I noticed now that three of the other occupants had wisely chosen to stay inside their rooms rather than face the angry Prince, even though their doors had been destroyed.
The Prince of Hell stepped over the troll and came straight at us.
Before I could get another word out, he raised his hands and power shot into the air with lightning speed. I heard Tyler yell in terror as the Prince’s dark essence hit me squarely in the chest, tossing me backward.
Blackness pulled me under, filing me up immediately, until there was nothing else.
12
I awoke with a gasp, my body jolting upward like I’d been shocked. My hand went straight to my chest, where the Prince had blasted me, as blood pounded in my ears, sounding like a rushing ocean with a heartbeat. My wolf paced back and forth in my mind. It was obvious she had been waiting for me to wake up for some time.
What happened? I asked her as I blinked and glanced around, trying to get my bearings.
She flashed me a picture of us being consumed by darkness.
I saw that part, but how did it happen? I had defeated the Prince of Hell’s magic before, and now that I had demon essence inside me, I’d been certain I could defeat him again—or at the very least hold my own in a fight. Where did the blackness go?
I glanced down at my hands like they would somehow give me answers to my burning questions, but of course they appeared perfectly normal. My fingernails had seen better days, but they weren’t falling off or streaked black with demon juice.
I rested one hand on the cool, slippery white floor beside me while I rubbed my other absentmindedly over my chest. Where are we?
After a moment, I stood slowly, turning in a full circle. The room was all white, and unlike in Lily’s cell, there wasn’t a scrap of furniture to be found. No bed, no dresser, which to me indicated no long-term stay.
I was taking that as a win.
There weren’t any doors either, and this time there wasn’t even a cutout where a door should’ve been. The room seemed to be hermitically sealed. I knew this wasn’t true, but it was still unsettling. I had to find a way out.
I paced forward, searching.
That wasn’t an ordinary shock of magic the Prince hit us with, I told my wolf. She didn’t answer. She was too focused on sending our power out now that I was finally awake. Either the Prince has always held out on us, or something else happened back there. I should not have fallen so easily to his magic.
It bothered me. I’d bested the Demon Lord before, so why was this time any different?
In my short experience as a wolf, I’d learned that magic had to go somewhere. When a supe was blasted with foreign magic, as the Prince and Tally had done to me, it either had to flow out, which is what Tally had hoped I’d do with it—or it had to be forced out like Ray had done when he vomited.
In my case alone, it stayed inside.
Most supes could transfer power easily, as my brother had to me when I’d needed it, but power wasn’t raw magic—it was energy, like giving a car a jump so it could grab its own juice. A supe needed power to make magic.
Magic was alive.
It was your signature, something that manifested from deep within you, and it made you unique. The stronger the supernatural, the more power they could generate. Thus their ability to control their magic was more potent.
This was what Rourke had been telling me all along.
The stronger the supe, the higher they were on the supernatural food chain. A supe with less power did not engage those with more power very often. But, on the other hand, if a pixie had been born with my kind of power she would have been fierce, able to wield her own magic to a much higher degree.
That’s what the sorcerers had wanted—to siphon off my power to enhance their own magic. But that wasn’t possible. A power transfer only worked in the short term, but it wasn’t something they could harness and keep.
My wolf barked, interrupting my thoughts. She motioned to the wall and I ran my hands along it as my wolf pushed our senses out to find a weakness or some escape pod. The walls were sterile and smooth, kind of like marble, but more porous. The texture was warm and sticky, but once again, there was no residue.
Not finding anything in the walls, I stepped back and glanced up at the ceiling, but only found more of the same.
Tyler, can you hear me? I called out in my mind. Are you out there?
Nothing.
Our connection was still blessedly there, however. I could feel he was alive, but I wasn’t picking up on anything else from him. The demons had a way to stanch communication or they had put him to sleep somehow. They had no real reason to hurt him, since I was here, but that wasn’t saying much. I had no idea how he reacted once I went down.