Chapter 56
Will knew something was wrong with the grand townhouse the moment he ran through the open gate. Elodie had ordered the carpet on the staircase rolled up for the celebration, yet it looked as though it had never been removed. A glittering red river dripped down the steps and pooled across the tiles.
“Oh,” Will breathed and stopped, panting.
Eric had been right. He should have run for the train.
But at the same time, Eric had betrayed him in a last attempt to hurt Elodie.
The threads she had tied around his heart were stronger than his own survival instinct.
She needed him, and he would not abandon her.
Perhaps the pact he had made with the god was far less dangerous than the promise he had given Elodie.
So he took a step toward the staircase.
It was quiet, far too quiet. From outside, he heard only the howling of vampires, and he possessed enough sense to bolt the gate behind him so the monsters would not follow the scent and storm the grand townhouse.
Then he noticed something else, something he had only ever seen in the Red Hand’s castle. Dark red moss, almost black, spread along the walls. It resembled wild-growing flesh or mold consuming the house.
With every ragged breath, he inhaled the coppery smell of blood, hanging so heavily in the air that he almost missed the sweet, rotten stench of the growths. He shuddered. He had hoped to banish those odors from the grand townhouse when he tore out the ballroom.
Elodie. Eric.
He drew one final breath, and the calm the Albatross’s magic had given him fell away completely. Shock crushed into him like a sledgehammer.
Elodie! Eric! The stairs flew beneath his feet.
Blood splashed up to his knees, but the red fabric of his clothes absorbed it.
His steps skidded across the slick floor, and the closer he came to the ballroom, the more intense the stench became.
The growths climbed the doorframes and gathered like snowdrifts in the corners.
Before he even reached the ballroom, he stumbled over the first body. Its throat had burst open, its belly gutted. His boots tangled in the large intestine, and his dinner rose into his throat as he struggled to free himself. Everything was still so fresh that steam rose.
The chains Elodie had wound around his heart rattled and dragged him onward while the beast of horror sat upon his chest, making it hard to breathe.
Empty eyes stared at him as he stumbled farther. More men and women appeared, all torn apart, their faces twisted in pain. It was so silent, so terribly silent, broken only by the steady dripping of blood onto the stone tiles.
Will reached the ballroom. The double doors were closed; only a hand was trapped in the gap, its fingernails clawed into the wood.
He stopped and stared down at the leather glove adorned with artificial nails and rings, but it was as though he could not truly see it.
As though his mind could not process what had happened here. Then he pushed against the door.
At least, he tried. Something pressed against it from within, and he had to throw his full weight against the wood. The moment the gap grew wide enough, he slipped through.
Will was no hero and had never considered himself particularly brave—not when he climbed into the Albatross’s cave as a child, nor when he accepted the position in Bloodgrove.
He had done those things because forward was the only path available, and as he forced himself into the ballroom now, he knew he was acting from cowardice once again.
Fleeing and leaving Elodie and Eric behind without knowing their fate was more terrible than surrendering to whatever waited for him here.
Behind him, the door fell shut again, crushing the arm once more until the bones crunched.
There was so much blood. In their dark red clothes, the guests formed a crimson landscape of hills, stretching across the marble floors to the edges of the ballroom.
They had died quickly, but not quickly enough.
Many still clutched their own entrails or pressed blood-smeared hands against their open throats.
The smell of burned flesh and stomach acid corroded the air.
His lips moved as though he meant to speak, but no words emerged. He wanted to call Elodie’s and Eric’s names, but the air caught in his throat. It was so silent here. His eyes burned, but he was too deeply shocked to cry.
Desperate, Will seized the nearest body and turned it over to see the face.
It was Elodie’s friend Lady Katelyn. In panic, he grabbed the next—the cruel Blato, who had filled a vampire with pig’s blood.
Now he lay there, himself exploded like a doll.
Beside him was a duchess who had invited Will to tour her mansion.
Stories attached themselves to face after face, invitations to tea or dinner, quick exchanges and fleeting touches.
He remembered their houses, which would now stand empty forever—or until scavengers claimed them and stepped into their bloody footprints.
But he searched for a scrap of white fabric. Elodie would stand out among all these bodies, he told himself. He would find her quickly if she were here. How fortunate that Elodie had worn a wedding dress. How fortunate that Eric had worn his senatorial robes over a black suit.
Only after he had walked several meters into the hall did he stop.
Even if he found them, they would be dead. No one here was alive.
He vomited over an elderly couple. They had been among the curious guests at the opera, and death had made their distorted features worse.
Even if Will had tried to respect the dead, there was scarcely any space where he would not strike someone.
His stomach almost turned itself inside out, and he retched even after nothing remained but acid burning on his tongue.
