32. Chace
Ahard shove at my back sent me stumbling into the prison cell.
Weak with exhaustion and malnutrition, and short of breath, I fell to my knees. Wiped the blood from my nose with the base of my thumb.
I gave no fight to the male at my back because…weak. And the chain remained locked in place around my ankles, the door to my cage sealed, holding me inside the cell…until the next time the bastard wished to experiment or torture.
My situation reminded me of Ubel’s laboratory and the many tests he had performed on his subjects. The old reaper never spoke of what he did in that room behind closed doors, but I knew. Now I had become one of those subjects, only one forced to submit to another playing God.
As if testing my pain limits, the past couple of days had been more torture than anything else. I had a hard time understanding how the things done to me could be used for any larger purpose other than to make me miserable. But the sadist clearly searched for something.
He’d taken and taken. Taken hair and nails and blood.
Taken flesh and muscle. Taken every possible bodily fluid.
He’d even, through some magical device, taken a sample of my reaper verve.
Captured it in a jar so that the power sparked and splintered, looking much like silver lightning trapped in a container.
Bent over my knees on the cold stone floor, with my hands fisted tightly, I studied the veins running the lengths of my arms. Yesterday…or maybe it was the day before that…my veins had run black. Today’s experiments had restored my natural color.
At least, that’s how my fuzzy brain recalled the sequence of events.
The little girl had also seen the color distortion, so…not a figment of my imagination.
A young girl in a place like this.
Who was she, and why had she been standing outside my prison cell in the dark dungeon?
What does he want with you? she had asked, to which I had no answer. And her other comment, The other prisoner never did that.
I wanted to explore that topic further, but my throat and tongue had denied me a voice.
What prisoner? Was that prisoner still around? In need of release, be it from a cage or a tortured life?
The child had quickly dismissed herself after those comments, saying she needed to run before he arrived, and she also wanted to check on her—whoever her was.
The child’s name had not appeared upon my flesh as a soul to be reaped, so I knew not who she was. The same held true of my jailer. I currently lacked knowledge about a lot of things, and that fact made me uncomfortable. I preferred devils and traps of known origin.
My jailer’s retreating footfalls faded down the darkened tunnel, and I inched my body over to the water bowl. I practiced conservation even though the water got refilled during each torture session.
I scooped two sips to my lips, then wet my hands to pat the blood from my face and neck. After one more sip, I lumbered to the wooden platform doubling as my bed. There, I collapsed.
Unmoving, I closed my eyes and willed the silence to devour my pain, turn my body and mind numb.
The soft clunk and shift of the lock broke the silence. How much time had passed? Had they returned for me so soon? The passage of minutes (hours?) hadn’t felt like nearly enough. I hadn’t even begun to recoup.
I cracked my eyes as the door to my enclosure swung open, accompanied by only the groan of protesting iron and empty air. No one stood present. No one unlocked and opened the cell door.
Against the protest of my many aching muscles, I shoved my body upright.
“Chace, my dear boy. We must move quickly.” The voice belonged to Aldine, but he was nowhere to be seen.
The air in front of me rippled. In the fluid motion, my elder appeared. Aldine pulled a cloak from his body and draped it over his arm, revealing himself washed in the green haze of my vision. With a firm grip, he clasped my wrist and tugged me to a stand.
I blinked hard, my body swaying in search of balance. Was this a trick? A new kind of torture?
“How did you find me?” My voice worked like razor blades on the inside of my throat.
“It’s amazing what you can learn when others are unaware of your presence.” Aldine’s lips pulled into a weary smile. He shoved the cloak and a key into my hold. “Take these. No matter what happens, you keep hidden and keep moving. Get yourself free of this place.”
I glanced down at the bundle of fabric and the sliver of metal. “What am I supposed to do with these?”
What kind of magic had Aldine brought to my rescue, and where had he found such things?
Aldine motioned for me to put on the cloak. I did as requested. The clothing article hung over my shoulders large, bulky, and completely unremarkable.
“They’re Killian tools. The key will open any door or lock, and the cloak will grant you the power of indiscernibility.” Aldine pulled the arms of the cloak toward the floor, hiding my hands, then he grabbed the edges of the hood and tugged it up and over my head to cover my face.
