Chapter 7
Chapter seven
Delilah
Dashing down the tunnel, I held one hand high, a ball of witchlight cradled in my palm and casting an eerie glow over everything. In her pouch, Pandora snuffled, expressing her displeasure with my actions very clearly.
“If you have a better idea, I’d love to hear it,” I muttered, but she offered no reply. Looking into several of the branching alcoves as I hurried along, I knew the exit had to be here somewhere, I just needed to find the markers, something to show me the way.
Growing up, Heidi had drilled it into me over and over: follow the light into the darkness to find your way out again. Well, these tunnels were plenty dark, and if I could only find the right marker—the circle and flame symbol that was as familiar to me as my own reflection—I knew I could get away.
To the left and right, plaques adorned both sides of the tunnel, row after row of names and dates, details of the bodies interred behind the bricked-up walls. Some crypts held whole families, entire lines of three, sometimes four generations, entombed together.
Family for eternity. It was a comforting thought, even if it would never be something I’d achieve, no matter how badly I longed for it.
Stumbling along, I tried to ignore that space in my chest, the gaping hole where my family should have resided, and kept looking for the plaque I needed.
I could think about my long-lost ancestors another time.
Reaching a sort of dead end, the tunnel split off in two directions, and I paused, considering.
I didn’t have time to explore, not with a freaking pack of demons on my tail.
Closing my eyes, I concentrated, trying to remember all of Heidi’s lessons.
I knew what I was looking for, and with that thought in mind, I reached out, allowing what little magic I could muster to roam freely.
“Ostende mihi viam,” I whispered, blowing lightly on the witchlight in my palm and hoping for the best.
For a moment, it merely hung there, the glow pulsing slightly with every breath I took. Then, suddenly, the light darted away, zooming down the left branch of the tunnel like a firefly.
“Shit!” Hiking up the hem of my dress, I took off after it, following it down a second turn, noting the slight downward slope to the floor as I went.
I ran, the crypt getting deeper and the temperature dropping with each step. A shiver ran through me; I had no desire to know how far the path might actually descend. Nothing good ever came from below.
Relief flooded my veins when I turned a final corner and saw the light had stopped, hovering in the center of the ancient tunnel.
I approached slowly, frowning when I realized that instead of a door leading back to the surface, the light had stopped in front of a tomb, the iron plate screwed into the ancient brickwork gleaming dully in the witchlight.
The words on it were clear, having been protected from the elements underground, and I ran my fingers over them lightly, reading them out loud.
“Be the light against the darkness.” My whisper was loud in the silence of the tunnel, ringing back to me on a ghostly echo.
Below the words, the symbol of the Umbra Fratrum was carved, a circle with a flame inside. Protecting the light.
I paused, considering. Heidi had told me that Phips was a Guardian, and through her, I had known to come to him for protection.
But, in all that time, I had never once considered what else he may have been guarding.
Perhaps what was hidden here could help me escape the demons and offer me the protection that Phips no longer could.
Perhaps this was why he’d been killed.
That had to be it. Upstairs, the church had been destroyed, the perpetrators clearly looking for something. I would bet they’d never thought to look below.
Their arrogance would be their undoing.
It made sense; the demon had said an artifact had been stolen.
There was only one artifact that a Guardian would have given his life to protect. One item so powerful that someone would risk the wrath of the whole Brotherhood to acquire.
The Fallen Key.
I just had to hope the protections the Umbra Fratrum had put in place had held up and that the item was still safely stored behind this plaque.
Collecting the witchlight in my palm once more, I thanked it for its help, stared at the iron plate, wondering how, exactly, I was going to get inside.
“What are you doing, little witch?”
His words rumbled through the darkened tunnel, causing the hair on the back of my neck to stand at attention.
Damn it. How had they caught up to me so quickly?
Turning my head, I gazed at him, his handsome face looking haunting in the cold glow of the witchlight. I hated that he was so good looking; his outsides should have matched his insides.
“You shouldn’t touch things that don’t belong to you.”
“It doesn’t belong to you either,” I spat, pressing my back against the wall, the iron plate digging into my shoulder blades painfully. “Be gone, demon. You have no power here.”
Archer’s reply was a low chuckle, his shadows rolling toward me as he advanced on my position.
