Satisfied that Sam would be out cold for hours she rose silently and crossed the room to open the door to the apartment into which Thomas and Marcus had disappeared.
Taking a deep breath to still her nerves she straightened her back and grasped the handle tightly to hide the tremble of her hand.
They were gone, she realized as she opened the door and stepped into the adjoining chamber, but the room wasn’t empty.
‘How is he?’ Tyrel demanded.
‘He sleeps,’ Aalia replied, her eyes downcast as was expected of her. ‘He will require much more healing but for now he needs to regain his strength.’
Tyrel nodded; her gaze quickly flicked to his face before turning away. His expression was carefully neutral, but she’d seen a trace of worry in his hard eyes.
She knew who Tyrel was, he was one of Thomas’s favorites. More than that, he’d trained with Samuel, they’d fought together side by side. They’d been friends she assumed and wondered how he must feel to have believed Sam was dead only to find out he still lived but had been missing for centuries. She was sure she wasn’t the only one looking for answers.
‘Is there something else?’ he snapped irritably. ‘Thomas ordered that you not leave Sam’s side until he was healed.’
‘Yes,’ she agreed, with a slight nod of her head. She kept her eyes low and her head slightly bowed. She wasn’t as scared of him as she was Thomas but as a female, even a healer, she was still considered beneath the warriors.
‘Forgive me,’ she murmured, ‘but in order to help Samuel it would help to have more information about what happened to him. I wish to…’ she swallowed tightly, fisting her hands at her sides so he wouldn’t see her hands shaking. ‘It would help if I could speak with the woman… Scarlett.’
‘Impossible,’ Tyrel replied coldly.
‘But, if I could just…’ she looked up at him.
Tyrel hissed.
‘You forget your place woman,’ he snapped. ‘You have your orders, now follow them.’
She didn’t say anything else, she simply bowed and returned to the other room, quietly clicking the door closed behind her as she leaned back against it, her heart pounding.
There was no way they were going to give her permission to speak with the woman… so she’d just have to find another way to speak with her.
3
Scarlett shifted uncomfortably on the hard metal chair, but then again, it hadn’t been built with comfort in mind. The cuffs bit unmercifully into her wrists, pulsing and throbbing with heat and pain. Now, she had some idea of what Sam had to endure while he’d been imprisoned and tortured by her brother Ash.
She’d lost all sense of time. It seemed to her that she’d been left alone for days but she could’ve been wrong about that. Her eyes had adjusted to the darkness of the room, lit only by the faint muted blue glow of the lettering adorning the four walls of her prison.
She looked down as her arm pulsed painfully, but she couldn’t even make out her own body in the darkness. Her stomach clenched emptily and let out a gurgle of protest. They hadn’t bothered to feed her, just another form of control, but it was her thirst that consumed her thoughts. She couldn’t even bring to mind the last time she’d had a drink. Her lips were dry and beginning to peel slightly. Every time she tried to swallow it felt like razor blades in her throat and there was barely any moisture in her mouth. She supposed it was the heat of the poison rushing through her body that was making her thirst worse.
She tried not to think about it but trapped in a tiny cube with no light and no sense of time wasn’t helping.
She glanced around the room again absently, trying to ignore the burn of her forearms, her eyes tracing the spells and incantations she now knew by heart. It was strange to think she was sitting in the same prison; in the same chair they’d held Lucifer in after his betrayal, before he was cast down into Hell.
It was a place every angel knew existed, but none dare question. It was considered blasphemy to even think his name. Every reminder of Lucifer had been systematically destroyed by order of the Council of nine, all except this cell it seemed. It made her wonder why.
She wasn’t that dangerous, well… she admitted to herself, she was. After all Sam had trained her himself, not that Thomas knew that. He’d be horrified to think of his precious son imparting their secret skills to an angel and a woman at that.
