37. Chapter 37
Chapter thirty-seven
The mayor and, subsequently, the Shield, must have been very confident in the ongoing absence of unwanted visitors. Aside from the wailings and occasional scream of those locked beneath the surface, Lux and Shaw didn’t meet anyone.
When the narrow doors rose before them, Lux breathed a sigh of relief that only darkness pushed outward from behind it.
“I’ll go first.” Shaw stepped forward without waiting for a reply, and she cursed her cowardice as she offered no objection.
Her wrists and ankles throbbed in memory of their restraint. She followed at his back as they entered the cold room, and she shivered in the darkness, unable to see a thing. “How will—”
She startled at the flare of light illuminating Shaw’s face.
“A thief, remember?” The small flame elongated his canines and sharpened his cheekbones, turning his grin into a wolfish sneer.
Her eyes dropped to the satchel slung across him. “What else do you have in there?”
Shaw strode to the surgeon’s worktable, and said over his shoulder, “Lock picks. Rope. A set of knives. And a couple surprises I hope to go unneeded, courtesy of Aline.” Her ears ached again just at the mention of them. “I don’t know what half of these are.”
She stepped around to his side as he stood, vial in hand.
“Then I wouldn’t touch them. The concoctions created here are abhorrent.”
He nestled the glass bottle very carefully back in its place, his gaze searching. “What did they do to you?”
Lux tried to fix her eyes in front of her, but the lone, narrow door pulled at her vision. She stared into its shadows. “I was bound, some toxin forced in my veins. And then…nightmares.” She swallowed. “But before that, I watched a man gutted, and when his inevitable death arrived, witnessed just how exactly lifeblood is extracted. It was…enlightening. I vomited all over the Shield’s boots.”
She heard Shaw’s breath catch behind her, but only too late did she realize he was likely imagining his father in the man’s stead. She’d been tactless.
But when she turned toward him, the eyes mirroring the flame weren’t filled with grief as she’d expected. Nor impenetrable shadow. Rather, her own widened at the compassion she saw there. And the immeasurable fury.
“I’ve changed my mind.” His words were clipped, menacing.
“About what?”
“Our mission here, tonight. Don’t look at me like that. I still plan on stealing every last remnant of lifeblood. But I’m burning this place down with it.”
“You can’t. You’ll harm the prisoners.”
“The flames won’t get past these doors. It’ll cause enough damage to prolong the fates of those down here until we can save them.”
We . Lux bit at her cheek as she observed his determination. His faith in their alliance.
Irreversibly.
She cared for him irreversibly.
But she still had to ask. “What makes you so sure?”
“Another gift of Aline’s.”
She snorted. “Now I’m even less thrilled with this plan.”
The room was empty. Empty of any substance that glimmered and glowed with a silvery sheen. Lux let Shaw investigate the small space she’d been held, tortured by her own mind. She had no desire to see it again. When he appeared through the doorway once more, his arms hanging in dejection, she felt only relief.
“Any other ideas?” Her nerves were getting the better of her. They’d been down here too long.
“Maybe his study—”
“We’ve looked there.”
“Not long.”
She clamped her eyes shut, shaking her mind free of the memory of a kiss she’d only ever thought of while alone. But when she opened them, something new occupied her attention. Behind them both, behind even a stacked set of stained, white sheets, stood a narrow cabinet with a curiously shaped padlock.
Lux plucked the wavering light from Shaw’s hand and strode toward it.
The cabinet was dark wood and finely crafted, but other than keeping the flames from touching its surface, she didn’t pay further mind to it. Her gaze roved over the lock instead. It was unusual, its ends coming to points instead of smoothly rounded, and, as far as she could see, it didn’t have any place for a fitted key let alone a lock pick.
She tugged on it anyway. A bolt of cold swept up her arm, and she dropped it.
“I’ve never seen anything like that before.” Shaw was beside her now examining the device with narrowed eyes. He didn’t pull on it as she had done, but rather turned it over to study its back.
“Bastard.”
“What?” Lux rubbed at her arm, still tingling as warmth worked back through her veins.
“ A pinprick of crimson, a droplet of warmth; so must be the Sacrifice .” He stepped back. “Blood. How fitting for our mayor.”
He reached for his knife at the same moment she pressed her fingertip over one of the lock points.
“Let me, Shaw.”
“No. You don’t know what else it might glean from you. I’m no one.”
“Being no one is a very dangerous thing in this town.” And she pricked the pad of her finger before he could protest further, glancing away from the drop as it pooled then splashed onto the lock’s surface.
“You shouldn’t have done that.”
