Chapter 25
Warmth seeped through the barricade of shock before anything else.
A gradual pulse of heat beating back the illimitable chill hooked beneath my skin.
Before my name, my thoughts, it was only heat returning home to the forge in my chest that breathed life into my being.
A gradual sensation, like lava flowing down a mountainside; it cascaded through my fingers, my arms, before flowing into the well at the center of me.
I blinked, and the world materialized into focus.
Steam spiraled upward, carrying the scent of herbs and garlic into my nose.
There was a bowl in my hands, loaded with my favorite tomato penne soup from the pantry.
Familiar and mouthwatering. The realization that I was home settled into the back of my mind.
Then I looked up, noting that I wasn’t alone.
The atmosphere sharpened and fractured as if I stood in a mirror gazing into an alternate reality. My heartbeat surged in my ears, pounding and echoing.
Professor Quinn stood at the sink, sleeves rolled up to his elbows as he went about washing utensils.
My mind moved as slowly as my eyes, traveling the planes and valleys of his shirt clinging to his broad shoulders and back.
The way his hair curled just slightly at the ends and brushed the top of his collar almost mesmerized me.
And he continued his menial chore, moving around the kitchen with easy efficiency as he grabbed a hand towel and began drying the washed dishes from the sink.
I didn’t have time to be embarrassed by the buildup of my dishes the past few days when it struck as odd that he effortlessly knew where everything was. As if he’d been there a dozen times before.
For a singular, dizzying second, I permitted myself to fantasize, to drift into a daydream of a companion sharing the load of domesticity. Was this what it felt like to share your life with someone?
It was as he turned that he caught me staring.
The mask in his eyes fell, and the full force of his glittering concern narrowed onto me. “Ophelia?”
“Yes?”
He closed his eyes, exhaling with relief before looking at me again. “Welcome back.”
“Did I go somewhere?” I held the bowl tighter, relishing the burn of hot porcelain on icy fingers.
His chuckle draped around me, as warm and comforting as a safety blanket. “In a sense.” He tossed the damp hand towel over the sink before leaning against it and crossing his arms over his chest. “You were in shock. I brought you home.”
Home. The word rattled in my skull like a misfit puzzle piece slotted in the wrong place.
On one hand, I easily imagined him in a homely space with me, sharing in the louche carelessness of a Saturday morning seeped in the aroma of roasted espresso beans and maple syrup.
Too easy to picture him as he was, with a silly themed apron tied around his waist, wearing the stern concentration he applied to lectures as he flipped pancakes.
The background in those daydreams didn’t match our current environment.
This place wouldn’t be home for long. If anything, it was merely a stopping point tainted with unguarded memories.
“Well, thanks…” My voice trailed off before bewilderment broke through the rapidly fading haze. “How do you know your way around my kitchen?”
He froze, and his gaze snapped to the window behind my head. The avoidance pricked at me after growing used to the striking intensity of his staring.
“Not exactly what I expected you to ask, Miss Ashcroft,” he said, voice low, and careful. Not an answer.
The atmosphere went taut, and the silence unfurled into a tense standoff. Sickly awareness curdled in my stomach, and heat flushed under my cheeks. I knew he was hiding something—everything—but the knowledge suddenly sat uncomfortably, like a pebble between my ribs.
“Please tell me it was because of your time as my grandpa’s student,” I said, almost whispering the plea. Things were strange enough. I couldn’t bear another wrench in my reality.
His shoulders immediately dropped, not fully, but enough to blur the sharp edges of him as his body shifted. His chest dropped on a silent exhale, as if relieved. The guarded tension loosened from his sea-storm eyes.
“Yes,” he spoke confidently as the presumed answer landed between us. “Precisely that. Hunter and I worked very closely together. He was my mentor.”
But the way he’d moved through my kitchen and the way he avoided my eyes revealed more than he felt obliged to share.
“Tthat makes sense…”
My gaze dipped down, and everything inside me ceased functioning.
A dark stain smeared on his trousers glared back. A rust-colored, sticky blotch smudged diagonally over his thigh.
