3. Viper
Viper
T he gates of St. Sebastian’s loom before us like the entrance to hell itself.
Ancient iron twisted into patterns that probably looked intimidating when they were forged centuries ago, now they just look like a massive pain in my arse.
The bodies of the hostiles are scattered around the entrance like discarded toys, and I can smell the metallic tang of blood mixing with the smoke from the burning library.
At some point tonight, we still need to deal with that, but it’s secondary. It’s not an inferno.
“Right,” I mutter, studying the mechanism that controls the drawbridge. “This is going to be a bastard.”
The winch system is massive and probably hasn’t been used since the place stopped being an actual fortress. Rust has claimed most of the metal, and the chains look like they might snap if we breathe on them too hard.
“Brute force it is,” I mutter.
“Got plenty of that,” Rafferty grunts. He grabs one of the huge iron levers, planting his feet. “Me, you, and pretty boy. Landon, are you staying or heading back? Speak now or forever hold your peace.”
“I’ve gotta get back,” he says, exchanging a look with me.
I nod. “We’ll open the gates and then seal them shut behind you. Get gone, mate.”
He punches me on the shoulder and jogs across the courtyard to his Aston. He guns the engine, and we open up the gates.
Landon exits the gates, driving over the dead bodies that were strewn about before he slams on the brakes and gets out. He drags the bodies into the overgrown ditch that serves as the moat as we close the gates and prepare for an epic cardio.
Blake removes his jacket, placing it over Venetia’s shoulders, and rolls his sleeves up. His forearms are muscled and covered in ink. I raise an eyebrow with a smirk. “Bit of a badass under that suit.”
He smiles. “Just because I have brains doesn’t mean I don’t also have brawn.”
I’m not sure if he’s throwing an insult at me or not.
Doesn’t matter. We have work to do.
Landon shoots off into the night, knowing he has to get back to the South Side before shit hits the fan.
I nod, my eyes tracking the thick, rusted links as Blake and Raff put their shoulders into the lever. The metal groans in protest, a sound like a dying beast, but it doesn’t budge.
“On three,” I growl, gripping the cold iron. The rain plasters my tee to my skin, and the world narrows to this single, impossible task. “One... two... THREE!”
We throw our combined weight into it. Metal screams against metal, a high-pitched shriek of agony that sets my teeth on edge.
For a second, nothing happens, and then, with a juddering crack that echoes across the quad, the winch moves.
Barely an inch, but it moves. The drawbridge groans, a deep, ancient sound, and lifts from the ground.
“Again!” Rafferty roars, his face a mask of straining muscle.
We heave. My back screams, my shoulders feel like they’re being ripped from their sockets, but we keep pushing. The drawbridge inches upwards, groaning and shuddering, fighting us every fucking inch of the way.
Venetia stands a little way off, her gun held loosely at her side, her gaze sweeping the darkness beyond the gates.
She looks like a fucking Valkyrie in the firelight, fierce and beautiful and mine.
The sight of her puts more fire in my bones.
I’ll lift this whole fucking castle for her if I have to.
With one final, agonised roar of metal, the drawbridge slams into its raised position, the locking mechanism engaging with a deafening clang. We stumble back, panting, the rain cooling our burning skin.
“Right,” I say, rolling my shoulders. “That’s one problem solved.”
“Now for the moat,” Blake says.
“Is this really going to stop them?” Venetia asks, chewing her lip.
“It’ll slow them down,” Blake says. “That’s as much as we can hope for until we burn their operation down.”
When we turn, we see that a bunch of the more resilient students have started to put out the library fire.
“Good for them,” I mutter. “All hands on deck.”
“Without being told,” Venetia adds slowly. “They know.”
I pull her close, just breathing in her expensive perfume. “They know.”
“Yeah, well, we need to know where the fuck this reservoir thing is,” Rafferty says.
“Underground somewhere,” Venetia mutters. “But where?”
“There’ll be plans,” Blake says, already tapping away on his phone, the screen reflecting in his annoyingly calm eyes. “This place has been renovated a dozen times, but the original foundations, the old systems... they’re usually documented somewhere in the archives.”
“The archives that are currently on fucking fire?” Rafferty asks, stating the obvious.
“Digital archives, Rafferty,” Blake replies without looking up. “The twenty-first century did eventually reach St. Sebastian’s, even if the architecture didn’t.”
I grunt, wiping rain and sweat from my face. Of course, the pretty boy has the fucking blueprints on his magic phone. As much as I want to punch that smug look off his face sometimes, he’s useful. Too fucking useful.
He finds what he’s looking for and turns the screen towards us.
