Demon Bound

wasn’t surprised that they didn’t discuss Belial’s parting remark about Michael. But they didn’t talk about anything else that had transpired, or make plans for escape. Only about the site. But every time Jake tried to steer the sparse conversation in another direction, Alice mentioned how few batteries they had to power her lanterns, and urged him to hurry, to commit the prison’s layout to memory.
    And even with their Guardian speed, it was one bitch of a project. One hundred and sixteen sarcophagi, each patterned by different symbols. More symbols covered the walls, the ceiling, the floor.
    They could have been processing any site on Earth—except that only the demons, Alice, and Jake showed up on their cameras. As in Caelum, apparently nothing in Hell could be photographed. Jake’s sketches were shit, at best—and because they couldn’t read any of the symbols, the only thing they learned was that one sarcophagus was missing from the pattern.
    The sentinels didn’t move, didn’t breathe, didn’t speak. They stood—or perched, if they were one of the six at the corners and middle of the ceiling—and watched.
    Jake was sitting with his back against one sarcophagus, his feet stretched out toward another, and thinking about shooting one of the sentinels, when the lantern began fading. No big deal. They had laptops, cell phones. If they had to, they could shine their eyes like the demons did.
    But Alice started to fret, flitting her hands. She came to sit next to him on the floor, muttering “oh, dear” like it was a one-hit wonder.
    Yeah, he thought. Wasn’t that just peachy? He went crazy for a woman, and she just went crazy.
    He drew in a breath, and frowned. Alice had spent most of her time at the other end of the room, and since they weren’t talking, he hadn’t been breathing much. With all the rot around them, he didn’t think he’d missed anything worth smelling.
    Now, though, he could detect the faint, sickly sweet odor of infected flesh.
    “Alice,” he said quietly. “Is your shoulder healing?”
    “Nooooo!” With a wail, she threw herself over his lap. When she began sobbing into her hands, he got it.
    She was setting the demons up. Giving them this impression of a nervous, sickly wreck of a woman. Why, he had no idea—but she was working up to something.
    And she was good at it. If he hadn’t known her, he’d have been convinced.
    He also thought that her parents had probably gone gray before Alice was out of her teens. Performances like this didn’t just pop out of the ether.
    But that infected odor was real, and his concern was genuine when he touched her braid. She wailed louder, and he had to bury his face against her hair. Oh, shit. He was going to crack up, and give her away.
    She pinched the inside of his leg, hard. The sharp pain sobered him enough that when she lifted her tearstained face, he managed to keep his straight.
    “I don’t want to be in the dark,” she said on a shuddering breath. “It frightens me so. I will go mad without light.”
    Yeah, right. But he let his concern ride up, so that it was all that showed in his expression. Those poker games were finally paying off. “Shh. It will be okay.”
    “We must escape from here.” She began weeping again, laying her cheek on his shoulder. “But there is no way, is there? He said that I couldn’t be teleported out of this realm, and I suppose that means I could be teleported within it—but we daren’t even try with the spell up.”
    “No.” Because if they were wrong, and she couldn’t be teleported at all, Jake would leave her behind.
    “But they will not lower the spell or let in light until he returns,” she sobbed. “I just know it. We need to escape before that, or I am bound to go insane.”
    She gave his hand a squeeze on “bound,” but he’d already picked up on her message. Hell, he’d been thinking about it for two days.
    Belial could have forced him into an agreement simply by using Alice’s life as the other half of the bargain. Something as easy as, For as long as you serve me, I will spare her life. But a bargain like that had a few loopholes—if anything happened to Alice, through Belial or not, Jake wouldn’t be bound any longer.
    Their time locked up here worked in Belial’s favor. It gave the demon a chance to develop and word an ironclad bargain.
    Jake would do it, to save her life—and they’d both be screwed. “We need to get rid of the spell,” he said