Chapter 26
BLACK HOLE
Poppy
There’s a reason I don’t sell mysteries in my café: I’d much rather shoot or slice straight to the answers.
Yet here I am. Trying to solve the biggest mystery of my life while skulking through the woods toward an abandoned cemetery.
Carrying Nikolai’s Leviathan mask in one hand, the coordinates from the invitation that came with it loaded on my phone in the other.
Jezebel creeps beside me, her big black paws silent on the snow.
Night kisses the sun to sleep, bathing the underbrush in bruised black and blues.
Brisk air fills my nostrils with the smell of crisp pine and dead leaves.
Above the canopy of tall oaks and towering evergreens, lightning whips the black clouds into a spiraling frenzy.
Distant thunder bellows a war cry, threatening to unleash winter’s fury.
It feels like a warning, the universe roaring at me to turn around and go back home.
But I can’t.
I won’t.
The coordinates on Nik’s invitation to join Leviathan’s ranks are the only lead I have left.
Am I a fool for refusing to respect my parents’ wishes for me to keep my distance from Leviathan?
Undecided. Their precious detective hasn’t found anything more on Quinn.
Bronte reported several run-ins with her at work.
Each time, she’s acted as if nothing is amiss.
I told him to back off, refrain from showing our hand. As far as I know, he’s listened.
Dread eats at my insides like a parasite, though, as I wait for Bronte to either go missing or get killed. Bile rises in my throat. I swallow it down, banishing the memory of Fiona’s mangled corpse before my mind can replace her with him.
We trek along an overgrown path, my cell’s flashlight illuminating a wrought iron gate ahead. I halt, reading the rusted script:
ST. AURELIUS’S CEMETERY
The same saint whose academy is stained with Leviathan’s footprint.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” I mutter, breath curling in the cold as I dial the only person I have left to call. “What can you find on the surname ‘Aurelius'?”
Emi’s keyboard sings my favorite tune as I push through the gate.
Jezebel slinks ahead, sniffing the gravestones.
The cemetery is a labyrinth of tombstones and mausoleums guarded by statues of snarling gargoyles and weeping angels with broken wings.
I can feel their eyes on me, tracking my every step.
“Aurelius, a Latin-derived surname originating from a noble family in Ancient Rome,” Emi relays.
“Felix Aurelius, the founder of St. Aurelius’s Liberal Arts in the late sixteen-hundreds, was born in the only American family with that surname.
He was burned for heresy after he was supposedly found spearheading a secret society with a select few students who were mistaken for a coven of satanic witches.
They were hung around his pyre after being forced to watch him burn.
Felix was later elevated to saint status due to his work at the academy having been one of the first to explore teachings of unorthodox religious doctrines. ”
Founder of an academy. Head of a secret society. Professor of unconventional theologies. All during the witch trials.
Was St. Aurelius the father of Leviathan?
“Who were the students?”
“The scanned records I'm seeing in the academy's digital archives are barely legible, but I think I see Harper Bishop, Cheryl Nurse, Leon Redd, and—holy shit. Octavia Morgenstern? How is that even possible? She was an only child, wasn’t she? You wouldn’t exist if she died this young.”
“Unless she had a child of her own before her death.”
“I don’t think so, Pops. It says here that Felix kept detailed records of each student he recruited. There were several entries about Octavia’s supposed struggle with infertility.”
A chill spiders down my spine. Maybe the stories about my ancestor having struck a deal with the Devil aren’t fiction after all.
“It’s not important,” I say, skimming a thumb over the demonic mask. “I’m going to see what else I can find. I’ll be back soon.”
“I’ll be here, willingly getting my ass handed to me by LuciImHome to keep Fiona’s spirit happy.”
“You know she wanted you to win eventually, right?”
“Oh, please. That cheeky bitch would’ve bet on me losing for the rest of her life out of spite for how many times I swapped the mocha in her coffee for Ex-Lax.”
Chuckling, I hang up and wander the graveyard.
Jezebel lurks around a crypt dwarfing the surrounding headstones.
The stone structure is framed by a trio of fallen angels: one sits upon the stout steps and tilts his beatific face toward the moon; the opposite is curled in on herself and weeping into her knees; the last guards the entry with a holy tome in her arms. Carved on a plaque above the door is the name Aurelius.
I snicker. “The pompous prick had to have the biggest crypt, didn’t he?”
Twigs snap nearby. Jezebel grumbles a low growl.
Fuck.
I tap my cell light off, tuck the mask into my jacket, and dart behind an angel.