Despite her discomfort she huffed out an almost silent laugh. She wasn’t sure which he considered lower, angel or woman. Either way she ticked all the boxes, especially when adding in her relationship with his son and her supposed knowledge of Caelum.
She was only surprised she didn’t already have a blade between her ribs, although it wouldn’t be the first time. Her thoughts darkened and a phantom ache in her chest pulsed as her thoughts were drawn back to her brother, to the look in his eyes as he sank his knife into her chest.
She shook her head; she didn’t have the energy to think about what had happened with Ash. She needed to figure out how the hell she was going to get out of this mess. She hadn’t counted on them holding her in Lucifer’s prison cell when she’d allowed them to capture her. Had it been anywhere else she could have easily broken out and escaped, but this room was designed to be inescapable. Even now, she could feel the pulse of power rippling through the walls and floor, powered by the ancient sigils and incantations. If Lucifer himself couldn’t get out, there was no way she’d be able to… not without help.
She dragged in a shaky and reluctant breath; she didn’t want to drag them into this, but she only had two allies in Heaven that she trusted. Somehow, she had to get word to Gabriel and Vince, she just didn’t have a clue how.
Feeling nothing but hopeless inevitability, she closed her eyes and let out a deep frustrated breath. Her arms throbbed and ached, her whole body flushed with uncomfortable heat as the sweat rolled down her neck and slowly trickled down her chest.
Suddenly she felt a tiny, cool hand cupping her cheek gently and her eyes snapped open. Staring widely in confusion, Scarlett found herself looking into the eyes of the dark-haired girl she’d seen all her life.
She appeared, much as she always had, wearing a pristine white dress tied with a deep blue sash. Her ebony hair spilled down her back, like ink. Around her neck she wore the same curious orb-like pendant, deep blue, the heart of it snapping with micro bursts of lightning.
She watched Scarlett with a grave expression, her pale skin glowing with an ethereal light in the dim, almost black room.
Her delicate hand stroked Scarlett’s cheek, as if she was trying to comfort her. Scarlett’s brow creased in confusion; the child was touching her… and she could feel it. Either she was hallucinating pretty hard or… the child was somehow real.
She’d seen the child for as long as she could remember. She’d never tried to reach out, to touch her, or use any other action, to imply she was anything more than a figment of Scarlett’s imagination.
Scarlett had always assumed she’d conjured her from somewhere in the deep recesses of her mind. An imaginary friend, someone to combat the loneliness and hurt of being an outcast amongst her people, but what if she was wrong? What if the child was real?
That had to mean she’d chosen Scarlett, but why? And who was she?
Scarlett blinked again but the child was still there, watching patiently, almost as if she were aware of Scarlett’s thoughts and was waiting for her to follow the path of her reasoning through to some sort of conclusion.
‘Are you real?’ Scarlett whispered, her voice scratchy and foreign to her ears.
The girl’s lip tipped slightly, an almost smile.
Scarlett’s mind was trying to puzzle it out logically. It was fair to assume, due to her situation and extreme dehydration, that she was hallucinating but something about that just didn’t sit right. Something about New Orleans…
She tried to think back to that moment. She was outside the church; she was holding onto Sam… they were trying to stop he
r from entering the church and…
Scarlett’s eyes widened and her mouth fell open slightly.
‘You stopped them,’ she breathed, ‘you threw Julien back against the railings. You opened the door to the church… it should’ve been locked, but you just opened it up to let me and Sam through.’
The girl didn’t answer she just continued to watch Scarlett.
‘Will you help me?’ Scarlett asked quietly. ‘I know that you can; you interfered back in New Orleans to get us into that church.’
The girl blinked and tilted her head the finest fraction.
‘I need you to find my friend Vince,’ Scarlett began, looking up sharply as she heard footsteps outside the door.
Her heart began to pound in her chest as the fear took hold, her breathing sped up and her hands fisted involuntarily, causing a sharp pain to shoot up her arms.
‘Please…’ her voice came out in a whispered, urgent rush, ‘find Vince and tell him where I am.’
