Chapter Forty
Marcus
Istudy the block of wood positioned perfectly at the feet of the hole where Veyn lives. There isn’t a single impressive thing about it, except that it should be destroyed for hygiene purposes alone.
“Destroy him.”
Annoying to believe, but I don’t know if I want to destroy him. Not because I don’t want to, but Lenora wouldn’t want me to and part of me likes the idea of her being protected by a supernatural creature who cares about her as much as I do.
But he’s evil.
Evil needs to be destroyed.
But she cares about him.
I can’t hurt her by killing yet another person in her life.
But he’s not a person.
Doesn’t matter. It would crush her.
I circle the box, searching for hidden compartments. A latch to pop it open.
I may not be ready to kill him, but I would like to see his power source in case I ever did need to. This might be my only chance to get this close without him in the room.
“Usher!”
The unsteady hiss of my name reminds me that I am not alone. That there is a lump of a man hovering a few feet away, clutching a weapon like a teddy bear.
“They were here,” I assure him, bending at the waist to examine the lip. “It’s a long story.”
I lift a hand and knock on the top.
Probably not the best idea if I don’t want to alert Veyn to my visit. But it’s barely on my thoughts when I reach down and knock on the side.
“What do you mean…? You were supposed to bring me to them?” He shuffles an inch close. “What the hell is that?”
I scoot around to the top and rap my knuckles along the wood, listening for a change.
“This is an altar. It’s where people die … mostly.”
A hollow thunk has me pausing and stooping for a better glance.
The spot looks no different from the rest of the box. Even the faint carvings of symbols I don’t recognize seem to come together seamlessly with no visible gaps to indicate something might be on the other side. I even drag my nails across the area, trying to snag on a crack.
“Usher, I swear to God, if you don’t—”
“Come over here and help me lift this,” I interrupt, pushing upright and hooking my fingers under the lip.
Julen’s muddy brown eyes blink as if I’ve asked him to strip and do the tango. The weapon in his hand drops an inch before jerking back up.
“Are you…? Get away from that thing and tell me where August and Berny are.”
It has to lift.
The seam runs around the entire table with just enough of a lip to tuck my fingertips. But would the top come off? It wouldn’t make sense if it slid off while a sacrifice was happening. Maybe there’s a switch…
“Are you stupid?” Julen is barking while I trace a circle around the altar with the pads of my fingers. “What is wrong with you?”
I open my mouth to explain that if we don’t hurry, something much scarier than both of us will find us lurking around his chambers and we will both get killed.
I hear the distant clink of chains. The whisper of a phantom breeze through metal links.
The air fills with the thick scent of copper.
Sharp and thick as if blood has pooled in my mouth.
Serrated fingers breathe down the column of my throat, irritating the skin and sending a chaos of tingles down my spine.
“Shit,” I breathe, straightening and turning to face the room.
Julen pivots with me, eyes bulging in their sockets. The rattle of his gun echoes through the hollow hiss of staggered movement. His feet shuffle on stone, disturbing the filth.
“What’s that? What is that?” he stutters, arm sweeping from left to right in wild jerks.
I can only pray he doesn’t set his gun off. I don’t trust the walls not to cave in, or worse, the bang alerting Veyn. But I also don’t tell him to put it down.
Veyn, I can almost trust.
These two, I don’t trust them at all.
From the shadows, they emerge. Hulking, grotesque figures rejected from the bowels of hell itself. Creatures too horrific to stare directly at. Both shuffle into the already stifling chamber with their stench of blood and death. The putrid musk of something rotting in the sun.
The one run through and bound by chains ambles forward, trailing the links piercing through his calves across the stone.
His companion shuffles. Not as bold or proud as he had been the last time I saw him. His body of tendons and muscles curl inward as if protecting himself from pain.
And I wonder if they had something to do with what happened with Lenora the night before. If they were the ones controlling her. My guess would be the one leaving bloody smears through the filth.
“What the fuck are those?”
It takes me a second to realize Julen is screaming. Horrified and panicked shrieks that echo off the walls and seem to get absorbed by the shadows. The sound doesn’t faze the two inching closer with the steady patience of demons with nothing but time on their hands.
