by Jessica Gunn
Chapter 7
Being unconscious wasn’t so bad. The pain stopped. Some semblance of sleep overcame me. I also stopped feeling hunger or thirst.
But always, the reprieve ended. This time before the demon guard had gotten me back to my cell. Over and over again, this process repeated until I had lost all sense of time. Almost all sense of self. I was nothing but a punching bag, and each time they brought me in for interrogation, the worse it got.
I blinked my eyes open as my guard tossed me through the archway and barely had time to put my hands out to stop my fall. My palms and knees scraped the stone floor. I bit back a cry until the door swung shut behind me, then I couldn’t stop the sad groan that crawled its way past my lips. Moonlight shrouded me there on the floor, masking the rest of the room beyond.
If these demons from Landshaft really thought the Fire Circle was out making some big alliance, they’d be screwed if they acted based solely on my answers. It was illogical to accept one injured Hunter’s sarcastic, pained words and form one decision that could start a war between the Empire of Darkness and the Hunter Circles because of them. What was the point of all of this?
Sick torture, clearly. Amusement. Entertainment on their part. But beyond that.
Unless… unless of course these demons had heard more information from my teammates. The ones I still hadn’t seen. But they must have been here. Somewhere.
Dammit, Georgie.
I knew they didn’t take being Hunters seriously, but that was no reason to reveal everything to these assholes just to save your life. The oaths we’d taken to become Hunters made us better than that. We had to be better than scared cowards; otherwise, who would stand in our places?
“Are you all right?”
My head snapped up, sending pain shooting down my spine like a strike of lightning. I looked around the tiny room for the source of the small, feminine voice. “Who’s there?”
A figure scooted closer to me. Not that there was much room here in this god forsaken cell. A young woman my age with long, blonde hair, a narrow face, and… burgundy eyes looked back at me. “Please don’t be afraid,” she said.
I jolted backward, skittering across the floor until my back was against the bars. As I did so, a burning pain screeched across my legs and arms. Over the past couple of days, the demons had created a kaleidoscope of text on my arms and legs. Scrawled engravings in a language or code I couldn’t read… and honestly didn’t have the energy to.
My stomach roiled.
“What did they do to you?” the woman asked, moving closer again.
I shot her a glare. “Stay away from me.” This was such a trap they might as well have not even tried. Yes, place me back into a cell with a woman. Thinking I’d help her out, demon or not. Like I’d got some honor code for that bullshit.
A demon was a demon no matter what. Even a helpless one. And demons were, by their twisted magikal nature, never helpless.
The young demon woman gave me a small, sad smile and nodded before retreating a bit. “I won’t hurt you. I promise. I’m a prisoner as much as you are.”
I laughed hollowly. “I’m sure.”
“It’s true,” she said very matter-of-factly. “I betrayed them.”
“Landshaft?” I lifted an eyebrow. There was no chance any of this was the truth.
She nodded. “And the Empire.”
I laid my hands palm-up on my lap as if welcoming the universe to end my suffering. “Don’t sound so chipper about it.”
The woman shrugged. “What’s done is done, and it looks like there’s no way out of this, so… I’m Chloe, by the way.”
“Right. Chloe.” I pinched the bridge of my nose—gently, so as not to make it hurt even more—and looked up at the ceiling. “What exactly is it that you did to betray them?” If this was a trap, at least it could be an entertaining one. I had to admit that talking to Chloe sort of put my pain out of my mind.
At least until I looked back to the markings I’d been scarred with.
Chloe shrugged again. “There was an attack and to save myself I gave this team of Hunters and government workers—Hydron, they called themselves—information they wanted. To make a way to combat aura sickness. Which supposedly they figured out in the end. I suppose, anyway, if Talon has captured me. I didn’t give them all the information I knew, but…” She shook her head. “They must have had enough puzzle pieces on their own. My information just filled in the blanks.”
Talon. Of course they wouldn’t want that information getting out. “There’s really a way to stop aura sickness?”
“Guess so.”
“That’s not possible,” I said.
“Apparently it is…” She stopped and gestured at me for something.
“Oh. Kian.” I didn’t see the harm in giving her my name. Not when we were both stuck here, and her probably indefinitely. Me… I’d get out of here. One way or another, although I hoped it was during a daring rescue with guns blazing once the Fire Circle realized what had happened to me and my team. But first I’d have to find my teammates and confirm their survival. Otherwise, rescuing just me was useless, as I’d be going back in for them.
And I definitely wouldn’t be risking my life—or theirs—to rescue Chloe.
“Well, Kian,” Chloe said. “Apparently, it is possible to find a way around aura sickness, so that it’s easier to fight many demons in one place. Hydron had a formula for a medication. I and the demons had the magik to make it work.”
I wasn’t sure I believed that. Aura sickness was a good human soul’s way of telling you when demons and their dark, twisted magik and souls were around. Too many of them, too many demonic auras, and your body began to shut down. But it didn’t matter, because when most people felt that sick from demonic auras, they were usually too surrounded to do anything about it anyway.
