Bruno grunted his assent to Davos and led me towards the back wall of the bar where two doors were standing side by side. I went into the one with the little skirt-wearing stick figure and immediately shut myself into a stall. I took in a shaky inhale, held it, then let it out in a swift whoosh.
It had been awhile since I’d been in therapy, and over a year since my last panic attack, but I could feel the cold, creeping hand of one scratching the inside of my chest.
I put a hand over my heart, and my pulse was running rampant.
Davos hadn’t threatened me, hadn’t made an aggressive move, and hadn’t done a single damn thing to remind me of Dr. Kesteral, the man who had once ripped open my rib cage and pulled out my still-beating heart to show to me, but something about this scenario, and the surrender of my power even for show…it was setting off all the alarm bells inside me.
I braced a hand on each wall of the bathroom stall and closed my eyes. One…two…three… I kept counting to ten, taking a measured breath between each number. Not a perfect solution, but one that would dull the edge of what I was feeling.
I could get through the night.
Maybe when I got back to L.A. it would be time to call Dr. Woodbine, the psych expert who worked at our office there. Talking to someone who knew the ins and outs of the supernatural community was my only option. When I’d tried to explain to a human therapist that Kesteral had broken my arm just to see how long it would take to heal, they were supportive and gave me PTSD coping techniques.
It was when I told them what I’d done to him afterwards that they tended to balk.
I targeted that memory, the recollection of him sitting alone in a chair as I approached with my sword in hand. The moment he realized no one would stop me from killing him was as close to a good memory of Kesteral as I could get.
I was strong.
I was a survivor.
I was going to find Sig.
Taking one final deep breath, I opened my eyes. The first thing I saw was a familiar symbol writ large on the back of the stall door. The odd upside-down seagull.
A second later someone grabbed me from behind and pulled me through the now-missing bathroom wall.
Chapter Nineteen
The hand clasped over my mouth muted my scream, but nothing could keep me from fighting back.
What the fuck?
It wasn’t every day I got pulled through the back of a bathroom stall, and while I tried to reconcile myself to the surrealness of being dragged into a dark hole in the wall, I was also trying to break free of my assailant.
Self-defense 101 taught you that even if someone was holding your arms, you could still slap backwards and get a good shot in at the groin.
I smacked my attacker hard, and he grunted. I say he even though I couldn’t see, because the grunt was decidedly male, and the arms holding me had been very hairy.
He didn’t let go of me, but he did release my mouth, which gave me enough of an edge to bite him in the hand. That was when he let go of me.
The door had closed behind us, and we were in the dark, presumably in a room or passage hidden behind the women’s bathroom stalls, which was creepy as hell and just got creepier the more you thought about it.
But we were also in a vampire bar, which meant this dude was probably a vampire. My window of time to defend myself was shrinking by the second because he’d recover quickly, and when he did, he would be mad, and an angry vampire wasn’t exactly a fair fight one-on-one.
I grabbed the knife out of my boot, and when he lunged at me a second time, I had it to his throat before he could get to mine.
The blade tickling the skin below his jaw gave him pause.
A thin line of blood traced down his neck.
My eyes had adjusted to the darkness, so now I was able to see that the vampire who’d attacked me had been none other than Bruno the guard.
“Jesus, you couldn’t even wait until I was out of the stall? I thought your deal was sloppy seconds.”
He blinked at me, clearly still expecting the timid Jessica ruse I’d favored when trying to win my way in with the vamps. Hook, line, and sinker, only now I was stuck inside a wall with this guy and had no idea how to get out.
I pressed the blade harder to his throat. “What am I doing in here?”