Next, she studied the mechanics of the door. The bars were roughly three inches thick. Reaching through, she felt the hinges, finding no weaknesses. The door was secured with a sliding bar that went into a hole drilled into the stone on the opposite side.
She touched the padlock that secured the bar. It was so big it barely fit in her hand. She felt around as carefully as she could, but there didn’t seem to be a keyhole anywhere. How did it open then? With magic, perhaps?
Either way, there wasn’t an easy way out through the door. That left her with option two.
Even if Murmur’s potion worked and she couldn’t use magic, it would still be smart to refresh her memory on drawing a hellgate now. With any luck, there would be a window between when the spell wore off and when he refreshed it, and she could activate the gate and escape.
So passed the next few hours.
She drew small versions of the gate on the wall, careful not to waste her chalk unnecessarily. She made minor adjustments with each redraw until she was certain she had the correct design.
There was no point drawing the actual gate yet, in case Murmur returned and decided to thwart her efforts. Using the sleeve of her leather jacket, she rubbed away all her rough sketches on the wall, leaving only the final one to copy later. Then she put the chalk piece—about half its original size now—carefully into her pocket.
She sat back down against the wall and stared at the door, watching the flickering flames of the torch outside.
She was hungry and thirsty and her back hurt. Before long, her tailbone ached too from sitting on the stone, but it wasn’t like there was anywhere comfier to be. She told herself it was wise to conserve her strength for when the potion wore off and it was time to escape.
She closed her eyes and forced herself back to sleep.
Muted footsteps pulled Suyin out of her uneasy slumber. Once again, she had no idea how much time had passed. A full day, or more? Her hunger had become uncomfortable, and her mouth was so dry it was glued shut.
She didn’t bother trying to open it. Exposing it to air would just make it drier.
Moving at all felt like too much effort, and she reminded herself again that she needed to conserve her strength. A cynical voice in her mind scoffed, pointing out that she wasn’t going to have much strength left to conserve if she didn’t find a way out of here soon.
The dull footfalls awakened her hope and gave her a boost of energy, as stupid as it may have been. She couldn’t help it. The human survival instinct was the strongest of them all.
A familiar looming shadow stepped in front of the torch. As before, he blocked the light, and all she could make out was his outline. It was just enough for her to see him prick his finger on one hand with the sharp claw of the other. He swiped thebloodied fingertip over the lock, and it sprang open. A magical seal, as she’d suspected.
The sound of metal shifting filled the deadened silence as he slid the lock free and pushed the cage door open. As he stepped inside, Suyin imagined leaping to her feet, ducking around him, and escaping into the passage behind him.
But he was huge. If he stretched out his arms, he could almost reach fully across her cell. If he stuck his leg out, he could trip her easily. And she’d seen how fast his tail could strike. The memory of that sharp barb piercing her neck and the sight of it swinging on the end of his tail now was enough to convince her to stay put.
He stopped in front of where she remained sitting against the wall. As he turned, the torch flame illuminated one side of his body, and she finally got a proper look at his face.
She recognized the features of the beautiful man she’d seen at the bar. The curve of full lips, the proud line of his nose, the arch of his cheekbones—that angelic perfection was still there. But unlike his human form, in which she’d struggled to find a single flaw, his demon form’s beauty was marred by his apparent … deadness.
It was the only way to describe it.
His skin was a pale, grayish white that she’d only seen on corpses on TV. The coloring around his eyes darkened dramatically, with shadows so deep they almost looked like makeup. His lips were bloodless and pallid, and his horns and claws were obsidian black.
But his eyes were the worst.
The whites were so bloodshot, they weren’t white at all but a sickly pinkish red. His irises were a light blue so pale it was almost colorless, and his pupils looked like tiny voids in the center of that circle of death. They were the exact eyes she’d seen in her dreams.
His hair was pure white, the same ethereal shade that hadcaught her eye in the club. Looking back, she was a fool for not realizing what he was the second she saw him. No human had hair like that, and no dye or wig was capable of achieving that remarkable snow-white shade. It was too unearthly.
All of him looked a bit like a zombie. The undead. A beautiful corpse.
He was lean, perhaps too thin for his height, but he carried an unmistakable aura of power. And with those ghastly souls swirling at his feet, haunted faces occasionally forming in the smoke, it was easy to believe it.
He stared down his nose at her. His expression was as cold as his cadaverous complexion. She stayed on the floor, looking up at him while chills raced over her neck and the backs of her arms.
“What’s wrong with you?” he asked suddenly.
She blinked. His gravelly voice still came as a surprise. As he spoke, she caught glimpses of sharp, pointed teeth.
Damn, he was freaky.
