24. Callan
CALLAN
Aflicker of red reflects off the crumbling stone around us, casting shadows over Devon’s sweat-slick face as I hold a steady finger up to my lips.
It took two days to find the mine, then another two to navigate the crumbling rocks and steep slope, but we found our way to the very bottom.
It’s hotter than hell down here, now that we’re closer to the saturated core beneath Streatham, and there is no relief from it.
Sweat drips down and over my eyes as I glance to the right.
We’re standing in a dark tunnel, illuminated only by the flames Devon has skating across the dagger he holds. The warm light shivers along the crumbling walls and the rotted wood rafters.
We heard something. An echo that sounded from far down the tunnel. Like a stone falling. There’s a chance we’ve just disturbed it; I mean, this tunnel hasn’t been walked in seventy-five years.
The mine was deemed clean, emptied of all ores, so they pulled the miners out and sent them elsewhere. To my knowledge, no one’s been back since, which means there has been no effort to maintain it or reinforce the weight-bearing walls. That was Delia’s main concern.
We’re surrounded by walls that haven’t been reinforced in seventy-five years.
It’s like an iced-over lake; all it takes is one crack. It’d be a quick death, one that wouldn’t get a proper burial, but it would at least be painless.
Another thud echoes down the dark tunnel, and Devon and I go rigid.
There’s a chance that it wasn’t a falling rock. Anything could be dwelling down here. Horrid creatures that don’t need sunlight…beasts that thrive in the pitch dark. Or Rogues.
I step forward, but Devon pushes his way in front. That’s his job, to put himself first, but it never fails to piss me off. We move quietly; each footstep precisely placed into the patches of soft earth between stone.
There is the near-silent crackle of static as magic blooms into my bloodstream. Without sunlight to replenish, we’ve had to conserve power, but the four of us have plenty of experience doing so. Even still, I only have about a day’s worth before I’m empty.
My head whips around when the toe of Phoenix’s boot strikes stone. His arm flails, but Easton snatches it and yanks him back in place. I can’t see anything but their eyes, not with the ventilation masks obstructing most of their faces, but Phoenix stares back at me, pupils wide.
I chastise him with a warning glare, turning back when I’m sure he got the message.
I manage to push my way to the front as we start walking again, timing it with the narrowing of the hall so that Devon can’t force me back.
If the map is accurate, as Pa promised it would be, there should be a corridor at the end of this hall.
It was a room for miners to sleep between shifts, and in theory, it should only be a few feet from the palace dungeons.
The dungeons themselves are made of solid rock, maybe three to five feet of it.
We’ll have to tunnel our way through without disturbing the mine.
My hand hovers, then a spark bursts down the tunnel. It zips past in a silent whistle, illuminating more cracked and crumbling walls, more wooden rafters with thick white webs hanging in the corners, and—
There. A door.
Devon steps between me and my view of it. “I’ll yank you back by your neck if you try to go in there ahead of me,” he dead-pans.
“Our biggest threat right now is the strength of the walls, D.” I shoulder past him and carefully navigate the rocks ahead of us. “If they collapse, it won’t matter who’s in front.”
“We don’t know who could be on the other side of that door,” Easton says sharply, but I keep walking, silently unsheathing the sword at my back in response. I make it to the door and gently push my shoulder against the rusted hinges.
The spark I sent zips past the small opening, illuminating the room for us.
The exposed earth ceiling is supported by more wooden rafters, with empty lanterns hanging from them.
I duck under, keeping my head low. The ceiling height has dropped dramatically from what it was in the tunnels.
Thin metal frames of collapsible beds lay strewn across the floor, torn pieces of cloth caught between the springs.
There are worn leather boots littered about, crushed cans of food, and empty canteens, as if they left this place in a hurry all those years ago.
Phoenix and Easton spread to the corners of the room, sweeping through the back of the space while Devon and I clear the rest. There are paintings on the walls, fake windows with bright green pastures and a burning sun hanging above it, a night sky with a half-moon, a shimmering ocean with cresting waves.
There is no telling how long some of these miners were left down here.
There is no telling how long they went without seeing the sun.
I bet they painted these to keep themselves sane.
I sheath my sword, crossing the room to the far wall—
“Wait!” Easton shouts, and I turn to face him. He raises a finger. “Look.”
I whip my head back around, my eyes narrowing on the few feet left between me and the wall I need to get to. The wall closest to the dungeons. “What? I don’t see—” My entire body stiffens.
There’s a reflective sheen, like gas rising off burning pavement, and it stretches across the whole room, floor to ceiling.
I rip off my mask. “Motherfucker.”
“What is it?” Phoenix asks, prowling forward. He looks at Easton when I can’t bring myself to answer.
“They’ve put up wards.”
Devon stands nose to nose with the ward, a vicious snarl on his sweat-slick face. “They suspected we’d come through here?”
“Not just here,” I grit out, tracing the ward to the far wall where it runs through stone. “If I had to guess, it’s up around the entire Palace.”
No one speaks. Phoenix shifts his weight, and Easton steps forward to study it.
I cast my gaze to the ceiling, then to the floor. “E, is it a blood ward?”
He nods solemnly. “A strong one.”