Aura sickness did make demon-hunting dangerous, though. So combating it with a medicine or a pill… it could be useful.
If it were true.
If this weren’t all a ruse. A lie.
A fabrication to get me to talk.
“Why stick you in a cell with me?” I asked, although I already had an unhappy suspicion about that. Maybe the complex was too small to house too many prisoners—assuming her story wasn’t a lie. But then why not just put a teammate of mine in here with me instead?
Chloe moved into the moonlight again. It made the sides of her face sort of glow. “I overheard them earlier when they were interrogating you. I think they’re afraid of an alliance of humans and other magik-users that can walk into Landshaft and kill them all without batting an eye because demonic auras aren’t weighing them down.” A half-smile twisted her lips.
“You still sound pretty chipper about that,” I pointed out.
She nodded. “Helps when you didn’t want to become a demon in the first place.”
I hesitated, unable to speak. Sure, I knew not all demons wanted to be made into demons. I just hadn’t ever met an individual like that before. “I—”
The door to our cell swung open again. “Up, child.” It was the same demon guard from before, glaring at Chloe.
She nodded and, without further prompting, complied. And as she stood, I saw the written scarring on her arms too. The same unintelligible language.
Wrong place, wrong time. For both of us, it seems.
As soon as the door slammed shut again and the cell was quiet, my heart sank.
Even with a cellmate, we were both restricted by being hit with requirem. Unless we had the advantage of surprising our captors and an ability to make or find weapons, we weren’t going anywhere.
It also meant I may not have a choice but to trust her.
If she were telling the truth.
What if she is?
I glanced out the window, focusing on the forest beyond and the moon rising in the sky. I no longer knew what day it was. I had no clue, no way to know. My legs and arms ached—my head pounded like a thousand horses galloping.
But so far, help hadn’t come. So… did it matter if Chloe was telling the truth? Either I didn’t trust her, we didn’t try to escape, and we both died here. Or I trusted her and there was a chance of getting out—an equal one. She either betrayed me and I died a young Hunter to demons in my twenties just as I’d feared when I had sworn the Hunter Circles oath… or she was innocent and maybe, just maybe, we had a chance at escape. Both she and I, and my teammates.
Where are you? I asked of the rest of my team as if they could answer.
Maybe it was better they couldn’t.
I glanced around the room again. Save for the moonlit window and some thin as hell, wannabe bed rolls, the small space was bare. Devoid of anything useful with which to make a weapon. There were always the food trays…
A plan formed in my mind, slowly but surely. My thoughts were slow, but now that I had a potential plan, nothing would stop me.
We’d have to be quick. And Chloe would have to be willing.
Assuming she came back from wherever they’d just taken her at all.
If not, it’d just be me and my teammates. I just had to find them.
Chapter 8
It was still dark outside when the Talon guards brought Chloe back to our cell. I couldn’t see the moon anymore, though, so many hours must have passed. I supposed. All of this not knowing what time it was or how long I’d been stuck in this cell was starting to get to me. A week had passed—maybe more—since the initial attack in the woods.
But the second Chloe was shoved through the door to her knees, I pushed through all negativity and confusion. We only had a bit of time to plan before the next window of opportunity came.
As soon as the door shut again, I looked to her. “I have a plan.”
Her body was shaking uncontrollably, and something dark dripped from her chin. Blood. “Great,” she said weakly.
Despite her being a demon and me having no sympathy for them at all, I hesitated. At one point, Chloe might have been human. For most demons, that was the case. I’d heard of demon children being born. It must have been a common enough occurrence. But I’d never once actually seen a demon child.
I allowed my expression to soften some. I may have hated demons, but I wasn’t generally a dick. “Are you all right?”
Chloe laughed dryly. “Would you be?”
“No,” I said, retreating into myself a little bit. Obviously, she wasn’t fine. They’d beat her. Tortured her, maybe. And for what? Chloe had definitely leaked some invaluable information about demons and Darkness to whatever this Hunter Circles and government organization was, but what was done was done. She couldn’t take it back now, and neither could they. “Listen, I have an idea for a way out of here. First, we have to escape this room and free my friends. Then we have a fighting chance.”
Chloe turned to me. Her face was a smattering of blues and purples, then red on her lips and chin.
I frowned. I wished there was something, anything, I could do for her besides offer words of potential escape. Words that probably sounded like a madman’s wishful thinking.
I wasn’t stupid. No matter what type of escape we concocted, the chances of success were…
“Your friends?” For a moment, Chloe’s eyebrows knitted together, then she nodded. “Right. Your team, I presume?”
“Yeah.” Most Hunters worked in teams. Supposedly, it was safer. But there were freelancers too. “If I was captured, so were they. And I’m not leaving without them.”
“Even if it means your own downfall?” she asked.
I nodded. “It’s part of the oath we all swore when we became Hunters.”
Chloe wiped away some of the blood from her mouth and chin with the sleeve of her shirt. “I don’t know how to tell you this, Kian. But we’re the only prisoners here.”
My heart sank, then rose again with defiance. “No. That can’t be true.”
