The seven points are destroyed. Most of the Seal of Dissolution is rubble, fragments of carved earth scattered across the floor. The lines of the heptagram are broken, discontinuous, the geometric cage dismantled.
But the center holds.
AZHRAEL.
The name glows in the packed earth, pulsing with that sickly yellow light, the last lock on a cage that has held for many, many years.
James pulls himself to his feet and wipes what looks like black blood from his mouth.
"Say his name," I tell him. "Complete the unbinding."
James turns to face the center of the ruined Seal. Beside him, Azhrael's form coils like a thunderhead about to break, those blazing eyes fixed on the name carved in the earth—the name used to cage him and will now be used to set him free.
James looks up at those burning ember eyes, and with something that sounds almost like reverence, he says, "Heavenly."
The word fills the basement. Fills the house. Fills the spaces between walls and the cracks in the foundation.
And then—
Nothing.
The glow in the center doesn't fade. Doesn't flare. Doesn't change at all.
Azhrael's form hangs motionless, suspended.
James's voice echoes once and dies.
The name AZHRAEL pulses steadily in the earth, unchanged, unmoved, untouched by the counter-word that should have shattered it.
Nothing happens.
I stare at the Seal. “It didn’t work.”
"Nae," James says. “Fuck.”
The silence presses in.
Sera is running out of time.
Chapter 6
Sera
Timeisastrangething when you have nothing to measure it against.
No windows. No clock. No cell phone. The red exit light doesn't brighten, or dim, or cycle through anything so merciful as a day-night rhythm. Just that constant crimson wash, turning the world into a darkroom where the only thing developing is my own slow deterioration.
My mouth is sand. My lips have cracked at the corners, and when I lick them, I taste copper, which at this point is the closest thing to hydration I've had since before the needle went into my neck. My stomach stopped growling hours ago and settled into a deeper, quieter complaint. The kind that doesn't announce itself dramatically but just slowly, methodically begins to consume itself.
Red Hands is in no hurry. That may be the most terrifying thing about him. Not the scalpels, not the camera now mounted on its tripod and aimed at me, not the footage of James playingon a loop on that laptop screen. It's the patience. The absolute, serene certainty that time is on his side. That he can simply wait until my body does much of his work for him, until dehydration and starvation and the Seal's slow drain on my energy strips me down to something manageable.
Something that can't fight back.
The Seal is hungry. That's the only way I can describe it. The longer I’m here, it’s a low, constant pull at the center of my chest, like something has hooked its fingers into place and is steadily, persistently tugging.
The shadows beneath my skin don't answer the way they should. When I reach for them, they come, but sluggishly, like wading through cold honey.
They’re leashed just as much as I am.
