Prologue

2

‘Camaxtli can you sense her around here or not?’

‘Yes! But don’t bug me if you don’t want to know exactly where she is.’ Cam’s voice was nothing more than a growl but we all understood.

I would because we share minds…or he shares mine being the other half of my soul. But that doesn’t really matter anymore, I mean I’m stuck in this situation if I like it or not. Fair play to the three who got me here, but going to this extent was a bit pointless, I mean they could’ve just taped his voice and I would’ve gone running to it. That’s what makes me stupid, reliable and reckless. Stupid for believing, reliable for agreeing and reckless for going. But hey an older sister has to do something for a little brother in need…or whatever he is.

The room I’m trapped in seems to go on forever and I mean forever; with it’s hundreds of black stones and whitened cement ranging as far as the eye can see. It’s hypnotizing and dizzying at the same time. But what the three don’t know is that I’m not alone. Never will be and never can be. Closing my eyes, I concentrate on the channel linking me and Camaxtli. It’s faint (which I guess is from the distance) and just loud enough for me to listen to what they are saying.

‘We have to save her!’

‘We know that Torsten but how do you propose we find her?’

‘Cam has a link with her. He can find her.’

‘Wyatt if he could find her then how do you suppose we get in? There’s only seven of us compared to a whole horde of Demons. Do you honestly think we can be that stupid to run into that?’

‘But Wyatt’s-

‘-right. We have six out of nine guardians and Torsten is a match for those flesh-eaters.’

I stop listening in when my warden walks through the wall. He doesn’t know I can hear what Cam and the other’s are planning nor can he see into my head, which really is beginning to piss him off. I scramble to my feet when he approaches and try to stop his four-joint fingers from grasping my arm. No such luck. They fell damp against my skin, like slimy tentacles.

He grins and produces what’s supposed to be something charming from behind his back. A single red rose…no wait. I gag at the sight of a white rose dripping with blood, pooling around his wrist and the once green stem. He smirks and slowly reaches out to run it across my cheek, chuckling when I shudder. Human or animal…the former is more likely.

Needing to wipe it away and yet not daring to under his gaze, I ignore him dribbling it across my neck and exposed collar bone. Showing defiance got me caught in this room and wearing a really stupid lacy dress, I daren‘t think what slapping his hand away will bring. A faster death more likely. I think, ruefully.

He watches the bloody rose stain the front of my dress and broadens his sickening grin. ‘You look lovely in red and white…hmm…so lovely indeed.’ Leaning forward, he swipes his razor tongue across my collar bone, carving a crimson line deep into my ivory skin.

He’s taunting me, I know without having to see the amusement in his eyes, but it doesn’t smear the fact that I’m going to die tonight and I can do absolutely nothing about it. If I hadn’t opened that book then this wouldn’t be happening…no, if Grams hadn’t stopped me from going to the attic and making the rules I had to break…if no one had lied to me about the issue of my mother….if the first Oronrá hadn’t written this constant cycle of a curse then I wouldn’t know and wouldn’t be here… All these ifs don’t really matter anymore there’s only one if that I should care about.

If I’ll get out alive.

In The Night

‘The declaration of a forever damned soul would be a fitting marker for this child. He shall never age nor shall he take upon the grimaces of the old. He would look no more than eighteen and bequeath upon the world a sense of darkness and a deadly power. He would be born a prince and die a waif under the starry gaze of his lover, her rounded face turned heartless and cold. She who would cast him into the flames of guilt and sorrow to never be leave of the sins he had committed until the twin pieces of the puzzle would once again be set together. Then he would have his soul and heart returned.’