“My pleasure,” the inspector said darkly. He fired his gun point-blank at the man’s chest.
They watched dispassionately while the dark mage spasmed uncontrollably and collapsed to the floor. Evander and Rufus dragged the three bodies inside an empty closet and pressed on.
The corridor soon branched in two. Evander extended his magic once more. To the left, he detected nothing but the general miasma of corruption. To the right came the fresh stench of dark magic.
Evander motioned to Rufus. They headed in that direction, hugging the shadows along the walls. Voices reached them a moment later. Even muffled by stone, one of them was unmistakably female.
Beneath it was a sharp edge of pain.
Evander’s blood turned to ice when someone screamed.
Shaw!
“You bastard!” Ginny raged in the distance. “Leave her?—!”
A sharp sound cut her off.
Fear and rage constricted Evander’s throat in equal measure. He and Rufus accelerated, the inspector gnashing his teeth.
The voices grew clearer as they approached a door at the end of the passage. It stood slightly ajar, wan light spilling through the gap along with the acrid scent of blood and burnt flesh.
“—tell us what we want to know and this stops.” A man’s voice, cold and deadly. “Your friend has already proven most uncooperative. You do not want to suffer the same fate as her, do you?”
“Go to hell,” Ginny snarled.
Another crack echoed through the door, followed by a pained grunt.
Whoever was doing the interrogation had just smacked Ginny again.
Evander’s heart clenched when he heard Shaw whimper.
“Such spirit,” the man sneered. “I can see why Winchester wanted you kept alive. But my patience has limits, Lady Hartley.”
Evander peered through the gap in the door.
The room beyond was a converted prayer cell, the once clean stone walls now stained with substances he didn’t care to identify. Torches guttered in iron brackets, casting flickering shadows across a scene that made his stomach turn.
Shaw was slumped against the far wall, her lip and cheek bloodied from being beaten and her left arm hanging at a sickening angle. She was conscious but barely, one eye glazed with pain, the other swollen and closed.
Ginny knelt in the centre of the room, her wrists bound behind her back and her chest heaving from anger and fear. Her emerald gown was torn and bloodied, exposing the swell of her bosom and her abdomen. Livid bruises darkened her stomach and right breast where she’d been kicked and punched. Her left cheek was discoloured and a gash in her temple oozed a crimson trickle.
The two dark mages flanking her held her up by her dishevelled hair, their fingers digging cruelly in her scalp as they bent her head at an impossible angle, exposing her throat.
A third man—the one who’d been speaking—stood before her with the casual posture of someone accustomed to causing pain.
“I’ll ask you once more,” her interrogator said. “What did Ravenwood discover about the Codex fragments?”
Evander was about to storm inside the room when Ginny’s interrogator produced a thin blade that glinted in the torchlight. He pressed it against her throat.
Evander froze, his instincts to protect Ginny from further harm warring with the wrath bubbling hotly through his veins. Rufus grabbed his arm, his face a mask of fury even as he stopped Evander from doing something foolish.
Ginny lowered her head with agonising stubbornness. A thin red line formed on her skin where she deliberately leaned into the knife. Her green eyes blazed with contempt despite her injuries and the threat to her life.
“I’ll tell you what the duke discovered.”
Her interrogator narrowed his eyes. “That’s more like it.”
A savage smile curved Ginny’s lips. “He found out that your mother was a tavern whore and your father the village idiot. Which explains quite a lot, actually.”
