3. Chapter 3
Chapter 3
P anting, I push the trap door open and hoist myself up into a dark, empty room. Standing straight, I take a moment to look around.
“Dust, lard, frankincense,” my wolf recites as she sniffs at the air, straining her ears. “And no sounds whatsoever. This is most definitely an abandoned monastery.”
I nod. I don’t think there’s any chance those guards will let Lorcan and Raven proceed sneaking into the town, so despite the worry gnawing at me, I don’t linger. I keep moving, rushing up the basement steps and through the winding corridors, past rows of deserted cell-like rooms and a huge, echoing chapel.
The plan is to get out of the monastery and find my way to our meeting spot, the second of the two entrances into town that Raven found using her powers. And the quicker I do it, the better.
Still, the moment I step into the entrance hall, I force myself to slow down. The last thing I need right now is to draw attention by running out of an abandoned building in an unfamiliar town.
But when I push the old wooden door open and walk outside, I immediately come to a stop, my eyebrows pulling down.
It is almost midnight, but it’s a town square I have in front of me, and there’s literally no one here except for me.
“This is not good,” my wolf states the obvious.
Frowning, I start moving away from the monastery and past one of the many half-timbered houses, looking up to try to gauge from the windows whether this entire town is deserted.
“Someone’s coming,” my wolf warns me. “Vampires.”
But I only manage to turn to my left before I see two guards — one tall and one short, both muscled — come out of an alley, their eyes fixing on me.
Damn it.
Slowly, I move to change direction.
“Hey, you,” one of them yells out.
So as not to raise suspicion, I stop, but I pull my hood down.
They come to stand in front of me. “What are you doing out?” the tall one demands.
It makes my eyebrows shoot up for a second, when I realize they don’t recognize me. My eyes dart to all the dust on my clothes from climbing through the trap door. “I fell,” I reply readily.
The short one squints at me. “What are you?”
I point at my Runes. “A fae.”
“She’s a weird one,” the short one leans to whisper to the tall one.
Do they really not recognize me?
The tall one keeps staring at me. “Prove it,” he barks out.
They really don’t know who I am. Fighting a smile, I use my Runes to shoot a small flame out of my fingers.
“Where’s your badge?” the short one asks, suspicion in his eyes.
What the… I’ve no idea what he’s talking about, but something tells me admitting that would only get me in trouble. “I lost it when I fell,” I lie.
The short one rolls his eyes. “In the name of the Holy Blood,” he drawls, then motions for me to follow. “Let’s go.”
Lorcan and Raven on my mind, I find myself hesitating.
The tall one grabs me by the upper arm. “Move it, woman, you’re going to be late.”
I frown. The whole situation is confusing to say the least, but they’re already dragging me down the square and I don’t think this would be a good moment to turn hostile.
I need to learn more first. I need to get out of this situation, find my way to our meeting point and get all three of us the hell out of this weird town.
But when the guards drag me all the way to the other end of the square, to the vampiric church perched there and then straight inside, it’s all I can do not to squirm with how unsettled the sight makes me.
This is where everyone is hiding. The Gothic interior is enormous, silent and dimly lit, but it’s crammed with people, all seemingly waiting for the service to begin.
My frown grows deeper. A midnight mass? I haven’t heard of one happening since the time of the Fausts’ first reign in sixteenth century.
It’s to the back of the standing crowd that the guards deposit me. When I glance over my shoulder, I see them getting settled in front of the now closed door.
This is mandatory? And it’s in strangely disciplined silence that the people are waiting. It makes the whole thing downright eerie, the way every movement echoes against the intricately carved walls.
My mind buzzing, I watch a gaunt male vampire in ceremonial robes climb to the raised pulpit under the largest set of three stained-glass windows to the front of the church. All eyes fix on him. It’s in that flat, dragged-out and somehow plaintive voice so characteristic of priests that he begins, “In the name of the Gods, the Mother and the Holy Blood.”
It makes my eyebrows shoot up, when everyone around me responds with a collective, echoing, “Fidelis sanguini.”
The ceremony continues in the same practiced, automatic tone, giving me the opportunity to look around for Lorcan and Raven. After all, this must be where the guards have taken them as well.
But looking around only draws my attention to more weirdness.
One, the people in the pews all seem to be vampires — lavishly dressed individuals giving off aristocratic vibes. The ones standing to the back are all faes — drained-looking people wearing simple, inexpensive clothing with a blue badge on their right upper arms. As for shifters, I don’t just fail to find Lorcan and Raven. There doesn’t seem to be a single one attending this service.
Growing more and more confused, I pay more attention to the rest of my surroundings. It makes me suck in a sharp breath, when my gaze lands back on the priest.
The insignia on his robes, on the pulpit, on the stained-glass windows behind his back…
It’s all vampiric symbols, but there’s the familiar depiction of the sun and the moon thrown into the mix as well.
