28 Elle To Discover #4
If Mr. Pratterman can access the spiral, there must be a way in.
The same way I’ve guided the tendrils toward ships on the surface, I imagine an opening in the wall, separating the stones and mortar into a large gash.
The spiral follows my command. It stretches upward until, when I open my eyes, there’s a dark red doorway before me.
“This is a woman’s life at stake,” James says. His desperation chisels at the stone I close around my heart. But it’s not enough.
“God granted her an extra month when she should’ve died on that ship and saved us all this heartache.” I don’t say it coldly. There’s no hatred in my heart for the girl. We’re both chess pieces. I’m merely moving as I was ordained to do.
Douglas is right. I cling to the idea that I’m beyond saving. These sins must be necessary, or what’s left of me will crumble into dust.
I walk through the doorway. Whatever Douglas says next is lost when I cross the barrier.
It takes my eyes a moment to adjust to the darkness inside, even with the power coursing through me.
The air is heavy with a damp heat I’ve never felt before.
Within seconds, my wool trousers and cotton shirt stick to my skin unpleasantly.
A scent wafts up from somewhere deep in the structure: ash, bitter hibiscus, and copper.
The ground gives a little under my feet like a mossy forest floor as I step forward. Yet, as my eyes finally adjust, I couldn’t be farther from a verdant landscape.
The spiral is made of stone and red, pulsing viscera. Threads of veins spread along the rounded walls. They connect chunks of wet and glistening meat to the dull stone. Steps follow the walls downward, a gruesome mirror of the lighthouse’s staircase above.
Liney would step back from the precipice, close her eyes, and retch at the smell.
I place my hand on the stone wall. Its heat coats my palm like honey.
This place, built of suffering and sacrifice to a being who doesn’t deserve such worship, connects to me.
I relax my shoulders, my jaw, and my grip on the knife.
There’s something like me within. A molten core that pumps through the wall’s veins that I understand. Heat, pain, and the momentum of hunger.
Small tendrils, like tendons, slither up my ankles to wrap softly against my calves with every footstep.
They aren’t trying to trip me, only connect.
I concentrate on the smoldering points of contact and open myself to its influence.
I’m used to the burn of energy by now, but this travels up my legs like sparks, wilder. Like it’s excited to be accepted.
The thrill turns feral when it meets my fury. A second heartbeat thrums through me, made of wrath and strong as the gales it’s swallowed ships with. My desperation to burn everything I know just to make it all stop feeds the beast of the spiral, consuming me as much as powering me.
I descend. There’s no rail beside the steps to save me from falling into its deep maw. I peer down the middle. There’s no bottom. It shudders then re-coils itself, drawing me down. It wants me to reach the bottom. Does it feel a kinship? Inside us both are meat and blood and misery.
I unbutton my shirt as I turn the last circle of stairs before the bottom.
It’s sweltering, like my face hovering over a boiling broth.
I fold the bottom of my trousers until they bunch at my knees.
I swipe at my sweating brow, but my arm is no drier.
This layer of hell is too hot even for an acolyte of rage.
Are there patron demons, the same as saints? Eleanor, patron of malice and rot.
The bottom of the staircase opens into a cavern.
The stone beneath me gives way to an underground basin—ocean?
—that spreads until it merges with the cavern ceiling into darkness.
The water is blood black, and whispers echo off the cavern walls, the same that I’ve heard every time I sacrificed to the Devil.
This, beneath the ocean of the living, is the drowned coast. The reservoir of all the suffering I’ve siphoned over the last year.
I approach the edge of the lake. While the surface is glass-like and still, fervent murmurs sound within. They’re a jumble of words, here and finally and give us and Elle.
They want me.
I remove the knife from its sheath. An oily iridescence moves on its surface. I can’t trust what Mr. Pratterman put into its blade. He could’ve placed a curse on it to stop the sacrifice. I can’t know what his use of the spiral’s power can do, only my own.
I kneel before the water’s edge. The whispers grow faster and louder until I can’t distinguish one string of words from another. I dip the knife into the water, careful not to place my hand in as well.
“I call on the forces that give this place its power.” My voice is unsteady, but it still echoes across the water. “Imbue this blade with your mark. Claim those it fells. Let this blade be enough, and I’ll deliver your sacrifice.”
A tug at the knife through the water nearly knocks me forward. I steady myself on the shore’s edge. Small, shriveled hands break the tension of the surface as I remove the knife from the water; then they sink back down. The surface is undisturbed.
Blue-gray marks glow along the edges of the blade, then fade into its darkness.
I have what I need.