The Blood Bracelets #2: Demon Born

Chapter Two

Ace watched as the morning sun rose over the water outside their window, the fresh sea air filling his lungs as he took in a deep breath. It was going to be a nice morning, he decided, though he also suspected a storm would be above them before the day was through.

Surprisingly, he had had a remarkable night's sleep, so much so that he was in a pleasant mood despite the events of the last few days – and the circumstances behind his current accommodation.

'We've got a nice view here, you know,' said Ace, watching a flock of seagulls swoop by. 'Fresh air, not too much sun, not too much wind. Just right.'

'Shut up,' Eljae hissed. 'We're in prison, Ace, not a resort. We're not on holiday. We're incarcerated in one of the worst prisons known not only to the demon world, but the mortal world too.'

'Alcatraz,' said Ace, nodding. 'I know. But who would've thought it had such a nice view in the morning?'

'Speaking of which,' she added, 'shut the hell up so I can go back to sleep, okay? Okay. Goodnight.'

'Technically it's morning.'

Eljae groaned, slamming her foot into the cell wall. 'I'd happily be running my claws right through you if it wasn't for these damn curses.'

Ace turned around, finding Eljae lying on a stained, thin futon that was tucked to one side of the cell. Her legs were stretched up against the wall as if contemplating kicking it down, and her red hair was a fantastic mess. Her eyes, narrow and tired, were currently trying to kill him with a single glare.

He smiled at her.

Eljae slapped the wall with her foot again. 'This is ridiculous! We didn't kill anyone – although I'm seriously considering it now – so why have we been locked up?'

'Aren't you used to this? Being a thief and all that,' asked Ace, sitting back down on his own futon. He could feel the slate ground beneath him, the cold rising up through the futon.

'Only in prisons I know I can get out of,' she muttered.

Ace leaned back against the wall, the window just above his head and the second window on the wall between them, offering yet another view of water and sky as well as the buildings of San Francisco in the near distance. He never thought his first time seeing San Francisco would be from this angle.

The mortal world knew Alcatraz as being a historical prison that shut down some time ago, now just a museum of criminal records and ghost tales. Parts of the prison were just that, except an entire section wasn't; it was still being used. There was another floor above what mortals saw as the rooftop of Alcatraz, but a powerful concealment spell hid the extra storey from human eyes, keeping up the pretence that Alcatraz was no longer in use.

Because of an agreement made by the Magistrate centuries ago, Terrenum Demons were given prison sentences if they ever attacked or killed Immortals and Alchemists. If they killed humans, however, they were executed themselves. But demons weren't the only ones locked up in Alcatraz; rogue Alchemists and exiled Immortals were imprisoned if they ever committed a crime beyond the breaking of their oaths.

Ace had woken up here, remembering nothing from the moment he passed out. It had all been a set up, but to what extreme? Were the Alchemists working with the Infernum and his pursuers, or did the Alchemists have their own plan? He wasn't sure if Kael and the others had made it out, whether Taryn really had been safe back at Zed's, and it made him realise that he was invested in this situation, these events, more than he had pretended not to be.