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Just as the pain had vanished, her fear began to drain away until she was empty of all things.

Red, scorching eyes were all she might fathom, her end and her beginning. Nothing else mattered; nothing existed but that rotting devil and her.

A flicker of satisfaction and his interrogation began. “Child?”

The mummified monstrosity cupped her jaw, holding it in place to facilitate her speech. Tongue thick, Pearl found herself answering without hesitation. “Yes?”

Raspy and horrid, his voice slithered through her ears. “Did you slay the human, Chadwick Parker, and leave his body on the street?”

She blinked once. More tears fell from red-rimmed eyes, her voice vacant. “He was hurting me. It was the only way to make him stop.”

The unblinking monster projected his pleasure, looking upon her as if beholding something truly worth devouring. “Tell me what happened.”

Still as stone, legs awkward under her, Pearl found herself leaning into the corpse-like touch. “It was dark. I didn’t want to talk to him.”

“And?”

“He forced me down, tore up my skirt so fast he was inside me before I could scream.” No one would have come even had they heard her cry for help. People didn’t go down dark alleys in search of damsels in distress.

Humans ignored screams in the night.

The demon answered her unspoken thoughts. “Because they are nothing but animals.”

“It hurt.”

There was no change in the fierce expression of the creature who commanded the room, only more demands. “Why leave the body?”

What had the devil expected her to do with it? “I had to crawl away before anyone saw.”

“And in doing so broke a crucial law.” If such a thing were possible, he seemed even more immense, her immediate world nothing but withered lips and glowing eyes full of fire. “Like any vassal under my rule, you must be punished.”

Her words came jumbled, as if from a drunken mouth. “I’m scared.”

The beast almost seemed to smile. “An apostate should be scared. You’ll be lucky to survive what’s coming.”

“I don’t understand.” Pearl blinked, a twin trail of tears escaping dazed eyes.

“You entered my city without permission, hid from my authority, and thought to hunt here, leaving a mess humans identified correctly. Is that clear enough for you?”

No. Even with her mind filled by the will of something powerful, Pearl disputed what the monstrosity had said. “Vampires are not real. I’m deformed. I’m sick. If I am faithful, God will have mercy on me.”

The monster chuckled, then seemed to catch something in her thoughts that stopped his mirth. “You believe such ridiculousness to be true.”

Sniffing, feeling her mind mush as the monster dug deeper, Pearl wept. “I want to go home.”

Utter silence grew between them. Glowing eyes burned, the creature’s concentration palpable. It clawed its way through her head, scraping through memory, picking apart what she was.

It startled.

At length, words came from the demon's mouth. “You have brought me a daywalker. It doesn’t know what it is.”

A ripple moved around her, strange enough to fractionally distract the girl kneeling on the flagstones. Incessant buzzing murmurs grew, daywalker whispered again and again.

“This one is to serve her sentence in solitary confinement.” An announcement came from the throne, the room silenced by their rotting lord. “See that she is fed, Malcolm, and seal the door. Brick it shut.”

The dreamlike quality that had invaded Pearl’s senses came to an abrupt end. When the gnarled hand of the monster receded, her pain roared back to life. Scooped into the crushing arms of the stone-faced angel who offered no pity, she was carried away from the mob and deep into the dark underground.

Chapter 3