Blood.
Demon blood.
Memories slammed back into my head as though they were a bat bludgeoning my skull.
Snarling, distorted creatures leaping out from the shadows.
Predatory birds swooping overhead as if wrangling me into the monster’s reach.
Impossibly long, sharp talons strong enough to gouge grooves in the pavement.
The guttural croak the demon emitted as a dagger plunged into its flesh and the wet squelch as Luther cleaved whatever life force kept the infernal monster alive.
The room tilted, and I might have fallen if not for the stool I sat on.
My pulse spiked, and my professor noticed the moment dread flicked across my expression.
His ocean eyes dropped to the stain, and his brows jumped as if he had forgotten about it.
An almost imperceptible clench feathered his jaw before he met my stare.
“That’s…” Words clogged in my scream-raw throat. “I—is that…?”
“You don’t need to think about that right now, Ophelia.” His voice came out as steady and firm as it did during his lectures. If I weren’t mentally spiraling at the sight of blood, I could have listened to him talk for hours.
Don’t think about it?
How could I not?
Normal universities didn’t have a demon infestation. Normal semesters didn’t start with dead girls being scraped off sidewalks. Normal professors didn’t hunt primordial monsters from Hell.
“That girl didn’t jump off the Belltower, did she?” I asked.
He inhaled slowly, then shook his head.
“You—” I choked on the question before forcing it out. “You hunt and kill those things? The stolas?”
Something akin to fatigue softened the hardness in his eyes.
He nodded.
Neither of us spoke for several moments. I mindlessly stirred penne noodles in tomato broth, thoughts drifting to our previous encounter when he tried to tell me the truth. Instead of listening as I should have, I’d gone running, fleeing like a bird startled from its nest.
And now the raptors were circling overhead.
Hugging myself, I said, “I didn’t… I didn’t believe you before. I didn’t want to believe you.”
“I understand. Believing makes them real.”
“I wish they weren’t.”
He smiled gently. The pronouncement of monsters was a heavy knowledge to share, and a burden he wanted to help with.
“I’m sorry you must come to terms with something so horrible. I wouldn’t wish this on anyone, but…” he moved closer, bracing his hands on the island counter that separated us, “you need to know that they’re after you, Ophelia.”
Thunder cracked outside, and something in my chest splintered.
I jerked back, frowning. “What—wait—no, that’s not possible… No!”
“Yes,” he gritted out. “And that’s why I tried to tell you everything last time we spoke. The stolas got wind of you the moment you crossed into Kilbride. I’d be willing to bet they’ve been circling you since your first day back to this accursed town.”
“That can’t be…”
“Oh, yes,” he snapped in a way that terrified me. “They can smell the blood of a traitor from miles away. Like sharks in the water.”
I paled, fighting off the shiver settling along my spine. My hands clenched and uncurled on the countertop in a senseless cycle. “Traitor? What… what are you talking about?”
Without preamble, Professor Quinn crossed the counter and snatched up my discarded bag on the floor.
“Wait—” I lurched off the stool, and he easily sidestepped me.
Lacking any semblance of decency, he dug around in my belongings as he returned to the island counter. The bag thumped on the hard granite, and in seconds he pulled out my grandfather’s journal.
Air whooshed out of my lungs.
“That’s mine!” I sounded petulant even to my own ears.
Luther ignored me, staring at the worn cover and tracing a finger over the front.
It seemed nostalgic for him to be holding it.
Until he opened it, the spine cracking quietly before he flipped through the pages.
And his eyes, they scanned the nonsense as if genuinely understanding the gibberish I’d been trying to decipher.
“Can you read that?” I blurted, curiosity getting the best of me.
“Of course I can.” He scoffed. Ocean eyes flicked to me, glinting with the dangers of the briny deep. “I was taught by the best, after all.”
“You need to start making sense,” I demanded.
He set the journal on the counter between us with a definitive smack. I held my breath, watching as he spread his fingers across the pages. Then he pointed to the sigils sketched in the margins.
