When she was high enough, she dropped him. He fell with a scream that silenced as he hit the ground. Wincing, she circled the tower again and prepared for another swoop.
An arrow shot so close by her head, she heard the hum of its fletching.
She executed another dive, noting how the crowd had turned more into a swarm, ready to charge at a moment’s notice. As she shot down a narrow lane, low enough that her wingtips brushed the shingles of the buildings, she carefully scanned her surroundings.
There.A portico at the end of a deserted street led to a door into the castle. She could see from where she was that it was ajar.
She swooped back toward the crowd of demons. A spear hurtled right below her wing, parting her flight feathers and missing the flesh by inches. If it had struck, she would have been grounded.
Rising up again, she faked an erratic flight pattern as if her wing was injured. She spiraled around and then stopped moving altogether, her body going limp in midair.
She plummeted toward the ground.
At the last second, she spread her wings and took a sharp turn. Narrowly missing the roof of a building, she cleared the top and dropped to a crouch in the same deserted lane she’d spotted earlier, folding her wings.
She heard the shouts of the mob as they came for her. Reaching behind her, she roughly plucked several flight feathers from her plumage. Disappearing her wings completely, she tugged the cloak hood over her head and made sure her skin was hidden.
Then she raced forward, using her plucked feathers to lay a false trail leading away from the castle just as the first demon rounded the corner.
“It went that way!” she croaked in her raspiest fake-demon voice, gesturing to the feathers she’d dropped and then pointing down the street.
The demon didn’t even look at the feathers. It heard her shout, saw her point, and sprinted in the indicated direction with a battle cry, spear upraised. The rest of the mob followed suit.
She shook her head. She’d plucked perfectly good feathers for nothing.
As the mob raced by, she ducked into the shadows, huddling deeper into her cloak as she hurried down the lane in the opposite direction. When she reached the portico, her footsteps echoed on the paving stones, and she was forced to slow her pace to maintain silence.
At the end of the hall, she found the open door she’d seen before and slipped through.
She was in the lair of the Necromancer. Now she just had to find Raum.
* * *
Makingher way down the dark passage, Sunshine stopped at each corner to peek around and make sure the coast was clear. It was eerily dark and silent, and the only sound she could hear was the distant dripping of water.
She’d heard stories of the lair’s former mistress. Paimon, Queen of Hell, had ruled this land with an iron fist. Anyone who crossed her was thrown into a pit of monsters and consumed for sport before a crowd.
Then, her most faithful servant, Mishetsumephtai the Hunter, had turned on her. It was said—though gossip from the underworld was often of questionable validity—that when Paimon fed the Hunter to one of her monsters, he cut it open from the inside after it swallowed him. In retaliation, he fed his mistress to the monsters instead.
Though Mist could have claimed her territory for himself, the promise of freedom appealed to the former slave more than the promise of power. He’d escaped to live as a fugitive on Earth with his human lover, and Murmur had taken possession of the castle.
As for the monsters, they were likely still here somewhere. Sunshine could only hope she didn’t run into them.
The lair was cold and lifeless, and it would have been pitch black if not for the occasional hellfire torch that burned from sconces on the wall. It was barely enough light to navigate by, but she didn’t mind. The darkness provided cover for sneaking.
It seemed her diversion had worked, as she didn’t run into anyone while exploring the ground level of the castle. She was looking for a dungeon, which was generally a below-ground situation, but as she wandered about, she couldn’t seem to find a single passage leading downward.
Eventually, she came across a spiral staircase climbing up the inside of a tower, and she decided she should at least explore the upper levels. Perhaps Murmur had a prison tower instead of a basement. Maybe he liked to enjoy the view while he tortured people.
She climbed the winding steps as quickly as possible, hating how exposed she was in the stairwell. She found a door to the second level, but something spurred her to keep climbing. She became determined to reach the highest point of the tower.
After what felt like hours, she did, barely believing her luck that she hadn’t encountered anyone, while simultaneously wondering if that wasn’t a bad thing. Here, double doors beckoned, so she opened the latch and slipped silently through.
A short entranceway greeted her, leading to two more sets of rough-hewn doors. She chose the one on the right.
Wincing as the hinges creaked, she peered into the gloom before her. It took a moment to realize what she was looking at.
It was…a bedroom. The drapes were drawn over the windows, but the outline of a large four-poster bed was discernible. The sheets were in a twisted pile on the floor, one pillow at the head of the mattress, the other at the foot.
