The Bloodstone Prophecy - Book 2 (complete)

Chapter 4 - The Queen

Liam woke to a splitting headache and an aching back. He groaned, sat up, and looked around him. How had he ended up here anyway? The last thing he remembered was the Shadow Queen coming toward them. He rubbed the tender lump on his head where someone, or something, had hit him.

He looked around him. He was sitting in a small cell, about the size of his closet back home. A feeble light from a torch on the wall lit the room and he looked around curiously. There were no windows, and he could barely make out the shadowy outlines of a short door he would have to duck to walk through. He touched the wall. They were the same rough texture of the dungeon rooms that held Neina. He wondered where Yasmin was, if she'd been thrown into the dungeon with the other prisoners, or if she was in her own cell. 

Liam felt a twinge of remorse as his thoughts turned toward his parents. He hadn't been in range to send them a message for days. They were probably quite concerned.

His mind turned toward his failed mission, and he felt an overwhelming sense of inadequacy. The team had trusted him, and he'd let them down. He should have done it differently, should have found a way to take out the guards and release Kami's grandmother. Back then he still had the element of surprise. It was torture, running through the mission in his head trying to reanalyze like this. It was too late to change things now, but his mind wouldn't stop.

Of course, there was no way he could have helped Kami and Yasmin's grandmother without releasing the others, and it would have been impossible to get the other prisoners out. In hindsight, it seemed stupid to come in alone. He didn't know why he'd insisted on it. It could be ego. Maybe it was the desire to see the look on Kami's face when he emerged with her missing grandmother. Or maybe it was because he didn't want to expose anyone else. He couldn't be sure. He certainly hadn't expected the dungeon to be so far from the entrance. Looking back, he should have at least brought Chris.

His thoughts turned to Kami. Truth was, he would probably have been a lot better off bringing her, if not Chris. She'd held her own just fine with that whip. Only the approach of the Shadow Queen with her entourage of creatures had stopped her from charging in to save them. He'd seen the determined look in her eye and knew he had to try to get her to turn back. He was glad she had taken the hint and hoped she got away and the Shadow Queen hadn't seen her. He shuddered to think of Kami stuck in a cell like this.

Liam heard a scuttling sound in the corner. A mangy rat glared at him from the shadows with beady eyes. He scooted backward. So this was it, then. He was exposed to a shadow creature with nowhere to run, no way to defend himself. Death by shadow rat. What a pathetic way to go. At least if he had died fighting that beast in the hive, he'd have something to brag about in the great beyond. But a rat?

Well if this was it, if this was the end, he didn't want to die sitting down. He stood up and looked around the room for anything he could use against it. There was nothing. The room was bare.

He squared his shoulders, waiting for the imminent attack.

"C'mon already," Liam said. "If you're going to do it, get it over with."

"Do you have a habit of talking to vermin?" a woman's silky voice said in accented English.

He spun around and saw her, the woman from the wax lake. The Shadow Queen. She leaned in the doorway wearing an amused expression. She was younger than she had seemed from a distance, no more than 20 years old, and dressed in a long silky dress spun in gold that clung to her body and shone in the candlelight. Her exotic face was even more lovely up close, her beautiful eyes framed by dark lashes and her lips deep red. Glossy red ringlets cascaded over gleaming bare bronze shoulders. She wore black lace gloves stitched with an intricate pattern to her elbows. She was beautiful enough to grace the cover of a magazine.