Dangerous Games

8

s**t. If he gets suspicious, it will end in disaster, so I flip the pills over and swallow, this time for real. “It’s hard to get them down without water.”

We drive in silence as he inspects my profile, and I sit stiffly in my seat, praying to God for deliverance.

He doesn’t seem to be listening.

When we pull to a stop a while later, I’m inhabiting a black and desolate place inside my head. It takes several tries with increasing volume for Dimitri to get through to me. His voice sounds as if it’s coming to me from underwater.

“Evalina. Evalina, wake up.”

He snaps his fingers in front of my face, but I wasn’t sleeping. Just gone for a stroll through the tangled darkness of my mind.

Naz, please be alive. Please.

“I’m awake,” I hear myself say, as if from far away.

My sense of detachment is a gift, one that keeps on giving as Dimitri exits the car and rounds the rear to open my door. Extending his hand, he smiles at me. A demon’s smile, sharp and menacing, promising me a front-row seat in hell. His perfect blond hair gleams like a pearl in the moonlight.

I clasp his fingers and allow him to help me out, but when I try to stand, I stumble and fall to one knee. Gravel digs sharp teeth into my kneecap.

“My little lamb is feeling weak,” he says, enjoying the idea. He nudges me with the toe of his shoe. “Can you walk, or do I need to drag you inside by your hair?”

I force myself to my feet, fighting back a wave of nausea. Despite the pills, my arm is throbbing, my cheek is hot and tight around the stitches, and I ache in the places he kicked me.

Far worse is the ache in my chest from the ragged hole where my heart used to be. It hurts like a phantom limb, missing but not forgotten, taking relentless jabs at the blanket of dullness my mind has wrapped itself in. It takes all my willpower to stand silent and upright under his gaze.

“You suffer so beautifully,” he notes, his eyes glittering. “Such stoicism. But you won’t be able to keep it up for long. I’ve been anticipating our reunion for months.” His smile grows venomous. “Plenty of time to get creative with your punishments.”

He curls hard fingers around my good arm and yanks me forward. I yelp in pain, stumbling. The icy gravel cuts into the soles of my bare feet.

Then I look up and catch a glimpse of the cage that awaits me.

Dracula’s castle couldn’t be any more frightening.

Peaked towers stab black daggers into the sky, obliterating starlight. A thousand dark windows consider us with hostile, glinting stares. Stately and sprawling, spookily lit by moonlight, the mansion looks like one of those places with ghosts in the attic and carnivorous monsters lurking in a labyrinth hidden deep beneath the floors.

Like a cornered cat, my soul recoils, hissing and bristling at the sight.

“What is this place?”

“Your new home.”

We don’t ascend the cracked marble stairs leading through the withered gardens to the main entrance, but instead take a detour around the north wing, walking under an arched colonnade festooned with gnarled dead vines until we arrive at a large wooden door. It’s plain and windowless, set back into vaulted stone, and flanked on either side by burly bodyguards gripping machine guns.

They snap to attention when they see us.

“Open it,” orders Dimitri as we approach.

One of the men produces a large round key ring from inside his suit jacket. He picks out one of the many skeleton keys on the ring, fits it into the lock, then flattens a beefy hand on the door and pushes. He steps aside to let us pass, his face a slab of stone.

The door swings shut behind us with a muffled boom and a cold draft, making the candles gutter in their brass candelabras lining the bare limestone walls. Cobwebs flutter in the shadowed ceiling corners.

“Oh, this isn’t creepy at all,” I say, standing beside Dimitri in the dank gloom. “Are you taking me to the Pit of Despair?”

“Shut up.”

His tone is icy. He doesn’t get my Princess Bride reference. The only man who would might be lost to me forever.

I swallow, thankful for my mental detachment, because it’s all that’s keeping me from sliding in howling agony to the floor.

Dimitri tugs on my arm. We descend a twist of uneven stone stairs, the temperature dropping with every step. I smell moss and rot and mouse droppings, hear the faraway trickle of water. The steps are so cold beneath my feet it burns.

Hysteria threatens the edges of my unnatural calm, but I push it back, offering a silent prayer to Jude the Apostle, patron saint of lost causes. But he and God must be on the same extended vacation, because when we reach the bottom of the spiral staircase, there’s no salvation to be found.

What greets me instead is my own personal hell.

“Do you like it?” inquires Dimitri, his tone as gentle and stroking as a caress. “When the estate was first built, this was used as a wine cellar, but it’s been empty for decades. I had it specially prepared just for your return.”