The Rise-Book II

Chapter 57: Death and Life

It was like she was a robot. She unlatched the lock, with a key she had a on a necklace, of my crate then went over to Blake's and unlatched his. I crawled out then stood up carefully, my back and legs achy from being hunched over for so long.

Blake quickly walked to me then pushed me behind him while the witch went back to Dominic. He eyed her up and down then licked his lips, before he flickered his eyes to us. "You should go."

"What will you do with her?"

Dominic shrugged. "Queen B and I need a snack. I think she'll do."

I was going to argue when Blake started to pull me out. "We need to go Char."

I looked back at the woman who was starting to unlatch Dominic's crate while he and Barrett eyed her hungrily, although I couldn't blame them. If anything they more than deserved what they were about to do–I was almost a little jealous.

Blake pulled the door open to a crack then pulled it wider. The hall was dark, but we could still see fairly well. He grabbed my hand then started to slowly pull me with him down the long hall that smelled of water; I wondered to myself if we were underground something or near a river.

We passed many doors as we walked, doors that were all closed until we can to a corner. Blake peaked around and pushed me back, a witch was trying to quickly lock a door down the hall that we needed to run down.

Blake readied himself to fight her, but as I looked I saw her shifting her weight as she fiddled with the lock. She was almost in pain, her fingers moving quickly as they tried to turn the key in the old lock that looked almost rusted. Hissing under her breath, she sat back as the door clicked open and opened slightly. "Screw it," she breathed out before she turned and ran across the hall to a disappear into a door that said, 'bathroom.'

"Char!" Blake hissed out, but I wasn't listening.

I ran as quickly as my sore legs would let me and pulled the door open more to see plastic crates, laundry baskets, filled with these glowing red stones. Some of them were just piled in the baskets while other were in bags. My beast and I sniffed the air, we could smell magic, blood, and something else but we were not sure what. They had to be important though, they wouldn't be kept in a locked room if they weren't.

It looked like something was moving in them, like there was a liquid of some sort swirling in them. It was almost hypnotizing to watch them; various colors of red, swirling and glowing brightly like rubies.

I dipped into the room before Blake could stop me. I knew we needed to go, but something told me to try and take a rock–or take a bag.

Blake was practically sweating bullets–his eyes looking at me then behind me at the bathroom in a mix of panic and frantic desperation, but I kept on. I looked around until I saw a small pouch; my wolf was weak but she nudged me to grab it. Something told us that this was important, that we would need this later.

My hands quickly snatched it before we looked around, hoping we didn't set off some kind of 'witch alarm.' Running back to Blake, who looked like he had gone almost pale, I took his hand and dipped back out of the room.

"You're an idiot!" he whisper-yelled to me.

"It could be important!" I replied.

Blake and I continued quietly in the dark. My head was throbbing and I was still sweating from the drugs, but my beast and I pushed on–we had to push on.

Soon I saw something that made me almost weep, it was a light. The moonlight pooled through a window. Blake ran to it and looked out then back at me with a smile. "Basement, that's the ground floor."