She hurriedly skirted the room, avoiding the lines of the pentacle once more, and scrambled to grab the seal. She pressed the seal against the shelf hurriedly, desperately. It slipped, and she dropped it, clattering to the floor.
The clawed hand felt along the edge of the portal, testing it out, and then was soon followed by a demon’s head. Green skin and sickly yellow eyes greeted her. Its face was etched in a snarl, locking its eyes on her.
She suddenly felt frozen in place. Unable to scream or pry her eyes away, her breath quickened as it crawled towards her on all fours. Elizabeth desperately tried to wrestle control over her body.
Move, move, move!she ordered her feet, but to no avail. The demon snarled something in the Godstongue and the hair on the back of her neck stood on end.
Then the demon reached the center of the pentacle, and light erupted. The demon opened its mouth, but no sound emerged. She watched in horror as its skin grew pale and waxy, as if all the fat was being leached out of its face. The creature’s skin tightened and dried out over its bones.
It thrashed against the pentacle’s hold, jaws open in a silent scream. Then its bones began collapsing in on themselves. It clawed at the stone floor, talons scraping against the stone, trying to find purchase. The skin on its face grew more sunken, and its eyes popped grotesquely from its skull.
Finally, its hold on her weakened, and she scrambled to her feet.
Awestruck at the demon dying before her eyes, she picked up the seal and firmly pressed it into the wood. She pushed the seal into the matching piece of wood until she heard athunk, and the hidden notch fell an inch into the shelf. She twisted the seal, hoping to trigger a mechanism that would close the door.
Nothing.
She tried twisting the seal the other way, and something clicked. Unseen metal cranks groaned within the walls. The wall moved, and soon the bookshelf shuddered into place once more, hiding the room from sight.
She listened carefully, getting ready to run if she had to. There was no sound. After a few moments, a wisp of darkness rose from the bookcase, coiling through the air, as if the thing had just died, as if the magic of the castle cooed in answer.
Her lips parted in wonder.
Maybe Ambriel’s work was easier than he thought.
It looked like she had just found the portal to the Underworld.
Chapter 29
Lady Elizabeth
Asmodeus gestured towards Caspian to follow him.
Curious, Caspian obliged, following him onto a terrace. Asmodeus stood stock still, carefully watching the grounds below them.
“What are we waiting for, brother?” Caspian said, growing annoyed.
He was silenced by a hand.
They waited for several minutes until a figure on a horse came plodding into view. Elizabeth was sitting sidesaddle and riding towards the forest.
“Is that…?” Caspian started, suddenly recognizing which horse she was riding.
“That hybrid devil horse you bought last year? Yes. Yes, it is.”
Caspian said, “Someone should get her off that thing; he’s going to kill her. He won’t even—”
“Let Lial ride him? I know. Watch.”
They watched Elizabeth walk Draugr across the castle grounds with her head held high. Confident and calm. How in the Seven Hells had she gotten Draugr to behave?
Asmodeus flapped his wings and hovered in the air, knees bent, gesturing for Caspian to follow. Curious, Caspian manifested his wings and took off after his friend.
They kept to the shadows of the mountains, sneaking through the skies. They watched as she took a trail in the forest, one he had travelled many times. Nothing about her countenance suggested this was unusual for her. The trail led out of the forest and into a valley, a wide, mostly flat plain, nestled beneath the mountains.
Asmodeus beckoned to him, and they hid in the mountainside, watching her from above. It wasn’t particularly interesting besides the fact that he hadn’t the slightest idea how she had bewitched Draugr—a ludicrous name his previous owner had given him—to allow her to ride him. He was certain she was about to be flung off.
Elizabeth dismounted and mounted up like a man, swinging her leg across the horse's back in one smooth move. She sat astride and bent over to whisper something to Draugr. Her skirt slipped, and instead of exposing her ankles, shewas wearing gray-coloured breeches under her skirts that covered her legs down to her boots. Where the devil had she even gotten pants?