The bang ricochets off the walls.
Smoke explodes from the barrel of his gun in a thick, gray cloud that permeates the air with the stench of gunpowder.
The bullet slams, dead center of the creature nearest him with a sickening thump that makes me flinch.
The accuracy at that distance should have split the demon open, but he barely registers the attack.
Barely twitches. He continues forward with his chains clinking behind him and his dark, hollow eyes fixed on the man trembling before him.
The wound crusts with an ashy soot that weaves thin veins across the gray plains of his chest. From the hole, a chain weaves through. A rusted coil of metal that snakes down to loop back into his body through a rotted cavity at his waist.
Maybe it’s because I’ve seen them enough times that the shock of them no longer fazes me the way I’m sure it should.
Julen is standing in a puddle that stains the stones black. The lingering perfume of his release mingles with the stink of gunpowder, blood and eons of disuse.
I don’t blame him. There is no judgment in my heart when he’s but a toddler staring up into the face of a monster. But there is satisfaction. A warped sense of justice.
“You smell of the other two,” the one wrapped in chains states in a voice thick with ashes. “Weak.”
The gun clatters from Julen’s trembling fingers with a resounding crack that echoes through my skull. It lands in the pool of his urine, forgotten as all the blood washes from his face, leaving him stark and violently ill.
“I want to watch,” I blurt, finally understanding Lenora’s need to see the task through to completion.
This piece of trash murdered my sons. He may not have pulled the trigger, but he gave the orders and that is just as bad. He’s also responsible for James and Gloria’s deaths. This pathetic excuse for a man is singlehandedly responsible for all the major losses in my life.
Now, I get to watch him die in whatever gruesome manner these monsters see fit.
The two don’t seem to hear or acknowledge my request. Their focus is the man collapsing to his knees as they surround him.
In a decision that surprises even me, Julen scoops up the gun.
I momentarily think he’s going to try and shoot the creature again, but he turns it on himself.
The barrel is placed beneath his chin and a second bang erupts.
Brain matter bursts from where the back of his skull is shattered in a fountain of crimson and ivory.
The pressure dislodges his left eyeball, and it pops from the socket.
The gun clatters from his fingers to strike the floor once more.
And nothing happens.
He remains on his knees with the monsters looming over him, his skull gushing blood down the back of his coat. He makes a noise that is a mix of a whimper and terror as he realizes he’s not dead.
“Weak,” the one with the chains hisses a second time. “It will take much more than that to save you.”
With no help from his companion, he grabs Julen by the scruff and drags him to where I stand by the altar.
To his credit, Julen does his best to put up a fight.
He flails and kicks. His screams bounce off the ceiling.
But his efforts are ignored as he’s hoisted up as if he were a bag of flour and dropped on the table.
“Quiet,” his captor growls.
And Julen goes silent. His body goes still. His single good eye darts from me to them with a confusion I understand. His mouth makes shapes that end with nothing. Not even when he claws jagged gashes down the soft tissues of his throat.
“Is the offering to us?”
The question has my attention lifting to the creatures on the opposite side of the altar. Both study me back with a focus that is a little too sharp. Too focused. I don’t wholly understand the request, but I suppose if Veyn is their leader, perhaps they need to be given the go-ahead directly.
“If you make him suffer, yes.”
Satisfaction is hard to decipher on a skull with no eyes or lips, but it’s almost unmistakable as the pair exchange glances.
And I don’t question it. It seems unnecessary when we both get something from this.
Still, the back of my neck prickles as I take several steps back and find a seat on the jagged path leading up to the hole above.
The two don’t acknowledge my withdrawal. They fix their attention on the squirming and thrashing man trying and failing to escape and take a step back.
The one of blood and tendons seems to be shivering uncontrollably.
Hard enough that I can see the faint tremors that course through him.
His thin, skeletal arms clutch across his bleeding chest as if he’s hugging himself to stay warm.
He hasn’t said a word and his silence puzzles me; he’d been the most vocal the last few times I’ve seen them. More than his counterpart.
But I let it go.
Their behavior is none of my concern.