“It is. I’ve seen the entire complex during my stay here, and there’s not much to it.” Chloe shifted and resettled herself against the opposite wall. “There’s this cell and one other, which flooded during the last storm the night after you were brought in. You must have slept through it, though I’m not sure how. Guess Talon has enough sympathy for me to not drown.”
I shook my head. “This isn’t right. They can’t be dead.”
“I never said they were dead.” She pulled up the sleeve of her other arm and traced her fingertips over the tiny ancient words scrawled there by knifepoint. The marks that mirrored mine. “I said they weren’t here. It’s possible they weren’t captured along with you at all.”
“They wouldn’t leave me behind,” I snapped as a frustrated fire burst to life within me. “They wouldn’t.”
She shrugged, but it wasn’t in an apathetic way. More… matter of fact. “If they’re not here, then you don’t have to worry about rescuing them. That’s all I’m saying. It might make your plan easier, actually.”
“How could they be alive?” My terse words cut even me. I pulled in a deep breath and forced myself to relax some. “There was no rescue.”
“Your team might not know where you are,” Chloe said.
“I don’t think we’re far from where Talon captured me.” I looked up to the window, where the sun was starting to rise and lighten the sky.
“What matters is they’re not here.”
Unless they’re dead. But I wouldn’t be able to tell that from inside this cell anyway. Survival first. That had to be the strategy from here on out.
“You’re right,” I said. “I don’t think they deliver food on a schedule. I’ve been awake for at least two days and only gotten food once. But the next time they open the door to do so, we rush them. Maybe we get lucky.”
Chloe shot me a look. “Or they knock us back with magik.”
“Maybe we’ll get extra lucky and can requirem them.”
“That’d require us being free from the word-magik too, so we can teleportante and I can fight.”
I nodded again. “I know. It’s a risk. But if they’re leaving us in here, they’re not reapplying it. It’s that or we sit here saying teleportante over and over again and hope that the wall of magik around this complex doesn’t block teleportation too.”
Chloe was quiet for a moment before lifting herself from the floor. “Then it’s the best chance we’ve got. Let’s do it.”
A Hunter and a demon are stuck in a cell.
They make an alliance to escape together.
What could possibly go wrong?
Chapter 9
It was a long while after that before the cell door opened again. The sun came and went, along with hours of halfhearted conversation. Given the lack of anything in the room, I couldn’t help Chloe clean any of her wounds or tend to my own, either.
“Mine should be okay,” Chloe had said at one point before sitting back against a wall and closing her eyes. “Demons heal faster.”
I raised an eyebrow. “That quickly?”
She chuckled dryly. “Not so much. But enough.”
“Lucky you.” I hadn’t meant it in a bitter way, though I was sure it had come out as such.
I kept thinking about my teammates as we sat there, listening for footfalls to come trudging up the hallway. Wondering where they were if they weren’t here. Were they alive at home or Headquarters worried about me, or dead in the woods?
The second I got out of here, I’d have to get back to Headquarters. From there, Jaffrin or his Command could piece together a search party while I got my arms and legs looked at. I wouldn’t be far behind the search party, either. There was no way I’d desert my team.
Finally, heavy footfalls echoed beyond the door.
“Hey,” I said, gesturing to Chloe.
She opened her eyes and nodded, standing from the floor.
We took our positions on either side of the door and waited for the demon to slide keys into the lock and o
pen it. We’d only get this one chance. A failure would result in our deaths or permanent separation.
Pulling a deep breath into my lungs, steadying myself, I waited. One second. Five.
The footfalls grew heavier and closer. A key slid into the lock on the other side of the door. It twisted, moving tiny metal gears within. It was like every movement was exaggerated and magnified as I waited with bated breath for the right moment to strike. I wanted to glance at Chloe. To make sure she was ready, too. But the very moment I went to look at her, the door pushed inward as a guard undid the lock.
I bounded forward before his feet crossed the threshold and pushed the door backward, slamming it into his nose. He grunted loudly, surprised, as I yanked the door back open and kicked him in the shin. Chloe stood beside me ready to attack. We both stumbled forward through the door and peered around to make sure no one else was here.
“Help—” the guard shouted, but the word was cut off sharply as Chloe kicked his head. A sickening crack reverberated throughout the hall.
I tried to chuckle but ended up in a coughing fit that lasted several seconds. “Good—aim—” I sputtered out between coughs.
Chloe spared me a small smile before grabbing my arm and leading me down a hall. How she knew where she was going, I wasn’t sure. She’d mentioned having spent a good amount of time in the complex. Chloe was either a quick learner or she was lying. I had to put my faith in the former rather than the latter or I’d never escape.
She led me down several hallways before reaching what appeared to be a door. There she stopped and turned to me.
“Through that door is the woods. Beyond that, the magik barrier. I’m not sure what it’s made of or how it works. We may yet be stuck here.”
“That’s fine,” I said, taking a few steps. “We have to try.” Worst case, we’d die. And the two of us were going to die anyway if we’d stayed in that cell.
There was only one choice, one path, forward from here.