Chapter 7
STARVED OUT
SUYIN WOKE TO COOL LIQUID FILLING HER DRY MOUTH. It was bliss, and she swallowed hungrily. The liquid kept pouring, and she kept swallowing. But suddenly, she couldn’t swallow fast enough to keep up with the flow, and it spilled everywhere. She choked, fighting for air.
“Swallow, witch.”
She recognized that rough voice. Her eyes snapped open, and her heart skipped a beat as she found herself staring into those eerie bloodshot eyes. How could he be attractive when he looked like he’d just clawed himself out of the grave?
He capped the plastic water bottle he’d been pouring into her mouth, set it on the ground, and shot her an impatient look.
“Don’t look at me like that.”
She wasn’t looking at him in any way. She was just trying to figure out what was going on.
She was lying on the ground. Right where he’d left her when he stole her blood. Not long after, she’d drifted into some woozy altered state that was halfway between sleep and straight unconsciousness, and she hadn’t seen a point in pulling herself out of it, so there she’d stayed.
Until now. Because Murmur had come back.
“Yes, you win this round.” His eyes narrowed. “Feel free to gloat.”
She blinked. She was so exhausted it was hard to think, and every part of her body hurt. After what she’d been through in the last … however many days, the sight of the demon before her sent her pulse racing with fear and hatred. Mostly hatred.
She loathed him with a burning passion. Her dreams were going to be full of visions of his gruesome death for a long time to come.
But she was still afraid of him. And that made her hate him more.
“I will cater to your human needs, but don’t think you’ve won my sympathy. I assure you, I have none to give.”
Oh, they had no misunderstandings about that. He’d left her to rot and starve to death in a dungeon underground. She was under no illusions that he was sympathetic or caring in any way.
“You wanted food. So eat.”
She frowned and forced her exhausted head to turn. In front of her on the floor was … She blinked.
A bag of apples. And a bag of carrots. And three plastic water bottles.
The sight was so bizarre—fresh, colorful produce, the inside of the plastic wet with condensation, amid this hellish pit of isolation—that she had to stare for several seconds before it sank in.
When it did, she sat up with strength she didn’t know she had and snatched up the bag of apples. Her left hand responded to the movement with a pain so sharp, she cried out.
When she glanced down, her fingers were swollen and purple.
“F-fuck,” she stammered, realizing she’d forgotten to loosen the bandage he’d tied on her. Her arm was going to fall off if she didn’t get this fucking this off.
She lifted her head, pinning the demon before her with the fiercest glare she could muster, and held out her arm. “Take it off.”
She hated how her voice shook. But she was weak and traumatized, and she was doing her best. She swore anew to kill this piece of shit for doing this to her, but for now she had to make sure she kept all her fingers.
“Take it off or my fucking fingers are gonna fall off,” she snapped when he just stared at her with a slightly cocked head.
He looked down at her arm. “I wonder if they would regenerate.” He was muttering again, like he was talking to himself. “Would be interesting to test.”
“Take it off!” she shouted with a forcefulness she didn’t feel.
His gaze snapped to hers and his brows rose. How did he have dark eyebrows and lashes, but white hair? The contrast was bizarre.
He reached out, and then those ice-cold fingers wrapped around her arm, dwarfing it against his skeletal hands. A shudder rolled through her at his touch.
He untied the bandage with creepy black claws, and she cursed colorfully as the blood rushed back into her throbbing fingers. It felt like she was being tortured by a mad acupuncturist and dipping her hand into boiling water at the same time.
Her teeth began to chatter, and her head spun. She didn’t have the strength to handle pain on top of everything else.
She used her good hand to awkwardly tear open the bag of apples.
Pulling one through the hole in the plastic, she sank her teeth into it, unable to stifle a moan as the sweet flavor filled her mouth.
She took several more bites, lost in the deliciousness of the apple, until she suddenly became aware of eyes on her.
She looked up and found Murmur watching her.
While she was preoccupied, he’d sat down across the cell, his back against the opposite wall, one arm draped over his bent knee.
His enslaved souls were dimly visible in the gloom, moving like lingering smoke.
He stared at her, but she could tell by the vacant look in his eyes that he was somewhere far away in his head.
She ignored him and went back to her apple, eating the entire thing, core and all. When she was finished, the feeling had returned to her hand enough for her to gingerly use it to open the bag of carrots.
