Page 7 of The Midnight Order (The Thorngray Vampires Duet #1)

Silver

Curses? Vampires?

Sitting up on the hospital bed, I look around the room. The men are enormous, even the one in the pristine Brioni suit. It smells like a hospital room in here. Not like I'm in the manor of death I've heard about from the locals.

My fingers coil into the starched blankets beneath me, and I shift on the bed.

The faint smell of vomit curls in the air, reminding me I'd been sick, reminding me I'm still drunk.

"Are you alright?" the doctor asks, waving his light in front of my eyes again.

"I'm fine." Swatting him away, I wince at the intrusion of light.

"You don't look it. You look pale."

The tattooed one chuckles low in his throat. "She's realizing we're real. That all this is real. Vampires," he finishes with a wave of his hands like he's telling a spooky story to a group of five-year-olds.

"I don't believe in vampires."

My stalker scoffs. "You're going to ignore that which is before you? I thought you were smarter than that."

I swallow.

Of course, I don't believe that they're vampires. This isn't reality.

This can't be reality.

There's the meat of it. If they're what they say they are, then what else is real? What else is lurking in the world I thought I lived in? Throughout the world, I thought I dominated in life.

I'm a strong, independent woman, and one thing I’ve always wanted is a man who strips all that away and makes me feel cared for and loved while handling everything, so I don't have to.

These men have the aura that they'd be that for me, but they're spouting madness, and I can't get behind it. Or I'm insane too.

My stalker walks to the end of the bed, his massive frame leaning over, his red eyes locking on mine. "Want me to show you? Want me to prove to you that I go bump in the night?"

"Lowell," the suited one warns.

Lowell straightens. "Don't worry. I'm not going to eat her. You know that."

"Do I?"

The doctor moves around the room, gathering supply packs and miscellaneous items before placing them onto a tray and pulling it close. "I'm going to place an IV. You're very dehydrated."

"How do you know I'm dehydrated?" I whisper as he slowly grabs my arm, watching me for pushback.

"A blue bucket of beer will do that to a person." The tattooed man crosses his arms over his chest as if my questions and unbelieving nature are crawling under his skin.

"Right," I whisper. "I'm drunk. That's all this is."

The doctor laughs, rubbing an alcohol pad over my arm after he finds a good vein. "You're not drunk. I just cleaned half your alcohol content off the floor."

My eyes flick down to where I'd been sick. The spot beneath his rolling chair is clean, and my mind boggles at the pristine floor.

How had he cleaned it so fast? How hadn't I noticed?

Neither of those things is something I need to worry about right now, so I set them aside. The box I've been keeping my worries in is full, so I drop them beside it, sighing internally.

"You're going to feel a slight pinch," the doctor says, and I look away from the needle and latch my eyes shut.

I hear a scoff. "She can't even look at her blood being drawn."

"It's the needle," I whisper as if trying to defend myself.

I don't like needles. I can't watch its entrance through my skin to find my vein. Something about it makes me queasy.

"Once her testing's over, she'll go home," one of them replies. It sounded like the smooth cadence of the suited one's voice.

He seems calm and level-headed.

Maybe he's the one I can convince to let me go.

Although doctors are supposed to have some instilled moral code of ethics, right?

"Alright, you can open your eyes now," the doctor says on cue, as if he knew I was thinking about him.

I watch as he hooks my IV to a pole and begins a drip from a yellow bag.

"What is that?"

"Fluids with some added electrolytes," he answers.

Tattoos laughs. "Better known as a banana bag. Don't worry, we've all been there. We've all also been the good doctor's pincushion."

I don't want to be anyone's pincushion. I want to go home...

I keep those thoughts to myself as I inwardly plan how to escape them.

They claim to be vampires, so their insanity must be their weakness, or so I hope.

I can work with that.

I only need to suss out which of them is the one who's going to be the most vulnerable while with me alone, because that's my target.

"She still doesn't believe," Tattoos grumbles.

He's assessed the calculating look in my eyes. I need to stay vigilant.

"Who the hell would?" Stalker replies.

"We need her to believe..."

Suit cuts off Tattoos. "No, we don't. We test her and then we toss her back; that's always been the deal. It's not changing because she's... her."

Because I'm me? What's so different about me that has Tattoos wanting to break their usual protocol?

Then again, I don't care. Reminding myself I don't care doesn't sate the voracious curiosity in my belly, however.

"I need her to believe,” Tattoos all but whispers, his tone dark and demanding.

My toes curl into the cross-grained blue blanket beneath me.

"This isn't about only you. Thinking the way you did, acting on instinct, is what landed us in this predicament in the first fucking place."

The statement has me curious about what Tattoos had done, but I swiftly forget all about the questions eddying in my mind.

Tattoos moves as quick as I can blink. One minute, he's on the far wall toward the end of my hospital bed; the next, he’s behind the doctor, still sitting to my left.

Holding the doctor's head in his hands, I note the gentle way he cradles it.