I skip my mini Glock in favor of my butterfly knife, having no interest in waking any residents living close by with a gunshot that could wake the dead.
Jezebel crouches by my side, ready to pounce.
Snow crunches twenty feet away. Ten. Five.
Imagining a hooded figure in a creepy demon mask, I raise my knife.
The footfalls grow closer…closer.
Then they stop.
Firelight casts the shadow of a masculine silhouette across the ground.
Jezebel’s growls fade, her demeanor suddenly changing at the same moment I lunge forward and strike. A tattooed hand catches my wrist mid-air, halting the blade an inch from an angelic warrior inked in black.
My eyes snap up, and my arm drops. “Mon ange?”
“Bonjour, Petit Diable.” Bronte, features lit by the lighter in his hand, hitches a dark eyebrow as Jezebel greets him with a purring yowl. “Fancy meeting you two here.”
“Wh-what are you doing here?”
“Stalking you,” he says, deadpan, a mischievous glint in his hazel eyes. I can’t tell if he’s joking or not. “The better question is: What are you doing here? Aren’t you under strict orders to stay away from all this?”
“I’m an adult who’s capable of making her own decisions, fuck you very much.”
“As has every victim of Leviathan been thus far.”
“Why do you care?” I snipe, my mood souring as every unspoken word between us since our last encounter at the manor comes rushing out. “We’re not working together anymore, remember? And it’s not like we’re friends. You have zero reason to give any fucks about my well-being.”
“That doesn’t mean I’d celebrate your demise, Poppy.”
I scoff and step backward, putting distance between us before I do anything rash like give him a matching scar on his other cheek. My heel catches a sheet of ice.
And I slip.
Too fast, my body pirouettes like a ballerina. My arms pinwheel. My knife tumbles to the ground, bouncing with the tip up as gravity yanks me down.
Stars save me. Despite the books I read, I really, really don’t want a blade in my ass.
Bronte lunges for my arm, hauling me into him. My face kamikazes off his hard chest as we stumble gracelessly. We slam into a statue so hard, the granite cracks.
And crumbles.
Bronte tucks me beneath his chin as stone crashes around us. I cling to him, and he clings to me. His shoulders take the brunt of the collapse. When the last broken piece tumbles to the ground, Jezebel chuffs. It sounds like a condescending, Humans.
I blink down at the angel who fell apart reading her book.
And laugh.
Bronte stares at me in wonder before belting the most radiant guffaw I’ve ever heard. His laughter is the sound of birdsong during a summer sunset: harmonious and warm and promising a night full of stars.
Thunder rumbles furiously overhead, and our laughter slowly trickles to silence. I’m all too aware of how dangerously close we are: our arms around each other, my cheek plastered to his chest. His scent wraps me in its bittersweet embrace, his warmth thawing the frost in my marrow.
My thoughts inevitably spiral to the past: his healing lips on my cheek, his grounding arm on my shoulders.
I backtrack to when he saved my life, twice.
Ruminate on when he comforted me at the academy.
Skip our visit to Voodoo & Velvet that didn’t end as well as it began.
Circle to whatever that moment was we shared at Morgenstern Manor, a look of pure want on his face as he held mine in the palm of his hand.
Hot and cold. Push and pull.
Whoever said women are indecisive surely never crossed paths with men in their thirties.
“Bronte?”
“Hm?”
“You can let go now.”
“If I do, are you going to fall for me again?”
My unamused scowl carves decades into my cheeks. “Bronte.”
“That face.” He chuckles, releasing his hold and thumbing his lighter as I snatch my knife from the snow. “So, what have I missed?”
I shake my head once. “You need to leave.”
“Why? Whatever news you have now will save Emi the time later.”
“We had a deal, remember? You’re breaking it by being here.”
The residual laughter in his gaze dissipates, swallowed as if by a black hole.
He fishes a cigar from his jacket and lights it, breathing gray smoke through his nostrils.
“I’m tired of sitting on my ass and doing nothing.
I can’t fucking sleep. I can’t talk to Dante because he’s too busy grieving over a woman who may or may not be dead at Leviathan’s hands.
Quinn is obviously off the table. Virgil doesn’t need this shit on her plate. I have no one else, Poppy. No one.”
He may as well have just thrown himself on his knees and begged.
The sky bellows, lightning arcing as ice begins to fall. My lungs expel a long sigh as I gesture to the Aurelius family crypt.
“Let’s get inside, monsieur. It’s a long story.”