But the headache was gone, and so was Vyr.
Crap. She dug around her purse for the tiny plastic baggie Nevada and Candace had given her this morning and pulled out a tiny video camera. It was disguised as a gold star sticker, so she stuck it on the back of her clipboard and pressed it once. There was a soft beep that told her it was on, and then nothing. It just looked like she’d decorated her clipboard, and now she had twenty-four hours of memory on this little camera to gather footage against this prison and against the New IESA. Riyah rushed to put the burner phone in her purse, locked it in the bottom drawer of her desk, locked her office, then speed-walked toward the elevators that would take her down to the lower levels. In a daze, she swiped her security card at each reader and moved deeper and deeper toward the lair.
She was still walking in that daze when someone knocked insanely loud on one of the windows of the cells. Riyah was shocked to see Nox Fuller and Torren Taylor in one of the all-white rooms. Nox was plastered against the window with the biggest grin on his face, and Torren was lying in the middle of the floor, all spread out, looking like a giant starfish. The dark-haired man was massive. And so was Nox, who was knocking again. He made a series of hand gestures, but Riyah couldn’t understand sign language. “I don’t know sign language,” she said loud enough for him to hear through the glass.
“He doesn’t know sign language either,” Torren said from the floor. “He just likes to annoy everyone and pretend he does.”
She studied the picture of the smeared red penis someone had drawn on the back wall. “Is that…is that drawn in blood?”
“It’s not weird,” Nox said through the glass. “Torren and I got in a fight, and I had extra blood. This room is fuckin’ boring. All white? Whoever the decorator of this place is, I want their name and number. I have formal complaints.”
Riyah huffed a laugh—the first one today.
“You’re Riyah, right?” Nox asked.
The behemoth on the floor rolled his head toward her and narrowed his eyes, then stood smoothly and came to stand beside Nox.
“I am. I can schedule a counseling session with you if you feel like you need to talk,” she said smoothly, in case the camera up in the corner could pick up audio.
“Oh, I feel super feely,” Nox assured her. “I probably need, like, thirty years of counseling. Can you pencil me in? Torren, too? He’s super-violent right now and needs to talk about his feelings also.”
“Yep,” Torren said blandly. “I have lots of feelings.”
With a sympathetic nod, she said, “I completely understand. It’s a big adjustment coming into shifter prison. How did you two end up in the lower levels?”
Nox grinned. “Fighting.”
“Each other?” she asked.
“Fighting everyone. This is like time-out for the super baddies, huh. They gave us lunch, and I was excited because I thought it was mashed potatoes, but nope. It was gruel. I mean it tasted fuckin’ delicious, but it was definitely not mashed potatoes. Can you put in a request for steak? I like mine rare. Like…just walk the cow by the fire. And we need some veggies so we don’t get scurvy.”
“Scurvy. Like what pirates used to get when they didn’t have enough vegetables on long trips…stealing…”
“Say booty,” Nox said through a grin.
Riyah sighed and repeated, “Booty.”
“Yep! Have you talked to the girls?”
“Shhh.” She shushed him low through clenched teeth as she gave a quick glance up at the camera.
“Oh, that camera has no audio. We got put in this cell on purpose.”
“On…purpose.” What the heck? “You know how to work the system in here?”
“Hell, yeah. When you request the steak, can you ask Euless about it in the cafeteria? He’s one of ours. He won’t spit in it.”
“Oh.” She blinked slowly. “Sure.”
“Thanks, Ri-Ri,” Nox said.
Torren rolled his eyes and muttered an apology for Nox.
“I’m going to see your alpha.”
Torren perked up and pressed his hands on the glass. “How is he?”
“Dude, I already told you he’s fine,” Nox said. To Riyah though, Nox shook his head slightly and gave her a warning look with his eyes.
“He’s doing okay, considering,” she said. It wasn’t a lie. She knew better than to try those with shifters.
“Considering what?” Torren asked, straightening his spine.
Nox was standing there with his eyes gone round, lips pursed, and shaking his head jerkily. So she shouldn’t tell Torren that Vyr lost the dragon?
“I’ll ask about the steak. See you soon,” she blurted out and walked away without looking back.
On one of their late-night talks, Vyr had spoken of Torren like he was a flesh-and-blood brother, and if Nox didn’t want Torren to know how bad it was for Vyr, she needed to listen. She’d done her research on Vyr’s crew before she accepted this job, just to see what she was in for. And to get a better feel for Vyr. The people an alpha gathered under him said a lot about the kind of person they were. Vyr had gathered some very loyal friends. And Torren had pledged himself to protecting the Red Dragon from age seven. If he was having a violence problem in here, she didn’t need to set him off with gory details. That would only get him and Nox hurt in that little cell. She made a mental note to bring Nox in for counseling first to better understand how to handle Torren’s session afterward.
She swiped her card at Emmitt’s observation station, careful to keep her clipboard hugged to her chest so the camera could catch everything.
“What are you doing here?” he muttered from his rolling chair as he watched footage of two guards escorting Vyr up an elevator. Vyr stared directly into the camera, and it hurt to witness the emptiness there. Two dragon eyes, frozen into his face. Vyr swayed with the movement of the elevator, unblinking. The scar on his head was stark and red, and he had a black eye that wasn’t healing.
“What happened to his face?”
Emmitt shrugged. “Dragon extraction was successful. Now he doesn’t heal like he used to.”
“The dragon is…dead?”
“Dead as a doornail. Look at those eyes. He’ll look like a freak for the rest of his life, but the world is safe.”
Stay calm. Stay steady.
“I guess I’m still confused about this place,” she murmured, sitting in the other chair. She rested the clipboard on her thighs and swung back and forth slowly in the chair. “Do we have to take the animals out of all the lower level shifters?”
“Nah, just the ones we want to duplicate. And when we get monsters like Vyr, it’s better for everyone if they just disappear. He’s helpless now. Look at him. You saw those videos of him burning Covington to the ground? And him blowing up police cruisers the day Butte brought him in? Well…now he’s just a man.”
“Who was sentenced to a year in prison. Not a cleansing.”
“Who’s gonna miss the Red Dragon?” he gritted out, ripping his gaze from the screen and glaring at her. “You?”