“You’re out of salt and out of options, witch. And I’m very nearly out of patience.”
Scrambling away, I did my best to avoid the reaching shadows, but in the small space, I was very quickly overwhelmed.
Two of the tendrils darted out and grasped my wrists, wrenching me toward him before slamming my body against the opposing wall.
I cried out, struggling against my captivity, but it was no use. The shadows held me fast.
“And I’ll take this before you get any more bright ideas.” Striding forward, Archer grabbed my satchel and lifted it over my head, passing it to one of the others, where it disappeared into the darkness.
“Now, what do we have here?” Archer stepped toward the crypt, his long fingers tracing the symbol as I just had. Inside me, something clenched, the idea of his fingers being where mine had just been causing my heart to race.
It wasn’t fear, exactly, more like...apprehension?
Or maybe anticipation.
I refused to label it as anything as utterly toxic as excitement.
“Nothing!” I barked, then immediately regretted it when Archer just raised an imperious eyebrow at me, his brown eyes looking black in the low light of the tunnel.
“I guess we’ll see about that, won’t we?” Turning back to the crypt, he raised both hands, his fingers out straight, then drove them into the stone on either side of the iron plaque, cutting into the brick as though it were nothing more than warm butter.
I held my breath, watching as he wrapped his fingers around the plaque and tugged, pulling it off the wall easily.
At my wrists, his shadows continued to writhe, their touch feeling less like a restraint and more like a caress.
Every time I pulled against them, they held fast, but never in a way that actually hurt, which confused me greatly.
But it was just another thing I’d have to examine later.
Archer stared into the gaping maw of the crypt, the hole in the wall looking like an open oven as he leaned forward and inspected the space. “Empty?” He sounded pissed, but his face remained nearly expressionless. “How curious. Funny that you’d come all this way just to hunt inside an empty tomb.”
“It’s just a crypt,” I deflected, straining against the shadows as they wound higher around my arms and toward my throat. “Its occupant long crumbled to dust. Why are you so surprised there’s nothing in there?”
Truthfully, I was as surprised as he was to find it empty, but I wasn’t about to let him know that.
“So many words, so few answers.” He stared at me, and my skin tingled under his regard.
I could see why he was the leader of this band of brooding tough guys.
Archer was exactly the type of man who could put fear into someone with a single look.
If I had known the reason the tomb was empty, all he would have had to do was send that look my way and I would have told him, whether I wanted to or not.
It was disconcerting, to say the least.
“Mal?” he finally said, his eyes still on me. “If you would.”
One of the men stepped forward, pressing past the other two in the narrow confines of the tunnel.
He was tall—they all were—but slender, with dark hair and eyes that appeared to always be moving.
As he approached Archer, Mal hesitated a moment before he removed something from inside his black shirt.
Lifting the item, which was on a chain around his neck, he clutched it briefly, as though he didn’t want to part with it, then reluctantly handed it over to Archer.
“Thank you, Mal. I’ll only be a moment.”
Straining against the shadows, I canted my head in an attempt to see what he was doing.
My witchlight still hung in the air between us, and as he worked, I could see that the item Mal had given him was a small compass on a gold chain.
Confused, I watched as Archer held the compass by the chain, allowing it to swing freely from his closed fist. Archer stared at it for a moment before thrusting his fist into the empty crypt.
Once the compass had fallen still, he began to speak, his words ones that I’d never heard before in a language I couldn’t hope to decipher.
As he spoke, the compass began to turn, the needle spinning slowly at first then wildly as his words picked up their pace.
Around us, the air seemed to thicken, as though the entire tunnel was suddenly under water.
My ears throbbed, the pressure intense, and for a moment, I could almost feel the ground beneath my feet shake, the earth quaking under Archer’s power.
It was overwhelming and awe-inspiring at the same time.
All of a sudden, the whispered words stopped and so did the needle, the tip pointing directly to the right, like the hand of a clock.
“Ah, perfect. Here you are, Mal.” He handed the compass back to Mal, who slipped it over his head as quickly as possible, tucking it back beneath his shirt and then covering it with his palm, as though to reassure himself that it was truly there.
“Now, let’s see what you were really doing down here, witch.”