Baldur’s insignia.
Fear floods me. When did he conquer France?
It’s at that exact moment that the people stop repeating the words of some prayer after the priest. There’s a moment of silence before he clears his throat and addresses us all in an equally pompous, but more conversational voice. “Beloved brothers and sisters…”
My ears prick up. Now I’m really curious to hear what he has to say.
“We are gathered here tonight to give thanks for the bounty we enjoy in our everyday lives,” he starts. “First and foremost, we give thanks for the Emperor…”
The Emperor?
“...our Sacred One, without whom we would be as lost as we were before Mother took us under her wing. His divine power he only ever uses for good — to put food on our tables, to build our cities, to protect us from those who would do us harm.”
“Fidelis sanguini,” the people all chant in unison.
Holy hell.
“Yet, despite all the selfless efforts and sacrifices of our Sacred One,” the priest continues, a healthy dose of self-righteous contempt coloring his voice, “there are still those among us with blackened hearts, who know not good from evil.”
Suddenly, there’s a disturbing restlessness all around me that makes me hold my breath in anticipation.
“As the Mother teaches us, there is no virtue higher than loyalty to the Empire, but even among you good, decent people of Troyes, there hide treacherous individuals. Tonight, we bring forth three of these plague-ridden rats, for you to decide their punishment according to the will of the Gods.”
With this, the priest gives someone to his right a nod and three guards step up with three people in chains.
With the corner of my eye, I spot a woman standing next to me get on her toes, this malicious gleam in her eyes.
“What say you, people of Troyes?” the priest demands.
“Witches,” someone yells out, using an old derogatory term for faes. “To the work camp with them”
My eyebrows shoot up.
“Work camp,” people echo in unison, their voices growing more and more insistent.
The priest raises a hand to ask for silence, then gives a nod to the guards.
In the blink of an eye, they kick the three faes to their knees and rip their shirts off.
One of the prisoners lets out a panicked wail that makes my blood curdle. He quickly swallows the sound, but now I see another guard bring out something that looks a lot like hot irons.
“Hey,” I mutter as soon as the realization hits me. Unable to contain myself, I start moving forward, the people in front of me throwing me angry glances over their shoulders.
“Shhh,” I hear someone hiss just as I feel the tight grip of a bony hand on my upper arm.
My eyes snap to my left, where I see an older male fae stare at me with a plea in his eyes.
“They’re hurting them,” I grit out just as my stomach churns with the smell of burned flesh.
“Please,” the man whispers, tears in his eyes, “you’ll get us all in trouble. Be quiet, I beg of you.”
He lets go of my arm. When I turn my eyes back ahead, the prisoners have already been branded — not a single sound to be heard from their mouths — and are being taken away, their heads hung low.
In shocked silence, I follow them with my eyes until they’re gone.
“Beloved brothers and sisters,” the priest’s voice snaps me out of it, “you have done us all a great service tonight.”
My jaw clenching, I throw daggers at him while I listen to people cheer all around me.
“You have helped banish evil from our hearts and our community,” he continues, then steps to the side with a golden chalice in his hands. The vampires in the pews start getting up and forming a line even before he says, “You may come forward and drink of his blood, so the Empire may grow until the Empire is all there is.”
“Fidelis sanguini,” the first vampire says after he takes a sip.
“Fidelis sanguini.”
“Fidelis sanguini.”
For a while, I just keep standing there, watching the ceremony come to an end with equal parts fascination and disgust.
Still, it’s finding Lorcan and Raven that’s my priority right now. Figuring out what the hell is going on with this town, that needs to come second.
So when I hear the guards open the door behind my back and see people start leaving, I rush out and address the first fae I see move to walk past me — this old, sweet-looking lady. “Excuse me?”
“Yes, dear?” she asks as she stops to blink up at me.
“I’m looking for an older, heavier man with a crew cut, in company of a delicate-looking girl with long, black hair.”
Taking a moment to think, she shakes her head. Then she motions in the direction of the church. “Were they sitting in the front?” she inquires, probably wanting to say they might not have gotten out yet.
“They weren’t. The girl is wearing a hoodie and the man is in traditional shifter robes.”
I watch her blanch. “ Shifters? ”
Frowning, I nod.
It’s a look of disgust she throws me next. Her voice is clipped and ice-cold when she says, “The work camp is to the left of the north entrance.”
The work camp? “Um, excuse me—”
But she’s already walking away, throwing another disgusted look at me over her shoulder before disappearing into the crowd.
Slowly, I connect the dots — the fact I didn’t see a single shifter in there and the fact Baldur always thought shifters to be vermin. They’re all being sent to work camps.
Fear floods me.
That’s where they took Lorcan and Raven.