Concealed (Unbound, Book 4)

Chapter Forty-Seven

My eyes burned as I stared at the two jail cells on the left side of the wide-open room.

I swallowed and blinked.

The harder I looked, the weirder the image was, and I felt as though something was drawing me in the direction of the confined spaces.

The space elongated, duplicating to four.

No matter how many times I tried to blink it from sight, I imagined that I was being kept in there with my friends—Calin, Maible, Nancy, and myself. Each of us were uselessly pounding against the bars to be let free even though our feet were shackled with chains on our ankles.

Then, with a blink, time sped up.

I watched as each of us were trapped until we grew old, gaunt, and eventually died.

I closed my eyes and turned my head, repeatedly whispering cleansing words.

The heaviness in the air diminished.

Opening them, I exhaled as the details of our hallucinated capture diminished.

Exhaling, I looked to the right and saw two tunnels branch off the wide, vaulted cave. Instinctually, I knew one certainly led to the center chamber that Brad had told me about the day he showed me how to get through security to access the towers. I had no clue where the second branch would lead, and I wasn't stupid enough to check it out on my own.

As it was, I was doubting my intelligence for coming down here.

Still, I couldn't turn back.

Looking straight, I moved towards the three worktables set up like a semi-circle in the center of the room. They were all old like the room and made of solid wood that appeared to have been nailed together directly after being chopped down and stripped of bark. I went to the table on the left and saw a container with powder inside, labelled with a piece of masking tape as Devil's Breath.

Nothing with that name could be good.

Was that what was in my tea?

I shook the thoughts out of my head and went to the table on the right and found piles of paper. Most of it was written in languages that I couldn't decipher, even after the lessons I'd taken with my mother. All I could tell was that it wasn't Latin or French. I shuffled through each pile and came up with the same.

On the corner of the table was a large book—the kind of tomb my mother had once told me about—with a piece of paper sticking out. I opened it to the page the paper was in but couldn't read the text. Picking up the paper, I was happy that was in English, though the title of what Devland had obviously translated made me feel like I couldn't get enough air.

Power Transfer.

What the hell was that for?

Grabbing a blank piece of paper and a pen from the worktable, I quickly copied the spell and ritual. I put the copy in my bra and the original back where I found it, closing the tomb to set it back on the corner where I'd found it. Nothing else on the table seemed legible. I didn't know if that was good or bad—the unknown seemed to come back to bite me whenever I let my guard down.

How could I protect myself if I didn't know what the danger was?

Exhaling, I turned to the middle table, which was where the light that illuminated the entire room grew from. There were three round fish tank-type bowls. In two, a fire burned. A pile of ash was undisturbed in the third, not even an ember glowing. In front of the bowls was a pile of paper. I picked them up and began to read Devland's scribble, holding my breath.