his own brother executed by the sunrise. Even if it was out of punishment for hurting me…. Would he? It made me wonder what Eros might do to Vincent once we got back.
Eros placed me into the back of the trunk, and I could make out his silhouette against the blinding gas station fluorescents, leaning close.
“Last chance to wake up from the nightmare, Doll.”
No. I didn’t want it to end. I wasn’t ready to wake up to the cage Vincent had put me in. Better to be Eros’ prisoner, where my loss of control was just an illusion.
“Fuck you,” I hissed through the bag.
Eros chuckled. “As my princess commands.”
With that, the trunk slammed shut, and darkness cradled me all the way to the deepest recesses of Deathwish’s most wicked fantasies.
Chapter nine
Inside the Slaughterhouse
Whenwerolledtoa stop, the engine cut, and a second later, the car shook as Eros swung the door shut. The sound of his heavy footsteps crunching on gravel carried into the trunk, falling in sync with the hammering of my heart.
I squeezed my eyes shut and took in several deep breaths to calm my pulse. It’s not like I was scared. Never that, especially while I was with Eros in his dreamscape. I could take hold of his mind at any moment if I needed to. But right now, I let him have control. Ineededhim to have control.
Every nerve in my body was practically buzzing in excitement. Whatever waited for me beyond the trunk of this car, I knew it would alter something inside me, like the darkest of dreams often did. To survive as a vampire queen, I needed to have my boundaries constantly pushed, tested, broken and reforged, over and over. What better person to do that than Deathwish?
All the breath work I did to even my heart rate went to shit when the trunk was suddenly torn open, with my mate’s bulky frame distinguishable through the bright light bleeding through the fabric covering my head.
“Where are we?” I gasped.
“My brothers call it my slaughterhouse. I call it the kennel. But the poor fucks who find themselves here just know it as Hell.”
The hairs on the back of my neck pricked at his answer. “Hell?”
“Yeah, so you should feel right at home, Baby Girl,” Eros answered with a hint of a wicked smile twisting his voice.
He pulled me from the trunk, lights and shadows dancing over my face through the fabric of the bag as he hauled me out into the night and over his shoulder.
The salty aroma of the ocean tickled my nostrils through the bag. We were right on the waterfront. He stopped for a moment, the sound of beeping from a keypad telling me we were about to pass through a door locked by a passcode. There was a click of a latch, and the groan of hinges, followed by the pungent, gut-punching scent of blood, bleach, and metal.
A chill rushed down my back. Where in the fuck were we?
The moment we stepped through the door, my insides churned. Underneath the metallic tangle of scents in the air, there were traces of more intricate scents that had my monster tensing within me. I couldn’t exactly put my finger on them. There were so many different threads of aromas weaved together. For some reason, Garrick’s face came to mind—one of Corry’s friend’s I’d met in the coven’s garage. Holy shit, I was smelling werewolf and demon, too, by the faint whiff of perfume that reminded me of V, the feisty teal-haired succubus in Corry’s biker gang.
Eros lowered me to my feet and ripped the bag off my head. I blinked rapidly, my eyes adjusting to the dim light.
The sight that met me robbed all the air from my lungs. We were in a warehouse with stacks of cages lining the walls. There was a platform-type elevator on every wall, with steel catwalks running between the different cages.
It looked like some kind of crude kennel, like a place they might keep dogs for illegal fights. Only it wasn’t dogs they were holding. The cages were too big and sturdy for that. They were made of steel, and some were bigger than the average shipping container. Many of them had enormous claw marks slashed through the steel. Others had bent bars, and by how thick the steel was, the animals inside had to be massive.
The sounds hit me first. Shrieks, howls, barking. Hooves scraping over metal.
When my eyes adjusted to the weak light of the flickering fluorescents dangling high above, I choked back a gasp. There were dozens of eyes clamped on me, boring at me from the darkness of their cells. Werewolves, demons, and loads of other monsters I couldn’t name.
I felt Eros' gaze hot on my skin, watching my reaction intently. My pulse kicked up when my line of sight drifted to the only cage-free corner of the building. It was a work area, similar to the one Eros kept in his den in the basement back home. There was a black metal toolbox on wheels that had to be taller than me, with a stainless steel table and, next to that, several rows of industrial shelving containing an assortment of evil-looking supplies. Bleach. Acid. Poisons of every variety. Surgical tubing. Plastic sheeting. Boxes of nitrile gloves.
The most notable thing was the meat hook suspended from the ceiling, hanging over a drain. My throat tightened at the dark stains marking the concrete around it.
