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Wynter slowly began to wake as a breeze lightly whispered over her face. It was cool. Refreshing. Otherworldly. And laced with a healthy dose ofyou need to wake up.
Frowning weakly at the throbbing ache in her temples, Wynter licked her dry mouth. God, she felt sick as a dog. Not to mention super groggy.
And hot. Really hot.
Her monster, on the other hand, was furious.
Furious?
She forced her heavy eyelids open and found herself staring at a caged lightbulb that hung from a plain ceiling. She shifted her arms and—
Ow.Her right elbow jabbed something hard. A cement wall, she realized. One on which names, dates, and profanities had been carved.
Springs creaked as she pushed up from the thin, saggy mattress on which she’d been sprawled. Wynter felt her sensitive stomach pitch. She was gonna hurl at some point for sure.
As she took in the rest of her surroundings, her worries of vomiting took a back seat. She was in a small, cramped, dimly lit space bordered by iron bars. Aside from the bed, the only piece of furniture was the dingy metal toilet on the other side of the cell.
Yeah. A cell. She was in a goddamn cell.
And as she looked beyond it, she realized there was a whole row of them—most were empty, but not all. It wasn’t an official prison, though. It seemed more like someone had converted some sort of basement into a jail. Which would explain the lack of windows.
Since the last thing she remembered was being pursued by bounty hunters armed with tranquilizer guns, it didn’t take a genius to work out that they’d managed to snatch her. The tranqs were no doubt responsible for her headache and nausea.
An otherworldly breeze angrily swooshed around the cell but didn’t unlock the door for her. That could only mean that there was a system in place—magickal or otherwise—that would trip an alarm in the event of an escape. The deity wouldn’t trigger an alarm that would have hunters bearing down on Wynter until she’d shaken off the grogginess.
Weirdly, her connection to her magick felt weak. It was hard to verbalize, but it was sort of like when your arm went numb and you couldn’t properly move it. She suspected that she’d be able to call on her magick, but not use it fast or efficiently. Which could be due to the drugs or some kind of spell, she wasn’t sure.
Her monster shoved at her, wanting control; wanting the blood of its captors.Yeah, me too.While the deity calmed it with a mere brushof air, Wynter silently assured the entity that she’d let it have its way when the right moment came along.
She pushed off the bed. Her belly rolled so viciously she balked. Ugh.
“The drug they use is a son of a bitch, right?”
Wynter tracked the unfamiliar male voice to the cell on her left. Although the lighting was crap, she made out a good-looking guy with an unkempt mop of brown hair crouched on the hard floor. “You could say that,” she said. It didn’t help that the scents of rust, iron, sweat, and must hung in the air. Or that said air was hot, stale, and stifling.
He gestured at himself with his thumb. “The name’s Clay.”
For some reason, she wasn’t so sure she believed him. “If you say so. Is that blood you’re using?” she asked, realizing he was drawing symbols on the floor. Satanic symbols.
He held up a palm that sported a wicked slice. “Don’t worry, it’s my own.”
“You’re attempting to call on a demon?”
“Asmodeus hasn’t let me down yet.”
She didn’t know what concerned her more. That he seemed so breezy at the idea of calling on a hell-bound demon to possess him, or that he’d clearly done it before. But all she said was, “All right.”
Looking into the cell on her right, Wynter saw a beautiful Latina sitting on the bed lotus style, her eyes closed, her palms exposed.
“That’s Delilah,” ‘Clay’ told her. “She sometimes goes into meditative states to talk to her dead ancestor. She’s apparently gonna ask Annis for advice.”
“Annis?”
He smiled. “As in the Black Annis, yeah.”
Wynter only blinked. Annis had earned her ominous title through her extensive use of blood magick and the many dark deeds she’d committed. Wynter therefore couldn’t imagine why anyone would ask the dead witch for advice of any kind, but whatever.
Hoping to walk off the effects of the drug, Wynter did a few slow laps of her cell, examining every inch of it. Runes were etched into each iron bar. Magick-nulling ruins, she realized. More were etched into the walland cement floor. Which meant that a captive could blast the cell with magick all they wanted—it would do no damage.
