Imprisoned (Book Five of the Castle Coven Series): A Witch and Warlock Romance Novel

by Hazel Hunter

  The demons that held them were a strange lot. The one that was still wrapped around Hailey was nothing more than a twist of roiling tentacles with what seemed to be an eye at the center of it. Its flesh was dry and rubbery. Where it touched her bare skin, it dragged and stuck.

  Piers and Kieran were being held by a strangely identical set of men with the heads and tails of hyenas, their backs spotted black and tan. They seemed to have no language, but the strength they possessed was immense.

  To Hailey’s shock, she saw that both Piers and Kieran had been muzzled. Brutal leather and metal contraptions sat over their faces. It must have bound their powers as well, as Kieran had not created the ice blades that protected him and Piers had not lunged into the air. They had left her free, but she didn’t even know what she could do in this place.

  There was a tall demon with a brawny man’s body and a pig’s face, and it marched from Piers to Kieran and back again, inspecting them thoroughly before coming to investigate Hailey. She tried to shrink back from it when it thrust its bristled snout into her face, but the monster that held her refused to let her move back. The pig demon sniffed her twice, his lip curling back in disgust before standing erect again.

  “You came through, little whiner. Here you go.”

  It tossed a small disk to where Ferret waited anxiously. The animal caught it deftly, flipping it to peer into the brightly reflective surface.

  “That’s what I looked like?” it asked in awe. “That was me? That was who I am?”

  Hailey felt her stomach turn over. He had betrayed them for a simple chance to understand who he was. She was sickened and infuriated, but there was something there that she understood. She had seen first hand how the Shadow Walk Prison could twist everything that you wanted and needed. She had seen how it could turn good people into monsters.

  “All right, they’re the real thing. Do they suit you?”

  She looked up to see the pig demon turning deferentially to a man in a blue suit. Between the pig demon and the demons that held her and her lovers, his normalcy made him almost more shocking.

  “I suppose they do, though of course I will want to ask them some questions. Given the strangeness of this acquisition, they may not work at all.”

  The pig demon snarled at the man’s indifferent tone, but the man raised his hand, his eyes as cold as ice.

  “If you want your slop, you’ll do as I say without the slobber, pig.”

  “Of course, Sir Knight. Anything you say, Sir Knight.”

  The pig demon bowed obsequiously, but when the man in the suit turned away, the pig demon’s face contorted into a visage of hate. Hailey shivered, thinking about what that hate might look like if it were unleashed.

  The man was of middle years with a slight limp to his step. In any other setting, he would have looked kind, though perhaps a bit odd. The hair on his head was dark, but the short beard on his face was almost pure white. He approached Kieran and Piers, staring at them intently. Something about him enraged Kieran. When the man got close, Kieran almost freed an arm from the demon that held it, lunging at the man. Though she couldn’t see much of his face beyond the muzzle, his expression was one of sheer rage.

  The man stepped back with a chuckle. Then he turned to Hailey. What she saw on his calm face chilled her more than the demons had. This was a man who had no understanding of her as a human, as a person. She was nothing more than dirt to him, and there was only one type of man who would think that of her. He was a Templar, and now he had all three of them bound. The Templars had spent centuries trying to eradicate all of Wiccan kind. The fact that he wasn’t actually just killing them was alarming.

  He stopped just a few feet away from her, looking at her curiously. He glanced down at a ring that he wore on his right hand. To her surprise, it sparked with green before going silent.

  “Now you are a puzzle, little miss,” he said, crouching down in front of her. “I can tell you are a witch, but I cannot tell anything about your powers. So far as I know, you have none.”

  “Is that a problem for you?” she spat, glaring at him.

  “It puts me in a bit of a dilemma, that is true,” he said, as if she had asked him a very logical question. “I am a Templar, you understand. I am not a monster. I do not kill humans–”

  “Unless they get in your way. Unless they are inconvenient. Unless they are Wiccan.”

