The Blood Bracelets #1: Blood Bound

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Eleven

Kael woke up suddenly.

His head snapped up off the ground and when he moved his body felt sluggish, like it was filled with lead and tar. He was in a dark room, but it was dark only because the lights were off and the moon wasn't piercing the clouds to offer enough illumination through the windows. He looked around cautiously, and saw a large table had been turned on its side and pushed up against the wall, each chair stacked on top of each other in the corner.

Kael was on the floor in the middle of the rectangular room, but he knew he wouldn't be able to move far. At four points around him were symbols charred into the carpet, and Kael could feel the energy from them across his skin, making the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. He slid his hand out toward one of the symbols, and suddenly a sheet of amber-coloured light, like an Immortal's eyes, shot up in front of him like a wall. The symbols were curses keeping him in. It was a small space, only wide enough for him to stand in without stretching his arms out.

Kael carefully stood up and raked a hand down his face, feeling that the onyx armour that had appeared across his skin was no longer there. He could only vaguely remember what had happened at the gardens, right up until Bennett had used his Heaven's Signum to try and reveal Kael's former self. He hadn't realised Bennett held a Heaven's Signum, since not even the previous Head of Immortals did, and Kael cursed himself for not anticipating it.

What Kael didn't remember, however, was what happened to Taryn – and that was bothering him the most. He tried to feel her presence along the thread that connected them and only faintly could he catch a sense of distress, which made something swell in his chest, something sudden and foreign, making him want to tear through the barrier keeping him here.

Wherever Bennett had taken him, it hadn't been far. The view the windows offered was still of Melbourne City, so Kael suspected they were in one of the Immortals "offices" disguised within the high-rise buildings that the city boasted. Kael knew Immortals liked to disguise themselves amongst mortal society, and had even done so well as to control the city's police precincts, so their bases in every country they could be located in were inconspicuous office spaces that a mortal wouldn't suspect if they accidentally stumbled into one.

He had to hope Taryn was in the building as well and not somewhere that he couldn't reach.

'It's smaller than your previous cage, isn't it?'

Kael looked over his shoulder, finding Bennett standing at the double-doors at the other end of the room. 'I like to think of it as cosier,' he replied wryly.

Everything about Bennett tested Kael's temper. He did not like Immortals. They were arrogant, self-important people who saw anyone not with amber eyes to be beneath them, as if they were as insignificant as an insect under someone's boot. Ace, though he didn't trust him as far as he could throw him, was one of the only Immortals Kael would tolerate purely because he wasn't one anymore. The fact that Kael had been in a cage the last time he was surrounded by Immortals was also a sore point for him.

He didn't need reminding.

But here he was – in, technically, a cage.

'Where's Taryn?' he demanded, turning to face Bennett.

'Worried for her, are you? I find that interesting. A demon that worries for a girl,' said Bennett thoughtfully, 'and yet you don't even know what she is.'

'You didn't answer my question,' he said, ignoring Bennett's word games.

'I know. She is safe and nowhere that you can corrupt her further, fortunately,' Bennett told him, looking idly at the symbols surrounding Kael. 'Not that you could get to her even if she were near you. Have you tried to escape yet?'