A Beautiful Evil (A Beautiful Book. 1) #Wattys2015

Chapter Twenty-Eight - Michael

I drifted for a while, neither awake nor asleep; Asmodeus's melody playing over and over in my head. I also dreamed, floating between total awareness and sleep. I dreamed of Dad and the Greek Islands we lived on. I dreamed of Alkaia, and her first moments of life when she emerged from her egg. I also dreamed of Charles, and the way his inky black wings rose above his shoulders, proud and defiant. Forms of shapes and voices drifted in and out of my consciousness: Fillin, barking at me madly when I stepped on that thorn. Mom: screaming at me for eating cookies before supper. And Avery, begging and pleading with his eyes the night I caught him in bed with a Succubus.

"Why isn't she waking up?" said a voice. "What did he do to her?"

"How should I know? Maybe if you wouldn't have attacked that damned Shade, none of this would have happened."

The first voice snorted, and I had a nagging feeling in the back of my head that I should recognize it. "So what, you're saying that we should have just surrendered ourselves? You'd let Mara go through that?"

Behind my eyes felt warm, as if someone had poured mildly heated water in my skull. It took me a moment to realize it was my brain that was warm, Asmodeus's song softly playing in the back of my mind, but disappearing.

"Would you prefer her alive than wondering if she's dead?"

"She's not dead," snapped the first voice.

"Are you sure? How do you know?"

Though my eyes and head were warm, my body was cold and I shivered violently. A soft moan escaped my lips.

"Because one, we don't die. Two, the last time I check, bloody corpses don't moan."

I stirred slightly, and came to the realization that I was flat on my back, my spine digging into the hard stone of the floor. I moaned again.

"Mara, luv. Are you awake?"

"I'm fine," I grumbled, though my voice surprised me. My throat was on fire. It was cracking and dry, and I had to swallow a few times before I spoke again."Where are we?"

Avery chuckled dryly. "Open your eyes."

I cracked my eyelids open and tried my hardest to sit up. Every muscles screamed a protest, but I bit my lip and powered through. I felt as if I was thrown under a train.

Sitting up and taking in my surroundings, I groaned. Not out of pain, but dread.

It was dark, and I was grateful for my enhanced eyesight. I was in one of my father's torcher chambers. This one in particular had three cages, all stationed on thick slabs of stone that had little stone steps in front of the cell door. The bars we coated in rust, but I didn't dare touch them because I could smell the Holy Water laced within the metal. No wonder I felt so weak.

"Surprise," muttered Avery, in another cage a few yards away. He was sitting on a cot in the corner of his cell, his back towards me. He was still wearing the pants that he wore to prom, but his shoes were gone, and so was his jacket and shirt. My stomach squirmed at the sight of his back. He looked like a tiger with bloody gashes for stripes. Bright crimson drops oozed from his wounds, dribbling onto the dinghy mattress and staining it red.

It surprised me that they weren't healed yet. They looked remarkably fresh, or something was stopping them from healing.

There was a strangled cough from my other side. Chares was in the third cage, sitting crosslegged in the center of his cell. His sapphire eyes stood out from the black, dried blood covering his face. He too, was barefoot and missing his shirt and jacket. My heart ached at the sight of him.