  “I do not kill humans, but you know that I cannot suffer a witch to live. Unfortunately, you are a witch, though you do seem to be a weak one. Is that why you’ve banded with these two monsters? Are you their whore?”

  Hailey refused to say a word to him, making him shrug.

  “It makes no difference, I suppose.”

  He stood up and began to walk away, but to Hailey’s horror, the thing that held her spoke.

  “Can I have her then, great lord? Can I? May I? I want her.”

  The Templar turned back to them, and the look of disgust on his face for the demon was almost equal to what he had for Kieran and Piers.

  “And what would you do with her?”

  “Walk,” the thing crooned. “I would step out in her body and stretch my arms through her. I don’t need to join the corps, I don’t need to be part of the war, I just want to walk through her.”

  If anything, the look on the Templar’s face only became more disgusted. He started to speak, but the pig demon interrupted him.

  “There are many of us who want bodies. We have sworn and we have sacrificed, and we have licked your boots, Sir Knight. You will not grant the bodies of those who can receive us as you please. We have a rank and a hierarchy just as you do, and you will respect it.”

  Hailey shuddered at the thought. She thought of the Templar in Wyoming who had been infested with a demon. He had been dying when they found him, his body unable to cope with the changes that the demon had made. The Magus Corps officers that had been taken over by the demons, however corrupted and mangled they had become, were still living. Something about Wiccans made them more able to handle the possession of demons. They could be used as vessels, they could be used against other Wiccans like an unstoppable shock force. Whatever the Templar had been getting ready to say was erased by his contempt of the pig demon.

  “You grow above yourself. You think that because we trade with you, because we deign to speak with you, you can dictate terms. Let me tell you here and now that you dictate nothing, no matter what you think. You will have one of the men. That was agreed upon. This woman, however, means nothing, and I will dispose of her as I please.”

  He turned to look at the thing that held Hailey.

  “Have her, don’t have her. It makes no difference to me.”

  The thing burbled with sick delight, clenching its arms even tighter around Hailey’s body.

  For a moment, her mind was nothing but a dark panic, but then she remembered where she was.

  This is the Shadow Walk Prison, she thought. This place bows to me when I am strong, and takes me captive when I am not. Gods above, I need strength!

  At the thought of strength, it was as if a door had opened in her mind. On one side was a turbulent dark sea with waves that rose up like skyscrapers. On the other was a field of light so bright it was nearly blinding. This was the power that she needed. It was always there waiting for her.

  Thank you, Kieran. Thank you, Piers.

  She opened herself to the power. She wasn’t taking it this time. She was letting it flow through her. Like a dam collapsing after the weight of a decade, it came to her as if it belonged to her by right. She was full of it, it was hers, and she would use it.

  There was a sudden shriek of pain as her body burst on fire. There was an eye-watering smell of burnt flesh as the thing holding her backed off. When the pig demon roared a battle challenge, she simply lifted her hand and summoned a bolt of lighting. She saw the demon lit up for a moment, its back arched and its face contorted with hate. Then it disappeared as if it had never been there, a drift of blacken
ed ash and char drifting away.

  Despite the carnage that she had just wreaked, she still felt completely calm. She felt as if she was floating, that there would never be anything that could get in her way again. Slowly, she turned to the hyena demons that were holding Piers and Kieran. For a moment, it looked like they wanted to run, and if they had, she would not pursue them.

  Then one stepped forward, holding a short but evil looking knife to Kieran’s throat. In that moment, any hope of pity or mercy fled her mind. She looked at them, her eyes fluttering closed. She imagined the red, living blood inside the demons, slowing down more and more. It grew sluggish, it almost stopped. She heard the howls of pain, piercing and loud, and then they cut off all together as their blood froze. Hailey watched in satisfaction as the hyena demons fell to the ground. The knife clattered away harmlessly.