The door rattled and the sound of a heavy bolt shifting echoed through the small room. She blinked and the girl was gone. Her stomach clenched and her body tensed as the door swung open, filling the room with light, blinding her.
She blinked and tried to focus, but her vision had adjusted to the darkness of the room. Even the light from the corridor beyond stabbed into her eyes like tiny pins.
She could hear heavily booted footfalls enter the room and she blinked rapidly, trying to focus on the blurry shapes surrounding her. She could hear the grating whine and bump of something being wheeled into the room over the uneven ground.
Even more light suddenly flooded the room and she found herself shutting her eyes and wincing. She heard the door slam with a metallic clang and slowly, as her eyes adjusted to the painfully bright light, she dared to look up.
Thomas stood in front of her, tall and imposing, his features a hardened mask of barely concealed contempt. He wore the uniform of a Sentinel, a heavy black tunic with tiny golden buttons. His blue gaze was hard and unyielding as he watched her intimidatingly.
There were two more tall, well-built men either side of her. She couldn’t tell if they were Sentinel or angel without looking but she dared not take her eyes off Thomas. She couldn’t afford to show any weakness.
Despite keeping her gaze on Thomas, she could see Azariel and Thackery standing to his right and Marcus to his left.
Her heart sank and she swallowed uncomfortably. She knew what was coming next, just as she knew with absolutely certainty that she couldn’t escape her fate any more than her mother had.
Thomas was the first to look away, but it was in no way a victory. His eyes darted to the men stationed either side of her and he gave an imperceptible nod. They seemed to need no more instruction than that. Suddenly Scarlett felt them unchaining her legs and arms from the restraints keeping her anchored to the chair. The cruel metal cuffs remained around her wrists but were detached from the chair.
They jerked her roughly to her feet as her legs, stiff from being seated for so long, tried to fold underneath her. She caught a glimpse of their uniforms as they lifted her arms above her head. Sentinels, she realized.
They attached the cuffs to the metal framework above her head. Until that moment she’d tried not to think about what the strange, cruel looking metal contraption was for. Now she realized, with some chagrin, she was about to experience it firsthand.
She dangled helplessly by her wrists, her toes barely scraping the ground as she swayed. The guards either side of her grabbed her soiled t-shirt roughly, the sound of material tearing filled the room as they stripped her. Her jeans were also torn from her body, leaving her in nothing but a pair of panties and her bra, the latter of which was heavily bloodstained from when she’d been stabbed and then healed.
They seemed content for the moment to leave her some dignity, rather than the complete humiliation of being stripped bare in front of her enemies. She doubted that was due to any kind of empathy on their part, but still, she would appreciate small mercies.
Her relief however was all too short-lived when she felt their bruising fingers press painfully into her back at her shoulder blades. The pain and pressure were excruciating, and she could do nothing to stop the hoarse cry which tore from her lips as they gripped her wings and wrenched them forcibly from the two faint slits which ran the length of her spine.
Their grip tightened and they twisted maliciously as they forced her wings to extend. They reached up to the wicked, curved, claw-like clamps suspended from the framework and snapped them viciously along the bones of her wings so she couldn’t move them.
She gasped painfully, trying to adjust to the painful, awkward angle of her wings when she felt them grab her ankles. A sharp pain followed by the immediate, familiar burning sensation and she knew they’d attached cuffs to her ankles the same as the ones at her wrists. Those cuffs were also attached to the frame so that she dangled, suspended fully from the frame, facing downwards, roughly at the height of a grown man’s shoulders.
Finally, her beautiful red hair was grabbed roughly and clamped to another one of the metal claws dangling from the frame. It snapped her head back, not allowing her to move her head and keeping her neck at an awkward and painful angle.
She tried to breathe slowly through the pain and discomfort, her limited field of vision only allowing her to see the door of her cage and the men who stood in front of it.
