Demon From the Dark (36 page)

           
With each step, gold flakes and pus seeped from La Dorada's body. The trailing gauze swished from side to side over the stone floor, sounding like a soaked mop.

           
Carrow didn't know which was more harrowing, La Dorada or the Wendigos who clearly served her.

           
"RIIIIINNNNNNGGGGG!"
she shrieked once more.

           
"You want your ring?" Lothaire's deep voice sounded.
"Then come and get it, you bitch!"

           
As La Dorada crept past, Portia's torque dropped from her neck. Ember's as well. Carrow gazed into nearby cells in disbelief. Every being in the Pravus was losing its torque. "What's happening, Lanthe?"

           
"She empowers evil, manipulates it. And those torques limited the evil immortals could do."

           
Just like Ruby and Carrow, Lanthe retained her collar.

           
Portia already had her glowing palms raised, her face sinister as she controlled some unseen mountain of rock.

           
The floor vibrated beneath them. Just outside their cell, the ground fissured around a burgeoning stone mass.

           
Ember, too, prepared to unleash her power. Her eyes were alight, her irises swirling, moving like flames. Fire danced above her palms. When she blasted the glass with heat, Carrow dove for the floor, covering Ruby with her body.

           
The glass exploded, shards raining over them.

           
"Ember, damn you!"

           
Under the unimaginable pressure of Portia's rising rock, the steel divider walls began to crumple. The facility's entire structure shifted, more glass shattering as supports buckled.

           
More immortals freed...

           
"Crow, what's happening?" Ruby whimpered beneath her.

           
"Here, get to your feet." How much longer until the roof collapsed? "We might have to run for it."

           
When shouting guards advanced, tossing canisters of gas into their cell, Ember emitted streams of fire, popping the cans back at them.

           
Portia tilted her head at the men. "These mortals need to get stoned." She waved her hand, and a cement chunk from the floor went hurtling at one of them. Carrow covered Ruby's eyes just as it connected with the force of a rocket. The man's head exploded like a watermelon.

           
Ember said, "Portia, stop showing off! We have business to attend to." She turned to Carrow. "First off, witch, you're going to pay for striking me."

           
"If you hurt her," Ruby said with her eyes shimmering, "I'll hurt you worse." Carrow jerked Ruby back behind her.

           
Why was Ember hesitating? She could burn them all to ashes.

           
"Leave them," Portia said. "The skirmishes are moving outside, and I'm not attending without my mask and claws. We search for them now."

           
Ember shot Carrow a look of promised pain, then snapped her fingers at Lanthe. "Come."

           
When Lanthe remained at Carrow's side, Portia glared over her shoulder. "Melanthe, you traitor. May you rot in heaven." She gazed down the corridor. "With your angel. He'll be coming for you."

           
Once they'd disappeared, Lanthe said, "There went any power we might have hidden behind. And they're right. Thronos will come after me. As will your, er, spouse, once he recovers enough."

           
Ruby's eyes darted. "I'm scared, Crow."

           
Carrow lifted the girl back up in her arms. "I know, but I'm not going to let anything happen to you." When Ruby sniffled, Carrow held her gaze. "Look at me. I will get you out of here--I swear it."

           
Easier said
...

           
Pandemonium reigned in the ward. Ember's flames burned everywhere as she released her trapped Pravus allies. Male immortals carted off flailing females.

           
Mere feet away, Uilleam the Lykae attacked four of the guards. Though he still wore his torque and couldn't fully turn werewolf, he easily ended the four, biting free one's throat while slashing the others'.

           
Volos, the leader of the centaurs, trampled anyone in his path, leaving behind pulped corpses. Succubae dragged down mortal guards, raping them in a frenzy. Carrow kept a hand over Ruby's eyes, but their moans rang out as they fed for the first time in weeks.

           
Lanthe said, "You know, as soon as we step out of this cell, we're in the shit."

           
"If we can get your torque off, could you do another portal?"

           
Lanthe had told her she needed to recharge every time she created one. Her expression lit up. "We could walk right out of this place."

           
"Then we've got to find Fegley." And his thumb. "I think I know where he might be." When the warden had carried Ruby in all those nights ago, he'd entered from a side chamber attached to Chase's office. He could be hidden there now.

           
"You ready?" Carrow asked.

           
Lanthe nodded, and they eased out into the maelstrom.

           
"I told you we'd escape soon," Lothaire grated.

           
When the building began to shift, Malkom somehow made it to a sitting position, his body in agony. Chase had been right; Malkom had learned much about pain. But he'd endured Chase's tortures, laughing up at him with bloody fangs.

           
"One way or another, this ends tonight," the vampire said. Whatever being had invaded this place was after the Enemy of Old. In turn, the vampire was pacing, ready for battle--and taunting the being.
"I am ready to have done, Dorada! Face me, crone!"

           
Malkom staggered to his feet as the ground quaked beneath him. The metal walls began to warp. The glass of his cell couldn't take much more of this pressure.
Escape is nigh.
He was already envisioning all the ways he'd punish the witch--

           
His collar abruptly dropped to the ground.

