If I could just get my hands around him, I could snap his neck.
The fight in me dies nearly as quickly as it came as pulls back. I watch as he quickly spits what looks like black goo onto the floor before licking the cut and pressing his thumb to it. He doesn’t look at me as he makes his way over the entirely of my body. He sucks each cut he makes, sometimes spitting nothing but blood out a bit of blood out, sometimes spitting thick, black goo onto the floor.
Each time he extracts the strange substance, my body takes on a life of its own as it writhes against the chains and tells me all the vile ways it would kill or dismember Dante.
The whole process makes me feel sick.
Finally, Dante cleans the switchblade off on his pants before snapping it shut and slipping it back into his pocket. He presses the back of his hand to my forehead, and I’m surprised to find it no longer feels nearly as icy as it did before.
“That should do it,” he says, his eyes returning to a clear, icy blue again as he grabs the chains and carefully lowers me to the floor, “you may speak again, Evi.”
I don’t say anything as he removes the cuffs from my body. The fog in my mind now gone, my thoughts are now flooding my mind in a chaotic mess as I try to sort through them.
Finally, one question rises above all the others.
“What was that?”
“What?”
“Whatever you just sucked out of my body,” I whisper, my throat somehow raw from my silent screams pain and fury.
“Venom.”
“Venom? What kind of venom?”
Dante sighs, his jaw working as if he’s trying to decide what to tell me.
“I’ll explain later, but first let’s get you cleaned up.”