Shuddering, Sarah Hummingstone crept toward the old maid’s quarters. “I hate this. I hate it. I hate it,” she muttered with every step. The otherworldly power ebbed and flowed from under the door and assaulted her. “Vile, disgusting. Those sick bastards.”
Her hand shook as she reached for the door that led into the room she hated most of all the hated rooms in the house. The room where her virginity had been offered in a ritual that turned her into a slave. The room where she’d been plundered, again and again, to enhance the power of her master-husband and his flunkeys. The room where an unnatural thing had been trapped. Every molecule in her body resisted the movement, but she forced herself forward.
“If it eats her, that will be bad, but if she remains here for them to toy with, it wil
