Chapter 35 #2
As we walk, I gain more confidence in my posture. The yellow eyes help, but blending in is a lot easier when there is someone far more interesting walking beside me—I might as well not exist.
Those that pass us keep their eyes low, but crane their necks at Salem as he walks by. They clearly fear him, but not enough to look away. They’re almost mesmerized by him. Drawn to his appearance despite what they know lurks beneath it.
We make it to his rooms without issue, crossing into the west wing of the Estate a few minutes later.
It’s nice to simply walk here instead of being tossed through time and space, waking up with all my organs rearranged and a pounding through my head so violent the only cure is ripping my brain out of my skull.
I slip inside the door he holds open, the darkness of the hall giving way to a grey-lit room. The heavy curtains are pulled back, revealing the clouded sky over Streatham as the smothered sun tries desperately to break through.
“Over here,” he says, crossing the room to an alcove along the far wall. There’s a long reading bench tucked beneath the window, and a bunch of decorative cushions have been tossed to the ground beside it.
Before I can question him, Salem pulls on the seat of the bench, lifting it on hinges I hadn’t seen.
“Holy shit,” I mutter, peering over the side of the wood. There’s a staircase leading to gods know where—all I can see is the first ten steps or so. “How the hell did you find this?” I ask him.
“I had a hunch,” he shrugs, still holding up the bench seat.
“You had a hunch that there was a secret tunnel inside this bench?”
Staring blankly back at me, he nods. “Yup.”
Looking down through the tunnel, I decide I’ve been in worse places, and quite frankly, my curiosity is eating me alive. “Well, this should be fun.” I swing one leg over, barely hitting the concrete on the other side before I’m grabbed by the collar of my robe that I’m officially deeming a curtain.
Dipping his head to my height, I swallow. “You’re a bit reckless,” he tells me. “Has anyone told you that?”
“Says the man who snapped the neck of a guard then insisted I burn a body in the—”
“We aren’t talking about me. We’re talking about you.
” His voice is steady, calm, and altogether too close to my ear.
There isn’t a single inch of wiggle room in his grip, but I am tempted to try and shrug out of my curtain robe anyway.
“You were about to just march right down there, weren’t you?
” A rhetorical question. That’s absolutely what I was going to do.
“Without asking me what I’d found or what to be careful of? ”
I take a steadying breath, forcing down my frustration enough to grit out, “What did you find?”
Keeping his hold on the fabric, Salem explains, “The first two tunnels on your right have been used recently. Avoid them. If you go down far enough, there will be an exit, but if you go through it, you won’t be able to get back in. It will lock behind you.”
I’m guessing he learned that the hard way.
“Anything else?” I ask.
His hold loosens a fraction. “No.”
“Good.”
I’m not sure what I hit him with—some combination of Rogue and Sol magic—but what was intended to knock him into oblivion only knocks him back a few steps, freeing me from his grip in the process.
“I’m not reckless,” I tell him, readjusting my curtain-robe. “I’m decisive.”
The Hound rights himself, silently staring back at me. He’s not annoyed or angry—my small display of magic is hardly a threat to him—but he does look surprised. Maybe not at what I said, but at what I did. And perhaps that’s a good thing.
If we are to work together, it will be as equals, even if he is a centuries-old god with a penchant for pain.
Blinking out of his stare, the Hound shoves his hands into his pockets and nods to the tunnels. “Happy exploring,” he says.
“Happy source hunting,” I reply, shutting the bench behind me.
As he suggested, I avoid the first two tunnels on my right, moving the ball of light above me further down the passage. The tunnel is narrow enough that the echo of me passing through isn’t as loud as I thought it might be, and I’m taking that as a win.
The walls are cold and damp, the steps worn, but the stagnant smell tells me that although they’ve been used frequently, they’ve not been visited in a while.
I might not have a supernatural sense of smell, but I’m not a moron.
The soft amber orb pulses, illuminating a pathway to the left. The rest of the tunnel continues ahead, but I decide to explore.
Unsheathing a knife—just in case—I turn the corner into the small chamber. When light pours into the space, I slowly lower my weapon.
It’s someone’s room. A grim and dismal attempt at one, but I can tell whoever stayed here had tried to make it nice.
There’s a small mat against the far wall, an old blanket folded neatly across it, and the sheets are stained and grey.
The only other thing in the space is a worn wooden chair in the corner with a few small cloths stacked on the seat.
I make a mental note to ask Salem what he thinks of this room. Maybe he got a whiff of who stayed in it. He must have decided it’s safe, or else he would have told me to avoid it.