The Blood Bracelets #2: Demon Born

Chapter Four

'How else were we going to get in?' Drake retorted. 'By the way, you owe me twenty-five bucks.'

The cell ward stretched out before them, long and dark and echoing with the curious murmurs of visitors as they began to explore. Kael looked up, following the rusted steel stairs that ascended to the second-floor galley where more cells lined the walls. The overcast light shone through the arched windows in the ceiling and at the stairs, all slated by more rusted steel and secured with bars while offering a meagre view of stone.

Some cells were sealed, allowing only small peep holes for visitors to stare through and see inside whereas others were open, letting visitors walk in and experience the claustrophobic homes of past prisoners. A few props had been added to those cells, like stools and dusty blankets.

Drake wasn't interested in the cells above them, instead he led Kael down the main hall, past a miniature version of the gaol set inside a glass case, and then walked in to one of the open cells.

Kael glanced surreptitiously at the tour guide nearby, and then followed Drake into the cell – who promptly shut the cell door behind him. Before Kael could even ask, Drake dug his fingers into the crevices around one of the bricks in the wall and began to slide it out, revealing a rusted latch behind it.

'Move those blankets aside,' Drake instructed, gesturing flippantly to the props in the corner of the cell.

Kael did as asked, though he kicked the props aside rather than touch them, and noticed a square indent in the ground. Then Drake pulled the latch, and the indent dropped down to reveal a hole wide enough for Kael to fit through.

'Trap door,' he said. 'How original.'

'Go on, in you get,' said Drake as he repositioned the brick into the wall.

With a sigh, Kael stepped over the edge and dropped.

The ground met him quickly, but Kael landed in a crouch to absorb the impact. The room he had landed in was pitch black, save for the column of light that came from the trap door above him. He moved out of the way and Drake dropped down beside him, then that light was extinguished as the trap door slammed shut.

Kael's eyes didn't adjust to the solid darkness straight away, but he could feel the other presences hiding around them, their demonic energies brushing across his skin like cobwebs.

'I'm about to be real angry with you, aren't I?' said Kael, glancing across the darkness to where Drake had been beside him.

'Uh, there's a possibility.'

Lights suddenly flared around him, white and fluorescent, and Kael squinted against the bombardment. It took a moment for him to blink away the glare of the lights that blurred his vision and see the demons surrounding him – ten, in total – as well as the room that they had dropped into. It was an old morgue.

Unused for decades, of course. Everything was dusty and tangled within cobwebs, and the source of such bright light were from portable spotlights, rather than the broken lights in the ceiling.

'So which one of you is Tank?' Kael asked, breaking the silence. All the demons looked as if they could own the name Tank, but none were an Alchemist. He could see a couple of lupines, a vampire, even an exiled Immortal whose face was charred black like Ace's arm, but all looked equally displeased at Kael and Drake's arrival.

'That would be me. Who's asking?'

Kael turned, finding a man older than himself sitting on the bench at the back of the room, which had a suspicious dark stain splattered across it. He knew this was the Alchemist right away, and not only because of the alchemic symbols tattooed up his arms and across his chest; he represented the name Tank in the only way one could, with skin the colour of silver and distinctly stone-like. He was wide as he was tall, which was much bigger than either Kael or Drake.