I tried to run for a clearing, but the forest seemed to be thickening with new growth even as it split wide open. The landscape was changing right beneath our feet.
The ground rose up suddenly beneath me, and I skidded down the new embankment, landing on my hands and knees. With nowhere else to go, I crawled over to a large tree that hadn’t moved and wrapped myself around it, holding on for dear life as the whole world fell apart.
Everywhere I looked, rock and root crumbled away into newly formed crevasses.
When the rumbling finally stopped and the dust settled, I was looking out across a great rift at least twenty feet across, stretching on in both directions for miles and miles.
I was on one side.
Jonathan on the other.
I crept to the edge and peered down inside. It was dark and cold and bottomless, its dirt walls crawling with electric blue vines dotted with iridescent white flowers.
It was oddly beautiful.
I glanced up at Jonathan, who stood smugly on his side of the divide, arms crossed over his chest.
“There’s one thing about our predicament I’m grateful for, Sunshine.” He smiled, pure menace emanating like a light from inside him. “I’m over here. And you’re over there. Withthat.”
My stomach dropped. I could tell from the satisfaction on his face that whatever he was talking about would be bad news for me.
Swallowing hard, I turned to look over my shoulder just in time to see it: a vile, two-headed beast charging down the tree-strewn path.
Charging right for me.
Eight
Asher
Two hours and countless tunnels and cells later, it was time to make an official statement: This was the most fucked-up shitshow I’d ever seen.
Gray’s ex? Dude was fuckingdisturbed. It wasn’t enough for him to just hunt down witches and burn them, honoring the desperate, pathetic traditions of his ancestors.
No.Thisfucking guy took things to a whole new level of sociopathy. He made Sebastian look like an angel strumming a golden harp in a meadow full of fucking tulips.
Picturing the Prince of Hell prancing around a meadow should’ve made me laugh, but I couldn’t even crack a smile. Not here.
This place was too damn horrifying for words.
I stood in the center of a large circular chamber in the center of the prison system, the space washed in a sickly green light that emanated from bulbs wired into the ceiling.
It smelled like shit and fear, so pungent it made my eyes itch.
The walls were lined with cages holding dozens of shifters, badly wounded and seemingly trapped in their animal forms—foxes, wolves, mountain lions, a panther. A huge copper-colored cage in the middle of the space held large birds—owls, ravens, vultures, and a bald eagle.
Perched on metal bars inside the cage, some of the birds glanced my way as I entered the room, but most of the other shifters were too weak to even lift their heads. Others cowered in the darkest corners of their cages, flinching with every step I took.
None of them uttered a sound.
“What did he do to you?” I whispered. But of course, none of them could respond.
An opening at the back of the room led to a secondary chamber about a third of the size. This one was also lined with cages, but these cages held people—humans, vampires, and a few shifters in their human form.
All of them were nude, their bodies covered in bruises and scrapes.
The vampires’ cage was the largest, fitted with wooden posts inside.
All four vampires had been nailed to those posts with hawthorn stakes.
