34

Winter heard something rattle in the distance, then the echo of footsteps in a cavernous space. Her head was spinning, and she took a breath. Her lungs filled with a vile stench and jolted her back to consciousness. Her eyes flew open.

Fuck! This couldn’t be good.

The smell came from a pit filled with hot, bubbling lava. It was only about as large as a jacuzzi. And dipping into it would be instantly fatal. She shuddered at the thought of somebody slipping and accidentally falling in, and wondered why nobody had bothered covering it. A moment later, she realized why. Her gaze fell on metal implements laid out on a table nearby, implements that could inflict pain. This was a torture chamber, and the lava pit was its ultimate threat.

Shit! She had to get out of here before somebody came and tried any of the instruments on her. She managed to take two steps, before she was jerked back to the wall, a short, sharp pain ripping through her ankle.

“What the—”

Chains bound both her ankles. They assured that she couldn’t move farther than two feet away from the wall. Apparently the demons weren’t quite stupid enough to leave her in this cave without restricting her movements. She tried to reach her feet to see if she could get out of the chains, but realized she had chains around her wrists too.

The footfalls she’d heard earlier became louder now, and a few moments later she saw a demon march into the cave from the entrance to her right. There were two more entrances, one straight ahead of her and one to her left, but the one to her left was hard to access, because the lava pit was right in front of it, leaving only a slim ledge to walk past it. It wouldn’t be her first choice to try to escape the cave via that route. Not that it looked like she was going to be escaping any time soon.

The demon stopped in front of her. His size alone was intimidating, as were his glaring green eyes and his grim look. But what made it worse was that she knew what he was sent to do: torture her until she succumbed to Zoltan’s demands.

Manus had warned her, and he’d been right. While she had successfully defended herself against Zoltan’s mental invasion, she had no defenses against physical torture. And after injuring Zoltan he would have no mercy on her until she gave in. What surprised her, however, was why he hadn’t come himself and had instead sent one of his demons to hurt her. She could have sworn that he would want to be witness to her pain. Had she maybe injured him so badly that he didn’t feel up to the task right now?

Not that it mattered much. She was sure the demon who glared at her would be just as cruel as Zoltan himself.

He lifted his hand now, and she saw the dagger he was holding. Instinctively she raised her arms to shield her face, and the chains rattled again.

She recognized the demon now. He was the one who in an earlier vision had killed her, but in a later one had lost his head to Logan’s dagger. But everything had changed since then.

“Go ahead,” she spat with a braveness she didn’t possess. “You might as well save yourself the time and kill me now, because I won’t give in to Zoltan. You can tell him that.”

He slapped her face with the back of his hand, knocking her head sideways. Pain seared through her and radiated down her neck and spine. She felt something wet trickle down inside her nose and knew it was blood.

“Bastard!” she ground out, refusing to give in to the urge to cry. She wouldn’t give the monster the satisfaction.

The demon brought his knife closer and leaned in. He opened his mouth, but nothing came out, no word, no insult. Instead his face suddenly contorted. Then a growl rolled over his lips, but before it could turn into a scream, a hand clamped over his mouth from behind and jerked him back.

The demon struggled, but the person behind him had the upper hand and wrangled him to the ground, face down. Now Winter could see why he was so easily felled. A dagger was stuck in his back, and green blood was oozing from the mortal wound. The person who’d killed the demon now twisted the dagger some more, making sure the demon was dead, then pulled it from the wound and carefully wiped the green blood off the blade using his victim’s clothing. Only then did he look at her, but she’d already recognized him when he’d yanked the demon to the ground.

“Logan…”

Their eyes connected. He’d come. After everything, he’d come to rescue her.

“I was scared I’d be too late,” Logan said.

She stared down at the demon again. “In my vision, it was different. You beheaded him.”

He nodded. “I know. You told me, and you were covered in his blood because of it. I can’t have that, or I can’t make you invisible.”

She understood immediately. By telling him about her vision, she’d given him the opportunity to change the outcome and thus the future.

“We’ve gotta get out of here,” he said.

She raised her hands, showing him the chains. “Same on my ankles.”

He pulled something from his inside pocket and went to work on the shackles around her feet. They clicked open faster than she’d expected. Her feet were free, but then suddenly Logan whipped his head toward one of the entrances.

“Wh—”

He pressed his hand over her lips, preventing her from speaking, and leaned in. “Demons. Drop your arms all the way so the shackles look as if they’re hanging there.”

Panicked she stared at him. It took her brain a second or two to realize what Logan was planning. With some luck, the approaching demons would only see their dead comrade on the floor and assume she’d fled. She dropped her arms and crouched down a bit, so the chains were hanging loosely from the wall, so the demons wouldn’t notice that they were still holding their prisoner. Because the prisoner and her rescuer were now invisible.

Two demons entered the cave. She recognized one of them immediately. Zoltan. He’d come to watch her be tortured.

His eyes immediately went to where Winter was standing. Her heart pounded so loud that she thought the sound would echo in the cave.

“Where the fuck is she?” Zoltan yelled. Then his eyes shifted and fell on the dead demon who lay not even a yard away from Logan.

He charged toward his dead subject, his companion on his heels, and kicked him with his foot. But the demon didn’t move. Zoltan cursed, his head raised to the ceiling. “The fucking idiot! Gets himself killed by a woman!”

He spun around, looked at the chains again, and for a heart-stopping moment Winter wondered if he’d step closer. Already, he was close enough to touch Logan if he stretched out his hand. Would Logan be fast enough to spin around and drive his dagger into the leader of the Underworld, or would Zoltan be stronger? And the second demon, would he kill Winter while Logan and Zoltan fought?

Her lungs felt like they were exploding and she wanted to gasp for air, but she didn’t dare, because the slightest sound, the smallest movement might alert Zoltan to their presence. She felt perspiration run down from her forehead along the side of her nose. Oh God, no, it was tickling her. A few more seconds, and she would have to sneeze.

Suddenly Zoltan turned to his underling. “Find the bitch! If she thinks she can play her little mind tricks on me, I’m gonna play, but according to my rules.”

The demon nodded. “May I suggest something, oh Great One?”

“What is it, Vintoq?”

“Have the guards at the vortex circles tripled, in case she tries to escape by forcing one of our own.”

Zoltan let out a laugh. “Forcing? With what? She’s unarmed, and she’s a sprite of a thing.”

“But her mental powers, oh Great One. She injured you. And I’d venture a guess that if she set her mind to it, she could force a demon to transport her out of here by using those powers on him.”

Winter exchanged a look with Logan. Was she really capable of that? Or was it merely an unsubstantiated fear the underling was expressing?

Zoltan seemed to contemplate it. “Do it. Hurry!”

Vintoq rushed out of the cave, while Zoltan headed to the other exit. Just as he reached it, he braced himself against the rock wall and groaned in pain.

“Fuck!”

Then he stumbled along, hurrying out of Winter’s field of vision.

Logan finally took his hand off her mouth. “We have to hurry or we won’t get out of here alive.”