Page 13 of Demonic Cage
A weak voice comes out of my throat, and I feel my cheeks flush crimson.
“Very much.”
“Do you hear anything from the way they speak?”
“I don’t understand their speech. Just… a word or two.”
Darya leans forward even more, and, reluctantly, I look at him again. A new light of interest shines in his eyes.
“What do you understand?”
“As I said, it was just a word or two.”
“What?”
Swallowing hard, I look at the ice cream counter. The frothy colors sharply contrast with the cloudy atmosphere between us. I don’t take my eyes off its surface as I say the ridiculous word.
“Kindra.”
The man doesn’t reply, and I can only curse myself for being so foolish. This word has made my entire family and all my therapists ponder, and they’ve all come to the conclusion that I probably heard it in a children’s tale and built my nightmares around it. “They might represent your parents,” my psychiatrist once said. In fifteen years, these monsters have represented everything, except they haven’t been defeated by any clever-looking fucking therapist.
I glance uncertainly at Darya, but as I see his face, it feels like I’m being stabbed in the back with an icicle. Whatever happened today, nothing has tensed my muscles as much as the way the man looks at me now. My thighs turn into stone. Black fire burns in the man’s eyes, an all-consuming flame. A silver streak appears in the middle of his pupil, extending like a rope around my chest. I can barely breathe. Beneath his eyes, purple circles gather, as if they had just been painted there. The hidden wrinkles seem unnatural on his porcelain skin. But his mouth…
His lips are half-open, a merciless smile lurking in the corner. Black smoke rises from his lips. I can’t move, as if I’m under a spell. My heart hammers against my ribs.
“What happened? I don’t understand…” The words leave me as a blissful sigh, and I’m not even sure if I actually uttered them. What has changed? I can’t take my eyes off the silver streak in his eyes.
The table is narrow between us, and Darya presses his legs against my trembling thighs. I try to pull away, but he doesn’t let me. His hand searches for my chin. His triumphant gaze holds mine captive. His glare lingers on my lips.
“My little champion,” he hisses like a snake, and his thumb gently strokes my lips. In my daze, I don’t know what to do. He’s so beautiful and alluring, and as much as I fear him, I feel safe with him, however little that makes sense.
“Don’t worry,” he whispers. “Everything will become clear soon.”
He gently places his index finger under my chin and slowly brings his face closer. I can’t speak. His gaze entraps me as if I’m under hypnosis, drawing me to him like a magnet. He’s so close. I can feel his fiery breath. Part of me wants to close the distance between us, but I also have the urge to flee. His lips barely touch mine, when someone beside me shouts.
“Lotte!”
The familiar voice pulls me back to the present, tearing me out of Darya’s spell. What the hell am I doing? It’s as though I wasn’t myself just now. I turn towards the voice, and my head starts to ache again. Nathan stares at me with clenched fists.
Nathan’s hesitant gaze jumps back and forth between me and my savior. “What are you doing?”
I open my mouth to answer, but I’m at a loss for words. Nathan doesn’t wait for a response, anyway.
“Who the hell are you?” he asks Darya, eyes sparkling with intensity.
“Nathan,” I interject, “how did you get here?”
I feel the anger simmering under my skin, but I can’t deal with everything at once. This day is chaos.
Nathan raises his eyebrows in offense. “I followed the GPS on your phone, which somehow conked out and showed you traveling hundreds of kilometers between Belgium and Luxembourg, but you ended up here and… Never mind. Why did you have to run off like that? You look terrible. What happened to you?”
I’m looking around uncomfortably at everyone staring at us. Nathan angrily removes something from his shoulder, and it’s only then that I notice he’s been carrying my bag. He throws it towards me, harder than necessary. I barely manage to catch it before it hits me in the face.
“I found it on the street. I thought… I thought…”
So, he didn’t see that I was taken. How is that possible, since it happened right next to him? He must have searched for mefor hours. The fact that he followed me and worried about me is almost as surprising as the existence of angels and demons.
“I… I’m fine. There was a little incident.”