Thomas nodded once again to the two guards who’d restrained her and with a silent nod, they exited the room, once again allowing her prison door to slam shut with a disturbing ring of finality.
‘Now then,’ Thomas finally spoke into the stillness of the room, ‘where to begin?’
Azariel, Thackery and Marcus hung back at the edges of the room, seemingly content to allow Thomas his time with her. Their bright eyes shone with a dreadful kind of anticipation, leaving no doubt in Scarlett’s mind that they would enjoy what they were about to witness.
‘You have no idea how much consideration I have given to the thought of your interrogation over the years,’ Thomas told her as he slowly and methodically began to undo each tiny golden button which ran vertically down the center of his tunic.
‘Is Sam okay?’ The question burst from her lips before she could stop herself.
Thomas paused mid button his expression carefully shuttered. He walked across the floor of the cell, closing the distance between them. When he finally stopped no more than a hair’s breadth away, he leaned in, his face so close she could smell his breath, and his voice when he spoke, was cool and deliberate.
‘You would do better to worry about yourself,’ he whispered.
‘Please,’ she stared back into his cold hard eyes, his expression giving no hint as to his son’s condition. It galled her to beg, but she had to know. If this was truly to be the way her life ended, she had to know if it had been worth the sacrifice. She had to know if Sam was alive. ‘Please…’ she whispered again, her voice breaking slightly.
His eyes dipped down as they caught a sudden flash of gold, and his fist wrapped around the small gold ring which dangled from a chain around her neck. His expression hardened and his jaw clenched tightly as he yanked hard. The delicate chain snapped, biting into the soft skin at the back of her neck and leaving a thin red line to mar her flesh.
Thomas straightened, gazing down at the ring sitting in his large palm. He picked it up, examining it carefully until his eyes fell upon the inscription.
‘Forever yours… Sam…’
Thomas’s eyes blazed with cold blue fire. He tossed the ring away in disgust. It clinked softly on the hard ground, bouncing and rolling away into the shadows as he turned his murderous glare on her.
Scarlett trembled, watching as Thomas once again began to silently unbutton his tunic. He slowly slid it from his shoulders and laid it carefully across a metal trolley, leaving him in a white linen undershirt. Slowly, he began to roll the sleeves up to his elbows, revealing his powerful forearms
corded with thick muscle.
Scarlett swallowed painfully, her eyes drawn back to the trolley. At least she now knew what had caused the squeaking noise when they’d first entered her cell and she wished she didn’t. The trolley was fully stocked with all manner of things she certainly didn’t want to examine too closely. Unfortunately for her, she had a hard, painful knot in her stomach which told her in no uncertain terms she was about to get up close and personal with every cruel, wicked looking, knife, screw, pin and plier on that gruesome table.
Thomas took his time perusing the items spaced out uniformly on the trolley. The longer he took, the more Scarlett could feel her body tensing, his slow deliberation heightening her fear.
Finally, he reached out and picked up a long, thin screw about eight inches long. He turned to her slowly, his eyes lighting up slightly at the tremor in her body. He held the end of the screw in the pinched fingertips of one hand while he casually tapped the forefinger of his other hand against the needle pointed tip.
‘Now,’ Thomas began slowly, ‘we have rather a lot of ground to cover, so why don’t we start with something simple before we work our way up to the grand finale. After all I wouldn’t want to rush this.’
The corner of his mouth twitched, almost a smile, but he held back.
‘The last time you were in our custody you’d been apprehended for murdering your own brother Asher, a custodian of the archives, and stealing from those archives a very important artefact.’ Thomas slowly paced closer to Scarlett. ‘So why don’t we begin with the location of the Sphere?’
Scarlett’s jaw tightened.
‘Where is the Sphere?’ he repeated.
‘I don’t have it,’ Scarlett answered defiantly.
‘Come now,’ Thomas replied coolly, ‘do you really expect us to believe that?’
The Veritas Page 3