Chapter 24 #2
Down here, I was way too scared to shine the light anywhere but directly in front of me. I didn’t need to see the cells, or the walls, or what lay beyond them—I just needed to find the hole, slip down, ask the Coffin Seeker some questions, then get the fuck out of there.
It was so pitch-black, even the fire seemed to be afraid, shrinking in on itself.
Towards the end of the corridor, where the floors above had sloped to a lower level, there was a break in the ground. A hole. One that required me to climb straight down, because as the last and final level, it wasn’t accessible by the main stairs.
Just as Flóki had said it would be.
I crept closer. Smeared letters on the wall spelled out Dauea manna svaeei, then beneath it, Dead Man’s Zone. Other messages in Icelandic had been scribbled in the same ashy ink alongside another language I couldn’t place.
With a big inhale that still left me feeling breathless, I set the torch next to the rim before lowering myself. I placed one foot on a rusty rung, grabbed the light, and descended into the darkness.
The metal ladder shook under me. If I had any intention of making a stealthy entrance, it was completely shot. Even Ryder probably heard me, all those levels above. I imagined him gnashing his teeth, struggling against the bars at the idea of me coming down here.
The heat of that, at least, was a welcome flash of warmth.
Because what came next was numbing fear.
My staccato exhales echoed off the stone chute, blackness above and below. If I reached out—if I moved my head—I would strike stone.
It didn’t feel real, like I was suspended in time—like I was entering a different reality.
I finally broke out of the tight, narrow space into a circular room, where the ladder stopped a few feet shy of the ground.
Even though my hands trembled, I released their grip and landed with a splash in a small pool. More mystery liquid, and bone-chillingly cold.
I held up the fire, the flames shrunken to half their original size.
Cringing, I looked around.
There were no cells here, just empty halls and thick metal plates in the ground—if this had ever been anything remotely resembling a prison, it was nothing more than crushed walls and piles of mildewed wood in the corners now.
Enormous slabs of ice jutted out of the ceiling, the undersides dripping an endless stream of water onto the floor.
Brick arches crumbled between them, bearing the weight of the six levels above.
No wonder they referred to this place as the Dead Man’s Zone—the entire dungeon had been carved into a glacier, and this was right below.
If the ice so much as shifted, whoever was in the basement was done for.
The guard’s warning to his queen circled in my head. If the glacier melted, what would happen to the prisoners? Would it kill them or… release them?
A clanging noise came from above, metal slamming shut. There was only one open door I had seen on my journey: the entrance to the dungeons. My entire body stilled. Had Flóki locked me in here?
Craning my neck, my gaze pierced upwards, as if I could see through the layers of stone and into the courtyard above. Instead, I noticed crimson blotches covering the ceiling—blood.
Get out get out get out. My heart beat with the command.
Sprinting towards the ladder, I stumbled over a mound of cobblestone jutting out of the putrid water, catching myself on my knees. The torch landed on top of it, on a round iron cover punctured with four small holes. My fingers froze as I reached for the stick.
Those were air holes.
I leaned in to get a closer look at the words embossed in the metal. Kistuleitarinn.
This was his oubliette.
I jumped back, the frigid muck swishing at the frantic movement.
Oh my God, could he see me? Hear me? Smell me? Did he know I was in here?
A menacing curl of laughter slipped through the holes, its deep rumble shaking the ice. Flakes of snow drifted to the ground.
“Come, child. Do not be scared.” The voice slithered through the chamber like the low howl of the wind on a stormy night. I could taste the rottenness of it in the air, heavy on my tongue.
But I didn’t dare move.
“Your heart is beating so fast. And your blood, the way it’s rushing through your veins…” A sigh tickled my spine like a sharp claw running up it. “The living body is my favorite symphony.”
I flinched as if his words had touched me.
That unearthly chuckle echoed throughout the room once more. “Let me at least get a good look at you, child. I haven’t come across another one of my kind in far too long.”
My kind. I huffed. Source pulsed from my fingertips, sloshing water into the holes.
I crouched down for him to see. “We are not the same.” My glare drilled down into the pit of black.
Shadows moved in the depths. A smoky black plume shot out, caressing my cheek. “We’re more alike than you’d care to admit.”
“Yeah? How so?” I brushed the wispy cloud—his Source, him—off of my face with a little too much force, my hand slamming into my own jaw when my fingers met only air.
“We’ve committed the same sin.” He casually blew out the last word, as if it were the smoke of a cigar giving him a high. Dread razed my insides. “Murder is a very unique bond—very unique indeed.”
