Page 41 of The Arbiter

The man to my left grunts. “No idea. The mark on her palm is different from the others we’ve brought. From what she said, she’s someone they’ve been looking for, but she refuses to say anything else. She’s a pretty little thing, too. I bet she’d fetch a high price in auction, especially since she could be a rare breed.”

I want to rip his throat out at how nonchalantly he talks about my kind like we’re chattel. If only they knew how easy it would be for me to kill them all. Their assumption is right. I’m rare, and nothing they’ve ever seen before.

Another door sounds. “Bring her on up, and I’d suggest keeping those hands bound. Since we don’t know what she is, we can’t risk her touching us with that mark.”

“We aren’t stupid, Minnick. We’ll handle it. She practically gave herself over to us. My guess, she might be rare, but she doesn’t look all that powerful.”

I hold back a snort. These idiots have no idea I actuallydidgive myself over to them. These must be the lackeys of the group, the expendable ones not given any information. I’ll gladly let them underestimate me.

“Still. You never know,” the man called Minnick says.

The men holding onto me shove me forward.

“Move that sweet ass, Damned. We gotta get you to the beautician for a makeover.”

I grit my teeth and continue forward. However, my feet stumble into what feels like a step, and my legs buckle, causing me to stumble and almost fall. The men holding my arms are the only reason I don’t.

“Well, that won’t work. We have to remove the sack now, monster. I don’t feel like carrying you up the steps.”

The sack is ripped from my head, and I get a firsthand view of the pleased smirks on their faces. I look around and see we're in an old, spiral stairwell. The walls and steps are a light gray stone. The railing of the steps is wrought iron and rusted, leading up to at least another six floors. I can see the highest part of the building between the winding stairs.

I’m pushed forward and begin my ascent, my boots echoing against the walls of the open stairwell. There are barred windows at every platform between the next set of stairs. Unfortunately, they’re too high for me to look out of as we pass them going up.

Hearing the screams of pain more clearly as we go higher, my chest constricts at feeling all the Damned around me. There have to be hundreds within this building. Some of their souls are fainter than others, but the ones in pain, I feel the most vividly.

I have to push back on the feelings or risk crying out myself, so I hold the tears back that threaten to fall, knowing that so many of my people are being tortured all around me. When we reach the third floor, the guy to my right pounds a fist on the heavy metal door. A guy on the inside slides open a little rectangle in the middle. Once he sees us, he closes the latch and opens the door.

There’s no way I could’ve prepared myself for the sight that lies before me as they walk me into a large hallway and shut me in.

All along the corridor, there are doors made of the same heavy metal as the one we entered through. The floor, walls, and ceiling are aged stone with mold and stains of time marring them. From drag marks, to large patches where someone had to have sat bleeding. Bloodstains can be seen all along the floor.

It’s then I notice the doors aren’t just any metal. They’re actually made of silver.

That’s not what makes my chest burn with agony and rage, though.

It’s that as I peek in through the small windows of each door we pass, I see some form of torture being performed on the Damned.

One is being cut repeatedly with a silver blade.

One is strapped to an electric chair and shocked violently over and over.

One is wrapped up tightly with silver-dipped razor wire while a masked person pours some sort of liquid on him, melting the flesh from his body.

Something inside me snaps with every passing window; each view of torture gets seared into my brain like a brand, boiling my blood.

I feel the earth move beneath my feet, and my world falls into slow motion as the rush of their pain floods into me. I come to a halt, making the two men on either side of me stop as well. They try to pull me forward, but my eyes only focus on the agony-filled faces of my people. It’s one thing to see it, and it’s a whole other experience feeling it as well.

Tears of both sorrow and pure fucking rage fall now, and a scream is torn from my throat.

I yank my arms from the two men, my earlier calm and collected mind clouded. These are my people, and they have broken them. I can’t control my instinct to kill for what’s been done.

My body explodes into my Damned form, and I break the blistering silver chains from my wrists with a simple tug. The two humans jump back from me but immediately go back to trying to restrain me. I slam my palm into the chest of the one on my left, rocketing his body backward into one of the doors. I watch with a venomous smile as his body erupts into flames and bursts into a cloud of ash before grabbing the throat of the one to my right as he tries to run away. My nails dig into his flesh, and I revel at the look of horror and fear that slides across his face at seeing this form.

“You will pay…” I rumble out in my demonic voice, acid coating my words.

The man’s face is turning purple, and his eyes are bulging from being choked. His hands begin clawing at my wrists, but it’s hopeless. Blood drips from the puncture wounds in his neck where my sharp nails are dug in.

“P-p-please. D-d-don’t,” he rasps ou, but his begging only makes me want to kill him more.

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