Garroway took my hand, squeezing, and then our bodies separated. He rushed to the closed door of the jail where it sounded like the screams were coming from.
I hurried after him, not wanting to be alone and naked and scared in this vast manor. Goosebumps ran along my arms and legs.
Garro plodded through the chilly corridor to Dimmon’s cell—the site of our unhinged sex—where the door was swung open. He stopped and backpedaled in front of me, gasping. As I rounded the grayskin, he held an arm out to keep me back. “Sephania, no—”
It was too late. I’d already slipped behind him to look over his shoulder.
When I gazed into the dark cell, a wave of dizziness hit me and threatened to bring me under all over again. I swayed as an intense coppery scent flared my nostrils, mixing with sharp odors of human filth and piss.
It was perhaps the most startling discovery I’d ever made.
Dimmon Plank lay prone on a wooden table, on his back and writhing. He was chained to it by large shackles along his burly gut and legs. His upper half squirmed. Blood spilled in rivulets down every corner of the table—so much fucking blood. It practicallysplashedon the ground, pooling around the legs of the table.
But that was not the worst of it. No, it was the gory sight of what lay within those bloody pools, scraped away ever-so-delicately with an expert scalper’s touch.
Human skin.
Skartovius Ashfen stood over Dimmon’s body with a dagger in hand. His cloak discarded, he was shirtless—smooth, blood-spattered, ivory skin stared back at me out of the dreary darkness.
As he hummed to himself and lifted the blade, another strip of skin fell from its edge, joining the leathery pile at his feet.
Skar glanced over his shoulder, feeling our presence in the doorway. Blood dripped from the corners of his mouth and his eyes were unhinged and crazed. “Ah, for shame. I was hoping not to wake you with the fool’s squawking. Alas, I suppose it can’t be helped. He has seen better days.” The vampire gave an easy, casual shrug and then turned and bowed his head to resume his grotesque ministrations.
Skar was skinning Dimmon’s flesh from his body . . . while keeping him alive so he felt every torturous nick of the blade.
When my eyes narrowed, focusing on the table, I could make out the splotchy, ribbed outline of pink muscle staring back at me. Dimmon was completely naked, his large wobbling gut hiding the rancid thing he had once used on me.
He went limp, unconscious from the agony of his torture. The hand I had burned black in a fit of lunacy was gone completely, soldered closed by a flap of burnt skin to create a disgusting stump. The rest of the skin along his arm had been meticulously peeled away to reveal the muscle underneath.
Bile rose up in my throat. The dizziness only grew worse the longer I listened to thatsnick-snick-snickof Skartovius stripping away Dimmon’s flesh like it was the skin of an apple.
I turned and violently retched on the ground.
Garroway yelled, “Master, what in all that’s Damned are you doing?!”
Skar ignored him and frowned once I’d straightened and wiped the vomit with my forearm. “You’ll need a stronger stomach than that, little temptress.”
“This . . . this is . . . puremadness!” I choked out. My voice was raspy and the words burned as they sizzled up my esophagus.
“No, not madness.” Skar crossed his arms and tapped his bloody dagger on his forearm. “This is revenge. As I understand it, you were having difficulty exacting retribution on this wretched waste of a man. I have no such reservations.” He licked his bloody lips, brow furrowing in thought. “After what he did to you, well, death is far too easy an outcome, no?” He hummed to himself, still lost in the throes of whatever insanity ailed him. Pacing toward us, he muttered, “So I concocted a way to make sure he feelseverything. . . for eternity.” He smiled then—wicked and lost. “Consider this my gift, Sephania. My aftercare for such a glorious evening.”
Garroway looked up at the nobleblood with an expression that saddened me. It was fear, when I could almost guarantee he had never shown that face to Skartovius before—at least notbecauseof Skartovius.
Garro didn’t recognize his master in that moment.
“Skar . . . youdidn’t,” he breathed. “Why is your mouth bloody?”
The nobleblood clapped him on the shoulder. “That is the best part of the whole thing, cub. Look closely.” He pointed at Dimmon, a disgusting lump of bloody, pulpy flesh.
I staggered forward, leaning closer from the doorway and narrowing my eyes in the darkness.
Garroway gasped first. “No.”
“Oh yes, my pet.”
My eyes became saucers when I finally noticed what dazzled Garroway so horribly. It was the edge of Dimmon’s shoulder, a ragged, torn bit of flesh was beginning to coil around itself and thread together as it inched down his bicep at a glacial pace.
Dimmon washealingbefore my eyes.
