So he had a mole. We’d suspected it, but now I knew for sure.
Would he have come to California himself, wanting to be present for my capture and to witness what The Doctor was doing to me? Or was he hiding somewhere else, anywhere in the world, watching footage sent to him?
I slapped the wall with my palm, the gritty surface stinging my skin. The last thing I needed right now was another wound to heal, as my aching chest could attest.
How was I going to get out of this?
It would be one thing if they were trying to get me to share secrets, but this was experimentation, plain and simple. The Doctor wanted to know how I worked, the same way a mechanic sought to understand a car engine. Without any information to offer him, he was only going to take me out of the cell when he wanted to poke around inside me.
There had to be something, some way I could have him release me from the room without being bound, and convince him I needed my full strength.
I looked at my hand pressed flat against the wall. My brittle, cracked nails seemed to be telling me something, and I didn’t think that something was You need a manicure.
You must be stupid, my wolf told me, piping up for the first time since we’d gotten here.
My wolf.
My wolf.
She was right. If the answer had been any more obvious, it would have smacked me in the face. The Doctor was fascinated with me because he knew I was half-vampire/half-werewolf. He’d never seen or studied a creature like me in his life.
If he truly was a man of science, wouldn’t he want to see what I could do?
I cleared the room in an excited bound, pounding the door with my fists. “I want to see him,” I shouted, my throat stinging from the screaming I’d abused it with throughout the evening. “I need to see The Doctor.”
I kept right on shouting and pounding, doing everything short of swearing up a storm. Shocking myself half to death was a last resort, but if it came down to it, they’d come in and stop me before I did permanent damage to myself.
I yelled until a speaker I couldn’t see announced, “Step back from the door.”
I did as I was told, scurrying into a far corner and raising both hands in a gesture of submission. I didn’t want to project any menace. The only way this plan was going to work was if I made him trust me. Maybe not as a person would trust a friend, but perhaps as a lab scientist might trust a rat not to bite him.
The door sighed open with a rush of warm air, and one of the male nurses came in, leaving it slightly ajar.
Run, my wolf urged. Knock him down and run.
She didn’t seem to understand escape wasn’t an option. Running wasn’t going to happen. Walking was hard enough. I ignored her, but didn’t overlook how happy I was to have her back. I’d need her soon.
“What do you want?” the nurse asked impatiently.
“I want to see The Doctor.”
“You don’t dictate that sort of thing. Haven’t you figured that out yet? You’re not a guest, you don’t get to make requests.”
“He’s going to want to see me.”
The nurse sighed, rolling his eyes. He’d heard this before. I had to wonder how many others had been in this room before me, and all the different ways they’d attempted to woo these people into letting them go. If I’d had my full strength, I would have tried to enthrall the nurse, I couldn’t pretend otherwise.
He was accustomed to that dog-and-pony show, though, because he wasn’t looking me right in the eyes. Some people who knew how the thrall worked would focus on my forehead so it at least appeared like they were meeting my gaze. This guy was fixated on my chin. If his gaze had dropped any lower, I’d be convinced he was staring at my tits, but I doubted he saw me as a sexual object.
Hard to be attracted to someone when they were bound to end up like a biology class frog. Once you’d seen someone’s literal guts, it had to be difficult to think of them as a hot commodity. I wasn’t offended. I didn’t plan to use my feminine wiles to get out of here.
“He’s seen everything he needs to see from you today.”
“He’s going to want to see this,” I insisted.
The man turned to go, and I panicked. This plan only worked if I was going to get out of the room, and to do that I needed to convince this guy I wasn’t talking out my ass.
“Wait. He’s a scientist right? You all are. I mean, this isn’t a hospital, so we’re in some kind of lab. Right?”
He didn’t say anything, but he did stop his attempt to leave.
“I get it,” I said, trying to sound calm. “My grandmother, she’s a scientist. Studied genetics and biology. She taught me to respect science, to look for an explanation. I understand why you guys are doing this. I’m different. I defy logic, and you want to make me make sense, right?”
The nurse stared at me, and a variety of expressions battled for supremacy over his face. He looked conflicted and angry but also confused and a little sad. I’d read somewhere making yourself human to those who might want to kill you would at least give them pause. If they stopped thinking of you as an object—or in my case a monster—and started relating to you on a human level, you had a better chance.
“My name is Secret,” I told him. “I live in New York City. I have a boyfriend and a family. I have friends and a job.” This had been the wrong tactic. He appeared disgusted, either with himself for listening or me for trying something so obvious. I backpedaled. “I know none of it matters. I know you guys just see me as a mystery you can solve by taking me apart. But I can do things.”
That got him back to me. “Do things? What kind of things?”
In the condition I was in I could perform such astonishing feats as walking, talking and breathing, but he didn’t need to know how limited my current range was.
“I have abilities.”
“Show me.” He crossed his arms and stared at my chin.
What I wouldn’t have given right then to be Eugenia. She hit the hybrid jackpot compared to me, by inheriting Grandmere’s witchy skills and our mother’s lycanthropy. I didn’t know if there was a precedent for were-witches, but she could have given this guy a hell of a display with her glowy-handed mojo.
“Only him.”
“Bullshit,” the nurse scoffed. “You can’t do anything.”
His dismissal rankled me, and for the first time I got decidedly sick of being treated like pond scum on a microscope slide. This guy was nothing, he was a human and he was not going to stop me from getting what I wanted.
“I am a werewolf queen,” I snarled. “I am the head of the vampire Tribunal. I am the great-granddaughter of the scariest witch I’ve ever known, and I have beheaded a fuc…frigging demon. You listen to me, you pathetic approximation of Darwinism. I want to speak to The Doctor. I will only speak to The Doctor. I don’t care how much power you think you have, because when you leave this room you are just a man. You are a man with a family and friends, and since you’ve chosen not to respect that fact about me, I won’t respect it about you. Your life is disposable to me. You are nothing. And if you think I don’t have a way to show my people your face, you are sorely mistaken.” I glared at him, never moving or making my threat physical, but putting every ounce of my formidability behind it. I wanted to swear at him, but my words would lose a lot of oomph if I was writhing around on the floor by his feet. In my head I was adding a lot of fucks though.