Sarita got halfway through this door and then froze. The white walls and white tile floor were gone, replaced by metal walls and a bare concrete floor. There were also six barred cells here, three on either side, all of them occupied. A wide aisle ran down the length between them, leading to a door at the far end of the room. Since the lab, the hallway, and these cells probably only took up half the length of the building, Sarita suspected the far door led to more cells and more prisoners.
She slid her gaze over the occupants of the first two cells. There were two women in the one on the left. They stood as still as statues, faces expressionless as they watched them enter. A lone man was in the cell on the right. He was huge. Even sitting slumped against the wall, Sarita suspected he was almost as tall as her. Standing, she doubted she'd reach halfway up his upper arm. He was also bald and extremely pale, almost blue. His eyes were closed, his head down, his chin resting on his chest. She wasn't sure he was breathing.
"Move." Cael shoved her forward with his hold on her arm and Sarita reluctantly followed Asherah down the aisle past the first two cells, aware that the women tracked them with narrowed eyes.
"You should have moved Colton to the front cell instead of leaving him surrounded by these monsters," Cael said tightly as Asherah stopped at the second cell on the right and began searching through her keys again. "At least then he would only have had them on one side of him."
Asherah shrugged. "They can't reach him in the center of the cell and he's not moving until we carry him out."
"What about her?" Cael asked, thumbing toward Sarita with his free hand. "They might bite her."
Asherah selected a key and stuck it in the cell door. As she turned it, she glanced at Sarita and her mouth twisted. "Judging by the footage from the island, she seems to like vampires. She'll be fine."
Sarita felt heat rush into her face at the woman's words as she realized Asherah had obviously watched the camera footage of her and Domitian. They'd been careful to not do anything outside the cocooned bed once Domitian had created the little shelter, but before that there had been the incident in the bathroom that first day. There was also their interlude by the pool. It was possible that a camera had been placed in the trees by the waterfall and caught that action. Though she'd been covered by the towel when Domitian had given her pleasure, it wouldn't have been hard to tell what was happening. And there had been no towel covering Domitian's erection afterward, just her mouth.
Her soul shriveled at the thought of this bitch witnessing those intimate moments between her and Domitian, but as Asherah opened the cell door, Sarita raised her chin and asked sharply, "Did you enjoy the show? Or were you jealous?"
Growling, Asherah caught her by the arm, nails digging deep into Sarita's forearm as she dragged her from Cael and shoved her through the open door. Sarita stumbled several steps, nearly stepping on a figure on the floor before catching herself. Freezing, she stared down at the boy she'd nearly trampled. He was young, perhaps six, and he was lying on the cold concrete with only a blanket wrapped around his bulky shape, leaving just his thin face visible.
"Let's go," Asherah snapped as the door clanged shut.
"No. We can't leave her here. If they drain her dry, Dressler will be pissed," Cael said and Sarita glanced over to see him eyeing the inhabitants of the other cages warily.
"Fine," Asherah snarled and pulled a gun from her pocket.
Sarita took an instinctive step back, pausing when she stepped on something. As she glanced down to see that she'd stepped on the boy's blanket, not any part of him, she heard two soft pffts of sound, and glanced back to the woman. She then followed the gun point to the cell next to the one she was in as the two men inside suddenly dropped like puppets whose strings had been cut. There were darts sticking out of each of them now, she saw.
"Happy?" Asherah asked Cael tersely.
"What about him?" Cael asked, nodding his chin toward the man slumped against the wall in the first cell on the other side of Sarita.
"He's bloodless. Can't do a thing. Now let's get out of here," she said, heading back up the aisle toward the door they'd entered through. "These guys give me the willies."
Cael hesitated, but then turned and followed Asherah out.
By Domitian's guess he was little more than a couple of minutes away from the cottage when something large swooped out of a tree on the side of the path and landed on the trail in front of him. It brought him up short, and he started to crouch into a fighting stance, and then recognized the man in front of him.
"Thorne," he said with surprise, straightening. "What are you-?"