Lukas held up the messenger bag at his side. “Yes, sir. I printed the documents but left the device at the office.”
“Good.” Nikhail glanced at the guards. “Lead the way.”
“Of course.” Priya extended her arm down the hallway as though she were escorting them through a palace and not a terrifying dungeon. “This way, please.”
“Here we are,”Priya said, coming to a stop in front of a cell several minutes later. “She’s dangerous, so we’re keeping her far from the other inmates.”
Nikhail peered through the one-way mirror into the cell. It stretched the length of the stone wall, providing a perfect view for outsiders to look in. On the inside, the surface was reflective.
The cement room boasted of a single piece of furniture: a chair bolted to the middle of the floor. Leather straps dangled from the arms and legs, speaking of the chair’s purpose, as didthe slanted cement floor leading to the drain ominously placed nearby. Once silver, it was now rusty and dark.
Crouched in the corner of the dark cell, wearing scraps of what had once been a dress, was the woman Nikhail had come to see.
The last time he’d seen Elodie Valois was in the ruins of Castle Sanguis. Isobel, the young human tech who had been working with Nikhail, had just been killed by creatures of the night. Before clearing the ruins, they’d found another group of rebel vampires.
The rest had been killed in the subsequent fight, but Elodie had been spared the fate of her brethren with hopes that she could provide them with much-needed information.
Like all creatures of the night, Elodie had been stunning upon her capture. Impossibly so. Her pale skin, as white as untouched snow, had glowed in the purple light of the orbs that illuminated the castle ruins. Her face had been exquisite and unblemished, from her perfectly formed lips to her straight nose and symmetrical eyes.
She’d been a thing of beauty, one that poets would’ve written about.
Or she had been, until her capture. When the soldiers had clamped prohiberis manacles on her arms and legs, she’d screeched. She’d thrashed about, screaming and cursing, until a silver muzzle had been secured over her mouth, preventing her from biting anyone who got too close.
Now, it was evident that this place had taken its toll on Elodie. The dungeon had a way of sucking the life out of its inhabitants, and vampires were not immune to its curse.
Nikhail understood what Priya had meant earlier.
The woman huddled in the corner of the room was so far removed from the vampire he’d encountered in Castle Sanguis that it was difficult to believe they were the same person.
Prohiberis manacles were clamped around Elodie’s wrists and ankles, the chains leading to the center of the room. She had enough leeway to move to the corner of the room, but no further. The silver muzzle remained, decorated in flecks of dried blood. As if she’d tried to claw it off, despite the pain silver brought her kind.
Cuts and scrapes littered the vampire’s body, evidence of prior interrogations. The prohiberis prevented her healing.
More haunting than the evidence of the torture she’d already endured was the feral look in the vampire’s pitch-black gaze. Wild and dangerous, they threatened annihilation if someone dared approach.
If this were a normal prisoner, Nikhail would’ve felt remorseful about the treatment they were receiving. But Elodie Valois was not a normal prisoner.
Her prints had been run when she’d first been taken into custody. That was a regular, run-of-the-mill activity. However, the story her prints told was far from normal. It was dark and sinister, even for an immortal creature of the night.
At nearly five hundred years old, Elodie was not a young vampire. Her prints had been connected to a string of twenty-four gruesome murders that stretched back centuries. Until her arrest, the crimes had remained unsolved.
Between the murders and her involvement with the Black Night, she’d been thrown in here. Since then, they’d uncovered even more about her true nature.
Elodie Valois was consumed with bitterness and contempt. Not just for the Representatives, although she certainly harbored no goodwill towards them. She despised humans and scorned all other non-vampiric species who called this land their own.
“Has she had any blood?” Nikhail asked.
Priya shook her head. “Not for a while. She was cooperating at first, answering questions about the documents found in the ruined castle, but she clammed up a few weeks ago and hasn’t said anything since.”
Around the time of the bombing at the Chancellor’s residence.
Nikhail made note of that, storing the information away in his mind.
“So, she’s starving.” It wasn’t a question.
Priya inclined her head.
Rubbing his thumb across his bottom lip, Nikhail assessed the situation. Withholding blood from vampires was a common tactic employed by guards in The Pit. It forced the vampire’s true nature to the forefront faster than any other form of torture.