His half-digested dinner dripped from their wrinkled faces.
With difficulty, he forced himself onward.
The candles in the chandeliers still burned and cast their light across the bodies beneath.
When he looked toward the ceiling, he could almost convince himself this was merely another terrible dream.
Even now, he marveled at his own work: the seamless transition from the bone-like ribs of the vault into the stylized branches and foliage of the central column.
Perhaps this was only one of those nightmares that plagued every architect before an unveiling.
The ceiling collapsing. Forgetting to lay a floor.
Everyone laughing at his idea. The guests finding it ugly; preferring to live inside their grotesque, dark mausoleums. Every single guest butchered, bleeding across his perfect white marble.
Will laughed. Enough bodies filled the hall that his voice had no echo.
Then he continued, without direction, only deeper and deeper into the disaster.
Until his feet no longer waded through a film of blood but sank into a thick, spongy layer. He had nearly reached the center of the room when his gaze fell upon the platform where the Red Hand had sat.
Again, he thought of the exploded vampire.
The Red Hand leaned against the central column as though resting beneath a tree in a red-and-white grove.
His head remained intact apart from a bullet hole in his forehead.
But his body lay open, as though someone had slit apart a sack and spilled everything he had been across the people surrounding him.
Will retched again, but nothing came up. Sunk ankle-deep, he waded through pinkish pulp, and although he could not prove it, he suspected it was the Red Hand’s insides.
“Oh gods,” he breathed and pulled his cravat over his mouth. It did little against the smell.
The red growths flourished wildly here, climbing the column like ivy and covering the bodies.
Will searched the corpses surrounding the Red Hand, but none of them belonged to Wilkinson, Elodie, or Eric.
Cursing, he turned in a circle and suddenly stopped.
Something was wrong here—apart from the absolute nightmare of this slaughterhouse.
The wall adjoining the small parlor he had intended to finish during the celebration appeared distorted.
Long folds ran across the tracery he had shaped less than twenty-four hours ago, as though it were only fabric, a vast curtain someone had drawn aside.
And where the door should have been, what should have been a stone wall parted. The stage curtain of reality had been pushed aside, folded open at one corner, revealing a dark maw. Red growths crawled out from within.
“Damnation.” Will knew he would not find Elodie or Eric in the ballroom.
His foot struck a revolver like the one Elodie used while hunting vampires. He laughed without humor and picked it up. Five rounds remained. Although the weapon was smeared with the unidentifiable red pulp, he shoved the heavy thing into his belt and headed toward the tear in the world.
The laughter followed him; he could not stop until he stood at the edge of the portal.
Of course Elodie had succeeded. Whatever course the battle had taken, whoever among them had sacrificed all these people, Elodie had ended it with a bullet to the head. As though putting down a rabid animal.
He imagined her white dress soaking through with blood, her looking down at the Red Hand one final time, granting him the mercy of a bullet, then turning toward the portal.
Or had it opened afterward?
It did not matter. Will took a candle from a wall sconce and ducked through the opening. He avoided touching the fabric of reality, afraid of what might happen.
The passage was dark. In the distance, he could make out a faint red glow and headed toward it. He did not look back.
The flame danced in the draft, which passed hot through the throat like some ancient breath and tugged at the sweat-damp strands of his hair.
He cupped a hand protectively around the candle, and his shadow moved across the crudely formed tunnel walls.
The floor was even and flowed into a low vault, but only now did he realize it wasn’t gleaming stone that covered everything.
In the Red Hand’s castle, the walls had felt alive. Here, they truly were. Muscles, tendons, and veins stretched across every surface, leaving not a single inch bare. Even the floor yielded softly beneath his steps.
Will cursed every god. How had he ended up here? How had this become his life?
An eye opened above him.
“Gods!” Will stumbled back. When nothing else happened, he frowned and watched it blink sluggishly. Hesitantly, he took a step forward, and the eyeball followed him until it nearly protruded from between the red lids.
Will held his breath and looked down the passage, waiting for something to happen.
But the eye merely watched him and blinked slowly.
Defiant, he raised the candle until it almost touched the eye, and the lids snapped shut at once.
It did not scream in pain, but Will saw it retreat from the heat, the eyeball twitching beneath the lid.
The thin skin scorched, and a blister formed.
With grim satisfaction, he lowered the candle. He might be in hell, but hell could feel pain. Though five bullets would accomplish little, he drew the revolver and marched on.
A second eye opened several meters farther on. A brown iris framed by bloodshot white watched him. Will’s steps slowed once more.
A third followed farther down the passage, then two more close to the floor, then ten across the ceiling, then hundreds.
Lids opened everywhere, covering the low vault like a grotesque sky of stars.
And every one of them looked at him.