Prison of Horrors (The DeathSpeaker Codex Book 6)

by Sonya Bateman

  SONYA BATEMAN

  Thank you for picking up Prison of Horrors. Please join my mailing list to find out about the latest new releases, book sales, and special subscriber-only offers.

  - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

  Copyright © 2016 by Sonya Bateman

  All rights reserved.

  Cover design by Lou Harper, Harper By Design

  This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously.

  - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

  Books in The DeathSpeaker Codex series

  Available now from Amazon and Kindle Unlimited

  WRONG SIDE OF HELL | Book 1

  FIELDS OF BLOOD | Book 2

  REALM OF MIRRORS | Book 3

  RETURN OF THE HUNTERS | Book 4

  CITY OF SECRETS | Book 5

  PRISON OF HORRORS | Book 6

  COMING SOON:

  DARK OF THE MOON*

  The DeathSpeaker Codex, Book 7

  *title subject to change prior to publication

  More books by Sonya Bateman

  The Gavyn Donatti series – Available for Kindle and wherever books are sold

  MASTER OF NONE

  One unlucky thief. One unlikely genie. One very odd couple.

  MASTER AND APPRENTICE

  A deadly cult. An unbreakable curse. The rules are simple: Learn to kill…or die trying.

  PROLOGUE

  Lightning Cove, Maine — September, 1716

  Thomas Davenport cast a determined eye down the beach to the rocky shores, where the lashing of the waves continued to bring forth the splintered evidence of their folly. The New World, indeed. They never should have made the crossing.

  He told himself that he had expressed his doubts from the beginning, when Giles Lennox and Rowland Garber had proposed the idea. A chance to make something of themselves. A fresh start. Freedom. Highly appealing, but a dangerous proposition. Yet despite his misgivings, their three families had joined together to finance this voyage, and to bring others seeking escape from the persecution and civil unrest. One hundred souls bound across the Atlantic.

  They had been so close to safety.

  Now there were but forty-odd left, huddled behind him around the few remaining lamps in the dwindling rain, on this Godforsaken spit of land. Among them were Rowland and Giles, their respective wives, and Rowland’s two sons. Some others had hauled themselves to safety, including the strange widow and her daughter, who were brought on only grudgingly at the behest of Giles’ wife. But overall their numbers had been halved, their possessions largely lost to the black depths.

  His own Hester, his beloved bride, was among the missing. He could not allow that to remain the case. He would find her.

  Thunder cracked the dark skies open, and a jagged finger of light threw the towering cliffs to the left into sharp relief. That exact spot, he thought ruefully, was ideal for a lighthouse. Would that others had set foot on this land before them, rather than having the grim task of saving any future ships fall to the survivors of such tragedy.

  He had no sooner resolved to search these shores, all night if it was required, when a hand fell upon his shoulder.

  “Thomas.” Rowland’s voice was heavy with strain and sorrow. “Do not go out there.”

  “I must.” He spoke without turning. “Certainly you know that. Hester—”

  “Is dead, Thomas.” There was a flat, frightening note beneath the words. “Accept that, as we all have. The rest of us are lost.”

  With gritted teeth, he turned to face his friend. “’Tis simple enough to say, with all of yours on land and breathing.”

  “Breathing, yes. Though young Samuel’s leg is badly broken, and with the doctor and all his supplies gone down, my boy is not long for this world. The blood poisoning will set in soon enough, if the shock does not kill him first.” Rowland’s mouth firmed to a grim line. “Yet I have not come to you, only to trade tragedy for tragedy,” he said. “You must not go, Thomas. There is something unnatural at work here.”

  He raised a skeptical brow. “It was the sea. Nothing more.”

  “Nae, it was more.” Rowland grabbed his wrist, a feverish heat burning into his skin. “I saw her. The widow, the … witch,” he breathed.

  In spite of himself, Thomas shivered. “You should not make such accusations lightly.”

  “’Tis truth,” Rowland whispered. “She was stood before that wretched mirror, muttering and muttering, and her daughter along with her. You know of what I speak.”

  “I do.” Indeed, he had been among the four men it took to carry the thing aboard. An ornate, solid iron frame with no glass, an oval of twisted metal branches with five great thorns pointing inward. Four clawed feet forming a base, a flat triangular panel at the top adorned with a single eye carved of black onyx. And how that dead eye seemed to stare — as if it could see into one’s very soul.

  “I saw her,” Rowland repeated dully. “There was a great green flash from the center of the thing. Then she drew a dagger and pried that blasted eye free. That was when the shouting began, the screams.” The hand on his wrist fell limply away. “That was when the ship struck the rocks.”

  A leaden weight settled in the pit of his stomach. He had no reason to doubt Rowland’s words. And if the shipwreck truly had been caused by unnatural means, he had every reason not to search for Hester. For if something came back, perhaps it would no longer be his beloved.

  Yet he could not give up hope. He would not.

  At length, he shook his head. “I must try,” he said. “Perhaps she lives yet. And there may be others, strong swimmers. Survivors. There is still time.”

