Chapter 4 #2
That was until Suyin began to struggle violently in his grip. As predicted, she started shouting threats at him so loudly, it stung his ears. He fought to hold on to her, but the slippery witch actually wiggled out of his grasp, dropping unceremoniously to the floor.
He bent to grab her, but before he could get a proper grip, she reached to her boot, pulled out a switchblade, and fucking stabbed him with it. Right in the neck.
He snarled viciously and recoiled, ripping the knife out and tossing it out of reach. In the time that took, she immediately began crawling away on her forearms and knees like a crab-insect, scrambling toward the hellgate.
Cursing and covered in blood, he shot his tail out, wrapped it around her ankle, and yanked her back to his feet. He stabbed the tip into her neck, giving her a second dose of venom.
She slumped, unconscious once more.
He pressed a hand over his neck wound and eyed her with newfound wariness. Perhaps not quite as fragile as you assumed.
Suyin awoke to a dull ache in her left hip and shoulder. The surface she lay on was rock-hard—literally, it seemed she was lying on a slab of stone—and her body was stiff and sore because of it. How long had she been asleep?
Where had she fallen asleep anyway?
The lull of unconsciousness still held sway over her, so she shifted positions slightly, hoping to sink back into the abyss.
Bloodshot eyes, tall horns, sharp claws—
She snapped out of the haze in a second and sat up with a jerk. Blinking roughly, she squinted at the wall in front of her and waited for her eyes to focus.
The memories rushed in. The image of a long tail whipping toward her had her sucking in a breath.
The scorpion. Just like in her dreams. But it hadn’t been an arachnid. The barbed and segmented tail belonged to the eyes and the horns of a …
Demon.
A fucking demon had taken her.
But of course it was a demon. This was what her dreams had been warning her about. This was the cause of the dread she’d been carrying around for weeks. She’d chastised herself endlessly for her paranoia, but it seemed she’d been well justified.
Not that being paranoid had helped. The owner of those bloodshot eyes had found her nonetheless, and now, here she was—
Where was she?
She patted her pockets, not surprised to find her phone and keys gone. And she’d lost her knife earlier when she’d stabbed the demon—which hadn’t made any difference, unfortunately. She touched the sore spot on her neck, feeling the two puncture wounds.
The room around her was square, all made of the same black rock, rough and unpolished. The only interruption in the stone was in the left corner—a small doorway was cut into the wall, covered by thick steel bars.
Opposite the door was a bucket with a lid. Was that supposed to be a crude toilet? The air had a stale, sour smell, with hints of sulfur, and she sensed she was underground. The only source of light came from a torch mounted on the wall outside the cell.
She was in some sort of archaic dungeon. A demon had taken her through a hellgate, and based on her surroundings, she could only conclude …
She was in Hell.
Heart suddenly slamming against her ribs, she lurched unsteadily to her feet, pressing her spine against the wall and staring at her cramped surroundings.
She was in fucking Hell. She was a living, breathing human in Hell. She was so fucking screwed.
But what use did she have to a demon? She was a blood-born witch, which meant he could kill her without consequence from Heaven. So if he’d just wanted to mess with her, why not do that? And if he’d been out for witches in particular, why focus on her specifically?
He’d been stalking her for over two weeks—there was no doubt in her mind that the demon who’d taken her was her neighborhood park creep—so he’d obviously been after her.
This hadn’t been a random snatching. This was a carefully planned operation.
What did she have that a demon wanted? What warranted that kind of forethought?
Whatever the case, she had to find a way out of here.
She had to gather her wits and make a plan.
She pushed off the wall and approached the bars, the only way in or out of her cell.
They were too close together for her to stick her head through, and she was only able to see a few feet down the passage outside.
“Hey!” Suyin hollered. Her voice didn’t echo. It deadened immediately, like she’d shouted into a pile of blankets. It was eerie.
“Let me out of here!” As if that was going to work. “What do you want with me?”
Nothing but that muffled silence greeted her.
She fought her rising panic. She couldn’t afford to go there. If she was going to have any hope of escaping, she needed to keep her head.
She’d been brought here by hellgate. That meant, all she needed to do was draw one on the floor of her cell, and she could leave the same way.
She hadn’t drawn a hellgate in a long time, and her memory was shaky, but with some trial and error, she was sure she could get it.
It would be a challenge, but she could hopefully link it to the gate the demon had used to get here by visualizing the dark room she’d seen for a split second before he’d stepped through.
Another challenge would be finding casting material. She had nothing to draw the sigil with.
But there was a solution for that too. A sigil could be drawn in blood. In fact, blood was more powerful than chalk or salt. She wasn’t keen on bleeding herself out while she tried to remember the details of the hellgate sigil, but she would do whatever—
Footsteps snapped her out of her thoughts.
She retreated to the safer depths of the cell as a looming shadow stepped in front of the torch, blocking out the light.
The demon cut an impressive silhouette. He was easily seven feet tall, with impala-like horns crowning his head. He held his chin high and his spine erect like he fancied himself royalty.
But his intimidating presence wasn’t what caught her attention.
At his feet, thick smoke swirled like he was walking on liquid nitrogen. Stray wisps rose and formed into hazy shapes, backlit by the torches. As the shapes coiled in and out of existence, Suyin swore she saw the outlines of faces and hands clawing at the air.
Chills raced up her spine, and she pressed herself harder against the stone wall.
