Page 63 of Ballad of Nightmares

His gaze traveled over the leggings and black band tee she’d put on, the neck cut out of the shirt along with a few rips above her breasts, showing off her cleavage and sternum tattoo. With a smile, she backed out of his arms and turned off the television, then grabbed her phone and shoved it in her back pocket.

“So, where are we going?” she asked.

He was surprised by how just in the three minutes he’d been at her side, all the worries of the last two days seemed to wane to the tiniest place in the back of his mind. But he didn’t answer her, and instead simply returned her smile and took her hand.

The old prison was a desolate, grown monstrosity twenty minutes outside of old town on the oceanside. Iron fencing like that around his own cemetery surrounded it, vines reaching and wrapping all around it. And the actual prison…

A large square box with as few windows as it had doors. The windows it did have had been vacated of their glass long ago, and now were nothing more than wrought iron bars. Grass and weeds had grown up through the old rocky drive, nearly confiscating the path to the doors.

“Do you know what this place is?” he asked as he moved the flashlight over the grand iron gate.

Ana’s pulse had become slower since they’d parked. She hadn’t spoken, but he could nearly hear her body preparing for whatever was about to happen.

“Is it a prison?” she asked.

“It was once,” he said, pushing the gate open. It creaked and groaned with the swing, vines ripping away from it and bending as he lit up the jagged path inside. He was hit with his own residual power lingering there; he could smell it on every dead plant and decaying creature. His eyes fluttered with that power, the memory of everything he’d once been within that place crashing back to him.

“It was the prison of King Atrion. Where he would send the people he thought deserved to have their minds bent and their wills broken rather than a swift death.”

What Sam failed to mention were the years he’d spent in this prison, carrying out sentences like some pet doing his master’s bidding. He’d warped more minds there than he could remember, made a few believe they were cats, others that they were children or infants. Atrion had enjoyed the tactics and watching those people go insane before Death was to finalize the sentence.

Atrion never found out how many souls Sam had left in limbo instead of carrying them into another existence, creating the ghostly demons he also had wandering his own cemetery, the ones—if ever he needed guards in the dungeon—that he would call upon. People had thought Death the most terrifying creature in the land…

But they hadn’t met the humans that defied him.

It was the first way Death had figured out how to start an army, to start his plan for eventual retribution.

The starving, demented souls were one of the reasons he’d brought Ana there. He wanted to see her reaction to the devious ghosts he knew were up for playing tricks. Wanted to see Deianira unleash herself and show her true colors. He wanted to know if she’d truly earned the title of The Tower, or if she’d simply been lucky.

And he could sit back in the shadows and watch it all.

Living plants seemed to wilt as they walked, and Sam didn’t bother relinquishing the trail of shadows that appeared in the wake of his footsteps. He wondered if Ana noticed them or was too focused on the building before her to note such small things.

“Who carried out those sentences?” Ana asked.

“Death,” he answered, and her eyes lit up when he said that name. Sam squeezed her hand and smiled softly as they reached the barricaded doors.

Movement rattled the bushes behind to their left. Ana flinched slightly, but not enough that he felt the pace of her heart change.

Shame.

He’d have to do a little more.

“You remember your word?” he asked, hand resting on the handle.

Ana met his eyes. “Planning on terrifying me enough to use it?” she teased.

“Your word, Ana,” he said a little more sternly.

She blinked but didn’t banter back this time. “Ravens,” she answered.

With a nod, Sam pushed open the doors.

The front entrance had a small foyer room before two iron-barred doors. A mouse skittered across the floor. Ana’s arm hit his, making Sam smile.

“Don’t let the rats take my glory, baby,” he said into her ear.

A shiver rose on her flesh, and she smirked up at him. “You’ll have to do much better than rats for that,” she said.