Princess Of Darkness (Editing)

Seven: The New Arrivals (Edited)

I woke the next morning to the consistent, and incredibly irritating sound of tapping at the window. I rubbed a hand over my face and rolled over onto my back, trying to block out the sound.

I was staring up at a high ceiling, not a single spider web or spot of mold to be seen, unlike what I was used to waking up to.

I sat up, looking about, slowly remembering.

Hell, the Underworld. Lucian. Rapture.

I wasn't in the room I shared with Brett. I wasn't even in the hotel room. It hadn't been some bizarre dream, it was real.

But, what is that tapping sound?

I threw back the blankets and went to the window, drawing back the heavy, red velvet curtain.

A black crow sat on the stone work just outside the window, tapping it's beak against the glass, asking to be let in.

"Pitch?" I asked, opening the window to let the bird inside.

He hopped down from the window ledge onto the floor and bobbed across to the door.

Unbeakened, a vision formed in my mind. It was of me following Pitch through the elaborate corridors and into one of the bathrooms.

"Are you my escort this morning?" I asked, kneeling down to pet the bird. He cawed in response, nestling into my palm. "And that's how you pass on messages? By showing things to people? You clever bird!"

Pitch waited patiently for me to collect my backpack with all my things in it, everything I owned. Next, I pulled my boots on, which, I decided, really wasn't a good look under the nightgown I'd worn to bed. I had found it when I got back to my room the night before, folded neatly at the foot of the four poster bed.

I followed Pitch at a brisk pace as he flew down the hallway. He would occasionally land on the floor or one of the wooden torches sticking out from it's bracket, waiting for me to catch up.

I didn't see anyone else in the hallways as I hurried after the crow. I hadn't noticed before, but the hallway leading from my room seemed shorter than the others, and I noticed how there were fewer doors than on other levels in the castle.

Maybe that's why there's only the one bathroom, I thought. Maybe I had my own, private level, where there was no one else to disturbe me.

Now, that would be cool.

It didn't take too long for Pitch to stop and land in front of a door at the end of the hallway. He began pecking at it until I opened it. We both stepped inside the bathroom and I was once again astonished at it's naturally occuring beauty.

As far as I could remember, I had never taken much time in my life to appreciate the magnificence of the natural world, but, standing here, gawking at the room before me, I felt as though I was making up for that now.

Just like the others, the room was divided into two by a small river, beginning on one side and ending on the other.

The water entered the little river from a stone ledge higher up the wall, creating a tiny water fall. It fell into a deep pool right at the bottom and flowed away again, down the narrower part of the river, trickling through the pile of stones stacked randomly up against the wall.

I followed the flow of the water with my eyes, trying to find out where it came from and where it went, but, no matter how long I studied the gurgling stream for, I couldn't figure it out.

Pitch was sitting perched on a rail set into the wall, ferns growing from the cracks in the stones, almost disguising the rail. It had a fluffy, white towel hanging from it and beneath that was a neatly folded pile of black clothes, a bar of soap balanced on top.