Leading from this bedroom...into the one next to it? Power.
Peace.
Salvation.
Perhaps he could leave this room, he thought then.
Perhaps he could be saved. That smal sip of salvation, the barest taste...a frosted apricot, juice so sweet his throat would forever rejoice.
He just had to-flames, screams, evil-get there. Must...
fight. FLAMES. Amid the growing black thunder in his brain, Amun jerked at his bonds. SCREAMS.
Already torn flesh surrendered, and already broken bone dusted to powder. EVIL. But he couldn"t pul himself free. He"d already used up his strength, he realized. He had nothing left.
FLAMES, SCREAMS, EVIL.
As he slumped onto the mattress, he laughed silently, bitterly. He"d lost, and so easily, too. He"d truly, final y lost.
He couldn"t even cal for his friends. A single word spoken, a single sound made, and everything inside him would spew out, his clash against the evil al for nothing.
FLAMESSCREAMSEVIL.
Closer...closer now...
A shocking burst of hope as that sense of defeat shattered.
If he couldn"t reach whoever was in that bedroom, perhaps he...she...they...could reach him.
As the evil swamped him once more, Amun shouted as soundlessly as he"d laughed. Come to me!
CHAPTER THREE.
COME TO ME!.
The desperate male voice invaded Haidee Alexander"s mind, a thriving fire amid a raging ice storm, dragging her from a cloying sleep and into total awareness. She jerked upright, panting, wild gaze scanning, mind cataloging her options in seconds, just as she"d trained it to do since being captured by the demon. Unfamiliar bedroom with one window, one door, offering two possible escape routes.
The door, varnished to a luxuriant shine. Scratches around the handle, meaning it was wel -used.
Probably locked. The window, thick gla.s.s, unstreaked by hand or bird. The pane wasn"t nailed shut, then. Couldn"t be, not to maintain that level of cleanliness.
Window, best bet.
Alone. Had to act now.
Riding a cloud of urgency, Haidee threw her legs over the side of the bed and stood. Her knees instantly buckled, too feeble to hold her weight. Not normal. Usual y she could awaken and five seconds later be ready to run a marathon.
A this-is-the-only-way-to-survive marathon.
This weakness... How long had she been out this time?
She lumbered to a shaky stand, trying to find her balance as she replayed the happenings of the last weeks through her head. She"d been overpowered by Defeat, the demon she"d been hunting. He"d carted her to what seemed a thousand different locations, trying to lose her boyfriend, Micah, and his crew of four. Hunters, al of them.
Don"t think about that right now. You"l lose focus.
Escape. That"s what mattered.
She tripped her way to the window, but just before she tugged on the pane, she stil ed. In al their days together, Defeat had never left her side. He hadn"t even trusted her to go to the bathroom or shower by herself, but here she was, on her own.
So, where was he now?
Two options. Either the demon had reached his final destination and was confident enough in the surrounding security to venture off on his own, or someone had stolen her from him.
Next thought: if someone had stolen her, they wouldn"t have abandoned her. They would have wanted her to know their intentions. Good or bad.
So. Defeat had her where he wanted her. The door and the window were probably wired, so there was a very good chance an alarm would sound the moment she touched either one.
Would an army of demons come gunning for her?
Probably. But she didn"t care. She had to try. Giving up wasn"t in her nature.
Haidee gripped the warm edge of the panel and shoved.
Cursed. Nothing, no movement. Not just because her fingers were as weak as her knees, but because the pane was sealed. She"d been wrong about the cleanliness factor, but at least she"d also been wrong about the wire.
Stil . She"d have to find another way out. And she would.
She"d been in far worse situations than this and survived.
Hel , thrived.
Steeling herself, she peered outside to note what she"d have to overcome once she left this place. The sun shone brightly, amber rays causing her eyes to tear. She wiped each drop away with the back of her wrist. No girly weaknesses al owed. Her prison rested high on a mountaintop, a barbed gate-electric?-stretching skyward and wrapping around the perimeter. She"d encountered similar gates in the past and knew this one would be impossible to climb without inflicting so much damage she"d die on the other side. If she even made it over.
Stil . There were hundreds of trees, each more lush and green than the last, their limbs stretching in welcome.
Those limbs would hide her, their leaves draping her and al owing her to search for a way to bypa.s.s that gate. And if there wasn"t a way to bypa.s.s it, she"d forgo cover and climb. Bottom line, death was preferable to staying here and being tortured by a demon.
Okay. So. New plan. Shatter the gla.s.s and shimmy to land.
Easy.
Yeah. Right. I"ve never been that lucky. Haidee twisted and surged through the room, her steps not getting any smoother. Clearly, whatever drug Defeat had repeatedly injected into her vein stil poured through her.
Concentrate, woman. The s.p.a.cious chamber boasted a king-size canopied bed with a white swath overlaying the top and fal ing to the floor like clouds sprinkled with fairy dust. A floral print love seat and a smal gla.s.s table perched in a tiny alcove, il uminated by a chandelier weeping with glittering crystal.
None of which she could throw.
To the left was a freshly polished desk and matching chair.
No paperweights or knickknacks rested on the surface, and the drawers were empty. To the right was a ful -length mirror surrounded by an ebony frame. Both were bolted to the wal . Next she tried the door.
As she"d suspected, it was locked.