“That was an accident,” I snarled, the scene from that fated day at the beach when I was eight swimming into my mind.
I’d worked hard on freeing myself of that guilt.
I wasn’t going to let this demon make me carry it again.
“I got caught in a rip current and my mom swam out after me. I didn’t murder her for sport. ”
“So, when you killed the teratorn and Finis, you did not feel an ounce of satisfaction?”
“That’s different.” The grate rattled beneath me. I was shaking with cold, unforgiving rage. “They were demons.”
“Perhaps then, but demons are not born. They were something else before.”
I swore I saw a hint of color in the darkness: the whites of eyes.
“Alright,” I said, my hands dangling between my knees, getting comfortable, even if the panic was like a parasite trying to burrow its way under my skin. “I didn’t make this trek for the small talk. I need something. If you can’t give it to me, I’m out.”
“Forgive me, my Nephilim sister. It’s been so long since I had a visitor.”
“Don’t call me that.” My nostrils flared. “We are not kin.” But even as I said it, the truth festered inside of me: all demons were once angels.
He sighed. “So go on. Tell me what you wish to know.”
The help I needed was right there, but another question formed on my lips. “Is this what Hildur uses you for?”
“Is that really what you care to hear? I am not amenable; it’s best to be forthright.”
It was a valid reminder—as human as his tone sounded, I wasn’t dealing with a person. I wasn’t even dealing with a ghost. I was dealing with the closest thing to the devil.
In the silence, he grew impatient. “Shall I help you decide?”
A breath of a shadow swirled up from the holes drilled into the metal plate. Billowing into color, into movement, into a vision that I recognized immediately—the one from the Pearl of Truth.
“Stop that!” I shouted as the scene enveloped me, bursting into color and reality.
Surrounded by scorched hillsides and battered elves led astray by an evil with claws and fangs, I batted fruitlessly at the smoky vision, which would not dissipate.
“You know I have the gift of Sight, but did you know I’m also a Projector? It was always part of what I did. Perhaps that makes me less of a monster? Yes… I played their favorite memories while I made mine. That’s got to mean something, right?”
The vision changed into the halls of this prison, to a screaming dark-haired guy behind bars. Golden-green irises rimmed the black depths of his eyes. Ryder, on his knees. Pleading. Craving. Heat burned through me, but it wasn’t him. It wasn’t real.
“I said STOP IT!” Dozens of hairline cracks shot across the brilliant sheets of turquoise ice above me.
“Careful,” he tutted, and the drawl of it threw me off guard. It was him but it was Ryder, rasping behind his iron bars. “This glacier is melting fast enough as it is.”
Swatting at the air, I felt myself tip.
The ground rushed up to meet me, and my hip slammed into the metal, the sharp edge of the oubliette slicing my thigh. Red blossomed like a rose through the fabric.
A moan crept up the shaft, one of disgusting, aching want. “It’s not as sweet. Not the fruity notes of elven blood,” Kistuleitarinn purred, “but delicious in its own way. You taste… like power.”
Grimacing, I pushed myself up. Searing pain slit my skin.
“How?” I asked, ignoring his sickening comment. “How is it that an ancient glacier is all of a sudden melting at a rate that magic can’t stop it?”
“Is that your final question?”
No, but I wanted it to be, if only so I could leave and get as far away as possible from this godforsaken place.
Curling my fingers, I gritted my teeth. “I need to know about Jarearbaeli. Hildur is taking me tomorrow—er, today.”
“Is she?” That tone made my insides twitch with unease.
“Um, yeah.” I gulped. “Anyways, apparently you’re the only one who’s been and lived to tell the tale.”
“Not the only.” The shadows swirled in his pit. “But as of your generation, yes.”
“Why is everyone so scared of it?” Water dripped off the ice, plinking onto the sleeve of my jacket. My angel senses homed in on every drop, almost tearing me from the conversation.
“You can guess why.”
“Because it’s spelled to keep them out? Because there’s an abominable snowman stalking the fjords? Because Gaia threw some caution tape up?” I crossed my arms, bearing my weight on the hip without the gash in it. “Look demon, if I knew, I wouldn’t be down here.”
He chuckled, and I felt the ground rumble beneath my feet. “There’s a monster in that lair most simply cannot face.”
“Which is?” I tapped my foot, the stale water seeping into my shoes.
“Themselves.”
“Themselves?” I repeated, scrunching my nose.