Total pages in book: 106
Estimated words: 99935 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 500(@200wpm)___ 400(@250wpm)___ 333(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 99935 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 500(@200wpm)___ 400(@250wpm)___ 333(@300wpm)
“That’s right. You’re here. Now that I’ve seen the faces of the men who took her, I can tell you they were no one special or important,” she said. “In all likelihood, they were nothing more than a bunch of lowly thugs tasked with delivering your nestmate to their true master. They were not worth killing... until you found yourself in the one place you shouldn’t be.”
“But how?” I croaked. “How can whoever they are know that I’m here? Did the glamour fail? Can some demons see through them?”
She was shaking her head before I finished. “Your glamour was cast by Lord Lucifer himself. His power is absolute. His contracts are absolute... and that may be why you were discovered.”
My head snapped up. “Why I was discovered? Because of the contract?”
Sabrina dipped her head. “It has been told to you over and over again that hellhounds cannot be tamed, and yet, for the first time in thousands of years, one came to the rescue of a lowly demon. Anyone who cares to follow their suspicions to the inevitable conclusion will realize that it wasn’t a hellhound who saved you. It was something or someone else in disguise. And why would anyone disguise and risk themselves to get you into this school?”
“No, wait— No,” I cried, head spinning. “How does it follow that just because someone helped me get into Abaddon, it means I’m a threat to whoever took Dora? Why in the world would someone think those events are connected a month after the fact?”
She stared at me for a long time, then nodded. “No, it’s you who is correct. A mysterious demon helped by a hellhound in disguise is too little information for her captor to jump to that conclusion. There’s no reason for them to think those events are connected,” she said, “which means you were overheard.”
I stilled. “Pardon? What do you mean? Overheard when?”
“Today. When you asked the wolf if he’d seen the demons who took your nestmate,” she said. “Someone heard—the one who took your nestmate heard—and realized there was only one reason the strange new student would be looking for those five particular demons.”
My skin prickled. I backed away as far as the pillows would allow me, as if hoping to escape the chill that ran up my spine. “Someone heard me...” I rasped. “And they acted that quickly? Murdering them all before class even let out? H-how? Who!”
“I do not know who. There are many beings in this manor with superior hearing, so there’s no guarantee they were even in the room when you spoke, but know thissss,” she hissed, “to paint the sign of the witches at the scene of the massacre is an act of terrible calculation. There has never been a witch in hell because there has never been a living mortal woman in hell.
“That is the case no more.”
I couldn’t help it. I shook under her gaze.
“If you are found, and it is almost a certainty now that you will be, the example that will be made of the invading witch will make all the tortures and punishments of hell look like a slap on the wrist.”
“But I’m not a witch!” I shrieked. “And I was in class when they were killed. Dozens of people saw me! No one could really think I had anything to do with this!”
Sabrina was unmoved. “You have everything to do with this, human, because now we know one thing to be true—whoever has your sister has no intention of giving her up. Even if it means turning on their minions. Even if it means inciting old grudges, hatreds, and panics. They will not surrender their prize, which means that you... will never leave hell alive.”
Her words were daggers piercing deeper and deeper into my heart.
Taking a deep breath, I grabbed hold of those daggers, and ripped them out. “No.” Finality rang in my voice clear as a bell. “No, I’m not going to do this. I’m not despairing or giving up. So what, her kidnapper knows I’m here? As long as Dora is here too, it means I’ll find her.
“And if that bastard did overhear my whispered conversation in the middle of a busy classroom, it means something else,” I gritted, balling my fist. “The man who had her taken has superior hearing. The kind that can hear a heart beating from ten miles away.”
“A vampire,” she stated. “That is not an illogical conclusion. There is nothing the vampires want more in this afterlife than the living blood of a human. They will do just about anything—kill just about anyone—to get their handsss on it.” She turned her head toward the door. “But there is another, simpler, conclusion.”
Tristan came in carrying a goblet of ice, and some water for me too.
“Into whose ear did you pour your questions directly into?” she asked as he shot me a tight, blushing smile. “Who knew from the outset that you weren’t what you appeared to be? Who offered to remain by your side even though he’d gain absolutely nothing by doing so?”