Chapter 5
ROCK BOTTOM
AFTER MURMUR LEFT, SUYIN LAY BACK DOWN ON THE hard stone floor. Overwhelmed by everything, trying to fight feelings of despair, she eventually drifted into an uneasy sleep.
When she awoke, she wasn’t sure how long she’d slept. Long enough that her back hurt like a bitch. Groaning, she pushed herself upright, wincing when she realized she needed to pee.
She eyed the bucket in the corner distastefully. At least it had a lid.
Afterward, she slumped back against the wall and slid down to the ground, feeling lightheaded. Whatever venom was in the demon’s tail had left her woozy and disoriented, but she was feeling much better now. Her mind was sharper, but so was her hunger. And worse, her thirst.
Hunger, she could manage for a while, but the thirst was going to be a real killer.
Murmur had said he wouldn’t harm her because he needed her blood for his spell. But he’d also seemed to think she was trying to trick him when she’d asked for food and water.
She knew demons didn’t need to eat, but humans did.
Surely the legendary Necromancer was intelligent enough to know that basic fact about human physiology?
She couldn’t be sure, and that made her nervous.
He might claim to want her alive, but all the good intentions in the world didn’t mean shit if he accidentally neglected her to death.
To give herself something else to focus on, she made a mental list of all possible escape routes. Which were really just two.
One: through the door.
Two: through a hellgate, once the potion binding her magic wore off.
Climbing to her feet, she stretched her stiff body until her spine cracked and then approached the door. She gripped the bars and shook them roughly. There wasn’t any give.
Next, she studied the mechanics of the door. The bars were roughly three inches thick. Reaching through, she felt the hinges, finding no weaknesses. The door was secured with a sliding bar that went into a hole drilled into the stone on the opposite side.
She touched the padlock that secured the bar. It was so big it barely fit in her hand. She felt around as carefully as she could, but there didn’t seem to be a keyhole anywhere. How did it open then? With magic, perhaps?
Either way, there wasn’t an easy way out through the door. That left her with option two.
Even if Murmur’s potion worked and she couldn’t use magic, it would still be smart to refresh her memory on drawing a hellgate now. With any luck, there would be a window between when the spell wore off and when he refreshed it, and she could activate the gate and escape.
So passed the next few hours.
She drew small versions of the gate on the wall, careful not to waste her chalk unnecessarily. She made minor adjustments with each redraw until she was certain she had the correct design.
There was no point drawing the actual gate yet, in case Murmur returned and decided to thwart her efforts.
Using the sleeve of her leather jacket, she rubbed away all her rough sketches on the wall, leaving only the final one to copy later.
Then she put the chalk piece—about half its original size now—carefully into her pocket.
She sat back down against the wall and stared at the door, watching the flickering flames of the torch outside.
She was hungry and thirsty and her back hurt. Before long, her tailbone ached too from sitting on the stone, but it wasn’t like there was anywhere comfier to be. She told herself it was wise to conserve her strength for when the potion wore off and it was time to escape.
She closed her eyes and forced herself back to sleep.
Muted footsteps pulled Suyin out of her uneasy slumber. Once again, she had no idea how much time had passed. A full day, or more? Her hunger had become uncomfortable, and her mouth was so dry it was glued shut.
She didn’t bother trying to open it. Exposing it to air would just make it drier.
Moving at all felt like too much effort, and she reminded herself again that she needed to conserve her strength. A cynical voice in her mind scoffed, pointing out that she wasn’t going to have much strength left to conserve if she didn’t find a way out of here soon.
The dull footfalls awakened her hope and gave her a boost of energy, as stupid as it may have been. She couldn’t help it. The human survival instinct was the strongest of them all.
A familiar looming shadow stepped in front of the torch.
As before, he blocked the light, and all she could make out was his outline.
It was just enough for her to see him prick his finger on one hand with the sharp claw of the other.
He swiped the bloodied fingertip over the lock, and it sprang open. A magical seal, as she’d suspected.
The sound of metal shifting filled the deadened silence as he slid the lock free and pushed the cage door open. As he stepped inside, Suyin imagined leaping to her feet, ducking around him, and escaping into the passage behind him.
But he was huge. If he stretched out his arms, he could almost reach fully across her cell.
If he stuck his leg out, he could trip her easily.
And she’d seen how fast his tail could strike.
The memory of that sharp barb piercing her neck and the sight of it swinging on the end of his tail now was enough to convince her to stay put.
He stopped in front of where she remained sitting against the wall. As he turned, the torch flame illuminated one side of his body, and she finally got a proper look at his face.
She recognized the features of the beautiful man she’d seen at the bar.
The curve of full lips, the proud line of his nose, the arch of his cheekbones—that angelic perfection was still there.
But unlike his human form, in which she’d struggled to find a single flaw, his demon form’s beauty was marred by his apparent … deadness.
It was the only way to describe it.
His skin was a pale, grayish white that she’d only seen on corpses on TV. The coloring around his eyes darkened dramatically, with shadows so deep they almost looked like makeup. His lips were bloodless and pallid, and his horns and claws were obsidian black.
But his eyes were the worst.
The whites were so bloodshot, they weren’t white at all but a sickly pinkish red. His irises were a light blue so pale it was almost colorless, and his pupils looked like tiny voids in the center of that circle of death. They were the exact eyes she’d seen in her dreams.
