Nadya's Nights: Road to Vengeance (15 page)

He turned away from her and followed the blonde woman out of the room, leaving Nadya bound to the table, her complexion deathly pale.

Chapter Twenty-Four: Rescued

Nadya slowly fluttered back into consciousness.

She quickly wished she hadn’t.

Her whole body was nothing but pain.  The only positive she found was that she was no longer having further pain inflicted on her.  She tried to force her eyes open, but it was difficult.  She felt so weak that she had to struggle for the strength to even lift her eyelids.  When she finally got her eyes open, she noticed the room was empty.

Did my tormentor take a break for the night?

She thought it was unlikely.  She felt dread as she heard footsteps coming down the steps leading to the room, but tried to put on a defiant look just the same.

The look turned to one of shocked surprise as the door to the room opened and Cyrus entered, followed closely by Ulbrecht.  They saw her as well and she tried to hide the surprise.

It wasn’t hard; between being so weak and realizing that she was completely nude in front of them.  There wasn’t anything she could do about it so she tried to push away the feeling.  She saw Ulbrecht approaching her, looking dismayed.

Jeez, it must be really bad
, she thought.

Cyrus remained by the door, keeping guard.

Finding the lever for the table Nadya was strapped to, Ulbrecht pulled it and lowered the table back into a horizontal position.  He moved next to her, looking at the manacles then turning away momentarily.  He found a set of keys on the opposite table and took them.  After some fiddling, he managed to get Nadya’s arms and legs unbound.

Setting her arms at her sides, his eyes caught sight of the ends of the needles protruding from her breasts.  He turned away, looking back to the table, then down at the floor.  He found what was left of Nadya’s shirt and picked it up.

Holding it up to her mouth, he said, “Bite down.  I’ll try to do this as quickly as possible.  I’m sorry.”

Not arguing, she bit down on the fabric of her ruined shirt.  His fingers touched against her breast, soft and nimble.  It almost made her forget about why he was touching her breast.  He pinched the end of the needle with his fingers and with a quick pull, yanked it free.  Nadya screamed into the shirt as he pulled the needle out.

He eyed the small pieces of flesh stuck to the needle in disgust and anger before throwing it aside.  He moved to her other breast, doing the same there.  This time, Nadya managed to contain the scream, although her teeth clenched down on the fabric just as hard.

Ulbrecht caught the glint of light off metal from the corner of his eye and looked down, spotting the tip of the third needle.  He cringed as he saw it.

“Fucking monster…” he muttered.

Even more gently than when he’d touched her breasts, he proceeded to get a firm grip on the third needle.  He slid it out quickly and Nadya’s body shuddered with pain.  He threw the final needle aside then moved back up to Nadya’s head, taking the shirt away from her mouth.

“I’m so sorry,” he said, pressing the torn fabric against the still bleeding wound on her neck.  He lifted her from the table.  The blood on her back had started to dry and as a result had caused her to become stuck to the table.  When Ulbrecht lifted her, her back peeled away, leaving clotted blood and a few pieces of her skin stuck to the table.

Nadya whimpered and shuddered.

“This is my fault,” Ulbrecht hissed.

Nadya managed to work up enough strength to turn to him and speak.  “No,” she said firmly then managed a half-smirk.  “Occupational hazard.”  Then her head grew light and she found herself falling forward into darkness.  Before she fell completely, she felt his hands on her, steadying her.

Despite being nude and tortured half to death, Nadya felt relieved.

Chapter Twenty-Five: Mind Over Mind

The ride back to Cyrus’s mansion seemed strange and disjointed to Nadya.  She lay across the backseat of Cyrus’s car, wrapped in a blanket.  She drifted in and out of consciousness, her concept of time totally off kilter.  Her eyes slipped closed for a time then parted back open briefly.  She wasn’t sure how far she’d been taken away from the mansion so it was even harder to tell if the trip back was, in fact, taking forever, or if it just seemed that way to her.

When she dropped into her semi-conscious state, the physical pain faded and she felt as if she’d be able to get some rest, but the moment she started to fall into a deeper sleep, the face of her tormentor appeared, sneering at her and she quickly forced herself back awake.  The pain in her body flared back up, but that was almost more tolerable than having the bastard vampire’s face in front of her.  She kept catching Ulbrecht turning in his seat to look back at her.

It must be really bad
, Nadya thought, locking eyes with him briefly and seeing the worried look on his face.

Then again, when doesn’t he look worried?

Exhaustion and pain ate away at her and before long she found her eyelids getting heavy again.  She let them close and lay on the seat, feeling the car moving underneath her.

A bad case of vertigo struck her.  It felt as if the car was spinning out of control.  She forced her eyes back open and the spinning slowed a bit but the damage had already been done.  Nadya shifted forward and retched, vomit spewing from her mouth and spilling onto the seat in front of her before running down the front of it.  There wasn’t much in her stomach to vomit up, so after the initial spew all she could manage were dry heaves that made her gut tighten up and ache.

