Footsteps sound, each step splashing in the water as someone nears.
I plant my hands and try to push up, but my arms give out, dumping me back onto the slick concrete.
Harsh hands grab me and flip me onto my back.
The tunnel is dark again, and it takes a moment to make out the shape of their face, and then for the familiar features to make sense.
The smile stretched across Tate’s face sends a spike of fear straight to my heart, because even though it wears my friend’s features, it isn’t really her looking down at me.
A flare of light blooms and I flinch at the sudden brightness. When I blink it away, a lantern is burning on the ground beside me. My gaze drags upward—from the shoes planted inches from my face, up jean-clad legs, over a broad torso—until my eyes lock with the demon’s black stare.
“And where did you think you were going?” it rumbles, its voice a deep distortion of Tate’s.
I yelp and scramble away, adrenaline burning through me and forcing my muscles to move. I only get as far as the wall I was chained to only minutes earlier. There’s nowhere else to go.
The demon crouches down, the smile on its face deranged and unhinged. It cocks its head like a bird’s, twisting Tate’s neck to an unnatural angle. I struggle not to whimper.
“That took you longer than I expected.”
“Wh-what?”
“With the power you have brewing inside you, I expected you to break those chains quickly. But you didn’t.”
It studies me as if trying to figure me out, like something I’ve done, or failed to do, has stumped it.
I keep my mouth shut because I don’t know what to say. Clearly it overestimated my abilities, but it doesn’t seem wise to point that out.
Its dark gaze rakes over me, and I get the unsettling sense that it’s looking past skin, past flesh and bone. The longer it stares, the more exposed I feel, like it’s peeling me apart layer by layer.
A deep sound of approval rumbles in its chest, making me shudder as a twisted smile lifts its mouth.
“I see you now,” it murmurs, then runs a finger almost lovingly along my cheek.
The contact burns, not with heat, but with the wrongness of it, and I flinch away, my heart hammering.
The monster curls its upper lip, a throaty growl spilling from its mouth. I can’t bring myself to look at what it’s done to my friend, how it’s twisted her into something barely recognizable.
“What?” it asks. “You don’t like this vessel? Don’t worry. I’ll discard it soon enough.”
That gets my attention, and I snap my gaze back to it. The word discard echoes in my skull, cold and final.
“Don’t hurt her. Please,” I beg.
The demon seems to savor my pleading, a crooked grin stretching its mouth wider.
“Oh, but that’s my favorite thing to do to humans. Make them hurt.”
An image of Kendra flashes through my mind. The way the demon tore through her flesh as if it were nothing. The way she collapsed to the ground and how I held her in my arms, begging her to hold on through my tears, even though deep down I knew she was already gone.
Revulsion and hate for this monster stirs inside me, strong enough to blot out the fear that has had me in a chokehold.
I glare at it, hoping it reads the loathing in my eyes. “I’m going to kill you.”
A guttural sound comes from the demon. I think it’s laughing at me. But then it cuts off and it grabs my chin, hard, forcing me to look into its black eyes as it says, “It’s foolish for you to hold out hope. When the time comes, I will suck you dry, steal every bit of magic inside you and make it my own, and there won’t be a thing you or anyone else in this world or the other can do about it.”
Suck me dry. Steal my magic.
Ice-cold terror seizes my heart, nearly matching the grip of the demon’s fingers on my face. If I live through this, there’s no doubt finger-shaped bruises will pepper my jaw.
