Page 6 of Demonic Cage
“What do you mean,what do I mean?”I shout at him before he can finish the sentence.
“Lotte… I was speaking in Greek. How did you get what I was saying?”
I just stare at him. He’s not denying saying anything. Instead, he claims that he spoke in Greek, and yet, I understood.
“Did you learn Greek over the summer? How?!” he demands.
He is playing with me. I laugh bitterly. I don’t speak a word of Greek. He is taking advantage of the fact that I’m not on mymedication, wanting to convince me that I didn’t understand him or, on the contrary, that I suddenly understood Greek.
I’m an idiot.
And I almost went home with him.
I start trembling, turning on my heel without a word. The cemetery tilts in front of me as I am running. Nathan yells after me, trying to keep me here. Everything is blurry, everything is distorted. How could I be so stupid? How could he go this far… Why did he do this?
I run. So fast that everything blurs again, and I know the fog enclosing me is just a figment of my imagination, but my field of vision is no longer clear. The terror is suffocating, and my heart drums against my ribs as I try to run away from him. From Nathan. From everything. I don’t want this day. I don’t want the next ones either. I don’t know what’s real and what’s not. If I continue like this, if I imagine more, then…
Something pulls my hair, and I scream in pain.
“Nathan…” I cry out. I fall onto a stone and look up in horror, but it’s not him in front of me.
Bronze eyes and dark brown hair are the last image I see before my head receives a massive blow and everything goes dark.
Like being underwater, everything hums around me, growing louder and louder. I groan in pain, and blink as light violently bursts into my field of vision, blinding me with whiteness. My head hurts badly, in a way that feels like an axe split it in half. Why is it so cold that even my leather jacket isn’t enough, and why is the scent of hay creeping into my nose, making my skin itchy?
I start to move cautiously, trying not to let the growing nausea overpower me and release the miserable half-croissant I had forced into myself earlier. If only I could hold my head for a bit…
But I can’t. Ice-cold panic washes over me. My eyes pop open, and everything comes back. Someone pulled me to the ground, and then everything was plunged into darkness.
I’m under the open sky, and the sun’s rays are blinding. I want to stand up, but I can’t. Desperately, I look around. I’m in the middle of nowhere, the grass sucked dry by the summer heat. Directly behind me, there’s a rickety barn, built of reddish-brown wood, but without a roof. I’m tied to one of its columns.
I want to speak, but my mouth is gagged, and only meaningless sounds come from my throat. I try to scream, but I’m hoarse. My hands are tightly bound, but the panic buries all the pain.
I aggressively kick the dust in front of me, trying to break free. Someone steps alongside, forcefully grabbing my face. I stare at my captor with wide eyes.
The black-haired man can’t be much older than me. I can't see a spark of mercy in his brown, almond eyes.
“Shut up!” he yells at me. I whimper as his fingers almost crush my jaw. I plead through the rags, but again only guttural sounds come out. In response, the man tightens his grip on my face.
“I said, shut up!”
Feeling the gag in my mouth loosen, I stop whimpering. I stare at him with tearful eyes, and his voice makes it feel like he’s hitting me with a cymbal, the sound resonating in my head.
The man looks at me for what feels like an eternity, then, as if throwing my face away, he releases me. The buzzing subsides, and fear tightens its grip on me again.
Why was I kidnapped? Is Nathan involved? He was there, he could have seen them taking me. Or is he here too?
I pull up my knees as though it would protect me. Black dots cover my field of vision upon hearing a distant sound of flapping.
I look at my captor as he stares into the distance. I frown. What is he wearing? The man’s trousers consist of white ribbons winding around his legs, and he has a brown leather vest on. He could have come straight out of a circus. He holds a long, gray spear so tightly it’s almost as if it will break from the pressure. Why does he need such a weapon?
I follow his gaze towards the sunbeams. Something descends from the sky. At first, I see a bird's silhouette, but, then it slowly takes on a human form. Okay, what I see now makes no sense at all.
Oh my God. This thing has wings!
Two snow-white angel wings, so majestic that I would gasp if my gag allowed it. They block the sun from my view as theman descends. His shoulders are bare and broad, and maybe today I’ve admired two men – okay, one was just a creation of my imagination – but these shoulders could ignite anyone’s imagination at any time. His skin is much healthier than the imagined white-haired man, and much more radiant than Nathan’s. It’s as if he’s not… not human.
His skin is naturally sun-kissed, white-toned, and with thick tattoos breaking the shiny surface. For a moment, I forget where I am. I swim in the man’s hard facial features, and he has a perfect physique, as if he just emerged from an MMA competition. His clothes are similar to those worn by the man who almost broke my jaw, but the difference is that his are speckled…Oh God, it’s blood.