But Lux wasn’t paying him any mind. Pressing her finger against her skirt, she knelt, eyeing the metal as it began to click and whir. The lock snapped free. With a triumphant grin, she swung the door outward.
The cabinet’s insides glowed silver.
And still their faces fell in a mixture of confusion and disappointment, their brows drawn in an exact replica of the other. For there were only twenty vials stacked inside at most.
Where is the rest of it?
“This…is it?” Shaw’s incredulity was plain. He snatched one of the vials from its resting place, fixing a glare upon the substance within.
Lux spoke the obvious, “He certainly isn’t draining lifeblood from those dead of the plague.”
Maybe it was a simple purge after all. She couldn’t absolve him yet.
Shaw tipped the shimmering liquid into his cupped palm.
“What are you doing?” She backed away from him, his expression unreadable.
He smiled, almost animalistic, his eyes flicking up to hers. “What I do best, Necromancer.” He dipped a finger into the silver pool as the vial shattered upon the floor. “Painting.”
Hours later, once the fire was put out and the black smoke cleared, men would stare in horror upon Shaw’s corrupt work. A gleaming, silver forest smeared across the walls in broad strokes, unmarred by flame. And the words:
Death is Inevitable
“Revive me if I’m burned to a crisp, won’t you?” were Shaw’s last words before he forced a hesitant Lux through the doors to listen to a begging cry from deep within the prison. He’d said he trusted Aline’s skill. The fervor with which he scolded Lux into listening to him spoke otherwise.
He’d told her it was a mechanism with a slow-to-emit gas and a spark with which to ignite the flames. It had sounded simple enough, but when she swung the door inward to see what took him so long, she was sent stumbling back by his body propelling through.
“It took. Go!” Shaw gripped her hand, pulling her after him.
Already, she could smell the smoke trailing behind her. She only hoped those trapped behind stone walls and locked doors would have faith. They did this as much for them as for themselves.
They had stolen every last usable drop of lifeblood, cast a vial upon the walls, and left one very obvious message for their beloved mayor. This would be his final lifetime in this world. Even with her continued revival of his tumor-consumed insides, she doubted he would survive much longer without it.
Her thoughts were cut short, however, when a high-pitched sound screeched through the tunnel. She clapped hands to her ears with little improvement, the noise continuing in a rhythmic pattern she’d never heard before.
“An alarm!” The color fled Shaw’s skin, draining Lux’s own at the sight.
He yanked on her arm, her legs unable to keep up with his sprinting pace. They rounded a curved corner in the labyrinth of the mansion’s underground. “What does it mean?” She’d never heard such a thing.
“It means we’ve been found out.” The words were nearly lost to her. She’d almost hoped they had been. For they wouldn’t live to see morning if the mayor discovered them, and with sweeping certainty, she knew their lifeblood would be the first vials in his refurbished collection.
The alarm rose, in both tempo and volume, almost eclipsing the pounding of boots upon stone beneath it. Shaw ground to a halt. Lux followed a few paces beyond him, breathing heavily. It was far more than exhaustion that screamed in her lungs and set her heart hammering, and even though her body was grateful for the reprieve, her mind was not.
“Why are you stopping? We can still make the old entrance!” She splayed her hand across her chest, trying and failing to ease her heart back to a steady rhythm. Shaw hung his head. “Shaw!”
The strike of boots drummed closer.
“Run, Lux.”
He didn’t raise his eyes, even as she was sure hers would pop from her skull. “What? No, come on, you imbecile!”
His eyes were twin storms, dark and thunderous when he lifted them. But his voice was sad. “Remember how I once said I could come to like you?” His quiet laugh was lost. “I think I have, after all, and I think it might be more than even that. I can hardly believe it.” He shook his head, strands of gold highlighted and shimmering by the torchlight. She stumbled back beneath the weight of his bag as he tossed it to her.
“Use the last device in there. A switch on the bottom and then you run. Promise me.”
“ Never . I won’t promise you anything.”
Shouts lashed through the air.
He was before her in two long strides, cupping her face in his hands before bringing his lips down upon hers in a kiss that was unlike either of the ones prior. Fast and hard, it almost hurt. A goodbye. He broke from her. With unguarded eyes brimming with emotion, he shrugged off his coat. Settling it around her shoulders, he pulled the cap from his head. He fitted it over her hair.
“Be safe, love. Be happy.”
A mass of tall, uniformed bodies barreled through the passage toward them. Shaw’s hands dropped to his sides, and he squared his shoulders. Following a final, lingering look at her, he turned. Her eyes stung, but it couldn’t be from tears. Wiping her cheeks, she stepped away from him. From his faded blue shirt.
This isn’t real, she thought.
But the Shield kept coming.
It isn’t real.
But he didn’t look back.