Page 93 of Inflamed By an Incubus

She scowled at him. “Stop rushing me!”

She settled her gaze back on the door and focused again, breathing through the spike in her panic, letting it all fall away. Just a few feet. A little leap. That was all she had to do.

As she exhaled, emptying her lungs, the world around her went black.

And then she was standing an inch from a crumbling dark stone pillar.

Her heart shot into her throat.

“Oh God.” She reeled backwards into Fenix, and he caught her, his arm snaking around her waist. “I messed up. Maybe I teleported us to Hell?”

Because the column resembled one she had seen in the castle in the Fifth Realm.

Fenix rumbled, “You can’t teleport to Hell without a portal. Not the right breed for popping in and out of that realm. No… this isn’t Hell.”

He released her and eased away from her, and she trailed after him.

Her eyes widened as she saw what was on the other side of the column and she looked at Fenix.

“What is this place?”

Chapter 27

“What is this place?” Evelyn breathed as her gaze seared him.

Fenix wasn’t sure of the answer to that question as he tried to take everything in.

“A church?” It was the best he could come up with as his gaze drifted over the towering thick stone columns that supported a vaulted ceiling and were linked by arches. Several of them had fallen down, the heavy stones strewn across the flagstone floor, replaced by modern constructions of steel beams.

Only there weren’t any stained-glass windows or windows of any sort in the plain stone walls that had been patched in places with concrete to stop them from falling down too.

“A crypt.” It felt like the better word for the enormous room they were in, one that stretched a good two hundred feet in all directions.

“Why would they be keeping the sorceress here?” Evelyn’s voice echoed around him, but he didn’t bother telling her to keep her voice down.

As far as his senses could tell, they were the only two here.

“Not sure.” He moved forwards. Slowly. His gaze scanned everything, charting every shadow as his senses stretched around him, and he noticed something. “The lights.”

He nodded towards the floodlamps someone had set up, ones that followed the line of the columns, as if they were illuminating a path.

“I don’t like this,” Evelyn murmured but she followed him anyway, sticking close to his side as her gaze leaped around. Her nerves trickled into him through their bond, filling him with a need to comfort her.

It was hard to deny that need, but he had to stop giving in to his desires. He had done that far too many times already on this mission, comforting and calming her whenever the need had become too great to deny.

“I think there’s something over there,” she hissed and he tracked the path of her gaze.

More lights. A cluster of them all pointed towards something.

Silver and black ducting snaked across the uneven floor, heading towards that point. Power for the lights? The flexible silver pipe looked as if it might carry air and he could hear mechanical whirring ahead of them, and the closer he came to the circle of lights, the fresher the air in the crypt became.

But he still couldn’t sense anyone other than him and Evelyn.

“How long do you think this place has been here?” Evelyn whispered.

Fenix didn’t take his eyes off the area ahead of them. “Millennia maybe. This place is old.”

“How do you know?” She looked around them. “It looks like it could be any old cathedral.”

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