Page 2 of Soulbound Shadows: Part 2

“Did you know my parents?”

Damien took a deep, measured breath. Then he leaned down and went to work.

Afterward, I was left in the dark again. The protein bar sat heavily in my stomach. My filthy tank top was sticky with my blood. Damien had only made shallow cuts, but they were deep enough to bleed like crazy, and some of the blood was starting to dry into itchy flakes. I would’ve killed for a shower. Hell, I would’ve killed for a wet wipe.

I leaned back against the clammy stone wall and closed my eyes, although it was dark enough that it didn’t make much of a difference. God, I missed Gabriel. I missed his intelligence, his loyalty, and his sometimes-clumsy earnestness. The way he touched me like I was something precious, and even the way he kept trying to protect me. I could have really used someone looking out for me right now. I tried to imagine him being here, patching up my wounds, holding me close. Would he give me a pep talk? Would he sit with me quietly and let me fall apart in his arms?

For a moment, I let myself bask in a fantasy of him showing up and making this all go away. I scrunched up my face, trying to keep the tears dampening my lashes from falling. I might be exhausted, in pain, and covered in my own blood, but I was not going to face the person behind all this with visible tear tracks on my face. Tucking my feet up onto the slab with my legs against my chest, I lowered my head to my knees and waited.

I wasn’t sure how long I was left alone in the dark. Long enough that the blood stopped flowing from my cuts, but not long enough for my stomach to start rumbling again. At last, the door creaked open, and a backlit silhouette stepped into the room. The sudden light was blinding, and I raised a hand to shield my eyes. The door creaked shut again, and we were left in total darkness.

“Hello, Evangeline,” the newcomer said. Her voice was soft and surprisingly sweet, with a lilting accent I couldn’t quite place. It sounded like she was speaking from every part of the room at once, and the effect was dizzying. Every single part of my brain dedicated to keeping me alive sent out screaming warnings. The hair on the back of my neck stood up, and goosebumps prickled the skin on my arms. A faint musical chuckle echoed through the cell.

“I am very sorry it has taken me so long to visit you,” the woman said. “I am very busy, you see.”

“Don’t worry about it.” My voice came out quavery and weak, and I dug my nails into the meat of my palms to keep my hands from shaking.

A globe of light popped into existence in the middle of the room, floating near the ceiling. After the pitch blackness, the glow stung my eyes. It was blue-white, like the type of LEDs that always gave me a headache. The light fell on the newcomer, draping her in stark shadows.

She was tall, easily six feet, and seemed to take up the entire room. Her long black hair and long black robe blended into each other, covering up every part of her except her hands and face. The effect was otherworldly and made her look a bit like one of those puppets that had always freaked me out. The sort with a carved face but human hands. The woman was strikingly beautiful. Her features had the placid delicacy of a mask, with sculpted cheekbones, and a high, patrician forehead, her complexion so white it was faintly translucent—the most human-looking part of her was the tracery of pale blue-green veins beneath her skin. She cocked her head to the side like a bird and stared at me, unblinking.

No human had eyes like hers. They were completely white. Not the cloudy white of blind eyes, but completely white, with no veins, and a pearlescent sheen. They were framed by the sort of thick, dark lashes you normally only saw in mascara ads. It shouldn’t have been possible to tell where she was looking, but I was completely certain she was staring me dead in the eye.

“You really do look just like your parents,” she said softly. One of her hands shot out, and I flinched back, but she cradled the side of my face, turning me toward the light. Her soft hands were freezing. “You are quite lucky. They were a very handsome couple.” She dug her nails into my cheekbone for a moment, dangerously close to my eye, then pulled back.

The way she moved was terrifying, fluid and graceful, but with sudden jolts of speed that had her across the room faster than my eyes could track.

My tongue felt heavy and dead in my mouth, but I swallowed hard and forced myself to speak. “You must be the boss,” I rasped.

The woman looked at me with her impassive doll’s face, tapping a finger against her lips. Her hands were long and slender, with sharp nails that made them look even longer.

“I am in charge around here, yes,” she said. Her voice was so musical and sweet that it seemed almost artificial, like one of those robot-voiced digital pop stars. “I am called Morgana. At least for now.”

“I’d say it’s a pleasure, but…” I aimed for a nonchalant shrug, though it probably looked closer to a dying spasm.

Morgana’s lips curled up in a beautiful approximation of a smile.

“Yes, very funny. Very… quippy. Your father used humor the same way,” she told me, with the air of somebody recording lab notes on a specimen they were about to dissect. She flicked a finger through the damp air as if she were conducting an orchestra. Cold, burning magic forced my hands down to my sides. My legs unfolded, and I stood entirely without my own permission. With the smooth, fluid steps of a trained dancer, I crossed the tiny room and pressed my back to the clammy wall, stretching my arms out on either side of me. The stone curled around my body, forming seamless cuffs around my wrists and ankles.

Morgana tapped a finger to her lips. Her mouth quirked into that non smile again, and the stone looped around my neck, thick enough that it forced my chin up and the back of my skull against the wall. I swallowed, my throat bobbing against the rough stone. I felt like a dead bug pinned to a taxidermist’s work bench.

“I have questions for you, Evangeline,” Morgana said. She practically glided as she walked toward me, her footsteps completely silent. “And sooner or later, you will answer them.”

“Let me guess,” I croaked. “We can do this the easy way or the hard way?”

She cocked her head to the side. “No. I intend to do this the fun way. But you get to decide if you’d like to tell me what you know before or after I torture you.”

“Eat shit and die.”

Suddenly, Morgana’s face was an inch from mine. Her cold breath fanned against my cheek, and if I could have, I would have squirmed backward. She smelled like nothing at all, which was an odd thing to notice, but my mind had fallen back to the protective mode of cataloguing details instead of dealing with the whole picture.

“I thought you might say something like that,” she murmured. “Although I’ll admit, I did not anticipate that specific phrase.” Morgana raised one of those long, pale hands to my face. There was a sickening wet crunch and her pointer finger contorted, splitting from the second knuckle to the tip, her nail falling away and skin hanging down like ribbons of torn white silk. From the gory, exposed flesh a blood-slick claw protruded slowly, curved and wickedly sharp. My stomach turned at the sight, but if it hurt—and it must have hurt—there was no sign of it on Morgana’s face.

She trailed the tip of the claw over my cheek ever-so-gently. It was so sharp, I didn’t even realize she’d cut into me until I felt the blood seeping down my skin. I wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of seeing me flinch, though. I would keep it together.

“I want to know how you became so much more powerful so quickly,” Morgana said. “I’ve seen your work before, and you were… unremarkable. Competent, occasionally clever, but not strong. But now… now you practically reek of magic. Even with this,” she added, touching my tattoo with her other hand, “I can feel your power trying to break free from its bonds.”

“Fuck. You,” I said, enunciating both words as clearly as I could.

---