“Fuck,” I curse, running my knuckles across four days of stubble. My thoughts churn, silence falling for a moment as they wait for me to speak.
I snatch my mask off the ground and pull it back over my face. “Devon, you’re with me.” Easton and Phoenix meet my gaze. “You two stay here, see if you can figure out how deep the ward runs, surely it can’t go that far.”
“What’s your plan?” Easton asks as Devon joins me by the door, the same question in his dark eyes.
“To test it,” I reply. “If we’re going to find a way through, we need to know whose blood can pass.”
Easton’s black brows furrow. “You can’t be suggesting—” His voice trails off when I look back at him unblinking. “Boss, only dark blood can pass; it has to be that.”
“We need to be sure.” I wedge the door open further, stepping out into the tunnel.
“Chiaros,” Devon mutters, unsheathing his dagger.
We need a Rogue.
We make quick work of it, taking a shortcut through an exit we found on our way down here, and within a couple of hours, we’re back on the surface. The sun has set, the ground over Streatham suffocated by fog dense enough to cover us as we slip through the ruined city.
Not a single building was left untouched.
They ripped everything apart all those years ago.
They stole anyone they could from their houses…
from their yards…then they obliterated everything.
But here, where we stand, it used to be the heart of the city.
The cracked cobblestone streets at one point were lively and always filled, vendor tents pitched in front of the blacksmith markets and Flora’s shops.
There was music, beautiful music, and laughter.
Children used to play in these streets.
I used to play in these streets.
“There,” I whisper, nodding to a figure stumbling past the Palace gates.
It’s a male, peppered black hair, dark skin, and serpentine yellow eyes that cut through the fog like sinister beacons in the night.
He’s drunk. Drunk enough that when Devon spins an illusion of a woman, wandering through the broken homes of the surrounding city, he stumbles his way to her.
As soon as the Rogue locks his gaze on the woman, I palm a dagger in each hand, slipping through the shadows of a nearby building. Devon shoots me a warning glare but my steps never falter.
The Rogue stumbles past, a hungry look on his face that makes my blood boil and my vision blur. It’s because of him that the music is gone. It’s because of him that there is no more laughter here. His kind is an infection, a plague that has swept through the entire territory.
Territory that belongs to us.
Suddenly, I’m sixteen again, hunting Rogues on my own for no other reason than to satisfy the violent desire to avenge and destroy and make suffer.
It never mattered how many I killed. It never mattered how many times I’d sneak back into Pirn covered in dark blood.
I’d still be out the next night, chasing something I’d never satiate.
A mission that would never be completed.
But fuck, it felt good to watch the life leave their eyes.
The illusion Devon is holding moves to stand along a crumbling brick wall, her yellow eyes fluttering as the drunk male approaches.
“What’s your name, darlin?” he slurs, the cold hiss of his voice making my skin crawl. “You shouldn’t be out here alone—"
His forehead slams against the brick, skewered by the dagger I’d thrown. “Neither should you,” I mutter as rivulets of dark blood run down the wall and into the dirt. Devon exhales when I wrench the blade out, and the lifeless body slumps to the ground.
I raise an inquisitive brow, and Devon shrugs. “8 out of 10.”
“Really?” I ask, exchanging the dagger for the sword at my back.
“I’d have ranked you higher if you’d picked one that weighed less. You realize we’ll have to carry him—”
I grip the Rogue’s blood-soaked hair, yanking it back as I bring the sword down. The blade crunches through bone, and Devon curses when the head pops free, dangling from my outstretched hand.
“Don’t worry, D, I’ll carry him the whole way.”
“Did he scream?” Phoenix asks, his mismatched eyes bright with intrigue as he assesses the severed head tucked under my arm. “What did it sound like?”
“Didn’t have time to,” Devon replies, flicking his chin to Easton. “Find anything out while we were gone?”
“The ward is deep.” Easton pulls his mask down around his neck, wiping sweat off his brow. “Deeper than we can dig without breaching fatal temperatures.”
“It will have to come down, then,” I tell them, swatting Phoenix's hand away from the blood-soaked head.
I take a steadying breath, then I grip the Rogue’s head and roll it across the Ward. It passes with ease, the glossy sheen rippling around it then settling back into a bone-chilling stillness.
Rogue blood can pass.
I move forward, my hand slamming into the ward, and it bites into the surface of my skin, jolting the nerve endings in my palm until I’m forced to pull away.
Sol blood can’t.
I fight the urge to ram my fist through it.
“We need a lakelet,” Easton suggests, but my ears have started ringing. “They know the most about wards and—”
The wooden rafters above us groan, and rocks flake off the walls in response. All four of us freeze, and I exchange a sharp glance with Devon.
“The storm,” he murmurs, and I whip my head back as the ward trembles, rippling like the surface of water. “It’s here.”
Wood splinters and our gazes shoot skyward in unison, to the rock overhead, to the wind that must be picking up at the surface… disturbing the ground beneath.
“Put your masks up,” I say as calmly as I’m able. “Take a deep breath.”
The ceiling fractures, splitting down the center with a guttural crack that I feel deep in my bones. Then I give what might very well be my last order.
“Run.”