“We will give Lilly a day or two to come to her senses, and then I will hunt her down if I must,” Mage answered calmly.
I sighed, as glad as ever to have Mage in my corner. “And while that’s happening, I’ll be busy trying to fix Evangeline and Julian. And Bishop.” Or I’ll die, trying …
7. Torture All Around—Evangeline
I trailed Ivan as he led me down the hall to a main floor bathroom. Without warning or asking permission, he slid his hands under my armpits and hoisted me onto the counter as if I were a child. I sat quietly, putting pressure on my wound as instructed, and watched him rifle through the cabinets below until he pulled out a sizeable rectangular white box with a red cross on the front. A first-aid kit—a strange thing to find in a palace of vampires, though perhaps not so strange with the ever-prepared Sofie.
Ivan unraveled the bindings around my arm in silence. Part of me wanted to keep the wound hidden, afraid of what I might see. The bleeding had stopped, thankfully. He tossed the soaked towels into the sink with one hand and reached for a giant syringe with the other. He gestured to my arm. Grimacing, I nodded my assent but had to turn away and grit my teeth against the sting as he pricked my arm in several places. Within minutes, my arm was completely numb.
Ivan continued rummaging through the box, pulling out various things—thread, gauze, ointments. He went to work, cleaning my wound and the skin around it with an antiseptic and cotton pads. With the blood cleaned up, it didn’t look as horrific. Still, the gash had to be a good four inches long, stretching from just below my elbow joint to halfway down my forearm.
I watched with fascination as my werewolf-nursemaid threaded a needle through my skin with the grace and delicacy of a plastic surgeon. In the eighteen years before I met Sofie, I hadn’t had one stitch. Since meeting her, my hand had been cut open, my neck punctured—twice—and now my forearm mangled.
“I’m going to look like Frankenstein’s monster by the time this is done,” I muttered to myself as I studied the long, thin pinkish scar across my palm.
Ivan looked up, his golden irises revealing nothing about whether he understood me, whether he even knew who Frankenstein was. “Scars build character. They make you human.”
He speaks English! I smiled, both at his gentleness and at his attempt to console me. “Well, that’s good. I thought they just made me ugly.”
One corner of his mouth twitched into a crooked smile as he went back to work on my arm. Within minutes, twenty precise, neat stitches closed up the gash Lilly had so stealthily granted me.
“Thanks … Ivan,”
He grunted, thrusting a small white pill and a glass into my hands. “For the pain.”
I accepted it with a nod, tossing it back and chasing it with the water. “So all this blood doesn’t bother you?”
He shook his head. “I can’t smell it.”
“At all? I thought werewolves would have a keen sense of smell.”
“We do. We can’t smell your blood. We can’t smell you. It’s like you aren’t here anymore.”
My heart skipped a beat as I processed his words. “What do you mean, anymore?”
Ivan shrugged noncommittally as he packed up the medical supplies. “In Siberia, you were normal. Now you’re not.”
This must be another symptom. “You mean, like, the Tribe? Do they also not exist?”
Another shrug. “I have not met this Tribe so I cannot tell you.” His hands moved rapidly and I realized he was rushing to get away from this conversation. I wanted to know more.
“What else…?,” I asked, but my voice drifted as Ivan shoved his hand into his jacket pocket and pulled out a plain white envelope, thick and stiff with its contents. He thrust it forward.
With a curious frown, I gingerly took it. Inside was a stack of four-by-six photographs—the ones of my time on Ratheus. The ones that brought me a balance of both sanity and insanity while in the mountains. The last I remembered, they were in my nightstand …
“Thank you,” I whispered, swallowing the lump in my throat, as I flipped through them, wistful longing pulling at my heart. I landed on a picture of Fiona and Bishop, sitting on a bench, Fiona’s beautiful violet eyes playfully taunting the camera. Full of life and love, and friendship. I traced her face with my finger, memorized Bishop’s smile beside her. I’ll never see either of those smiles again.
“Ivan?” I asked as he hastily bagged the bloody rags and gauze in a garbage bag. “What happened to all the others? In the mountains? When Ursula attacked and Leo sent us away, there was still staff there. Magda … Maria …”