  She stepped closer to her lovers, reaching out to take the muzzles away from their faces. Both of them fell on her. For a long moment, she was overwhelmed by their arms around her, their mouths kissing her face. She did her best to return their affection, but it was a bit like being overwhelmed by two large dogs. When they finally threatened to knock her off her feet, she pushed them away with a laugh.

  “I’m glad you’re both all right,” she said.

  “All right and perhaps a little aroused,” said Piers, looking around. “Hailey, what did you do?”

  “Saved you?” she asked, slightly affronted. “What do you mean?”

  “Do you have any idea how much you did?

  He looked around the clearing. There was no sign of the many-armed thing that held her, but there was a scorch mark on the ground where she had lain. There was a pile of black char where the pig demon had been, and around them, she counted five hyena men that she had killed all at once.

  “Oh,” she whispered, eyes wide. Piers nodded.

  “Those were acts that would tire three normal Wiccans.”

  Hailey shook her head.

  “I didn’t need to touch you, but I did draw it from you. I…I guess I needed you and you were there.”

  Piers smiled.

  “It’s a beautiful thought, but romance aside, you may have managed to do something that no one else has done before. This is entirely new.”

  “It might be an effect of the Shadow Walk Prison,” Hailey argued. “It may simply be that we stand in a very strange place where the rules are not what we are used to.”

  Piers looked unwilling to concede the argument, but Hailey felt a snake of panic in her belly.

  “Did I hurt you? When I drew from you, oh it was so much. I knew it was from you and Kieran, and I just… took.”

  Piers wrapped her in his arms comfortingly.

  “I’m fine, I’m absolutely fine. I feel completely normal. Check if you like.”

  Hesitantly, Hailey touched his wrist, visualizing his power again. The light was still there, still bright, completely unchanged though perhaps it felt calmer now.

  “It feels the way it always does,” she said.

  “Yes. I would have told you if there was something wrong, but there isn’t. Seeing as how you have just saved our lives, I think we’re doing well. All that, and you also killed a lot of demons.”

  “A lot but not all,” said Kieran.

  Hailey blinked to see him coming out of the forest.

  “Where did you go, Kieran?”

  “The Templar ducked out of the way as soon as you summoned lightning from the sky,” he said, his voice grim. “I tracked him into the woods, but less than a hundred yards away, his tracks disappear as if he was vanished mid-stride. I think he left the Shadow Walk Prison right there.”

  Kieran had been hunting Templars for centuries. Hailey could see that to have one escape, especially one that communed with demons, was a sore spot for him.

  “As long as he doesn’t come back with reinforcements, I’m happy to let him go,” said Piers with a shrug, but Kieran shook his head.

  “There’s more at stake now than one more Templar I didn’t get to kill. He knows about Hailey, and he knows what she can do. That’s going to make her a target. On top of that, it sounded like he knew what was going on with this alliance.”

  “Alliance?” Hailey blinked.

  “Templars and demons leagued together? I would call it an alliance, but it might be more appropriate to say that it’s the end of our world.”

  Kieran’s words sent a shudder down Hailey’s spine. She remembered how powerful the demons possessing the Magus Corps officers had been. She remembered how difficult that battle was and how much it had cost all of them.

  “Kieran, could they have more Magus Corps officers?”

  “They could. In the Magus Corps, we die and we disappear on a regular basis. There is no telling who might keep us. We had always assumed that the Templars killed us, but they might have kept some of the missing alive. Hell, they might not even need Magus Corps officers. It might be enough to use Wiccans recently awakened.”

  Kieran shook his head.

  “We need to get out of here. The Magus Corps needs to know about this, as do all of the covens.”

  “Before that, what shall we do with him?”

  Piers pointed at Ferret, who astonishingly seemed to have ignored the battle. He was in the same position that he had been in when he had caught the mirror. Standing practically in the curl of a hyena demon’s arm, he smiled and chittered at the shape in the mirror.

