Tyrus grips his spear tightly, the tension around his eyes increasing. “From this moment on, we move quickly. The longer we stay in the prison, the more likely that it won’t let us leave. Let’s go.”
While the moderate heat outside feels a lot like a spring day, the inside is cold and sterile. All scents vanish, and for a moment, it even feels as if my eyes aren’t working, although they soon adjust.
We’re standing in a large, square room, which has to be some sort of entryway, with flat, gleaming walls and again, no visible door.
My demon wolves growl at the new environment and I sense how unsettled they are. They hate metal boxes and seem to feel as uncomfortable in this room as they feel in elevators.
I have no doubt the environment is designed to be unsettling to all demons. After all, it’s their prison.
The soldiers who follow us inside are already jumpy, but their spears are now pointed outward, rather than at us, and I’m not sure what they think could be coming to attack us.
Tyrus leads us through the front room and, when another seamless door opens, into the next. The room is rectangular, feeling like it stretches far beyond us, and a light beam rests on the ground.
“We ride this,” Tyrus says. “The prison will take us where it wants us to go.”
“How do you know that if you’ve never been in here before?” Taniya snaps.
“Because Crone imprisoned my family as punishment for the King’s disappearance,” he says, a snarl growing on his face as he faces Taniya. “I watched them enter and step onto the light beam. I haven’t seen them again.”
Taniya exchanges a glance with me and we all step quickly onto the light beam, my demon wolves flanking us, while the soldiers bring up the rear.
The light beam moves much faster than the one outside, shooting down the long hallway, and our surroundings become a blur. It takes me a few seconds to realize that we must be passing prison cells. The cells blend in a silver blur, but they each have a small, circular window through which I occasionally glimpse a face.
Some of the faces look human—like some of the demons I saw on the street—but more than a few are beyond any supernatural I’ve ever seen on Earth. From those with red, bubbling skin and faces that are long and angular, almost horse-like, to those with more than two eyes, each of them a pinprick of darkness that locks onto us for the second it takes us to move past their prison.
“How many demons are imprisoned in here?” I ask Tyrus, who is standing two feet in front of us, scanning our surroundings as intently as I am.
He tilts his head toward me, his expression shuttered. “Thousands. Maybe more. Some of them have been here since before I existed, and they will be here long after my time is done. Before the King disappeared, only the worst of the worst were caged in this prison.” He pins me with a hard glare. “Make no mistake, if they were ever allowed to go free, it could spell the end of our world and the destruction of the Balance completely.”
The way that Malia and Taniya, along with my demon wolves, press in closer to me tells me they’re thinking the same thing I am. “Is there a chance that my sisters could be imprisoned with them?” I ask.
“That’s up to the prison,” Tyrus replies. “I have no control over what it does with them.”
Flexing my hands to try to calm myself, I take a few deep breaths and push my demon power and my wolf down as they rise with my agitation. Streams of darkness are swirling inside me, searching for a way out of the cage I’ve got them locked in.
Tyrus’s hard stare softens, but not enough to alleviate any of the anxiety I’m feeling.
“The prison is designed to keep beings alive for as long as possible,” he says. “It will feed them and sustain them. It’s unlikely that it will put them in situations where they could be killed or mortally injured. But I can’t guarantee that it won’t hurt them.”
I can’t stop the growl that passes my lips as my anxiety increases. Already, being here in the Underworld, I sense the parts of myself that I’ve tried to lock down and control rising up faster and stronger than ever before.
If I’m not careful, I might find that the balance of power within me changes. If my darker side wins, I could step over the line I’ve always drawn for myself. The line that has, up until now, stopped me from descending into the darkness of demonkind.
But if something happens to my sisters…
For all of our sakes, I really hope not.
CHAPTERSEVEN
The light beam transports us across and up multiple levels, again and again, until I’m dizzy and have no idea where we are now in this massive building. Everything on the inside looks the same to me—it’s both a maze and a prison—and I keep pushing away my fear that I’ll never find my sisters again once I leave them here.
Just when my head is starting to spin and both Malia and Taniya—and even my wolves—are showing signs of fatigue, the light beam stops moving.
We find ourselves facing an open door into a single room with high ceilings and plain silver walls—but muted silver this time, so the interior isn’t blinding.
I rapidly assess the environment for threats, disconcerted that the chamber appears so plain. I’m relieved to see that there’s at least a mattress on the floor, what looks like a small bathroom at the side, and a shelf with books that they probably won’t be able to read unless they’re in English.
Tyrus and his men crowd in behind us, once again forcing us to move, although Malia and Taniya don’t push back.
