Page 51 of Beneath the Watching

Out of the corner of my eye I caught a flicker of disdain in Josiah’s eyes. He quickly corrected the errant emotion while he tucked himself back into his pants and zipped up. When I swiveled my head back, Sem was directly in front of me.

“Seize him,” he thundered.

Multiple guards surrounded me, holding me with iron chains that materialized from the ether before I had time to react. My energy was restrained no matter how hard I pushed as I tried to fight the magic’s hold. Two of the guards shoved me to the floor and Josiah’s boot returned, this time dead center, directly over my heart.

Tapping his index finger against his lower lip, his eyes glinted. “Don’t fight a battle you won’t win.” His voice flowed over me tainted with a hint of hostility. “Comply.”

Ignoring him, I fought to break the chains, willing them to disintegrate. The air wavered as I kept trying, but my bindings didn’t. The force of my angered roar rocked the glasses on the table before I collapsed, soundly defeated.

Josiah’s chest heaved. “Fucking moron,” he muttered.

“I tire of this,” Sem declared, waving Josiah and the guards off. “Veronica, my dear, come see daddy.” Sem’s voice slitheredthrough the room as a well-endowed young woman tentatively approached the man.

“Lift him,” Josiah ordered the guards.

The men held me over their heads and brought me through a hallway while I strained to see where they were taking me. It didn’t take long for me to perceive they carried me in such a fashion I wouldn’t be able to pick out landmarks should I dare attempt to escape. All I could see were the gray bricks lining the ceiling and the towering walls.

We stopped for a moment, and I listened to an elevator ascend before I heard doors slide open. The overhead lighting was blinding, forcing my eyes shut as I was carried inside. The lift descended and I was brought down another corridor. The sound of a metal gate screeched, opening on rough hinges before finally, I was dropped to the ground.

My head pounded from the impact with the cement flooring. When my chains disappeared, I rolled over and saw the guards walking away, leaving Josiah’s brutal face peering down at me. I half expected to get up close and personal with the heel of his shoe again or for him to take a chunk out of my neck and drain me.

He did neither, choosing instead to glare at me from above. The man was unreadable, possessing the ability to hide behind an impenetrable mask that hid his aura from prying eyes such as my own. Even if I couldn’t physically see the ethereal fogs that surrounded beings, I could feel the energy. Right now, it was gone.

Tossing one more malevolent gaze my way, he left.

It’d been years since I’d been in any situation where I’d have to fight with my fists. While I did my best to stay in physical shape via exercise, it wasn’t the same as sparring with a partner or engaging in hand-to-hand combat. With Ilya being constantly swamped with business matters, and now the situation with hiswoman, my skills were undoubtably quite rusty as he and I hadn’t practiced together in a long time.

The one thing I hadn’t let fall to the side was my intellect and educational pursuits. I was far more at home training my brain than my body and I knew it was the only thing that would get me out of here.

The way Sem ran his court, I would’ve expected to be dealt with instantly and being imprisoned hadn’t crossed my mind. The only thing I could think of was he planned torture, with Mabel as an audience to inspire the most terror possible.

My cell was essentially a metal box with no windows and only a solitary door with a narrow horizontal open window. Peering through the small slot, I could only see forward, the thickness of the door prohibiting a visual examination of anything on either side.

Concentrating, I sent out feelers to detect any sorcery, and as expected the room was bound with extensive magic. If it hadn’t been for the meal I'd indulged in earlier, I wouldn’t have the necessary energy to even begin to fight the invisible net covering the jail cell. The guards hadn’t bothered to lock the door, secure in the knowledge the court’s wizardry would keep me contained.

Mindful of possible hidden alarms, I began attempting to untangle the translucent threads. Visualizing them in my mind until they became physically tangible, I delicately unknotted the strands one by one. A job such as this would take time and deep concentration, the caliber of magic utilized being near immaculate.

Pausing, I looked down at my fingers. Razor thin cuts oozed blood, staining my hands from the intricacy of the effort. Whether by physical or mental battle, either way some of my life force would be lost in crimson drops on the floor. I’d expended much too much energy trying to free myself from the chains and was now paying the price.

I was re-focusing when suddenly I was lifted into the air and slammed against the wall.

17

STEFAN

“Don’t wastea single moment believing there is any way out of this for you.” The sound of Josiah’s voice hissed and slithered from the doorway as he immobilized me with a barely a lift of his hand

Glaring back at him, I said, “There’s always a way.”

“Not without my permission,” Josiah answered, taking a step into the room.

He tilted his head curiously, as if I were a bug pinned under a needle in a display case. It felt like he was unraveling my structure, my form, the things that made me,me.I didn’t know much of the man, having never had a conversation with him until I was summoned to the High Court. I had seen him around in the distant past, when my mother had brought me here when I was younger, but we’d never had an in-depth conversation.

She’d come here to hunt and scheme, trying to catch the eye of a higher court member. She’d been dissatisfied with her lot in life being joined with merely an ordinary demon god and wanted something greater.

More beauty, more riches, more respect, and more fear.

I couldn’t remember if she’d ever tried to ensnare Josiah, but the possibility of such enraged me.

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