Chapter 9
SINN'OUS
The pool of water flooding the centre of the cell is not what Sinn'ous thought to encounter in Jasper’s cell after lunch. While the smaller inmate is sleeping like the dead, his floor is drowning in liquid.
A quick assessment informs him it’s not coming from a leaking pipe dripping through the wall or from under the toilet, but rather it splatters from the sinks edge to pool off to one side. Like someone tried to bathe in their cell.
Sinn'ous’s eyebrows raise in question at Jasper, who is tightly wrapped in his sheet, lips slightly parted. His face a mottled display of colouring bruises.
How someone can be such a heavy sleeper and still be alive is a miracle in itself. Satan Himself must be protecting the boy—well, protecting him from others’ so he can be gifted to Sinn'ous.
Praise Satan.
But this can’t do. The mess is unbecoming.
Reni’s towel solves the issue, soaking up the spill like a starved desert.
He balls the sloppy wet mass, and promptly tosses it out the cell door where it clangs on the rails, momentum carrying it right over.
It lands on the ground below with a resounding thwack, followed by the ripe curses of exasperated inmates.
Cunningham’s irate face pops around the cell’s bars, the guard’s lips parted on words of reprimand that instantly smooth to neutrality the moment he sees Sinn'ous.
He glances at Jasper, then back, mutters a curse and retreats back the way he came.
Grumbling about not wanting to be killed over collecting an inmate for kitchen duty.
The young guard is one under Sinn'ous’s thumb.
With a baby girl who needed a heart transplant and time not on her side.
It was all but a cinch to call Zayne and have a hacker lined up to do a little tampering.
A lot of money greasing the right palms. A mystery aunt’s recent passing leaving an inheritance to Cunningham.
And she was bumped all the way to the top of the list. Leaving one guard indebted to Sinn'ous.
Alone again he takes the time to run his fingers through his prey’s hair, smoothing out the hazelnut length. Each pass of his fingers has the boy’s eyelids fluttering in sleep.
Sinn'ous is gone before the alarms call them to mealtime.