Despite the material, I could still see the world before me, now tinged with a slight silvery haze.
“Keep the key safe,” Aldine ordered.
The key, long and slender, featured a large K and a small skull at the center. I slipped it into my thigh pocket.
“Can you see all right?” he asked.
“I see you.”
Heavy footsteps echoed in the tunnel, heading in our direction. I stared into the darkness, my chest clenching and heart thrumming like a battering ram. We should run. Only…
Can I? I’m in less-than-ideal condition, and it’s probably too late to try. In my current state, the mad male of a jailor would easily catch me.
Plus, I was still barefoot and chained to the floor.
Aldine didn’t turn toward the approaching sounds. He held his gaze steady in my direction yet failed to meet my eyes. In fact, I got the strange sensation he peered straight through my chest.
“Aldine?”
He shushed me. “Use the key to unlock the chains and say not another word until you are far from this place and somewhere safe.”
“I don’t―”
“I said silence,” he whispered with a hiss.
I clamped my mouth shut and watched in horror as my wicked jailer appeared out of the darkness. He stepped to the open door of the prison cell, a muddy haze surrounding his body.
“What is this?” the bastard bellowed.
“I would like to know the same thing.” Aldine turned to the door. “What have you done with my charge? I know he was here. Where is he now?”
I stood beside Aldine in plain sight. What kind of mind game was he playing?
Oh, right. I blinked, hard, and rubbed my forehead, attempting to dispel the haze from my mind. Invisible cloak. That’s what Aldine meant by indiscernibility when he’d given me the Killian’s cloak. It granted the wearer invisibility. The whole reason I hadn’t seen Aldine enter my prison.
“Liam Aldine,” the jailer said with a sneer. “I caught rumor you might be in our citadel. I have to admit, I never expected to see you again.”
I sucked in a deep breath. If the two knew each other…
“Yes, well. I do enjoy surprising people,” Aldine replied, a slight shrug lifting one shoulder. “But I did not come here to catch up on old times. I came here to find my charge.”
My jailer narrowed his eyes. “How did you find this place? And how did you unlock this cell?”
“The cell was already open and empty when I got here, but the scent of neglect and mistreatment is thick in this place.” Aldine’s shoulders squared, and he swung a cursory glance over the space. “What have you done with him?”
The word empty reverberated through me as I glanced down at my hands covered by the cloak’s overly long material, my arms now encased in a faint silvery glow.
Aldine called the key and cloak tools of the Killian.
If that were true, that would imply the Killian was more than a myth and had magic tools unavailable to a reaper at my level.
I peered past Aldine to the bastard who had been a source of torture for days on end. The captor didn’t register my presence one bit. Apparently, the cloak did indeed grant invisibility.
Hope bloomed in me for the first time in days. I swallowed hard and took a small step back, careful to keep the chain at my ankles silent.
Aldine had told me to use the key.
If the cloak works so expertly, and the key works on any lock…
I extracted the key from my thigh pocket and, able to see it through the cloak, studied the thin design.
The jailer swung a glance over the cell, moving past me without a pause. “I suspect you know where this individual is that you seek. The real question is, what are you up to? After all these years, Liam, what brings you to my basement?”
Aldine released a low, gruntled laugh. “Basement.”
I kneeled and (gritting my teeth and sending a prayer to the gods) tried the key in the lock at my feet.
Holding the iron shackle, careful not to let the casting hit the ground with a clamor, I turned the key.
The lock released, and I gently…silently…
set the cuff on the stone floor. I repeated the process with the lock upon my other ankle.
Whether Aldine’s location or the cloak hid me from the jailer’s view, or if the jerk simply found himself distracted, it remained unclear.
Whatever the reason, I thanked the death gods that my torturer didn’t notice the slight scrape of iron on stone, movement caused by the brush of my coverings, as I took several steps, removing the chain from the cover of the Killian cloak.
Did the robe muffle or hush any noise within the drape of its material?
The bastard stepped closer to Aldine. Dangerously close. Yet Aldine stood his ground without showing an ounce of fear or concern.
I circled around the side of the two males, keeping at a safe distance. If the bastard couldn’t see me, then I wanted to make damn sure he didn’t hear, feel, or sense me, either.