“Your family…” he started, pausing for a bracing inhale, “I’m sure you know the Ashcrofts were one of the founding families of Kilbride.”
A beat passed before I remembered to nod.
“Those founding families were the first settlers in the area. But precious land and resources weren’t all they found, Ophelia.” My heart skipped several beats, and a frigid chasm rent apart my chest. “They found the ruins of an ancient temple built to honor a long-forgotten deity: Moloch.”
“Moloch,” I repeated, inaudibly. Just speaking the name aloud sent ice shards shooting through my veins.
“In the wreckage of those crumbling ruins, the founding families discovered a new god to worship. One that answered their prayers and granted them strange powers. They developed into a cult that quickly rose in wealth and status on the East Coast. A church of acolytes horribly and monstrously devoted to the will of their infernal god. A terrible religion where only the most devoted apostles were granted the ability to transform into something new, into a grotesque mimicry of their god, into beings touched by their master and eager to serve him.”
“The stolas,” I mumbled.
“Precisely.” The affirmation dropped a stone into still waters, sending shockwaves rippling through my being. “Moloch’s favorite apostles have the power to transform into demons. An ability that eventually passed through the bloodlines.”
Every feather, every dream, each paralyzing encounter, every sigil in the insensible journal melted and morphed together into a terrible truth taking shape in the raw space in my mind.
“So, the ones you kill—”
“Apostles of Moloch. People just like you and me on the outside but warped by an infernal power down to their very cores. They walk amongst us during the day wearing the guise of a human, then at night they transform into monsters and plot the return of their master.”
The kitchen compressed around me, squeezing into a throat swallowing, suffocating me.
“Me… but why me?”
Our eyes locked, and his smile was grim.
“Your grandfather,” he said simply, and everything came full circle from such an abrupt answer.
“Hunter was the first Ashcroft, the first acolyte, to ever leave their cult. He was a brilliant man, truly. They don’t make men like him anymore.
He chose real academia over fanaticism. Truth and language over mysticism and terror.
” His head dropped, and he pressed his fingers into the handwriting on the pages.
“Eventually he began searching for a way to bring an end to the cult. A way to fight and kill the stolas. A way to stop them from bringing Moloch into our world.”
My breath hitched, and the soup I’d managed to eat gurgled uncomfortably in my stomach.
“But what… What does any of that have to do with you? Why is a history professor involved in all this?”
He paused, shifting from foot to foot and avoiding my eyes. “A stolas killed my sister.”
A gasp breached me. I slapped my hand over my mouth to cover it before another wave of words escaped. “Oh God, I’m so sorry for your loss. I can’t imagine—”
He held up a hand, stopping my ramble.
“It was a long time ago.” His shoulders sagged, and he ran a hand through his hair.
“But your grandfather was there seconds after it happened. Showed up like some dark knight and killed the fucking thing. Not in time to save her, but…” He sighed and blinked away the cloud of misery forming in his eyes.
“He took pity on me, I suppose. Saw my need for revenge and taught me everything he knew. The demons, the cult, the real history of Kilbride. More importantly, how to kill them.”
An asphyxiating nightmare, everything crawled from the darkness and threatened to sweep me into an unfathomable sea of agony. And it was too deep, too dark, too fathomless.
I would drown—I was drowning.
With his eyes on the journal, he continued.
“Hunter eventually told me the story of how he betrayed the cult by leaving them, how he lost his inherited power to transform into a stolas, and consequently working against them for the rest of his life. He’s a traitor in their eyes.
Because of that, all the remaining stolas will be trying to get to you.
They might see you as the penultimate sacrifice to bring their god over into our world. ”
All those weeks, I had truly begun to believe I was falling into an abyss of insanity. Questioning everything and everyone around me, disbelieving the truth standing right in front of my eyes.
All along the truth was that my grandpa’s decision to leave the cult had cycled back around as a burden on my shoulders.
An executioner’s ax barely restrained and hovering in wait over my vulnerable neck.
It was there, in the hollow silence of my ancestral home, where I found myself trapped in the epilogue of a dark inheritance.