4

Pressing my lips into a thin line, I gave him a belligerent look. I hoped he could feel the hate radiating off me. He hadn’t given me a gift; he’d made me think of myself as a monster for years.

Instead of taking my silence as an affront, Simon just giggled in that mad way. “I like you! Most of my experiments are overly dramatic.” He rolled his eyes. “All the screaming, the pleading, the begging. Ugh.” He shook his head sadly as if remembering all the terrible moments from his past. “It’s exhausting, listening to it all. I like silence for a change.”

The next words slipped from my mouth against my better judgment. “You’re crazy.”

Simon’s eyes grew steely and deep, like pools of inky black madness. “Only those who don’t understand true genius call the gifted crazy. We aren’t crazy. It’s only that everyone else is too dense and can’t see our vision.”

With that, he stood, his lab coat swishing behind him, and began to hum that awful song again. Near where I lay strapped down, a strange contraption was bolted on a rolling upright rod that looked almost like an IV stand. Simon tinkered with it, using a combination of magic as well as a few small, delicate tools he extracted from his pocket.

The scent of an alpha tickled my nose again, and I sat up as far as the leather strap on my chest would allow. To my amazement, Abel lay on a table across the room, strapped down exactly like I was. We’d all thought him dead, yet here he was, alive. The same strange needle device was attached to his bicep.

A wave of relief and happiness washed over me. I’d been so sure that Abel had been killed that I’d already begun mourning him in my mind. Seeing him alive, his chest rising and falling in sleep, was the best thing I could have seen—other than Wyatt and Zoe crashing through the doors to save me, of course.

My solace faded quickly. If Abel was locked up here in Simon’s lab, it meant the mad fae scientist had plans for him, too. Did he want to make him feral like he had with Leif? Or did he have some other atrocity planned? For a moment, I recalled those hodgepodge creatures we’d fought, those random combinations of other beings put together with some awful form of magic. The thought of that happening to Abel made me sick to my stomach.

What did Simon have planned for me? He’d strapped that weird machine to me, too. Thundering terror echoed through my chest at the idea of being turned feral. I’d spent so many years thinking that was what I’d done the night Simon kidnapped me, I’d basically developed a phobia of becoming that type of monster again. Even knowing it had all been a lie didn’t wash away my horror at the idea.

Neck protesting, I lay back against the hard metal table. The burning itch of the wolfsbane on my skin was a distant but irritating sensation. I still couldn’t believe that I hadn’t killed someone that night. As awful as my current situation was, I could take heart in that one truth: I hadn’t been a killer. I had never been a monster. Reaching deep within myself, I sent apologetic sympathy toward my inner wolf. She hadn’t forced me to murder anyone, and I’d shoved her away because of that. I didn’t know if she would ever forgive me, but I had to start somewhere.

A whimpering acceptance came back, echoing from the deepest recesses of my mind.

“Let’s see how this works,” Simon said, pulling my attention back.

He’d rolled the strange IV stand to the very side of my bed. With a few quick movements, he had it attached to the device already on my arm. A hose of some sort ran into it. He muttered to himself and cast a few waves of magic across both devices.

Before I had time to really see what he did, I felt the magic thrumming through my body, coursing in as something moved from the device on the pole into the device on my arm, then finally into my body. Dizziness and vertigo slammed into me. Blinking did nothing to abate it. If anything, opening and closing my eyes made things worse.

“What… what are you doing to me?” I muttered. It took all I could do to stay conscious as sleep threatened to drag me under.

Simon leaned across my body, checking me over. “Prepping you for a new experiment I want to try next.” I could smell peppermint on his breath as he lifted my eyelids high and flashed a penlight on my irises. “A little something I’ve been working on to instill utmost obedience in my more volatile subjects. As you are the strongest specimen I have, I thought it would be smart to test it on you.”

“I feel… weird,” I mumbled.

“Yes, yes, a bit of lethargy is to be expected, but other than that, you should notice nothing else. As long as you don’t pass out like that one”—he nodded toward Abel—“I’ll reward you by giving you a thorough tour of my laboratories. It’s the least I can do for your help that night many moons ago.”

The dizziness faded, leaving me with a strange exhaustion. He’d said I wouldn’t notice any other side effects, but the weird hum of magic still vibrated in my veins.

Simon turned, looking at a doorway, and snapped his fingers. “Come.”

Two vampires scurried into the room, obeying Simon’s summons. Each wore a lab coat similar to Simon’s. These vampires weren’t mad like the ones in the jungle I’d fought over the last few weeks. A sane clarity shimmered in their eyes. When they looked at Simon, they did so in a subdued, even cowed manner—they both respected and feared him. Odd to see.