The Pull

Chapter Twenty-Four (Rowena)

We continued down the hallway and found cells on both our right and left with human women inside. Emaciated, dirty and bloody, the women cowered as we entered, covering their faces and hiding under filthy blankets.

"Lilith!" I cursed. Alfred was worse than we had imagined. I had never in my life seen anything like it. I started shaking uncontrollably, trying to process what I was seeing.

One woman reared her head and dared to looked at me. She opened her mouth to speak but saw my eyes, and hid again. Fury flowed through me, and I advanced on the door. The rotten smell of their unwashed bodies and uncollected waste was so putrid I stopped breathing for as long as I could so I wouldn't vomit.

"Go back and get the keys, please," I sent to Min.

Min held up a large set of ancient keys. "One step ahead of you, Highness," she said with a grim smile.

"A good thing too," I grimaced. "Can you open the doors?"

Nodding, Min started opening the heavy iron door while I used my speed to run back and get clean blankets for the women and freshwater bottles from the fridge. "Angelica, I need you. Eliza can stay at the door and let us know if anyone comes." I sent.

Angelica held her nose as she entered the horrific corridor. She stopped dead in her tracks when she saw the five human women aged in their late teens and early twenties covered in blood and filth.

I wrapped a blanket around the timid, yet brave woman who had lifted her head. Her clothing was so tattered she needed a blanket around her to maintain her dignity. "Shh, now. We have come to free you," I said, as gently and as reassuringly as I could.

"Get away from me you freak!" She shrieked.

While I admired her fight, I was frustrated by her words. I lifted her chin and said forcefully, willing her to understand, "Listen, I'm going to get you out of here. I'm not interested in your blood."

Her jaw slackened and her face lost all of its tension. For a moment I was scared I had frightened her so badly that she was about to faint from fear. "Are you ok?" I asked.

"Yes," she said as if dazed.

Angelica was behind me and said, "Well done Rowena, you just coerced your first human."

"What?"

"Coerced. Mind-controlled."

Stunned I stared at the poor girl. "I don't even know how I did it."

"Try again." Angelica encouraged.

I concentrated hard and said in the same forceful manner and applied the same will to her mind, "Drink." She grabbed the water bottle I held out for her and started guzzling it down. "Sip it slowly," I amended my orders. She did and I sighed in relief.

I looked at the other women, huddled in the corners of their cells. I didn't have time to do this for all of them. Having seen the disgusting way Alfred had stored these humans as if they were canned food, I had no doubt Henry's mother must be here too.

"Angelica, see to the other women. Willow, you too," I said. "Min you're with me." Min followed me wordlessly and we descended further into hell.

We walked cautiously down a darkened hallway, lit every few metres by a naked globe over an opened cell. These were more like the rooms I had seen in Alfred's images, but they were all empty. We reached the end of the hallway and there we found the only closed door. This had to be it.

I was scared to open the door. The state of the human girls was so atrocious, and they were so sickly and starved, I couldn't imagine what state Hannah would be in. Those girls were young, they could only have been captured for a few years at most. Hannah had been held for nearly one hundred and eighty years. I shuddered. One hundred and eighty years of torture, one hundred and eighty years of being raped, and feeding the man who was supposed to be your lover.