Before he could say anything else, there was a metal scraping at the far side of the room, like a bolt was being slid back. A door creaked loudly on its hinges, and hard-soled shoes clomped across the cold concrete floor. There were others following behind the leader, but Marcus was focused on the footsteps of the authority figure. It had to be Minerva.
The newcomers appeared from around a corner, and at the head of the little pack was a tall, lanky woman with long brown hair. Her thin-lipped mouth was an ugly gash across her mouth. Even when she was smiling, it looked like it was more of a pained grimace.
“You’re finally awake,” Minerva announced, throwing her hands out as if she were welcoming him into her parlor rather than her torture chamber.
“What the hell are you doing, Minerva?”
She cackled, the sound bouncing wildly off the stone walls. “I thought that would be obvious.” Stopping just a few feet away from Marcus, she bent down. The neck of her blouse gaped, giving him an unnecessarily clear view of her breasts right in front of his face. He gritted his teeth and kept his eyes on her face. Even if he wasn’t a gay man, he was sure he wouldn’t find a damn thing appealing about her.
Her long, lean face was full of harsh angles, and her skin was pulled tight over her skull. There was something about her that made Marcus think she always looked half-starved. It made him wonder if that had been her unfortunate lot in life as a human before some vampire finally took pity on her. As a vampire, food was always easy to find.
Even now, there was a smear of blood around one corner of her mouth as if she’d fed just before coming down to taunt Marcus and his brothers.
“Haven’t you figured it out?” she teased. “I’m taking over.”
“Bullshit.”
“Really? Isn’t that exactly what you and your annoying brothers were planning when you started those rumors with Winslow?”
She straightened and snapped her fingers over his shoulder. One of her little flunkies darted away for a moment and then came running back with a folding chair in hand. He carefully placed it in front of Marcus and Minerva sat.
“I’ll give you this—it wasn’t a bad plan. Winslow immediately went running, spreading the stories you and your little pet started. Thanks to you both, Winslow and Robert are dead. That’s five of the eleven dead now. Only six more to go.”
“What? You plan to kill all of the Ministry?”
“I plan to destroy all of the Ministry!” she shouted, shooting straight to her feet to tower over Marcus. “They are a useless waste who value only wealth and privilege. They’ve done nothing to protect or lead our people. We’ve floundered for centuries, forced to remain in the shadows when we should be ruling this planet.”
Flopping down in the seat, her legs spread wide, Minerva glared at Marcus. She lifted a booted foot and pressed her heel into one of the gunshot wounds in his shoulder. Marcus tried to clamp his mouth shut, but the pain was excruciating, and he was forced to cry out. Only then did Minerva relent, putting her boot on the floor with a heavy thud.
“I don’t understand your attack on my family,” Marcus said between pants. “If anything, we’ve helped you.”
“Except for the fact that the Variks represent the very worst of our people,” Minerva snarled. Leaning forward, she grabbed Marcus’s face by his jaw, her long nails digging into his cheeks. “Rafe tells humans that he’s a vampire. He makes us into a joke for humans to laugh at as he fucks them and drinks himself into oblivion.”
“I celebrate that I’m a vampire. I don’t hide who I am!” Rafe said proudly.
Minerva rolled her eyes before she looked over her shoulder at one of her minions. With a little jerk of her head, he walked over and delivered a series of blows. Rafe’s pained cries echoed through the room and Marcus strained against his chains, desperate to grab her, to stop the man hurting his brother. But there was no escape.
“And he’s just the tip of the iceberg,” Minerva continued when the only sounds were Rafe’s labored breaths. “His annoying twin seems to think that we need curing. His experiments are going to destroy us.”
“Afraid he isn’t going to share his discoveries with you?” Rafe taunted and Marcus flinched. Rafe really didn’t know when to keep his mouth shut.
Luckily Minerva chose to ignore him this time. “And then that fucking mother of yours. Her madness made us all look bad. Protecting your stupid human. Attacking her own clan. She should have been destroyed centuries ago instead of protected and coddled.”
“Julianna’s condition was not her fault.”
“Too bad. Vampires are the pinnacle of evolution. We are perfection and we should always embrace that perfection. We are not a joke for humans. We are not madness. We are not something to be cured. And we most certainly don’t protect and hide those weaknesses.” Her glare sharpened on Marcus. “You’re the worst of them all. Time and again you’ve gone before the Ministry, protecting your worthless clan, making excuses for them, making promises that will never be kept. Each of them should have been executed a hundred times over, but you’ve negotiated, promised, cajoled, and bribed our so-called leaders into looking the other way when it came to the Variks.”