Down the Rabbit Hole - Book Four

1. The Sound of Madness

VYNDREN

The enchanted locks arranged across the brass doors all begin to play their out-of-pitch, eerie melody as they are unlocked. The huge doors elevate upwards like wings and the nurses scamper in; the wheels on their cart chirp obnoxiously and for some reason it's these little annoyances that are more torturous than the actual torture this place dishes out.

"Rise and shine, Blood Prince! It's medication time!" the sadistic nurses announce happily.

I've been doing time here at the Depp Asylum for the Criminally Insane for only two days, but already I'm familiar with the routine.

Huge needles stab into my arms and the sides of my neck. Pink and green chemicals are injected into my bloodstream. They instantly render me nauseous and leave my vision uncontrollably swimming. Everything keeps changing colors as the drugs take full effect, and now everything around me keeps rapidly growing and shrinking as if I'm trapped on some kind of psychedelic carousel from hell...

I'm unchained from the wall my straitjacket is fastened to and I crumple into the waiting wheelchair. The nurses readily chain my arms and legs down to the chair before they roll me out into the hall.

I'm so delirious and drugged, everything mixes together like the nauseating cacophonous of a drunken circus...

Fellow inmates hurl themselves at the bars on either side of me as the nurses wheel me down the corridor. The deafening screaming, the manic laughter, the poorly executed catcalls and the hysterical crying from the inmates mingle together like a lullaby, they might as well be singing to me as I'm pushed past.

"Dr. Bones? Here it is!" the nurses uses my chair to shove open the double doors to Bones' lab. "Patient Zero! It's ready for therapy again!"

Dr. Bones whirls around, the surgical mask she wears looks like a glowing green skeleton's jaw, she holds a bloody scalpel in her left hand. "Good gods, is it really?" she glances over her shoulder at the grandfather clock. "Time really does fly when one has fun," she removes her wet rubber gloves, then her goggles and the mask before motioning at her crowd of nurses. "Take inmate 99 back to their cell, keep them sedated until I can finish the lobotomy. I have a session with my favorite patient to conduct."

The fleet scurries around her, wheeling the operating table out the side door, the bloody sheet that trails after it briefly gets caught under the door before they manage to pull it through.

"Your Highness," Bones smirks as she leans against the front of her desk. "You look simply ravishing this morning."

I growl unintelligibly behind the witch's bridle I wear.

The nurses roll my wheelchair in front of one of the closed windows. I flinch with agony as they suddenly throw open the shutters with a bang, waves of painful sunlight pour over me.

"Ahh, still getting used to the sunshine, are we?" Bones chuckles smugly as she watches me squirm with distress.

The light may not be able to reduce me to bones anymore but it still hurts like hell. Apparently I have some sort of photosensitivity or something stupid like that in this new life. I sure the hell wasn't allergic to the sun when I was a human before.

"So before we start something new today," Bones slides off her desk and paces in slow, predatory circles around my wheelchair. Her shadow briefly hides me from the sun but she moves just when I stop twitching with pain. She chuckles before going on, "let's go over some things that we already know. We've learned that you don't have any more Dark creature blood in your veins."

Yeah, these bastards found that out after they'd bled me for hours. Point one for Bones.

"You aren't nearly as strong as you were when you were the Vampire."

After they bled me, they left me chained up and beat me to see if I could escape my bondage when under extreme duress. Obviously I couldn't. Another point goes to Bones and her nurses.

"And you don't carve blood anymore," she smiles fondly at the memory of that experiment.

I shudder despite myself as my groggy mind flashes back to the other day when they forced buckets of pig blood down my throat. I instantly feel sick again. I swear I can still taste the blood filling my nose and throat...

"I really have no other choice but to diagnose you as a human being." Bones sneers as she stops before me again. "But we both know that you're not, now are you, my dear?" She seizes my hair and dips my head back to meet my unfocused eyes. "You're some kind of abomination..." She strokes the metal muzzle over my mouth with her other hand. "But I'll figure out your secrets soon enough, my pet. We have nothing but time." She trails her nails down my throat. "The Alice has given me all the time in the world to play with your mind," Bones chuckles when I flinch.

I'm still kinda in shock that Adara sentenced me to this asylum but what the hell else did I expect? Her hands were tied, I guess.

Apparently it was either this or be crucified.

"One day I'll figure out all your dark secrets," Bones purrs as she unstraps my straitjacket. She's so close -and I'm so drugged out of my head- it looks like there's three of her pressing in around me, each one sways back and forth in a different neon color. "And you'll make me the most famous psychiatrist in all of Raetri."

I lethargically try to pull away as she tugs my jacket open. I hiss with pain as more sun covers my bare skin. I can practically feel the hives burning through my skin and my eyes uncontrollably start to water.

"If you truly had no connection with the Blood Prince anymore than something tells me you wouldn't still have this," Bones purrs as she strokes my Bloodmark. "See, my pet, this is what convinces me that there is still a piece of the Blood Prince within you." She leans closer, her shadow hides my face from the sun as she puts her lips to my ear and whispers, "I will find the Prince eventually, Von Vesymir. I'll find him even if I have to cut open every vein and pick through bone. Understand?" She hisses.

Even if I wasn't wearing the muzzle, I'm still too sedated to form a reply.

"Good boy," she kisses my ear and now moves away. The sunlight falls over me unrestrained and I wearily wither with quiet agony. Bones rings the bell on her desk and more nurses come skittering in. "Take Patient Zero outside and let him be in the sun for a while," she sneers as I'm wheeled past. "I added something new to the courtyard, Your Highness," she calls after me. "I do hope you enjoy it!"

She's cackling as the doors shut behind me.