She’d never particularly cared for raw carrots, but now they tasted damn near as good as the apple, the crunchy vegetables full of flavor and vitality. She swore never to turn her nose up at a carrot again.
After eating two, she forced herself to stop, though she was hungry enough to finish the entire bag. She wanted to ration her food since she didn’t know when this fucker would deign to feed her again, and she didn’t want to make herself sick by eating too much at once.
Murmur’s brow was creased in a frown, and he was muttering something under his breath that she couldn’t discern. He jerked his chin away, only to suddenly jerk it back the other way and snap, “That’s ridiculous.”
He shook his head roughly and growled, “Impossible.”
Was he … arguing with himself?
His head suddenly snapped forward, and his gaze sharpened on hers in a way that told her he was actually paying attention now.
She swallowed the lump in her throat. She’d die before she let him see her weakness. “Where did you get the food?” she forced herself to ask.
“From my garden,” he deadpanned.
She blinked.
He rolled his eyes. “I went to Earth and took it from a supermarket.”
“Took … as in stole.”
He looked at her like she’d just asked him if Hell was real. “Obviously.”
She blinked. She wasn’t going to thank him, and she didn’t care if he shoplifted vegetables. Not if it meant she got to eat.
They stared at each other. She glared at him, her eyes full of hatred, and he just … watched her. Like he truly felt nothing. The same way he’d pushed through that crowd of people like they were inanimate objects, he watched her now with complete detachment.
In fact, before her eyes, she watched his eyes grow more and more distant, until suddenly, she knew he’d gone back into his head.
“Can’t understand why it failed,” he muttered, shaking his head. “All the ingredients… Everything in place … More blood needed perhaps? But how—”
“Your spell failed?” she asked.
He blinked, and suddenly he was back in the room with her. “Yes.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.” By the set of his jaw, he wasn’t lying about that.
“That means you’re going to keep me longer, doesn’t it?”
“Yes.” He didn’t look smug, but he didn’t look sorry either. He simply didn’t give a shit.
Bastard. There was no chance of Stockholm syndrome with this one.
“How long?”
“As long as it takes.”
“People are going to think I’m dead. No one knows where I went.”
“That was the point,” he replied easily.
She gritted her teeth against the wave of despair that crashed over her. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of seeing her fall apart. Not that he’d care either way.
He was a demon. It wasn’t like she’d expected anything different, but damn. She hadn’t realized she could hate him any more than she already did, but somehow, she found a way.
“I must return to work now,” he said, more to himself than her. But he didn’t make any move to get up. And his voice suddenly sounded exhausted. “There’s much to be done and little time left.”
She frowned, trying to figure him out. “My blood is a key ingredient in your spell. What kind of spell? What are you trying to do?”
“That’s not your concern.”
“Maybe it should be. I’m a blood-born witch. Maybe I could help you.”
His scoff made it clear he didn’t believe her. And yeah, she didn’t blame him. He was a god-knew-how-old demon who’d probably been practicing black magic longer than she could comprehend. She was a smart, powerful witch, but she couldn’t match that.
“I already told you that trying to trick me won’t work,” he said, but she didn’t miss the spark of intrigue in his eyes. Like he was enjoying watching her try.
“I’ll be honest then,” she said. “I’d do pretty much anything to keep from being left in this cell again.”
His eyes narrowed, and she thought she might have surprised him with her candor.
“Maybe it’s not smart to tell you that, but I need to make it clear that if you think I’m trying to manipulate you, it’s only because I’m desperate.”
“Why?” He looked around. “It’s not that bad. I didn’t even chain you up.”
She shot him an incredulous look.
He shrugged. “You should see how I treat my other prisoners. Most are chained so tight they can’t even lift a finger.
” A sickening glint lit his eyes, like he got off on that.
Of course he does. “My most prized prisoner is decapitated regularly so he’s constantly using all his energy regrowing his head.
” His lips curved at her expression of revulsion. “I’d say you have it easy.”
“I’m not a demon. If you did that to me, I’d be dead.” She gestured to the cell. “This is about as much as a human can take without dying. I need more than a bag of carrots once a week to survive, especially if you want to keep taking my blood.”
He frowned, and her heart picked up. She might actually be getting through to him.