A complex diagram of tunnels and pipes beneath the campus.
“Here,” he points to a section under the old chapel.
“The main valve system for the original reservoir. It’s designed to flood the moat and the lower tunnels in case of a siege. ”
“A siege is what we’ve fucking got,” I mutter, my eyes fixed on Venetia. She’s staring at the map, her expression intense, already processing, planning. She’s a natural at this. My wildcat. A fucking queen.
“Fine, but where do we access this lower level?” I ask.
“The dungeons,” Blake says with that sinister smile.
“Dungeons?”
“Old castle, remember?”
“Oh, hell no,” I growl. “I’m not going into any creepy as fuck dungeons.”
“Scared?”
“Scared of a hellhole designed for imprisonment under a fucking place of worship in a six-hundred-year-old castle that has seen more sieges than I have changed my underwear?”
“You don’t wear underwear,” Venetia points out.
I glower at her. “My point is not only is it creepy as fuck and probably full of ancient diseases and filth and maybe a bunch of dead men, it will have…” I breathe in deeply.
“Have what?” Blake asks curiously.
“Rats,” I grit out.
Silence falls, and I straighten up.
“The man who feeds his venomous snake dead mice is scared of rats?” Rafferty snorts.
“Scared? No. Wary, yes. Filthy vermin. If you grew up where I did and saw the shit, literally, that they eat, you wouldn’t be so cavalier.”
“Here’s an idea,” Venetia says. “How about we let Lucy down there to clear the way?”
“Are you fucking with me?” I spit out.
“Why not?” she says, shrugging. “Gives her a bit of exercise outside the tank, and she gets nicely fed. Assuming there are rats down there…”
“As far as ideas go, it’s not half bad,” Rafferty says.
“This. Is. Insane.”
“Maybe,” Blake says. “But we need you down there and not freaking out when you hear the patter of tiny feet.”
“No,” I say, trying to push my irrational wariness aside. “She means a lot to me. She could die down there if she eats anything old and deadly.”
“So we go, rats or no rats,” Blake states.
“Let’s go,” I grumble, bending to pick up the rifle I ditched when we lifted the drawbridge.
“You planning on shooting the fuckers?”
“If they get in my fucking way, yeah,” I snarl, my patience worn thinner than cheap bog roll.
Rafferty’s smirk tells me he’s enjoying this far too much.
I shove past him, leading the way toward the chapel.
The air is thick with the smell of wet earth and burning history.
Every shadow seems to writhe, every gust of wind sounds like the skittering of claws.
“A crack in the armour,” Venetia murmurs, slipping her hand into mine. “Never thought I’d live to see the day.”
“It’s not a fucking crack,” I correct her, my voice low. “It’s a healthy respect for plague-carrying vermin.”
“I think this castle was built a hundred years after the plague,” Blake pipes up, and I’ve never wanted to whack a cunt more than I do right now.
“Shut the fuck up,” I growl.
“Anyone notice that the staff is on hiatus?” Venetia asks as we stride past the smouldering northwest corner of the library. Damage is minimal. Either someone is really crap at aiming, again , or it wasn’t meant to destroy the entire building.
“Do you blame them? Those that aren’t in on it, are probably running for the hills.”
“How?”
“Every castle has tunnels,” Blake points out. “Exit strategy for the Lord in case things go sideways.”
“But exit means entrance as well,” I say. “We need to find it.”
“After we flood the moat,” Venetia says. “I can’t imagine six-hundred-year-old tunnels are being run over with fleeing staff. If they even know where they are.”
“No, that just leaves the ones who are part of this. And we don’t know who they are.”
We all shudder uneasily, but we don’t have time to let our caution rule us. We have to methodically work our way through the pile of shit.
“Maybe we should split—” Venetia starts,
“No,” Rafferty says before I can. “We don’t split up.”
“Agreed. That would be the worst thing we could do right now.”
She nods. I know she didn’t really mean it, but wanted to say it, knowing we have a lot of ground to cover.
The chapel looms out of the darkness, its windows shattered from the blast.
It feels less like a house of God and more like a tomb.
Blake leads us to a heavy stone slab near the altar, with a tarnished iron ring set into its centre.
“This is it,” he says, his voice echoing in the cavernous space.
“The entrance to the dungeons. Prisoners would be brought here to repent their sins before being shoved into the hole.”
“Great,” I mutter.
Rafferty and I bend down to grab the ring and pull. The stone grinds, scraping against the floor as we heave it open, revealing a set of steep, narrow steps descending into absolute blackness. A gust of stale, damp air, smelling of rot and centuries of decay, hits my face.
And I fucking swear I can hear them. The patter of tiny feet.