           
He gazed up. A female of great power was passing his cell. She looked like a walking corpse, surrounded by a pack of Wendigos.
She's rid me of the collar?

           
Without warning, another female, a dark-haired sorceress, appeared outside his cell, raising her flaming palms at him. What the hell--

           
She shot fire at the glass, shattering it to free him. Before she disappeared with a speed approaching his own, she said, "Go find your wife, demon."

           
"I--
will
."

           
Finally, Malkom would have his revenge on Carrow Graie. One foot in front of the other, half-crazed from his torture, he limped outside.

           
Chaos. The heat from the fires singed his skin. The groan of twisting metal rang in his ears.

           
The moaning succubae mating with abandon and the bloody clashes only increased Malkom's madness.

           
At the sound of a deep bellow, he swung his head back toward the vampire's cell. Directly outside, that dead female stood, commanding her Wendigos to launch themselves at Lothaire. Her grisly face was creased into a smile.

           
The Enemy of Old was somehow defending himself, tossing the rabid creatures out of his cell again and again. But Lothaire fought a losing battle. "Slaine?" he bit out. "A hand here."

           
The female swung her head at Malkom, her sole eye riveted to his face.
"RIIIIINNNNNNGGGGG?"

           
Malkom shook his head slowly, then turned toward the witch's cell, calling over his shoulder, "Where's your allegiance now, vampire?"

Chapter
 
31

           
"You wanna tell me about Thronos?" Carrow murmured as she carried Ruby and led Lanthe toward Chase's office. "Since we're all on the lam from him?"

           
"He's broken because of me," Lanthe said quietly. "I 'persuaded' him to dive from a great height. And not to use his wings."

           
Beauty.
"The guys--in fact, everyone here--they do love us, huh?"

           
Lanthe nodded. "I'm up for Congeniality."

           
As they approached the end of their corridor, more Wendigos crept through the intersecting hall. Ravenous for blood, bone, and flesh. Their red eyes gleamed in the semi-dark, their wiry bodies hunched, their gaits uneven.

           
Lanthe and Carrow pressed themselves against the wall, Carrow tucking Ruby's face against her shoulder.

           
As the creatures scented the air, Carrow's heart raced.
We can't outrun them.
A second passed ... then another ... One took a step in their direction--

           
Screams carried from another corridor, and the Wendigos loped off toward the sound.

           
Too close. And they wouldn't be so lucky next time. On that thought, Carrow sped in the opposite direction down the next ward, the one filled with offices and labs. The butchery here was even worse than in their own. Dead humans lay everywhere.

           
The three stole through a gauntlet of fights, sex, and ...
feeding
. Rocks still rose, buckling the floor. The entire area was unstable.

           
At last, they reached the office unscathed. The door had been broken open and now hung askew on its hinges. Ignoring her disquiet, Carrow cautiously eased inside.
Empty
.

           
Through the window, she saw another turbulent night much like the one Chase had watched there two weeks earlier.

           
Across the office, the panel door was already halfway open. They slipped inside.

           
The area looked like a storage room with stacked crates and metal shelving lining the walls. The ceiling had begun caving, with some rafters collapsed, their ends stabbing the floor. Immediately, they heard a man's weeping coming from the back.

           
They descended a small flight of stairs, then followed the sound to find Fegley trapped, his nearly severed right arm caught beneath one of those colossal rafters. A machine gun lay mere inches beyond his other hand's reach.

           
"So close, yet so far away."
I couldn't have tortured him better myself.
Well, she
could
. But this would do. She toed the muzzle with her boot. "Aw, it doesn't seem to want
to come to Daddy,
" Carrow said, repeating his line. When she kicked the gun away, he cried harder.

           
From behind them, Lanthe breathed, "Look at this place. These are all our effects."

           
They were surrounded by the weapons and personal belongings of the prisoners--Invidia whips and antler headdresses, the leather saddlebags of the centaurs, weapons of all kinds.

           
Though many of the shelves were in disarray, as if someone--or something--had already ransacked the goods, Lanthe was able to find her own things. "My gloves! My beautiful mask." She hastily donned her claw-tipped gloves and cobalt-blue mask.

           
When smoke began to waft in from gaps in the damaged ceiling, Carrow said, "The fires are getting closer." She could smell the sickening scent of burning flesh. "Let's hurry."

           
Lanthe hastened over to Fegley. She knelt to yank on his trapped hand, while dodging pitiful slaps from his other. "Even if we bend down, his thumb won't reach our collars, and his left one won't work."

           
"Heh. That so?" Carrow asked. "If we can't go to the thumb, then the thumb will come to us." She began searching for a blade. "Hell, make it his hand."

           
Fegley strained his body. "No, don't!"

           
"Hey, you invited us to the party, mortal," Lanthe said, catching the knife Carrow tossed to her. "Looks like you tussled with the wrong creatures. You had to know you couldn't contain us."

           
"W-we have for centuries. This is Chase's fault! The ring--he wasn't supposed to t-touch it!"

           
Carrow frowned. "La Dorada's ring?"