When she got herself back under control, Nadya slid back away from the mess as much as she could.  She opened her mouth to tell Cyrus she’d pay the cleaning bill but she couldn’t find her voice.  Instead of words, she could only manage a weak croak.  Angered at her own weakness, she clamped her mouth shut again.

Nadya fought even harder to keep her eyes open, not wanting to risk another dizzy spell.  She didn’t realize she was dozing again until something moist touched her face.  Her eyes snapped open and she saw Ulbrecht wiping her mouth with a wet napkin.  When he finished cleaning her up, he moved the napkin away from her face but kept looking back at her, concerned.

She attempted a confident smirk to let him know everything was fine, even if she had no idea whether or not it really was.  She only got the corner of her mouth to quirk upwards before darkness consumed her again.  Her body forced her into a state of unconsciousness, too weak to maintain anything else.

With her mind so disoriented and jumbled, she didn’t realize she was asleep.  Things went black for a little bit.  Then her vision returned and she was still in the backseat.  The only difference was all her pain was gone.

Looking to the front seat, Nadya couldn’t see Ulbrecht.  Pushing herself up to get a better look, she realized both he and Cyrus were gone.  The car continued to drive along by itself.

It’s a dream
, she thought.

Or another nightmare.

Just as she thought that, the door beside her flew open.  Nadya felt a hard shove against her and before she could try to brace herself, she flew out the open door and into the darkness beyond.

For a moment, she saw the road passing by her in a blur and growing closer.

It’s just a dream
, she told herself.

It isn’t real.

Her shoulder slammed into the ground, the blanket providing little protection as her arm snapped.  She screamed as very real pain flooded through her.  Her body spun and skidded along the ground, the blanket flying away into the night and letting the rough asphalt shred her flesh.  Sharp snapping pain filled her with each fresh bone break.  She slammed face first into the ground, her nose flattening before her mouth exploded in a mess of blood and broken teeth.

Nadya’s body flipped with her head against the road and there was a loud snap as her neck broke.  Her limp form tumbled a few more feet then lay still.  Nadya’s eyes stared blankly.  Her body was a jumbled mess of twisted limbs.

There was no way she could be alive.  Yet she was.

It’s a fucking dream
, she told herself for the third time.

Every inch of her was on fire with pain that no normal dream could inflict.

Doesn’t matter
, she said to herself. 
None of this is real.  Your spine isn’t twisted into a pretzel.  Your face isn’t crushed in.  You’re not fucking road kill, so get your ass up.

In a series of jerky movements, Nadya’s body straightened itself out and repaired the damage done.  In roughly thirty seconds, she got to her feet, unscathed.  Hearing the sound of an engine roaring, she turned to see headlights in the darkness.

Despite the fact she’d just been flung out of it, Cyrus’s car was now behind her and looking to run her over.  Nadya narrowed her eyes and turned to face the car head on.

“Not… fucking… real…” she spoke out loud.

The car’s path didn’t change and it seemed to speed towards her even faster.  Nadya tensed her body, clenching her fists and planting her feet firmly on the road.  She clenched her jaw and waited for something very anticlimactic, like the car passing right through her.

Instead, the vehicle struck her dead on.

But instead of flattening her, the car split in half, Nadya’s body crashing through the middle.  As it was destroyed, the car exploded, engulfing her in flames.  A few moments later, she emerged from the burning wreckage, unharmed.

“This is getting boring,” she said to the darkness, knowing full well who was behind her unnatural dream.  “I’m going to wake up now.  Try again when you’re not such a pussy.”

Nadya opened her eyes.

The weakness and pain flooded back into her, but she didn’t mind it so much.  She’d managed to fight off Remy’s mind games, at least once.  And if she could do it once, she could do it again.  She felt the car slow down and then come to a stop.  Ulbrecht turned and looked back at her, giving her a smile.

“We’re back.  Now it’s time to get you patched up.”

Chapter Twenty-Six: Licking the Wounds

Ulbrecht and Cyrus helped Nadya out of the car and back into the mansion.  She was still weak and filled with the pain of the tortures Remy had visited upon her, but her willpower was growing stronger by the minute.  Facing off with Remy in that dream world, or whatever it had been, and beating him back had revitalized her confidence in herself.  Everything else was just a matter of letting her body rest and heal a bit before she hunted him down and fucked him up big time.

They helped her over to a couch and she sat down on it, pulling the blanket closer around her.  Despite everything else that had happened, she still wasn’t comfortable with being nude around the two men.

Ulbrecht seemed to sense her discomfort and turned to Cyrus.  “Do you have any clothing she could wear?”

Cyrus nodded and left.

Ulbrecht kneeled down in front of her, reaching out to place a hand on her shoulder, giving her a reassuring smile.  “I’m going to have to dress your wounds.”  He still looked a bit weakened from the treatment he’d been given and Nadya knew he couldn’t be finished with the cure yet.