  “Nae, Thomas. There never was time,” Rowland said carefully. “Have you not heard what I said? The widow—”

  “For God’s sake, Rowland. Hester is with child!”

  His shout rang out across the rain-swept beach. And a voice unlike any he had ever heard replied.

  “If ye wish her saved, Master Davenport, you’ve but to ask.”

  His heart leapt into his throat as the widow came into view, not twenty paces from where he and Rowland stood. In her arms she carried a slight figure, one leg bloodied and horribly mangled, with shards of bone protruding from the shin. Rowland’s youngest boy.

  Rowland spat and forked the sign of the evil eye. “Release my son, witch!”

  “As you wish.” The widow stared calmly at him and began to lower the moaning boy. “Heed me well, though. I am not fond of rude, thankless behavior.”

  When the boy’s feet touched ground, his injured leg seemed to blur for an instant.

  And then it was whole again.

  Rowland dropped to his knees in the coarse sand. “Samuel?” he rasped in disbelief.

  The boy gave a sob as he ran easily to his father and fell into his arms.

  Thomas’ blood ran cold. He stared at the widow, took a half-step back. “What devilry is this?” he whispered. “’Tis not possible.”

  “Devilry.” The widow laughed. “You are closer to the truth than your friend, I’ll give you that. And what price would you pay, Master Davenport, for your own act of … devilry?”

  His jaw firmed. “Speak plainly, woman.”

  “Ah, but there is no woman here.” The smile on her face cut into his soul. “For the safe return of your wife and unborn child,” she — it said. “What would you pay?”

  It was wrong. He knew it, with every fiber of his being. To strike a deal with this … this cr
eature, who had likely caused this tragedy from the start, would damn him. Damn them all for eternity.

  Yet what choice did he have?

  “Anything,” he finally said. “I would pay anything.”

  The smile became somehow worse. “Of course you would,” the creature said. “And as fortune would have it, I require so little of you. A simple token, really—the loyalty of your family, for which you will be protected through the generations to come. In return, you will prosper in this place. All three of your families will prosper, in fact. Yourself, Master Lennox, and Master Garber.”

  Thomas swallowed. His throat had gone suddenly dry. “And my Hester?”

  “Naturally. Her as well,” the creature said with brisk impatience, and held a hand out. “Do we have an accord?”

  He hesitated only briefly before he shook.

  Thunder boomed again as the creature laughed. “Go to her now,” it said, releasing him to gesture toward the jagged shore. “Claim your prize, Master Davenport.

  He followed the gesture, and in a flash of lightning caught sight of a lone figure stumbling away from the rocks. Drenched and shivering, her clothing torn — but alive. Alive and well. Nothing else mattered.

  With a half-choked cry of joy, Thomas ran for his wife.

  CHAPTER 1

  Lightning Cove, Maine — Two Days Ago

  The First Haven Church of Lightning Cove looked like something out of a Gothic horror story. Dark stone walls and tall pointed roofs, flanked with turret-style towers that could’ve been transplanted from some ancient English castle. Or maybe Alcatraz. And the spire rising from the top of the steeple was crowned not with a cross, but with a metal spike-tipped lance — as if the building’s very existence was a declaration of war.

  Special Agent Calla Frost parked around the back and got out, headed for the big black door that she’d been told served as the entrance to the place every day but Sunday. She’d only been to this town once before, a few weeks back, to help the research team settle in.

  She hadn’t liked the place from the start. She had the strangest feeling, the moment she’d crossed the bridge that connected this town to the rest of the world on the only road in or out of the place. It felt like a squeeze, or a pinch. Like something had grabbed her entire body for a few seconds.

  Knowing what she did about the world, and the very real magic in it, she couldn’t quite dismiss that feeling as nothing.

  Her team had rented a cottage, expecting to be here for a while. There wasn’t much information on the artifact they were looking for. But apparently they’d found it four days ago. And it was in the church. She hadn’t known until yesterday, because the service up here in North Coastal Nowhere was laughable at best. Even the landlines sucked. Nicole Routh, the lead on the research team, had told her that some of the residential homes still had party lines.

  Maybe that was considered progress for a three-hundred-year-old town.

  She was actually less than thrilled about this project. Hell, anything involving Milus Dei bothered her these days — ever since she’d met Gideon Black. The infamous DeathSpeaker, the monster to end all monsters.

  Except he wasn’t. Not even close. In fact, she kind of liked him a little … well, maybe a lot. Their working relationship had been veering dangerously close to personal territory lately, and more and more, she’d found she didn’t mind. At all.

  She couldn’t even hate him for killing her sister. Not after she found out what Carrie had really been doing for Milus Dei all these years. Horrific experiments, mutilation and long-term torture on subjects — on people whose only crime was not being exactly human. Up to and including Gideon’s father, who’d been left to a slow, agonizing death when Gideon and his brother Taeral rescued him.

  Carrie had tried to kill them both, too. So even without all the terrible things her sister had done, it was self-defense on Gideon’s part.

  Still, here she was. Working with the cult she’d been unwittingly recruited into when she thought she’d be saving the world from monsters. As it turned out, a lot of the monsters were human. But not all of them. That was the only reason she was still doing this. Some branches of Milus Dei had no idea what other branches were doing. There were good people involved in this mess, people who didn’t deserve to be tarred with the same brush.

