The Blood Bracelets #2: Demon Born

Chapter Seventeen

Ace recognised Alcatraz as soon as the Doorway spit him out, with enough force he was convinced the Doorway had pushed him on purpose. Considering Tempus had been the one to create the Doorway, it wouldn't be surprising if it had been on purpose.

He glanced back to the Doorway just as it closed, but he could still feel a stream of wind blowing through an unseen gap, the way wind seeps through a window that doesn't quite fully close. He supposed it would help in case he forgot where the Doorway would re-open, which was entirely probable considering his attention span.

Ace turned back to the prison, having been deposited in an abandoned cell. The entire building was abandoned, actually, if the silence filling the cell ward was anything to go by. It was dark and dusty in the building, but that came as no surprise considering it was night now that Ace was on the other side of the world.

Stepping out of the cell, Ace looked either side down the gantry, but only one side was fit enough to move along. To his left, the gantry had collapsed from the earthquake, leaving a gap large enough that Ace didn't trust an attempt to jump it. Above him the ceiling had caved, leaving a hole for the beginnings of rain to drift through, light and slow like a gentle snowfall. He turned down the gantry and to the stairs that crookedly descended to the next floor, which had once been the cafeteria hall where Ace had proudly tossed a bowl of gruel at a jail guard.

The only sounds as he picked his way through the wreckage were the small bits of debris his feet accidentally kicked aside, when his impatience momentarily pushed aside his need to be utterly silent. If Orsen was still here, and he had to hope that he was, he didn't want Orsen getting away because he heard Ace's clumsiness.

A few dark stains, which Ace suspected to be blood, marred areas of the cafeteria hall, and he was quite sure he saw an arm from underneath a pile of rubble but he decided not to pause and check. He stopped in the middle of the hall, glancing back up to the jail cells on the mezzanine-like floor. There were no sounds and from what he could see, no one else was up there. The stairs on the other side were broken, so Ace couldn't check himself, and he had the sudden urge to call out Eljae's name – but he didn't.

If Orsen had Eljae here, he wouldn't keep her in a place so open.

He'd keep her in the isolation cells.

Ace turned to the door at the other end of the room, remembering where Orsen had taken him during his imprisonment, but as he made his way across the rest of the hall he heard something scatter across the floor, like he had kicked a pile of rocks.

Stopping, Ace glanced down to his feet. The floor was clear.

He turned, cautiously, to look over his shoulder but found only stillness behind him. He was almost about to brush aside the sound as unstable rubble when something else caught his ear, and it was a sound that had nothing to do with the prison's foundations.

It was a growl.

Low, predatory, and not entirely something he would expect from just an ordinary animal. He had thought this place abandoned, but perhaps some prisoners stayed.

Since Ace hadn't had the forethought to grab a weapon from Zed's, He kept his senses alert, ready to cast a time compression at the first threat that appeared. When the cafeteria hall returned to silence, Ace cast a last suspicious glance about the room and then turned back to the broken gate that had once barred the door to the next corridor. Ace's demonic sense may have been weakened from his exile, but it was still telling him that a demon was nearby.

Even if he couldn't see it.

The gate was now unhinged, so Ace carefully lifted it aside, aware of the slightest creak it might make, and was just about to open the next door when he heard a solid thump hit the ground behind him.