Page 8 of The Demigod

She was slight and fair, her porcelain skin impossibly flawless, save for a small crescent moon-shaped birthmark to the side of one of her eyebrows.

Her inky black hair cascaded over her shoulders and down her back, framing a soft, delicate face dominated by stormy blue eyes.

Eyes that were lasered in on me.

“You’re awake,” she said, her voice like a secret just for the two of us, smoky and elusive, something like the shadow she clearly was able to cloak herself in, even if I had no idea how that was possible.

“You put me to sleep,” I countered, finding my voice scratchy from, I recalled, screaming in agony for what felt like lifetimes.

“I put you into a deeper sleep,” she clarified.

“Like you did with him?” I asked, jerking my chin toward the slumped figure across the room.

“If I hadn’t, they would have kept torturing him until he died.”

“What happens when he wakes up?”

Above us, there was a chorus of laughter that was quickly drowned by the thump of music.

“I get him out of here,” she said simply, shrugging.

“How?”

To that, she reached into her pocket, producing an ancient-looking key.

I wanted to tell her to release me. But her body language was tense, distrustful. At some point, it was entirely possible she’d seen the Change in me, was questioning who I was,whatI was.

I needed to gain her trust first.

“Don’t they know it’s missing?”

“No,” she said simply.

“What if they want to release one of us?”

To that, her face darkened.

“They pull,” she told me. “If the wrists and hands are small enough, just until the skin is gone.”

“And if they’re big?”

“Until the arms rip off of their bodies,” she admitted, her stormy eyes nearly going black as my own stomach sloshed around.

“Fuck.”

“Yeah,” she agreed. “Hence the key.”

“How many men have you rescued?”

“Dozens. More. Men, women, some teens, even. They’re… not picky,” she said, face scrunching up as if the words tasted sour in her own mouth.

“If they like playing with humans, why am I here?” I asked, hedging my bets, figuring she must know I wasn’t one of them.

“My best guess is they’re tiring of how quickly the humans die.”

“I guess that makes a sick sort of sense,” I agreed. I was, after all, immortal. They would torture me day and night for eternity, and all I would do was heal and be prepared for more.

“What are you?” she asked, point-blank.

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