  Besides, it gave her an excuse to keep seeing Gideon.

  At least this mission had nothing to do with Others. The artifact they’d been looking for, some old mirror, was rumored to have magical qualities. If nothing else, it had historical value — the thing was ancient before the settlers of Lightning Cove brought it here from England.

  She was glad they’d already found it. In her opinion, this little town was creepy as hell.

  The door opened before she could knock, and Nicole’s smiling face greeted her from the other side. “Frost, you made it,” she said, stepping back to wave her inside. “This thing is amazing. Wait until you see it.”

  “Yeah, you mentioned that.” Personally, she couldn’t wait to call a retrieval squad and get the artifact — and her team — out of here. “Well. Lead the way, I guess.”

  She followed Nicole down a short hallway, through a large room laid out almost cafeteria-style with folding tables and chairs, and past open areas that contained choir robes, stacks of Bibles and hymnals, and doorways into other rooms. They passed through a small, wooden double-hinged door and emerged behind the pulpit in the sanctuary of the church.

  The artifact stood on the platform where the altar should’ve been.

  For some reason, the sight of it was unnerving. Maybe because the placement looked deliberate — as if the local congregation had decided to worship that thing instead of God. Speaking of the locals, why would the minister, or pastor, or whatever of this church have allowed this?

  And why would her team want to put it there in the first place?

  “This isn’t right,” she murmured, taking a few steps closer to the artifact. She’d barely registered that Seth Olson and Jimmy Lane, the other members of the research team, were standing on either side of the platform. Watching her. “I mean, why here?”

  Nicole was suddenly next to her. She hadn’t even heard the woman come up. “It was already in the church,” Nicole said. “It’s been here all this time, just … waiting to be found.”

  Something was very wrong. Not only with the artifact. Nicole didn’t sound like herself, and Jimmy and Seth were just standing there. None of their information had indicated what kind of magic this thing was supposed to have, but right now it looked like whatever it did wasn’t good.

  “I think we should get this out of here.” It was almost hard to speak. Her tongue felt thick, her head slightly dizzy. “It’s not right.”

  “Oh, no. It’s perfectly fine.” Nicole’s hand was on her elbow, steering her toward the mirror. And she wasn’t resisting. Why wasn’t she resisting? “Come on. Have a closer look.”

  Frost shuffled along and stared at the artifact. An oval frame about six feet tall and four feet wide, constructed of black metal branches twisted together like a wreath. It stood on black iron, clawed metal feet — like an old tub, but with actual claws that looked sharp as razors. And at the top of the frame was a single black stone eye mounted on a metal triangle.

  “I thought this was a mirror.” A kind of drugged wonder she didn’t like at all laced her tone as she spoke. “There’s no glass.”

  Nicole was still helping her along. “It’s a very special mirror,” she said. “You have to stand right in front of it to see your reflection.”

  And then she was in front of it. For an instant she could see through the frame to the rows of silent, empty pews stretched out beyond the pulpit. Then it shimmered like water, and she was looking at herself. Lips parted, eyes dulled with confusion.

  “How…” She lifted an arm and reached for the surface of the mirror. Her fingers touched something, but it didn’t feel like glass.

  It felt like someone else’s fi
ngers.

  With a faraway shock, she realized that even though Nicole was standing right behind her, the other woman wasn’t reflected in the mirror.

  Something brushed her hip. With effort, she managed to look down and saw Nicole taking her gun from its holster. “I’ll give this back to you in a few minutes,” Nicole said. “Well. Not you, exactly.”

  “What are you doing?”

  The words she meant to sound threatening came out small and afraid. She looked back at the mirror, her jaw practically hanging open now.

  Her reflection grinned.

  Before her mind could register anything, the reflection’s hand closed around her wrist and pulled. At the same time, Nicole gave her a hard shove. She went through the surface that wasn’t glass, or anything she’d ever felt before, and sprawled on a wooden platform almost exactly like the one she’d just been standing on. Except it was wrong. Darker.

  She lifted her head just in time to see her reflection standing on the other side of the frame, accepting her gun from Nicole.

  Now there were people in the pews. People in the aisles. Some of them were already on the platform. Through a dulled sense of panic, she recognized a handful of faces as residents of Lightning Cove, the few she’d met. They were coming for her.

  And just before the reflection of the other church disappeared, the church on the right side of the mirror, a guttural voice seemed to fill this twisted copy of the sanctuary and travel like an arrow to the other Frost.

  “Go,” it said. “And bring me the DeathSpeaker.”

  CHAPTER 2

  Manhattan, New York City — Present Day

  This was not a date. Maybe if I kept telling myself that, I wouldn’t screw things up completely. Unfortunately, I was kind of pacing the lobby of the Castle while I waited for Frost to get there.

  And Sadie had noticed.

  She came out of the parlor, where her and Taeral had been hanging out with Eli and Grygg, and watched me for a minute. Eventually she said, “Okay, how serious is it?”