When Magda only stared at him he jumped to stab the key into the lock and turn it. As the bolt clanged back the sound echoed through the cavelike tunnels. Holding the torch in one hand, he used his other to tug the heavy door open. Neither Magda nor Merritt made any move to help him with the difficult task.

When the door was opened enough to pass, Merritt cut in front of the guard and stepped through the doorway first. Magda followed close on his heels. The guard followed them in.

She could see by the light of the glass sphere Merritt was holding that there was a second iron door. The outer room they were in had a ceiling so low that she and Merritt had to stoop over lest they hit their heads. She knew that the cells for the gifted had double doors with an outer room as an extra layer of protection. Besides the iron doors, the small outer room, as well as the inner room, would be heavily shielded.

“Give me the key,” Merritt said to the guard. “You can wait for us back at the entrance.”

The squat, burly guard hesitated. Merritt snapped his fingers and held out a hand, palm up, wiggling his fingers impatiently. The guard reluctantly placed the key in his palm. Seeing the two of them silently waiting for him to leave, he fidgeted a moment, scratched a hairy shoulder, and then stepped back out the first doorway.

He ducked his head back in. “If you need anything, yell. Sound echoes down here, so we’ll hear you.”

“Well, if you hear the woman screaming, that doesn’t mean we need you,” Merritt snapped as he gestured a curt dismissal. “It only means we’re questioning her.”

As Magda watched the torchlight disappear into the distance outside the first door, Merritt unlocked the second. As she waited anxiously, he put his weight into pulling open the inner door. It was so cold down in the dungeon that she could see her own breath rise slowly in the still air.

Finally, the greenish light penetrated into the inner darkness.

There hanging by chains from manacles attached to the wrists of her spread arms, was a bloody, naked woman.

Chapter 72

The woman in the center of the inner room hanging by her wrists appeared to be nearly unconscious. She barely slitted her eyelids to see in the dim greenish light from the light sphere who was entering her cell. Only her eyes moved to take in Magda and Merritt.

She wasn’t older, as expected, but instead looked closer to Magda’s age. Her disheveled, straight, jet black hair was shoulder length with bangs that came to just above her eyes. She was so beautiful, even with strings of blood across her face, that Magda found herself pausing for an instant to stare.

Magda’s heart ached at the sight of what had been done to this poor creature.