Panting, fury blooming, she kicked the bench at the foot of the bed. The heavy wood didn"t move an inch. And s.h.i.t, that hurt! She yelped, hopping and rubbing her stinging toe.
Someone had removed her shoes, leaving her barefoot.
Something she wished she"d noticed before.
d.a.m.n, d.a.m.n, d.a.m.n. The luxury and wealth here made a mockery of the hovel she"d scrimped and saved and final y managed to buy for herself, yet there wasn"t a d.a.m.n thing she could use to aid her escape. What the hel was she going to do?
Come to me!
The tortured, pain-fil ed voice overwhelmed her senses, the words like licks of fire, somehow heating her up. A voice?
Heating her? Could be a hal ucination, yeah, but she"d seen and experienced al kinds of weirdness throughout her too-long life to simply write this off.
"Who said that?" She spun, fighting a wave of dizziness and automatical y reaching for the blades she kept anch.o.r.ed at her thighs.
Only silence greeted her-and she sported no weapons.
Defeat had taken her knives, guns and poisons, foolishly thinking he"d triumphed. But that"s what he-it-did. Broke down the opponent through any means necessary, destroying al thoughts of achieving victory, no matter the cost of surrender.
Not that he"d broken her.
He"d learn. Haidee was unbreakable.
Come to...me... Weaker now, riding a tide of despair, but no less urgent.
Not a hal ucination, she thought. Couldn"t be. That heat...
So, who was he? A prisoner like her? There was something oddly familiar about his voice, as if she"d heard it before and it had made an impression. Yet she couldn"t specifical y place it. Was he a Hunter?
Had they met during training? At one of the thousand debriefings she"d attended?
Come...
Her ears twitched, and she turned, fol owing the sound of his voice this time, determined to help him, just in case he was a Hunter as she suspected.
Come...please...
There. She frowned. A wal . Was he on the other side? The fact that she"d heard him certainly suggested he was nearby.
Slowly she approached the wal . She padded her hands along the smooth, delicate paper, finding no hint of a doorway, and yet... Haidee dropped to her knees, gaze zeroing in on a tiny gap between crown molding and floor.
A smal crack of light seeped through.
No, not light. Not ful y. Woven with that stream of light and dancing dust motes was a wisp of black, a writhing phantom, curling up, inching toward her.
With another yelp, she scrambled backward. The black tendril fol owed her, avoiding her pants and her T-shirt to reach the skin bared at her wrist. But when it touched her, a screech rent the air and the...thing was sucked back through the crack, returning to the other room.
What. The. Hel ?
Had she just met one of the demons, stripped of its human cloak? Was that what tormented the man who"d cal ed her?
Probably.
Her fight-or-flight instinct screamed flight.
Haidee replied, Screw you, flight! I won"t leave a man behind.
Teeth grinding, she sc.r.a.ped her nails over the wal paper until she created a groove. Then she began ripping, tossing the pieces she extracted over her shoulder. She worked feverishly and final y revealed enough of the wal to find the outline of the door.
No k.n.o.b. Of course.
Through faint sc.r.a.pe patterns on the floor, she knew the door had once opened from the right. Which meant there would have been a k.n.o.b at one point. She had only to find where the demons had s.p.a.ckled over the hole its removal would have left behind....
She sc.r.a.ped the center of the right side, cringing at the grating sound she created, until flecks of white chalk began to embed in her nails. Bingo! Clawing harder, deeper, she removed the s.p.a.ckle as fast as she could. Took half an hour to reach the other side, and by then, ice coated her entire body in a chil y sheen.
Her arms trembled violently, her sense of urgency increasing. She was swiftly using up her reservoir of strength and knew she wouldn"t be able to stay on her feet much longer.
When she col apsed, she wanted to be outside, the man with her.
Haidee latched her fingers around the edges of the hole and jerked. The door eked open a mere fraction of an inch.
Fighting disappointment, she gave another jerk-only to be rewarded with another fraction. Get in the game, Alexander.
You can do this. Deep breath in, hold, hold... As she exhaled, she tugged so hard she feared her spine would snap. Final y. Real movement. Not much, yet just enough.
When the door stopped, it stopped hard. She lost her grip and fel to her a.s.s.
Pinp.r.i.c.ks of starlight dotted her gaze, but when the crackling orange and yel ow washed away, she focused on the gap she"d created. A sweet sense of victory flooded her as she popped to her feet. Her knees rebel ed with every step forward, but she didn"t pause.
She squeezed her way through the opening, shirt snagging on a sharp protrusion, then ripping as she just kind of fel into the other room. When she balanced, she quickly took stock, readying herself for anything.
Another bedroom, this one a mix of light and dark. There was a thrashing man on the only bed, smoke rising from him, undulating.
Her gaze locked on the smoke, and she gasped. It was as beautiful as it was horrifying. An ocean of crumbled black diamonds, punctuated by the occasional sparkle of paired rubies-like eyes, watching, lethal y intent-and d.a.m.ning flashes of white. Sharp, like fangs.
Come on, come on. Time"s wasting. For some reason, looking away actual y hurt, shooting a pain from her temples to her bel y, but she did it, refocusing on the man and closing the distance between them. The moment she reached him, bile scalded her throat, and she nearly lost her last meal. Fruit and bread that Defeat had grudgingly given her. Al those injuries...