Page 40 of King of the Damned
“Where’s the sacrifice?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Suddenly, I’m levitating in the air, face-to-face with Amatisi. My feet hover above the floor as she wraps her bony fingers with unnaturally long nails around the stake in my stomach. She rips it out, and I feel instant relief. She allows me one single moment of painless existence before she shoves the stake back into my stomach and lets me drop to the floor. I groan when my knees hit the cold marble and I hunch over, gripping the stake.
I pull it out again and brace my bloody hands against the floor, trying to hold myself up against the pain. Amatisi begins circling me again.
“Where’s the sacrifice?” she repeats. I keep my mouth shut, grunting as I look up at the witch. She tilts her veiled head to the side, and though I can’t see it, I can hear the smile in her voice.
“Oh, Kaius, you simply never learn, do you?” She takes a step towards me, her hand outstretched. From her fingers, dark magic begins to spread and swirl around me. “How many more centuries will it take for you to realize–” The magic solidifies into a collar of wooden spikes around my neck with a long chain attached. From behind me, sitting on my throne, Dravon pulls the chain, embedding the spikes in my throat. “–that it never pays to make an enemy out of me?”
Dravon snickers and pulls the chain again, embedding the spikes even deeper into my throat. The pain is almost unbearable. Amatisi uses her dark magic to put splintered wooden cuffs around my wrists, effectively rendering me useless.
Amatisi stops directly in front of me, tilting my head backward by my hair and then placing her thumbs on my temples. Her long, claw-like fingernails dig into my scalp.
“If you won’t tell me what I want to know from your bleeding throat willingly, I shall take the knowledge from your weak mind by force,” Amatisi purrs.
I know what’s coming, so I use every last remaining shred of my focus and willpower to solidify a shield across my mind. If I let Amatisi invade my thoughts, it’s over. Everything I have tried to protect Adelasia from will be out in the open.
My skull feels like it’s being crushed when the magic enters my consciousness. Its sharp talons dig and scratch and scrape along the mental barriers I’ve put up. I can feel pain snake along my thoughts. Dravon must be pulling the chain, trying to get me to break my focus, but I will not. I’ve been alive far too long and endured far too much over the centuries to be so easily taken down by splinters.
I can hear Amatisi’s voice in my head. She laughs. “What is it you’re trying so hard to protect, Kaius? Is the sacrifice truly worth all this trouble?”
I grit my teeth and roar with frustration when I manage to push Amatisi completely out of my head. She tilts her head to the side, impressed by my fortitude. But she knows I’m breaking. If she tries to enter my head again, it’s over. She’ll know exactly where to find Adelasia and I’ll have no way to protect her myself.
When Amatisi grabs my temples and invades the sanctity of my most private thoughts, I scream in agony. She can see it all. Every single moment I’ve spent with Adelasia and every conflicting emotion that came with them.
Most importantly though, Amatisi sees that I have no intentions of killing Adelasia, because her heart was always destined to belong to me.
Amatisi lets me go and begins to laugh uncontrollably.
“Oh, what a beautiful circumstance be this!” she purrs before turning to face her sisters. “Our noble King of the Damned has gone and fallen in love with the human sacrifice!”
The rest of the Priestesses and Dravon begin snickering. Amatisi turns her attention to me once more, gripping me with her long nails by the jaw. “Your wayward heart is the reason you’re in this situation in the first place, but I am done giving you time to fix your mistake.”
Amatisi lets me go, and then from the ground, plumes of black fog begin to rise. My heart sinks and I’m suddenly filled with the worst kind of dread imaginable.
“No!” I growl.
From the fog, three of the most wretched abominations the Priestesses have ever created rise.Griefclaws. They stand even taller than I, their limbs unnaturally proportioned, with claws protruding from their fingertips that are so long they scrape across the ground when they move. Their eyes are nothing but depthless voids and their mouths are nothing but rows and rows of sharp teeth and the rotting remnants of the flesh of their last meals. Their skin is brownish gray and stretched tightly across their bony frames.
They make unnerving chittering noises as they await instructions. They are the Priestesses' most loyal, unquestioning servants, designed only to bring grief as their names suggest. They are lethal. So dangerous that even I know better than to foolishly say I’m not afraid of them.
Amatisi approaches her pets and strokes their chests as if in comfort. “Bring her to me, my children. Alive.”
Eighteen
Adelasia
The air in the room has gone icy cold. So has my blood.
A monster standing even taller than Kaius lingers down the hall from where Saddiq and I cower. Unnaturally long limbs add to its unsettling appearance, and it stands in a cloud of its own foul, festering stink of rotting flesh. Claws hang from its fingertips down to the ground, scraping lightly as it slowly pads down the stone hall. It’s not coming directly for me though, it’s staring straight ahead.
I quietly and slowly move my legs and the bottom of my dress away from its path as it inspects the space just inches from me.
My heart sinks even further into the floor when another one crawls toward us, its spine contorted awkwardly on the ceiling. The creatures chitter gutturally to each other.
They’re communicating, but they’re paying no attention to me or Saddiq.