“Is this necessary?” Stalker pipes up, his tone sounding almost bored with the entire situation.

Tattoos bares his fangs, hissing as he locks eyes with me. His bite at the good doctor's neck is swift, causing the doctor to arch up off his chair. I notice the erection in his scrubs growing thick with tension before I note the trickle of blood down his throat where Tattoos is lazily sucking.

"That's enough!" Stalker shouts. "I don't need you blood-crazed!"

I swallow thickly. My heart is racing a mile a minute.

My eyes can't look away. They're pinned to the scene before me as Tattoos licks the doctor's wound.

He whispers in the doctor's ear, and the doctor moans in response. "How am I supposed to get any work done now?"

Tattoos straightens, glaring at me.

"Vampires are real," I whisper.

"What good did all that do? When her testing is done, she won't get to keep the memory," Suit says.

Tattoos walks closer, his eyes never leaving mine. "She's different. I can feel it."

"Oh, fuck off. Don't raise anyone else’s hopes. You've said that before." Suit pushes off the wall and leans over the right side of my bed, coming nearly nose to nose with Tattoos.

I'm lying beneath two vampires about to go toe to toe, and I still have alcohol swirling in my veins. There's no way I'd survive the brush-up. Not to mention, I'm cuffed to the bed. There's no way I'd escape.

"Everyone needs to calm the fuck down," Stalker says, his tone exerting control over the situation when it had felt like it was slipping.

"You're not going to do anything about what he just did?" Suit argues.

I thought Suit was in charge, but I'm getting the idea that maybe I was wrong in that assumption.

"She understands now. Don't you, little lamb?" Stalker asks me, directing his eyes towards me. Their stare feels like a thousand-pound weight sitting on my chest.

"I do." I hate to admit it, but he wasn't going to let me do otherwise.

Stalker pushes off the wall, clapping Tattoos on the shoulder. "Take a walk."

"But I—” Tattoos tries to argue.

"That wasn't a suggestion," Suit cuts in, and I'm very confused by the dynamic.

I'm inwardly reeling at the revelation that they genuinely are vampires. Fear is radiating through my veins, and I can't calm the quake in my hands, so I wring them together on my lap, the itchy, starched nature of the blanket giving me an outlet.

"We're not going to hurt you," the doctor says, rolling his chair closer.

His hand curls over my arm, and the same alarm bells I had in town, shaking the man’s hand in the Radio Hut, return. Like a sharp, dark omen is seeping from his touch, warning me to run.

"Please, let me go. I won't tell anyone you took me."

My begging fails to garner sympathy from him, and he sighs, turning away. "This won't take long, and then you'll be home."

I'm left reeling for a while. The remaining three men gather in the corner and whisper-argue amongst themselves.

The adrenaline dump from realizing what they are, combined with heavy exhaustion, left me working to fight through to keep my eyes open.

Stalker leaves the room in a huff, and the doctor tells Suit he’ll be back soon. Then, I’m staring at one man, a vampire, as he hangs his head in what looks like defeat.

I watch him for a while as he grapples with something inward before stalking closer and taking a seat on the chair, rolling nearer and placing his hand on the bedside.

His fingertips nearly touch my hip. "I'm sorry about all this. It's difficult for us, too.”

"That doesn't comfort me if that's what you were going for."

"I was. I don't want to make you uncomfortable. That's not our goal."

While alone, this man looks... vulnerable. He looks tired.

"Then why do this at all?"

"Because we have to." Grabbing the edge of the mask on his face, he tugs. "It's hard to explain, and it sounds mental. I understand the fantastical elements of our lives, I really do, but they're still our lives. You know? We can't escape them."

The doctor walks back in, and Suit turns to look at him.

"Time to go. I have work to do. You said you wanted her tested and gone ASAP, so I'll need to begin."

The word gone is said with so much angst that even my chest tightens, and I'm the one who wants to be gone.

I don't want to know that this world exists. Fuck, I don't want to be a pincushion for vampires, either.

The doctor sits where Suit had been, taking my hand in his.

"I'm sorry for how we took you and for how they behaved.

This will be painless and will be over sooner than you think.

Just work with me, and I'll have you home in no time.

" Even as he promises that, his eyes are locked on the connection of our hands.

A thrumming moves through my arm, using the canals of bones and nerves to radiate into my body. I ignore the feeling and chalk it up to the blue bucket of beer I ingested earlier.

The kind way he thumbs over the top of my hand, and the longing look in his eyes, is something I can work with.

He's shown his hand.

The good doctor is my ticket out of here, and not by my playing nice, either.

He's vulnerable and seeking something he thinks I can give him; his defenses are down.

Switching into survival mode, I squeeze his hand back, testing.

His red eyes light, flicking up to me with hope rimming them.

Yes. He's my way out of here.

The only thing is, I need to make sure I don't let my defenses down because I can see these dominating, dark men growing on me over time, and I can't let that happen.

I have to get out of here before it can.