Page 6 of The Demigod

To be fair, it was a sound I was accustomed to. You didn’t work your whole life punishing the deserving in hell and not get used to the bloodcurdling screams of people in pain—both mental and physical.

But this wasn’t right.

I wasn’t in hell any longer.

And the only screams I heard on this human plane were those of women in the throes of ecstasy.

But my mind was a thick mud, trying to pull me back down into its comforting depths each time I tried to claw toward the surface, to figure out what was going on.

I guess it was the pain that finally did it.

The more I struggled toward consciousness, the stronger the sensations got.

There was a hammering in the back of my skull that demanded notice, that had my eyelids flickering open.

The first thing I saw was the dirt floor beneath my feet and my own filthy shoes.

When I tried to peel my chin off my chest, there was a screaming sensation up the back of my neck that said I’d been in that position for a long time.

What was going on?

Ignoring the pain, I forced my head to loll back on my weak neck as I became aware of a searing ache in my shoulders.

One look toward the side showed me the source.

Chains.

Thick as fuck chains around my wrists—wrists that I was dangling from.

“What the fu—“

But then it came back to me.

The club.

The downer mood inside of it.

Leaving.

Pain.

Panic.

People.

People who couldn’t just be people because at some point, the Change had moved through me, focusing my powers, strengthening them.

But they’d kept control over me.

Then, clearly, dragged me down here, chained me up, knocked me out cold.

How long had it been?

As if answering that question, though, I saw the small barred windows toward the top of the wall. Through them, little streaks of amber and gold stretched across the sky.

It looked more like sunset than sunrise to me, though.

Had I been knocked out for nearly a full day? How was that possible?

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