Hold Me Closer, Necromancer - Lish McBride [19]
She tried to sit up. The world became tilted and queasy. She put her head back down on the cool surface of the floor. Squashing the flood of panic, she willed herself calm. First, the facts. She could panic when she knew what kind of mess she was in.
It hurt to open her eyes, and she felt dizzy. A concussion? The blood in her mouth didn’t taste fresh, so whatever had hit her had struck a while ago. She should have healed a concussion by now. But she hadn’t, so either she’d taken on more damage than she knew, or something was interfering. Her stomach burned, her throat felt torched, and then she smelled it. Aconite. She’d been drugged, then. Drugged and beaten. Not good. And cold. Damn it. She’d been drugged, beaten, and stripped. That did not bode well at all.
Brid rolled quickly onto her side and retched for what felt like a very long time. When she thought she could manage it, she sat up. She leaned against cold bars and opened her eyes.
Bars. She’d been put in a cage. She touched the floor. Iron. Being enclosed in the stuff would keep her from her swords. She could, however, just as easily bend the iron like it was wicker. Sometimes it was good to be a hybrid. She stood up, reaching for the bar closest to her, and frowned. There at the top were runes done in silver, the wards drawn with a cold fire. She felt the chill of the symbols with the tips of her fingers and frowned. Somehow, someone had built a cage not just for a werewolf but specifically for her or someone like her.
Shit.
And then it hit her. The wolf smell. Her eyes burned with a red flame, fueled by hatred as the name slid between clenched teeth. “Michael.” Then she smiled. Flip the situation on its side, and this could become a chance at revenge. Things were looking up.
She studied the room. It seemed she was being kept in a basement, no windows, solid concrete floor and walls. The cage only took up about a quarter of the space, but it was a big area. Manacles were attached to a few of the walls, some of which bore the same silver-drawn runes that were on the cage. Unpleasant. And sitting in the corner was a heavy wooden table with restraints that she didn’t like the look of. Another table stood against the wall behind her. On it glass beakers were neatly arranged next to a Bunsen burner. Someone had hung a small chalkboard next to the table. Brid didn’t recognize any of the symbols on the chalkboard. The lighting was bright, fluorescent, bathing everything in stark reality.
All in all, the basement looked like someone couldn’t decide whether he wanted a torture chamber or a laboratory so he’d made both. Every scent she got felt tainted with death, incense, and old blood. Enough blood that Brid felt that the sooner she got out of here, the better. The drain in the floor wasn’t giving her delighted butterflies either. There was something disturbing about this particular basement having an easy-rinse floor.
The only other things she could see were a few shelves piled high with old books and what she thought might be a small refrigerator under the stairs. She could hear the soft whir of a motor, and the size looked about right for a mini fridge.
Brid stretched, feeling a pleasant pull through her body as she did. She walked closer to the bookcase to get a better look. The books on the shelves were old enough that most of the leather bindings had lost their print. The few words she could read made her stomach twist. They looked like grimoires, but not like any of the ones Brid had seen before. Admittedly, she hadn’t seen many, and most of those had been in the hands of witches who avoided black or tainted magic.
Brid stilled. She heard voices above her, both male, one the grinding bass of Michael. The other soothed her ears even though she didn’t recognize it. The stranger sounded angry, but that smooth voice still rolled around in her mind, lulling