She shook her head firmly.  “No.  You have your own healing that needs to be done.  I’ll live.”  She gave him a half-smile, trying to convince him that she was more or less all right, even though her appearance said differently.  He didn’t look convinced and she let out a frustrated sigh.  “Fine, but you need to continue your treatment.  Let Cyrus patch me up if it’s really that important to you.  If you turn into a werewolf, this whole night is going to be wasted.”

That seemed to get through to him a bit better and he gave her a nod.

Cyrus returned with some clothes, manly and too big for her petite frame, but she wasn’t going to complain.  She took the clothing from him and nodded to Ulbrecht.  “Get him set up with his next dose.  Then you can deal with me,” she said, her voice hard despite how weak she felt.

She wasn’t about to let either of them push her around even if she didn’t think she’d be able to physically force them to do what she wanted.  Neither of them seemed interested in pushing the issue, though, and she watched them head back to the study.

Once she was alone, she shuffled through the clothing, finding some boxers and slipping them on.  She wasn’t looking forward to putting a shirt on.  Her back throbbed with pain from the whipping she’d endured.  The wounds would have to be dealt with anyway.  So instead of covering her chest, she set the rest of the clothing aside for the moment and laid face down on the couch.  Her nipples ached from the needles that had impaled them, but they were superficial wounds at best.

Painful, humiliating, superficial wounds.

Nadya crossed her arms in front of her and laid her head sideways on top of them, cursing herself for letting the bastard bloodsucker get a hold of her.  Not so much for what he’d done to her, but because Ulbrecht had to come to her rescue.  He needed to be receiving his cure, not running around saving her ass.

As if to punctuate her thoughts, she heard an inhuman howl of pain from the study.  The sound hurt her in a way that was much different than what Remy had done to her and it felt odd for her to feel such empathy for someone else.  She wasn’t really sure she liked the feeling much.

He saved my ass and I owe him
, she thought. 
That means I keep him from going all wolfy.  Once that’s done, we go our separate ways.

She wasn’t entirely sure how she felt about that, either.

Things had become increasingly more complicated since she’d met the young vet student.  Her own life had been reduced to shambles.  Once he was gone, she might have a chance of salvaging something.  What, exactly, she had no idea.  She wasn’t sure if Vladimir would take her back, and she wasn’t enthusiastic about returning to see if he would since he might just put a bullet in her head.

Despite the disturbing thoughts running through her mind, the mental wandering had helped her to push the physical pain away.  It wasn’t until she caught the sight of movement that her eyes shot up and focused.  She was pulled from her reverie, the pain of her wounds flooding back into her.

Cyrus had come out of the study with a first aid kit.  She mentally prepared herself for the added sting that she was about to feel when he cleaned her wounds.

“How badly did this affect his situation?” she asked as he knelt down next to her and opened the kit.

Cyrus removed items from the kit, preparing to attend to the wounds.  His eyes looked at the damage done to her backside.  There were a number of gashes from the whip and even where it hadn’t broken open her skin there were large red welts, causing the majority of her back to be swollen.

“I’m not going to lie about it,” he said, dowsing a rag with peroxide.  “That was about the last thing he needed to be doing at this stage.  Adrenaline feeds the virus.  Makes it harder to drive out.  There wasn’t any stopping him, though.  I tried to get him to stay behind and let me find you on my own, but he insisted.”

Nadya’s jaw clenched as the wet rag touched against her back, feeling the cold of the liquid and the burning of the peroxide against her wounds.

“You should have tried harder,” she said through her teeth, not at all happy about the news.  “Or just left me and not told him anything.”

“You’d be dead now,” Cyrus pointed out, continuing to clean the wounds on her back.  The rag grew red from her blood.  “Do you really care about him that much?”

Anger flowed into her at his comment and she had an urge to snap at him and tell him it was none of his fucking business.  Instead, she managed to cool herself down enough to offer a more detailed response.  ”I threw my life away so that he’d have a shot at having one for himself.  If that all goes to hell, then everything I’ve done has been for nothing.  And then it won’t matter if either of us are alive or dead.  If this cure doesn’t take, I’ll kill him, for myself as much as for him.  It’s the only shot I have at redemption.”

Finishing with her back, Cyrus set the bloody rag aside and took another, putting more peroxide on it.  He moved to her neck, cleaning the blood from the bite there.  “Strange way to earn redemption, by murdering the person you’ve done so much to save.”

The more he spoke, the more he annoyed Nadya.  “You’re starting to see why you should have left me with the vampire.  If I didn’t come back, and you didn’t cure him, then you’d be able to hide him, keep him safe.”

She supposed that was a possibility anyway, although she knew she wouldn’t be able to lie to Vladimir if he asked what had happened.  It wasn’t that she wanted to die, but she’d have been happier knowing that what she’d been striving to accomplish all night had succeeded even if she didn’t live to see it through.

That and she didn’t like the thought that she was now indebted to Ulbrecht even more now, as well as Cyrus.  There were only so many people she could make things up to, and it seemed like the further she traveled along the path she’d chosen, the farther it took her from the life she’d had only a night before.  That life had been dangerous and full of death, but she’d been content and even felt safe.

Now she only felt alone.