His hair was pure white, the same ethereal shade that had caught her eye in the club. Looking back, she was a fool for not realizing what he was the second she saw him. No human had hair like that, and no dye or wig was capable of achieving that remarkable snow-white shade. It was too unearthly.
All of him looked a bit like a zombie. The undead. A beautiful corpse.
He was lean, perhaps too thin for his height, but he carried an unmistakable aura of power. And with those ghastly souls swirling at his feet, haunted faces occasionally forming in the smoke, it was easy to believe it.
He stared down his nose at her. His expression was as cold as his cadaverous complexion. She stayed on the floor, looking up at him while chills raced over her neck and the backs of her arms.
“What’s wrong with you?” he asked suddenly.
She blinked. His gravelly voice still came as a surprise. As he spoke, she caught glimpses of sharp, pointed teeth.
Damn, he was freaky.
Still, “fake it till you make it” was the best advice she’d ever heard, and she lived by it. So she forced her face into a look of defiance, mustered as much attitude as she could, and said, “I’m dehydrated and starving.”
He blinked. Like he was actually fucking surprised.
It was such an unexpected reaction that it took her a couple of seconds to gather her wits again. The dehydration and starvation didn’t help either.
“That’s what happens when you leave a human in a dungeon for days with no food or water,” she added.
To her further surprise, his lips curved into a cruel smile.
He was hideous and beautiful at the same time. He looked cold and dead. He looked ethereal and elfin. His tall horns were majestic. His hair was stunning. His eyes were disturbing.
He was fucking terrifying.
“So you truly don’t know,” he said. “I suspected, but I wasn’t sure.”
“Know what?” The delirium of sensory deprivation made it hard to care about anything. This entire scenario was starting to feel like a fever dream.
Instead of responding, he knelt in front of her.
In their close proximity, the misty souls at his feet brushed against her with an icy chill, and she shuddered in revulsion.
He tilted his head and leaned closer, studying her like she was fuzzy bacteria growing in a petri dish and he was the lab tech trying to decipher the results.
She tilted her head at the same angle as his, trying to get a read on him, to figure out what went on in the mind of a being like him. His complexion implied decay, but up close, his skin looked smooth and supple.
“If you want me alive,” she said, “you’re going to have to feed me.”
But apparently, he was done talking.
His hand shot out faster than her tired eyes could track, and cold fingers wrapped around her throat. Ice-cold. The sensation of touch was there, but there was none of the warmth that came from touching a living person.
Still holding her neck, he shoved her sharply, and she hit the ground on her side. “Stay,” he growled.
He released her throat and whipped out a short blade from a holster beneath his black coat. Then, grasping her arm, he unsnapped the cuff of her jacket and shoved her sleeve up.
Suddenly, the knife was cutting across her forearm, and a hoarse cry escaped her at the sharp burn.
She followed that by unleashing a stream of curses and trying to yank her arm out of his grip.
Even tugging with all her strength, he held her easily, the flexing tendons in his hand the only sign he was expending any effort.
With his other hand, he pulled a long, cylindrical jar from inside of his coat, dropped the knife, and gripped her arm, holding it over the receptacle.
She stopped struggling, though she probably shouldn’t have. But her gaze was riveted to the sight of her blood spilling into the jar, the glass filling steadily.
After a couple minutes, the red flow eased into drips as her blood clotted and the wound started to close, but he continued to hold her there as if refusing to miss a single drop.
And then it was done. He dropped her arm, put a cork in the jar, and tucked it back in his coat.
Then he pulled a strip of cloth from his pocket and tied it over her wound so tight she was pretty sure her hand would fall off.
She gasped at the pain, but he ignored her, retrieving his bloody blade and wiping it on another piece of cloth.
He stood and sheathed the knife in a smooth motion.
“Should be enough,” he muttered, apparently speaking to himself. “The sacrifice will be strong.”
“How do you keep it from clotting in the jar?” she found herself asking. Why she cared about that right now, she couldn’t say. Probably shock.
He glanced sharply at her like he was surprised by the question. “The glass is coated with a potion prepared beforehand. The blood stays fresh as long as it’s in there.”
Before she had a chance to respond, he turned and swept out of the room.
The cage door slammed, the bar slid across, and the padlock clicked shut. His shadow moved out of the torch light as he began to walk away.
“Wait!” she cried again.
That dark shadow appeared once more.
“I need food. And water.” She closed her eyes and then forced herself to add through gritted teeth, “Please.”
“You don’t,” he replied, and then he was gone, the muffled sounds of his footsteps fading too quickly.
Alone again.
“You fucking dead-faced prick,” she hissed.
Murmur wanted her alive, but apparently, he had no understanding of what was required to keep her that way. He would learn from his mistake the hard way, but that would be because she was dead.
She’d never wanted to die to prove a point, but this was almost worth it.
She shut her eyes. She didn’t bother sitting up or loosening the painfully tight bandage. She didn’t bother checking the locks to make sure everything was secure. And this time, when the despair crept in, she couldn’t summon the will to defeat it.
At least if she died, she would thwart whatever plan this fucking asshole had, whatever it was he wanted her blood for. It was shit consolation for the absolute worst-case scenario, but it was all she had.
As the darkness rose up to claim her once more, before she drifted off into a deep slumber, she whispered his name.
She would curse him to eternal torment with her dying breath.