Bianca pulled the blue and green crystals from her bag. That blue barely flickered, but the green was still glowing. It cast an eerie light over the dim cell, and Bianca shivered. “Can you tell if the human in here was a witch?”
“No.” Lucifer shook his head. “We can feel magic when you use it, but witch energy merely feels human to us.”
He led the way out of the cell and down the corridor to the next doorway. The quiet was so absolute it felt weighty.
The next cell looked the same but even Bianca caught the power signature left over in here. “Nephilim,” she said.
“This must be where they kept Eddie.” Raphael’s top lip curled back in disgust. “If Wrath or Shade saw this, they’d lose their fucking minds.”
Bianca didn’t know how the beings housed in these cells hadn’t lost their minds. “Definitely Nephilim,” she said. “But not Eddie.”
She didn’t know how or why she knew, but she did.
Raphael and Lucifer gaped at her.
“Another Nephilim?” Lucifer found his voice first.
She drew the energy inside and sifted it. “Please don’t ask me to explain, because I can’t, but this one feels male.”
“Well, well, well.” Raphael chuckled. “It looks like Wrath was not the only hell prince playing away from home.”
“Or archangel,” Lucifer drawled.
Raphael’s head jerked. “Archangels do not consort with humans.”
“Are you sure about that?” Lucifer sneered. “Because last I heard, humans were as tempting to angels as they are to us.”
Humans were tempting to hell princes? And archangels. Huh!
Spinning on his heel, Raphael stormed back into the corridor.
Lucifer winked at her and murmured, “That’s what I thought.”
The rest of the corridor yielded more cells, each holding residual human energy. When they found where Eddie had been kept, Bianca knew it the moment she crossed the threshold. “This is where they kept Eddie.”
The other two nodded and moved on quickly. None of them wanted to dwell in the place where Eddie had suffered.
The next room looked like a barracks that could have housed fifty in rows of metal bunk beds fastened to the floor.
“Demons.” Raphael recoiled. “This was filled with demons.”
Instinctive fear made Bianca shiver. “That’s a lot of demons.”
They found four more rooms like it.
Raphael whistled, the sound echoing creepily around the empty barrack. “I know you said they were organized.” He glanced at Lucifer. “But this whole place speaks to a scale of organization I never imagined.”
“Right.” Lucifer looked grim. “We know Ashe is not in charge, but I’d like to know who is.”
The next room was a laboratory, complete with workstations and a stainless-steel operating table. All three of them stiffened.
“Magic,” Bianca whispered. The lab was steeped in it.
Raphael strode to a large metal door against the far wall. He cranked the handle and opened it.
The smell hit Bianca, and she retched. Musty and sweet, and sickening.
Lurching out of the room, Raphael slammed the door behind him. “Get her out of here,” he snapped to Lucifer.
And Bianca knew.
Sidestepping Lucifer, she dashed to the door and wrenched it open.
Bodies. The room was filled with bodies.
“Bianca.” Lucifer took her arm. “Come away, you don’t need to see this.”
Her gut screamed at her to run, to escape all the death, but she forced herself to stand and look. She studied each and every face, and where she could, gave them their names.
Shauna who loved a practical joke.
Andy who always lost her keys and cell phone.
Sandra who would argue with a rock.
All of them, left to rot in a subterranean torture chamber. She’d found her missing witches.
In her palm, the blue crystal stuttered and blinked out.
Chapter Fourteen
Indolex’s presence pummeled Ashe like a sandbag to the head. He’d been expecting this visit since the failed witch abduction.
He lowered himself into a submissive crouch and pressed his forehead to the floor. They hadn’t known the child was more powerful until they’d taken the mother. Only then had her bind of her daughter’s power revealed that they’d taken the meal and left the banquet behind.
“Ashe.” Power throbbed through Indolex’s voice, grating on Ashe’s nerve endings.
Their new base of operations was larger and better equipped than the one they’d been forced to abandon. As if Indolex had anticipated Eddie’s rescue and already planned for the eventuality. It shouldn’t surprise him. Indolex weaved plans within plans like a venomous spider from the center of a vast web. “Master,” he replied.
“What happened, Ashe?”
Ashe’s flesh crawled. Indolex sounding reasonable was more terrifying than his unbridled rage. “I was not aware that the child was the more powerful source of magic,” he said. “It was only once we’d taken the mother that her true power was unbound.”
If he tried to lie or prevaricate, Indolex would end him for certain. With each new infusion of Nephilim power, Indolex grew stronger, more unassailable.
The hem of Indolex’s robe stirred Ashe’s hair. “How did you not know?”
