Those were the first, and not the worst. The torture came so very, very deliberately. There was nothing human about it, nothing driven by hate or fear or anger.… No, this was a cold, empty kind of pain, inflicted in a lifeless and distant way.
I couldn’t keep calm. The pain ate away at my hard-fought reserve, sped up my breathing, brought back all the desperate panic that I’d striven to keep sealed away.
And it went on, and on, and on. The red-hot, invading pain. The whispering trickle of blood against my skin. My own ragged, too-fast breathing stirring the lank strands of my hair in the tiny spaces.
And then the screaming.
My voice wore raw soon, and my throat ached and bled from the effort. There was no more peace, no more logic, no more planning left inside me. Only the pain, the terror, the despair.
And then, from a vast distance, came the whisper of… music.
It wasn’t music as a human might hear it; this was the language of the Djinn, of tens of thousands of immortal voices raised together in a sound that held nothing but exaltation, beauty, harmony.
It was the sound of worship, and madness… a divine, thoughtless madness that had no room for individual pain or pleasure, sadness or joy. It was my brothers and sisters, but they had ceased to be the individuals I’d once known.
They sang as they killed.
Death was moving across the face of the world, and I could feel it. Worse: I could be it. Some part of me knew the insane peace of surrendering will, conscience, logic, of becoming the Great Beast, and hungered to join it.
And then I heard Pearl’s voice whispering to me. Let go, she said. Let the music fill you, Cassiel. Let the earth take you as you change. I will make you into a creature of terror and beauty, a weapon for the new Mother’s hand. I will make you my angel—not of mercy, but of death. Shining, cutting, crushing death, and you will be as beautiful as a knife. This is why I’ve spared you all this time, to serve me. Fight and die, or surrender and be reborn. Your choices, my sister.
No. No, these could not be my only choices. It didn’t matter whether I closed my eyes; I could see nothing, not even a glimmer of light, but now I deliberately squeezed them shut and brought up vibrant images in my mind: Luis, lying propped against pillows in bed, tracing his fingertips over my body, smiling. His skin gleamed like fine new bronze, and the indigo lick of flame tattoos on his arms had a sinuous grace and beauty that made me shiver. His eyes were a rich, dark cocoa, and his kisses held spice and sweetness and woke vast, unhurried needs inside me. His touch trailed heat, and his tongue woke fire.
I reached for him, and for an instant, just a single flash, I saw him. Not the image of him from our bed, not the smiling, lazy, sexual creature I’d imagined in that moment—no, this was a frightening vision of a hard, battered man, stained with smoke and blood, and his eyes were as dark as empty windows as he drew and shaped a fireball in his hands.
And I heard him, just a whisper. I might have imagined it, so quickly did it pass.
Luis said, I’m coming.
And then the singing madness rose inside me to a shattering pitch, and the needles piercing me drove deeper, and it was all darkness, solitude, loss. I was weightless, then falling into the darkness.
Alone.
Trapped.
Chapter 9
LIGHT.
It came in a white blaze that seared my skin, blasted my eyes even through the squeezed-closed lids, and I heard myself make a rusty, metallic sound of protest.
It was a single, thin crack in my prison, and I felt a tiny whisper of something so sweet and precious that I couldn’t identify what it might be. Fresh air? Hope? Both seemed impossible to me now.
There was a sound that echoed even through the impenetrable walls pressed against me, and I felt a shudder go through the world, my world… and then, the tiny crack of light widened into a bar. The darkness shattered and left me bare.
I couldn’t move. The weight that had trapped me in this tiny space was gone, but when I tried to lunge for the light, I couldn’t get free. Moving woke screaming agony everywhere in my flesh and bones, and all I could do was open my eyes and stare in confusion at the blur of brightness in front of me.
There was a sudden, horrifyingly loud babble of sound. Voices. I couldn’t sort them out. It was all too real, too harsh, and no matter how bad the dark had been, at least it had been constant.…
I picked one voice from the noise. “Cass? Cassiel?… Damn you, let me go. I have to—”
“No!” said another voice. “Keep him back. He doesn’t need to see this.”
The first voice—I knew it, and I felt something resonating inside me, a kind of warmth, a glow that I hadn’t even known was gone until it returned. Power, flowing into me. Making me live again.
I blinked. The haze before me resolved into the shape of a tall man, dressed in a stained flannel shirt, blue jeans, boots. His hair was long and untidy around his lean, angular face, and he was looking at me with an odd hesitancy.
“Cassiel,” he said. It was half a whisper, and in a sudden move, he crouched down. I was lying on the ground, I realized. Above me was stone, and the light that had blinded me shone from a single flashlight he’d averted at an angle. “I’m going to get you out of there. You just stay still. Struggling will only hurt more.”
I blinked and tried to speak, but the raw edges in my throat could only make an indistinct rough whisper. I tried to move my head, tilt it forward so I could look down at myself, but he was right; the effort woke sharp and screaming pain in my skull, neck, and shoulders.
“Where is Luis?” I managed to say. The man who crouched over me smiled a little, but his eyes looked tired and heartbroken.
“He’s over there,” he said. “First we have to deal with this, okay? He got us here. Now let me get you out. Stay strong.”
I couldn’t nod, but I blinked to let him know I understood.
Lewis Orwell, the most powerful Warden in the world, took a deep breath, lowered his head for a moment, and when he raised it, there was an aura of golden power that glimmered around him even here, on the human plane.
He bent forward and slid his large hands over my face, through my hair, around my head in a slow, sweeping motion.
It hurt. I stiffened with the snaps of agony, one after another, like tiny bones breaking.
His hands met at the back of my head, then moved down, cupping my neck, spreading out over my shoulders. Every gentle touch sent waves of agony through me, snaps of white-hot pain. He paused there for a moment. He was as close as I’d ever let any human get, his body all but pressed to mine, and Orwell’s lips hovered very close to mine. His eyes were dark, very dark, and full of a power I didn’t fully comprehend.
“Look down,” he whispered.
I did.
I was encased in a coffin that had been fitted exactly to my body, one made of glittering pink crystal that shimmered in the artificial light.
And the coffin was alive, and it had grown into me. Needles of crystal, a whole forest of them, pierced and punctured my skin, some thin and just in the skin, some thicker and driving to muscle. Still others had drilled into bone.
They were flushed red with my blood.
“I have to break them,” Lewis said, still very softly. “This thing is alive. It’s fighting to keep you. It’s feeding off you. I won’t lie, this is going to hurt.”
I could nod now. After a second’s horror, edged with fear, I did.