Chapter 2
Inside, the Halloween Ball was a swirl of masked revellers and torchlit arches.
Music thumped like a distant heartbeat. Síofra's pulse picked up as she felt eyes on her.
Every glance felt loaded: disgust and morbid curiosity in a dark nauseating mix.
She dared not look for Morgan. She'd seen enough of his vicious, handsome face in her nightmares.
A drink had materialised in her hand, probably Rand.
Clutching her drink like a lifeline-a blood-red punch that smelled of spiced rum-she followed her friends toward the dimly lit corridor at the back Flickering candles invited her deeper into the night's mysteries.
They stepped through another arched doorway into a crush of swaying bodies and torchlight.
Cam was immediately pulled away by her childhood sweetheart.
Cam and Drako had been together forever and were nauseatingly in love.
Síofra's heart dipped with alarm when she spotted him: Morgan Dane, all broad shoulders in his torn tuxedo, leaning by the punch bowl as one of her worst bullies chattered away while running her nails down his arm.
A crooked silver crown, bent and cracked like it had been pried from a grave, sat on his dark hair.
His face was painted with pale corpse-makeup, shadows sunk deep beneath his cheekbones, his lips smeared with a touch of grey, a jagged scar drawn across his jaw.
He seemed to be half listening while his eyes scanned the crowd.
He was every bit the rugby captain she'd obsessed about in her dreams. Six feet six of hard muscle, he was a business-administration student one year ahead of her.
As she moved into the crowd, icy pale-blue eyes flicked toward her as if assessing a wager. Which she was,in the end.
As soon as her pictures went viral, he flooded her phone with messages. She had deleted every one of them and blocked him with a trembling hand.
She felt Rand’s hand on her elbow. “Come on,” he murmured, concern in his light brown eyes which saw too much.
He had done his best to take most of her pictures down but even a talented hacker like him had limits.
Rand towered over her, all long limbs and awkward angles, softened only by the glasses perpetually sliding down his nose.
To anyone else he was just the geeky linguistics student who loved obscure dialects, but Síofra knew better.
Behind his mild manner and faintly crooked smile was the warlock blood of a powerful line, the shadowed gift of scrying threaded in his veins.
He’d once confessed in a hushed voice that he was also a master hacker, able to pry open secrets with code as deftly as he could find a missing earring in a forest.
Morgan's pale roving eyes followed her as she downed the punch in one go .
They narrowed at the hostility in her green eyes before they slid away from him.He abruptly stepped away from Debbie mid-sentence and was heading purposefully towards her.
He opened his mouth to speak as he closed in, probably to dish out more pain, but Síofra slipped away, hating her cowardice but still not ready to see the disdain in his eyes.
Veering toward a corridor draped in black velvet, she picked up the pace with Rand at her heels, ever her protector.
She stopped in an alcove and Rand slid in next to her.
Before she could protest, he pressed another goblet of punch into her hand.
The sticky liquid smelled more of rum than fruit, but she took a small sip anyway, letting its warmth steady her nerves.
“Dutch courage”, he whispered, watching with adoring eyes that brought tears to her eyes.
Why could it not be Rand? He would never hurt her.
Instead, after all he had done, one glance from Morgan sent her heart thundering like a drum and the soft place between her thighs moist with welcome.
Chemistry did not take into consideration the personality of a toad.
They found a half-hidden door at the end of the hall.
A small cluster of students stood around a low table, candles sputtering, a Ouija board laid out like an invitation.
One of them,a third-year art student with moon-white makeup,beckoned her in.
Next to her , Triston, a fourth year senior in astronomy vied for her attention only to be rewarded with a cold-shoulder.
He had the reputation of being a manwhore.
Hesitantly, Síofra crossed the threshold.
Behind her, Rand hovered. She caught Morgan's sharp glare through the doorway, fury etched in his sculpted features as his eyes seemed to settle on Rand's hand on her shoulder.
Inside the dim room, with nowhere else to go, she sank onto a battered armchair.
Rand perched at her side, but when the circle was about to close, she saw Morgan slip in and deliberately take the chair directly opposite.
His eyes were on her with laser focus but she couldn't bear to hold his gaze.She slid a nervous thumb over the silver ring on her right index finger, the only thing her mother had left her.
The band was blackened with age, etched with the words "Ahayah Ashar Ahayah" -the Highest Name of God.
In her research, she'd learned Solomon himself had used the phrase to bind demons; tonight, the metal felt strangely warm, pulsing against her skin.
Touching it was a way she self-soothed when things got rough.
As the candles guttered, the planchette hovered at rest. The girl with the pale white makeup was chanting but there were two in the circle who were only focused on each other.
Morgan's pale-blue eyes bored into her, silent and strangely possessive.
She finally met his gaze, conveying the rage and betrayal in her heart while gripping the ring like a talisman.
Blending in the shadows of the room, a towering figure watched while flashes of gold illuminated the darkness under the hood and unfamiliar runes decorated his pale skin.
Across the table, the others whispered an invocation, and the first faint click of the planchette echoed through the hush.
In another dimension
Ashmedai's claw hovered inches from the quivering membrane, its surface rippling like dark water in moonlight.
He barely remembered what the moon looked like since he was imprisoned in this festering nothingness.
Recently, he had felt a presence, warm against the chill of his skin.
The presence was almost…feminine. As he probed again, tasting the barrier's tension-a heady mixture of mortal fear and unwitting longing-his thoughts turned into chaos and madness.
Once, his minions had served him without question.
Now their betrayal festered like a wound.
They had whispered behind his back, stolen shards of his power, and led him into a trap that had stolen his sanity with excruciating slowness.
His fangs shot out from between his parted grey lips.
A drop of viscid venom mixed with the crimson of his cut lip dripped down from the tip.
They would pay for their treachery; each curse he had crafted in this sterile court of limbo was primed to burn their flesh from their bones. Slowly.
He clenched his fist, the membrane recoiling under the pressure.
How he longed for Solomon's reign to endure, so that he might exact the ultimate vengeance upon that usurper of his freedom.
The creature whose chains and seals had bound him here so long ago.
He had been used and forgotten in this hell.
No one knew the pathway here and the key had long been ground into powder and scattered in the winds.
Ashmedai closed his eyes against the million silent shudders of the grey realm.
Time had ceased to have any meaning in this emptiness- days, centuries, epochs blurred into endless waiting.
Opening his eyes, he returned to the wall.
Six shadowed archways shimmered beyond the veil like a promise.
One pulsed with a faint, fevered glow-the pledge of mortal weakness to be exploited.
It was not the pathway to his domain, but that can wait.
He pressed harder, sinews straining, and felt the membrane flex a little at last. A strangely liquid snap echoed through the silence.
Patience, he reminded himself. Soon, with the right spark on the other side, this barrier will shatter and then his vengeance will truly begin.