When the vampire appears the next day he seems rather more vigorous. He carries a similar tray to yesterday's and sets it down before he approaches.
'Yesterday, the questioning, that was Cole's orders. He wanted to know about that stuff. And he was watching me with his telepathy so you got an easy ride. Today is different. If you want this food remove your clothes.'
'What?'
'You heard me.'
'But when you kissed me, you said it was too much.'
'Yes, well, perhaps I was wrong about that. Perhaps it was too little.'
Merle shakes her head, mostly in disbelief – some horror, but she's not actually that scared because she knows she'd rather starve. 'I'm not going to take my clothes off. There's no way.'
'Fine, I'll do it for you.' The vampire rushes across the cell at her, his dark coat billowing out behind him. Merle is sitting on the bench and he knocks her back, hard against the wall. Before she even realises it, he yanks at her T-shirt so hard that the fabric starts to tear. She's screaming.
With a grunt of effort, he pulls her down onto the floor. She's kicking and scratching at him. He's so strong.
Then a familiar breathy voice above them says, 'Oh for goodness sake, use your weapon. Hit him like this.' Merle looks over the vampire's shoulder and sees Kris-tina standing over them, looking almost bored. She bends down and picks up some of the slack from Merle's chains and uses the doubled length to strike the vampire's skull. He collapses onto Merle's chest.
'See. Easy,' says Kristina. 'You know that might be why Darius wanted you to wear the chains. He used them as weapons every chance he got.'
Merle's pushes the unconscious vampire onto the floor and gets up shakily. 'Well, I guess I'm not an expert in these things. Dungeon self-defence.'
Kristina gives a snorting laugh. She picks up the tray of food and brings it over. 'God,' she says, putting it down on the bench, 'is that all he brought you? I made much more. He was probably trying to make sure you were always hungry, the dirty sod.' She pauses a moment then looks at Merle with one hand on a curving hip. 'He was only doing it for the kick of playing with you, you know. He wasn't actually attracted to you.'
'Oh,' Merle says, not really sure what to think about that. 'Right.'
'I'm just saying that because I hate the stereotype that vampires are always trying to get it on with humans. It's the biggest lie out there. We're not interested in you like that.'
'Right,' Merle says again.
Kristina claps her hands together. 'Now eat up and I'll try and find the rest of your food. That old corpse Oberon will probably try and claim that he doesn't remember how much humans eat. But I do.'
As she leaves, Kristina takes hold of Oberon's body by the legs and drags him out of the cell.