The whisperings from the other side of the door make my pulse race. "Demon child..." it says. "The ancient keeper..."
I blink and stare at the door. The ancient keeper? Who? Me? Or was it talking to the Nephilims?
"Did you hear that?" I ask Sacha but he stares at me with furrowed brows and from the blank look on the other Nephilims' faces behind him, they didn't hear it either.
"Daughter of Astaroth...we have what you want.."
Do they really? I spend a few more seconds, staring at the door in contemplative. Tricky tricky tricky... I know I shouldn't believe everything that I hear, after all, I'm good at telling people what they want to hear in order to get what I want. But the urge to be on the other side of that door is very strong.
"I have to do it," I tell Sacha, closing the gap between me and the heavily carved door.
The moment I set my palm flat against it, the delicately carved vines start to move. My hand and my arm are buzzing. It's as though they're drawing energy from me. They're twisting and slithering like little serpents to wrap around my hand and slim wrist. My heart starts to race and my ears are filled with dark whisperings.
The Nephilims watch on curiously while the vines tighten around my hand as they rearrange their positions.
I clench my jaw and press my lips together as thorns pierce through my skin, drawing blood.
Sacha's cool indiffrent expression slips. His eyes widen, his jaw tightens, and his nostrils flare.
Then he's saying something. His lips move but I can't hear him. His voice is drowned by the whisperings in my ears.
When the blood starts to trail down and drips off my elbow, he looks as though he's ready to tear the door to pieces, but I put my free hand up to his chest to stop him from reacting. He grabs it and holds it tightly in his hands. Then he brings it up to his lips to press a kiss on the back of it. His eyes are intent on my face, watching my every expression.
Watching him- the fire in his eyes, the determined curve of his strong jaw, his nose, high cheekbones, and those messy curls help. I draw strength from his hand that's holding me. His scent calms me.
When the vines find their positions, the rose petals in the carving fall on the floor one by one and as they fall, the vines around my hand ease up, retreating little by little. The whisperings stop. By the time the last petal drops to the floor, my hand is finally free and the door opens with a click.
I stare up at Sacha and he gives a little nod before I cautiously pull the door open wider to peer inside. A gust of wind blows through me with an ugly cackle and I jump back with a start. Everyone behind me looks as startled.
"Well, there goes one spirit making a run for it," I comment lightly after I recover. The other Nephilims all stare at me as though I was insane while Sacha squeezes my arms and pulls me back so that he could enter the room first this time.
All of us file in behind Sacha and Olivier flicks a switch beside him. The room is suddenly bathed in the dim orange light from an antique fixture on the wall.
I give the room a cursory glance as I step in front of Sacha.
The room is not very big or grand and the furnishing is quite minimal. Set against the nearest wall is a four-poster queen-sized bed with a bare mattress and a pillow. Next to it is a bedside table and a dresser. There is a small table flanked by a couple of antique chairs by the windows. All in all, a pretty normal-looking room if not a tad bare with no pictures on the wall or a rug on the floor.
There is a huge fireplace on the wall facing the bed. It's definitely too big for a room this size. As my legs carry me toward it, I know right away that this is the reason why I'm here. It leads to something bigger and I'm inexplicably drawn to it.
"Well, well, well... look who's here," says someone. I pause and my eyes jerk away from the fireplace to home in on a woman in a flapper dress who is lounging on the bed.
Resting on an elbow beside her is a man in a suit with a thin mustache. Their smiles radiate malice.
I'm sure they have just reappeared because I didn't see them when I first entered the room.
There were three spirits in my vision when I was here with Katherine yesterday. These two and a cackling old woman. She must have been the one who blew through me at the door just now.
"Some gorgeous Nephilims and a little girl," the woman continues flirtatiously, eyeing the shirtless Nephilims behind me.
"How very interesting," says the man, monotonously. His dull eyes are fixed on me. "Someone came to free us. At last." The words "at last" are said with a hoarse whisper. His mouth stretches and widens until his jaw reaches the middle of his chest and his tongue lolling out to his stomach.
I blink, giving them an unimpressed look before I turn my attention to the fireplace.
The man rolls off the bed and jumps in front of me, trying to regain my attention. The moment I look at him, he smiles. One of his eyeballs rolls out of its socket to dangle just below his jaw. The skin of his face starts to rot, crack, and peels right before my eyes. Dark liquid oozes out and grey flesh is soon falling in chunks onto the floor until I can see the white of his skull.
"Neat party trick," I tell him. He sputters indignantly and the woman lets out a high-pitched laugh as I walk right through him to get to the fireplace.
"She's not a human. You're wasting your time," I hear one of the Nephilims behind me say.
I suppose their trick would have scared some humans but they're barely entertaining me. Now I'm very sure that the whisperings I heard before didn't come from these two fools.
"Not a human?" I hear the woman says. "She is not a----"
"Shhhh..." I hold a finger up to my lips with a scowl. "Quiet!"
I stand close to the opening or the firebox of the fireplace and try to listen. Are those whisperings that I hear? What are they saying?
The opening is over six feet in height and probably around twelve feet in width. It looks like a big dark gaping mouth of a beast. Sacha pulls me back when I try to stick my head inside it.
"What did you hear?" asks Sacha.
"I don't know... some whisperings," I tell him. "I think they're trying to tell me something."
The woman's face suddenly appears a few inches from mine. Instinctively I rear back until the back of my head hits Sacha's hard chest and he immediately and protectively wraps an arm around my waist.
"A Cambion! She's a Cambion," the woman announces triumphantly. Then her attention is not on me anymore. "What's a Nephilim like you doing with a Cambion?" she asks Sacha flirtatiously. Her eyes roam over his shirtless body.
I ignore her as I try to listen to the whisperings from the other side. Then I bite into the cut on my hand until I taste blood.
As soon as I hold my bloody hand over the hearth, the fire suddenly roars to life with a spine-chilling shriek. Sacha instantly jerks me back until we both toppled on the floor.
The two spirits whoosh out of the room with a horrid bloodcurdling scream.
"Well, that's one way of getting rid of their pesky presence," I mutter, trying to sit up. I guess those spirits aren't too eager to go to hell yet.
"A portal to hell," whispers Olivier and I look up to see the three Nephilims staring into the fire.
"Yep, a portal to hell," I agree before I turn to Sacha. "I don't think it's a great idea for you to go in," I tell him. He is still lying on his back beneath me. His body had cushioned my fall.
"You're not going in there alone," says Sacha, lifting me up by my armpits as he gets to his feet.
"But I'm a half-demon," I argue. "That is not a place for a Nephilim." The underworld is where the demons rule. It's dangerous, treacherous, and confusing, even for me.
"If you think I was going to let you go in there without me, you're delusional," he says.
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Hello everyone!
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Nicole♥