  Coming to crouch down beside him, Hailey could see what he saw. He had been a rather handsome young man dressed in Victorian clothing. With black hair and blue eyes, he bore a small resemblance to Kieran. The young man in the picture was joined by a tall willowy blond woman who kissed him and an amused black man who punched him lightly on the arm. She remembered what he had told her when they first met, of betrayals that had brought all three of them to the Shadow Walk Prison. Her heart twisted, and despite the way that Ferret had betrayed her, she couldn’t find the anger that she’d once had.

  “You’re a sitting target right there,” she said softly. “No good will come to you like this.”

  “Sounds fine to me,” muttered Kieran, but she ignored him.

  She put her hands to either side of the small animal who paid no attention to her. She closed her eyes, concentrating hard. She had no image in her mind. This time, she simply imagined peace, a place to be safe until something changed. She felt the earth move under her hands, felt it rise up and up. When she opened her eyes, she realized that she was kneeling next to a boulder that was almost waist high. When she put her ear to it, she could hear a chitter. With a soft sigh, she stroked the stone one last time and stood up.

  “He’ll be free when he gets over that grief,” she said. “I don’t know when that will be or if it will come at all, but he will be free.”

  “Better than he deserves,” growled Kieran.

  “It’s time for us to go home,” she said.

  She felt tired suddenly, as if she was ready to wake up from this dream. She had been in the Shadow Walk Prison for what felt like a very long time. She wasn’t certain whether people should be in it so long at all.

  “Come here, take my hands.”

  Piers and Kieran obediently did so. It occurred to her what a precious gift they offered her, what beauty and what love. She had led them badly astray at least once already. Now they were trusting her to steer them right.

  “Close your eyes. I have an idea.”

  She imagined a darkness that could tear a soul from its roots. She imagined a cold and windy place without anchor. It was strange and ugly, but underneath it all, despite the pleasures and temptations it offered, the Shadow Walk Prison was empty. It was nothing.

  She imagined that darkness lightening. It had to end. It was not permanent. It was no place for her and her loved ones. They had a home to get back to, a home to build, a home to protect. It might take them years to make it what it needed to be, or it might take them no time at all. There was a world of change that needed
them. She understood it as well as she understood her lovers. They needed to go home. They needed to be full of themselves, not just their desires or their fears.

  The darkness was lightening. It was over. They were home.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  HAILEY REALIZED THAT she was lying flat on her back. Her hands were empty, but she did not fear that Piers and Kieran were lost. Beside her, she could hear them stirring in their narrow beds. With a smile, she sat up carefully.

  “Oh hell…”

  Hailey put her hand to her head, aware of a vicious pounding between her eyes.

  “Hailey? Here, drink this.”

  Mindlessly, she drank the cup that was bumped against her lips. It was liquid fire. She coughed some of it up, but the rest of it went down her throat, making her cough violently.

  “Why would you do that to me?”

  Lucius looked unrepentant.

  “Liona would always ask for a bit of something alcoholic to settle herself after a visit to the Shadow Walk Prison. She said it made her saner.”

  “Liona never felt that sane to begin with,” Hailey groaned.

  Despite the burning in her throat, she felt better. She could turn her head to look at Piers and Kieran. Kieran was rubbing his head as if it ached as well, but Piers was up and rummaging in the pile of their gear that Lucius had put in the corner.

  “Are you already up?” she asked. “You’ve just spent hours–”

  “Two days,” muttered Lucius.

  “Two days, thank you, in a place that I’m fairly sure inspired stories of Hell. You can take a break.”

  Piers spared her a fleeting smile.

  “I’m afraid not, darling. People need to be told of the Templars and their nasty little project. I don’t want anyone to be unprepared, and that means we need to take action now.”

  Kieran nodded, though he was moving more slowly.

  “The Magus Corps needs to be made aware of this at once, and we can start getting the information out after. This feels big, and it feels like they’re going to act soon. Especially now that they know we’re on to them, they’re going to start their strikes.”