Page 14 of Even Vampires Bleed (Even Ever After #2)

Cassiopé

I was proud when I managed to shut the other guy’s mouth, but now that we’re upstairs and I can see the carnage that happened here while we were downstairs, I’m regretting it a bit.

Why?

Because everything went smoothly. The hidden entrance was right where Anna told us it was, only a dozen guards were stationed around the castle, and only half that were in the dungeons when the first team arrived.

It’s bloody though. Obviously it’s bloody. The team from the dungeons came flying in their fully shifted forms so no one had any weapon. We don’t even have clothes to dress in, so imagine the carnage they had to enact with fangs and claws.

Nothing is pretty, and Léandre’s wing tips are right at home in the blood-spattered dungeons.

Marcus is in the dungeons. The rest of the team is in the dungeons. The guy who appointed himself team leader told us that when we climbed up the stairs.

But we still haven’t found my father, and when I see the state that we found the survivors in the dungeons in, I’m starting to fear that I might be too late.

I’ve opened every door in the basement—yes, there was a second level underground. I’ve found contraptions that seemed to be right out of torture books.

I’ve found human remains. I’ve found shifters covered in their own excrement with missing limbs. They weren’t in the cells we first opened; they weren’t even locked down. I don’t think they couldn’t move on their own.

I’ve found every nightmare I could conjure, and yet I feel like the worst nightmare is yet to come.

“Here,” someone yells from somewhere above me in the castle.

I know deep in my mind what they have found, so I run.

I probably should be careful, because I’m naked, don’t wear shoes, and the ground is covered in blood. I almost fell on my butt twice before I even reached the door to the inhabitable levels.

There are bloody footprints that make the ground slippery, but that’s not all. The castle smells like a mix of bleach and blood. This is definitely not the first time this castle is seeing blood.

I have no doubt it saw blood at the time it was built—French kings were rarely very merciful—but this is recent and pungent.

It makes me want to vomit.

I follow the voices up on the first floor—and the footprints—and face a group of five warriors all around one door.

They are whispering and I can’t hear what they’re saying, but the tone is one that doesn’t give me high hope for what—or who—they’re talking about.

No one seems to want to cross the threshold of that door. As if whatever is going on inside could attack them or infect them.

I know what is inside. I know who is inside.

“Let me see him.”

My voice is barely above a whisper, but they all hear me perfectly.

Anna moves aside, but stops me when I join them at the threshold.

“Cass, you don’t want to see him like this,” she tells me, and I can hear in her voice that it’s painful for her to tell me that, but I don’t care.

“Is he alive?”

I strain my ear for a heartbeat, focusing on anyone other than the five heartbeats right next to me.

“Yes, but…” she starts, but at the same time I hear a very faint heartbeat on the other side.

“It’s my dad we’re talking about,” I say, and I don’t know how my voice doesn’t waver with the fear that is shaking me from the inside.

“I know, but he wouldn’t want you to see him like this,” she tells me. Two of the guys that are still at the door nod in agreement with Anna.

“He’s not here to tell me that,” I say with as much strength as I can muster. “He’s there on the other side of that door, and there is nothing or no one that will prevent me from seeing him.”

She must see the resolve in my eyes because she removes her hand. The men at the door part to let me through.

I choke on my breath.

She was right.

I’m not ready.

I almost vomit in my mouth at the sight.

My dad is laid on an operating table that looks right out of a horror movie.

His ankles and wrists are tightened to the table with metal bands and there are leather-like bands anchored to the table at hip, forehead, and throat level.

His body is not moving, but I can see his eyes erratically sliding under his eyelids. But that’s not what made me hold my breath when I entered.

There are tubes everywhere. Every blood vessel has a needle in it, with fluids of various colors moving through them, and his torso and head are open.

The room isn’t aseptic—it’s just a normal room—and yet it’s been used as if they were in a sterilized environment.

The skin of my father’s torso is open and held by clamps on the sides. I can see his heart slowly beating. There are pieces of what look like organs on the side table, as if my dad has been cut open just for the sake of seeing how fast his organs would grow back.

The tubes and the open chest could actually be okay. We heal fast. He might have to sleep for a while to regenerate, but he’ll survive that.

But I slowly walk to the side and look at what is going on with his head.

Like the torso, it’s open. I can see my dad’s brain.

I want to vomit, but I keep looking just to be sure what is happening there. There is no tube like the rest of the body, but small cables are still “plugged” into his brain and I think I saw something glint.

I refuse to even blink just to be sure and… here it shone again.

That looks way worse than what was done to Léandre, and I just feel helpless all of a sudden.

No, I can’t think like that. My dad is alive. Whatever was done to him can be undone, I’m sure of it.

“Anna, did you call Elhyor already?”

She’s the only one with a holo here.

“He’s sending someone,” Anna answers, and I slouch to the ground.

Everything is going to be alright.