The Darkest Whisper Read Free Page B

coated the stale, dusty air: cologne, sweat, an assortment of foods. How long had the Hunters been here? What were they doing here? Had they already found the artifact?
    The questions skated through his mind, and his demon latched on to them. As Doubt, it couldn’t help itself. Clearly they know something you do not. It might be enough to topple you. Your friends could very well take their last breaths this night.
    Doubt could not lie, not without causing Sabin to pass out cold. It could only use derision and supposition to topple its victims. He’d never understood why a fiend from hell couldn’t utilize deceit—best he could come upwith was that the demon carried a curse of its own—but he’d long since accepted it. Not that he’d allow himself to topple this night. Keep it up and I’ll spend the next week sequestered in my bedroom, reading so I can’t think too much .
    But I need to feed , was the whined reply. The worry it caused was its greatest nourishment.
    Soon .
    Hurry .
    Sabin held up his hand, stopped, and the warriors behind him stopped as well. There was a chamber up ahead, its doorway already open. The sound of voices and footsteps echoed, perhaps even the buzz of a drill.
    The Hunters were indeed distracted and begging for an ambush. I’m just the man to give it to them .
    Are you, really? the demon began, Sabin’s threat unheeded. Last time I checked —
    Forget about me. I’ve supplied you with food as promised.
    There was a gleeful exclamation inside his head, and then Doubt was opening its mind to the Hunters inside the pyramid, whispering all manner of destructive thoughts. All for nothing…what if you’re wrong…not strong enough…could soon die …
    Conversation tapered away. Someone might even have whimpered.
    Sabin held up a finger, then another. When he raised the third, he and the warriors jumped into motion, a war cry echoing.

CHAPTER TWO
    G WENDOLYN THE T IMID SHRANK against the far wall of her glass cell the moment the horde of too-tall, too-muscled, too-bloody warriors charged into the chamber she’d both loved and hated for over a year. Loved, for being inside of it would have meant she was out of her cell, freedom a possibility. Hated, for all the torturous deeds that had taken place there. Deeds she’d witnessed and feared.
    The very men who had performed those deeds gave startled cries, dropping their Petri dishes, needles, vials and various tools. Glass shattered. Savage roars boomed, the intruders leaping forward with practiced menace, their arms slashing, their legs kicking. Down, down their targets fell. There was no question about who would win this fight.
    Gwen trembled, unsure what would happen to her and the others when things settled. The warriors were clearly inhuman, like her, like all the women locked in the cells surrounding hers. They were too hard, too strong, too everything to be mortal. Exactly what they were, however, she didn’t know. Why were they here? What did they want?
    She’d known so many disappointments this last year that she didn’t dare hope they’d come on a rescue mission. Would she and the others be left here to rot? Orwould these men try and use them as the detestable humans had done?
    â€œKill them!” one of the captured shouted to the new warriors, the sound of her hard, angry voice causing Gwen to draw her arms around her middle. “Make them suffer as we have suffered.”
    The glass that kept the women removed from the outside world was thick, impenetrable by fist or even bullet, yet every heartbreak inside the chamber and cells was a blast inside Gwen’s ears.
    She knew how to block the noise, something her sisters had taught her to do as a young child, but she desperately wanted to hear her captors’ defeat. Their grunts of pain were like midnight lullabies to her. Soothing and sweet.
    But strong as the warriors obviously were, they never