Page 64 of Ballad of Nightmares

The right corner of his lip flinched upward, and he let go of her hand to roll back the two iron doors. They clanked and groaned, and Ana’s eyes lit up that violent green as dust sprayed over their heads. Sam beckoned her to follow with a jerk of his head.

Silence so thick that every rustle of wind on the outside whistled and echoed off the walls. Trickles of water cascaded down several walls, the distant drips sounding in an erratic rhythm.

“How long has this place been vacant?” Ana asked.

“Who says it is?” He smiled at her over his shoulder, and she gave him a tight-lipped glare.

“Ha-ha,” she drawled. “Really. How long?”

“They were all dead or released during the last war,” Sam said. “Some say Death unleashed a few upon the world to distract while he shadowed this place. Other stories say he turned them all to ghosts and refused to ferry their souls into the next life.”

“Fairy tales,” Ana teased.

Sam’s chin lifted as they continued walking. He could feel the baited breaths in the walls, feel the power practically rumbling beneath his feet. What this place had once looked like filled his mind. He knew every hall. Every cell. Remembered the names of each of them.

“They say you can still hear the screams on Death’s Day,” he said as he dragged his hand along the walls, the vines between the stones dying in his wake.

They took a set of winding iron stairs at the end of the hall up to the next level where the isolation rooms had been, and Ana paused at the high window that overlooked the vast grounds and the abrupt ocean cliff.

“You know, if the view looked like this, I might not have complained too much about being imprisoned here,” she said as she braced her hands on the window ledge.

Sam didn’t reply. He didn’t join her at the window. Instead, he took her lapse in attention to settle at the back of the room and cloak himself in shadows. Anticipation filled his stomach. He hadn’t seen these demons since he’d watched them die and left their bodies to rot, their souls to wander aimlessly about this place.

But they belonged to him, like the corporeal ones that he’d allowed back into their bodies. And even calling them, he knew they would have some sort of form. What that form would be, he wasn’t sure.

He hadn’t called on ghosts in a long time.

Sam crouched down, pressed his hand on the breaking stone floor, muttered only two words.

Wake up.

Power lurched from the depths of his bones and rumbled into the soil. The ground quaked, making Ana grab the wall and turn. Her eyes widened as she looked to every corner and then began calling his name.

“Sam?”

But Sam was too entranced by the warp of shadow now circling back into him. A chill ran down his spine as he felt those souls reach out, out,out. Pleading for the leashes around their necks to be cut free. His eyes lifted to Ana, cold and carmine.

Hunt.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

IT HAD BEEN a while since Ana had felt the stench of true death around her. But as she turned and turned, looking for Sam, she felt it rising out of every crack and inch of that fucking cell. The flashlight he’d been holding was now twisting on the ground.

And Sam…

“Sam, this isn’t funny,” she said, staring into the darkness.

A child’s laugh sounded from a cell on her right, not too far ahead. Cackling. Echoing. Ana swallowed. She could feel an energy she hadn’t caught onto when she’d first stepped inside this place. It had felt hollow upon arrival, but now…

Voices whispered in the opposite direction. Ana stepped slowly to the flashlight rolling in the middle of the floor, her gaze never leaving the other end of the hall.

A flame flickered on across the open space by another cell door. She became as still as she’d ever been and shut out every thought in her head.

She forced a laugh out as her pulse began to pick up. “Come on, Sam. I know you want to play, but you can’t scare me.”

Though she wasn’t entirely sure of those words.

No response… at least from him.