“You’re awake.” His voice was gravelly and deep and somehow not what she’d expected. With that proud posture, she would’ve imagined it to be smooth and articulate.
“Who are you?” she demanded. “What do you want with me?”
“I think you can guess.”
She shook her head. “I really can’t.”
His head tilted, those tall horns tilting with it. His face was too shadowed to see, and it made it even more disconcerting to speak to him.
“Who are you?” she asked again.
“You really don’t know? I’m almost offended.”
She said nothing. She wasn’t going to apologize for not recognizing a creepy stalker demon on sight.
Her face must have betrayed her confusion because he said, “The souls are usually a dead giveaway.” He gestured to the smoky mass swirling about his feet. His fingers were long and slender, tipped with sharp claws.
Her eyes widened. Those were … souls?
He sighed like he was disappointed in her for not figuring it out and playing his stupid game. “My name is Murmur, or the Necromancer. Either works. And yes, the rumors are true.”
She sucked in a breath.
“That’s more like it,” he said, as if pleased by her reaction.
If she’d been any less shocked, she would have rolled her eyes. Instead, she could only stare at that towering silhouette and wonder how she’d fallen into such deep shit. Oh, she’d heard of him, all right, and what she knew didn’t bode well for her.
She wasn’t as obsessed with demonology as some other witches she knew. Many were drawn to witchcraft because of a certain fascination with the dark forces in creation, and they enjoyed studying the hierarchy of Hell, called the Order of Thrones.
Suyin had spent most of her life trying to make peace with the fact that she would never know her father because of his own obsession with Sheolic magic. It was for her own good that she stayed away from it.
But she still knew who the Necromancer was.
Every witch of any significance knew who he was. He was like the witch boogeyman, a cautionary tale to warn against dabbling in black magic. Don’t mess with demons or the Necromancer will steal your soul.
The Necromancer’s army of enslaved human souls was well known, and truthfully, she should have recognized him just from that, as he’d said. She also knew he couldn’t actually steal souls—everyone in his army had agreed to be bound to his service to escape the torturous suffering of the Nine Rings.
It was a shitty trade, but some people would do anything to avoid the consequences of their actions.
“What do you want with me?” Suyin asked again in a hoarse whisper.
“Let’s not play dumb,” he replied in that gravelly, dark voice. “Attempting to manipulate me won’t work. Really, it’s insulting you’d even try.”
Her mouth opened and then closed again. She didn’t have a clue what he was talking about, but he apparently thought she did. She wasn’t sure if it was better to play along or make him understand.
He wrapped a hand around one of the bars, leaning in. His face was still shrouded in darkness, but she could make out those slender fingers and sharp claws just fine.
“Listen closely because I will not repeat myself,” he said.
“I took you because I require your blood for a spell. This spell is possibly the greatest feat of magic ever undertaken, and the very fate of the underworld rests upon its success. You are the missing ingredient to that spell, and now that I have you, I will keep you here until I complete it.”
He released the bar and moved back into the shadows, the torch behind his head creating the illusion that he glowed with an eerie orange halo.
“Luckily for you, since you’re so useful, I will not waste a single drop of your blood. So long as you cooperate, you will not be harmed. But if you try to cross me, I have ways of making you suffer that do not involve spilling your blood.”
Her mind was reeling. Why did he want her blood specifically? If he was after blood-born witches, she was definitely outclassed in raw power by Lily and Iris, even if she had more practical knowledge. Why hadn’t he gone after them instead?
“And before you attempt to use a hellgate to escape,” he added, “you should know that I put a seal on you that prevents you from accessing your magic. While it’s active, you will be unable to cast.”
She immediately did a body scan, running her hands down her torso. The kind of seal he was talking about had to involve carving a sigil into the skin, but she didn’t feel any fresh wounds—
“I spelled it into a potion and made you drink it while you were unconscious. It’s in your bloodstream. I already said I wouldn’t waste your blood or risk weakening you prematurely.”
Her eyes narrowed. He was lying—
“If you want to test it for yourself, go ahead.” He reached into the pocket of his long coat and tossed something into the cell. It rolled across the stone to her feet, and when she glanced down, she saw it was a piece of chalk.
Her heart sank.
He had to be telling the truth. No way he would have given her this if there was any way to use it to escape.
She looked back at that looming shadow, the souls of the damned swirling at his feet.
“You will remain in this cell indefinitely. I will take the blood I need when I need it. I will keep returning for more until the spell is successful. You’d best pray that happens sooner rather than later. There’s not much to look at down here.”
And with that, he disappeared into the darkness.
She stood, frozen in place, her heart pounding in her chest for several seconds before she suddenly sprang into action.
“Wait!” she shouted, racing forward to grab the bars. “Wait!”
The muffled sound of retreating footsteps stopped. The demon—Murmur—didn’t return, but she sensed he was there in the darkness, waiting for her to speak.
“I need food,” she called down the tunnel. “And water. And fresh air. And somewhere to sleep and water to bathe. I can’t survive down here with nothing but a fucking shit bucket!”
There was a long pause. She couldn’t see into the dark; she didn’t know for sure that he was even there. But judging by the way her skin prickled and the hairs on her neck still stood on end, he was.
And then he spoke.
“I already warned you not to try to manipulate me. When I give you a warning, it would be wise to heed it. I never make idle threats.”
And with that, she heard the footsteps again. She listened as they grew fainter until they were gone completely.
Leaving her alone in the dark.