Chapter 34
Gone is Ezra’s usual long coat, replaced by a hooded velvet cloak like the others.
Beneath it, he wears a crisp black suit, bloodred tie cinched at the top.
But instead of a mask, his face is on display, all the hard, angular lines of him swathed in shadows.
An angry violet bruise decorates his left cheekbone, his mouth kissed with dried blood.
His eyes are rimmed with purple-black veins, and when he smiles at her, she swears she catches the sliver of a fang.
As if he’s more monster than man, as if there’s almost nothing human left in him at all.
“Please rise,” Ezra says to the small crowd.
Mallory turns to see the masked men stand obediently. Facing their next leader.
Ezra glances toward her. “Tonight, we are joined by the rightful seventh gift to Our Lord. We almost lost her to careless witchcraft, but now she’s come home to us. To where she belongs.”
She thinks of Victor saying the same. Perhaps she does belong here. Perhaps it was always going to end this way.
“I know you’re all eager,” Ezra says, “to begin the ritual.”
Mallory freezes as Ezra opens his cloak to reveal a long dagger, strapped to his waist.
The hilt and cross guard are crusted in glittering rubies, the same symbols from his rings woven between.
Ezra wraps a steady hand around the weapon, tugging the gleaming blade loose, and her breath catches.
Suddenly, the knife in her pocket feels pathetic.
A flimsy defense against unmistakable power.
She won’t be able to protect herself at all.
Ezra lays the dagger carefully against the altar, green eyes locked on hers.
“But my father taught me only the best manners. A live offering in our presence deserves a last meal.” His smile is cold as he extends a hand. “Will you join me?”
Mallory fleetingly imagines Ezra looming above her, kissing her mouth as he plunges that jeweled dagger into her chest. She looks toward the exit, her only way out.
But if she runs, Saskia dies. And she’d still be hunted anyway.
Mallory steps forward and wordlessly gives Ezra her hand. He laces their fingers together, sealing her fate.
“We’ll just be a little while,” he says to the others. “Please. Have a seat. Thank you for your patience.”
“Where are we going?” she asks as he leads her into the sacristy. Her palm sweats against his. “Where—”
Her whispers evaporate as he squeezes her hand twice in quick succession. Their code? What—?
“Ezra—”
The second they’re in the sacristy, Ezra tugs her, fast, toward the armoire at the far end of the room. Before she can ask any questions, he wrenches both doors open, parting the hanging garments to either end. And Mallory can only stare at what’s been inside this entire time:
A rusted gate, bracketing a tiny space with a brass lever and mirrored walls.
An old-fashioned elevator.
Understanding takes hold as she thinks of the footsteps below the chapel’s first floor. Victor suddenly appearing in the sacristy out of nowhere. How both those things seemed impossible because there isn’t a staircase to a basement.
But there is an elevator. And it’s been kept secret.
“Come on,” Ezra says, rushed. “We don’t have time.”
“In there?” She shakes her head. “I don’t understand—”
“Shhh.” He practically hauls her inside the armoire, coaxing her toward the opening in the back. “Don’t let them hear you.”
Mallory’s pulse hums. The elevator floor is covered in debris, and mold snakes up the back.
The jagged lines of the gate have turned sea-green with age, and the rusted lever releases a grating sound as Ezra yanks it harshly to the left.
The elevator groans through its descent, reaching the basement with a sigh.
Ezra opens the gate and snatches her hand again. She scrambles to register her surroundings: shadows clinging to the walls, sticky cobwebs in every corner, the smell of fresh earth. A circle of stones, something lumpy and dark in the middle, like a bedsheet thrown over mounds of dirt.
And Ezra, all but dragging her behind him toward an arched opening in the wall.
The tunnel. The one that once connected the sanitarium to the chapel, from the blueprints. The one that now leads to Thorne Hall. Her stomach plummets.
“Ezra,” she protests, “wait. Where are you taking me?”
“Away from this place,” he grinds out. “I’ll explain when we get to my room.”
She halts, boots skidding as he keeps pulling her. “No—no. Ezra, let go—I don’t want to go there.”
He flings an incredulous glance over his shoulder. “You want to stay here? With those freaks foaming at the mouth to watch me stab you to death? No fucking way.”
“Wait.” She’s off balance, confused. “I don’t understand. Isn’t that why I’m here? Isn’t that what you want, too?”
Ezra turns abruptly, practically slamming into her.
“That,” he says, “is the last thing I want.”
“What?”
He searches her gaze. “Don’t you know how much you mean to me? Don’t you think I’ve been losing my mind trying to figure out a way to stop this?”
Her breath rushes out. “What?”
Ezra’s arm hooks around her waist, trying again to coax her toward the tunnel. “Just come with me, and I’ll tell you everything, I’ll—”
“No.” Mallory twists away, heart hammering. Distinctly aware of how easy it would be for him to carry her into that tunnel if he wanted to. “No. I’m not going anywhere until you explain. Now.”
He drags a hand through his hair. “Alright—alright. Fuck.”
Mallory leans against the wall, trying to calm her breathing. Ezra stalks past her, pacing the room like a jaguar in a too-small cage. She tracks him with suspicion. A beast, especially a restless one, will eventually pounce.
“You were right when you said my family is in a…cult.” A muscle flickers in Ezra’s jaw. “I grew up thinking of it as religion. My grandfather, he always positioned it that way. And I didn’t know any better. For a while.”
“The entity your family worships,” Mallory says, “is a demon, right?”
Ezra takes a long inhale. He glances at the ceiling, like he’s afraid the creature might hear.
“In a way,” he says. “He’s an ancient deity of biblical times.
A fallen angel, doomed to eternal life between worlds.
Feeding from dead things, forever craving the blood of something living.
Some think of him as the first vampire, although drinking blood from a living source cannot sustain him.
Only blood harvested from a heart in a similar in-between state can extend his time on earth.
He takes several forms in legends and is represented by the symbol of a raven. Most people call him the Blood Angel.”
“But you call him ‘Our Lord,’ ” Mallory says. “I heard you. You worship him? Pray to him?” She narrows her eyes. “That’s why there are raven statues all over this campus. Your family put them there.”
“Yes.” Ezra swallows. “When my grandfather Jacob was young, before all this started, he was a religious scholar. He grew up in England, outside Oxford. Was born into a wealthy family. He began researching Enochian, an ancient alphabet of symbols believed to be the language of angels.”
Mallory looks down at Ezra’s hand. “Your rings. That’s what they are.”
He nods. “Jacob moved to Rome in search of a legendary book written in Enochian. The Book of Angels. He studied at Sapienza. He grew…obsessed. His professors and contemporaries all told him it was impossible, that people have been searching for the book for centuries. But Jacob found it in the possession of an elderly woman living in Matera, whose family had kept it hidden all the way back to the fifteen hundreds. Jacob befriended her. Tricked her.”
Mallory squints again as she guesses what came next. “Killed her.”
Ezra’s darkened stare says more than any answer could.
“The book contained stories about the Blood Angel, supposedly written by other angels of his time, ones who followed him. Prayers. Evocations. Rituals to restore him to life, temporarily, despite his fall. Jacob learned the Blood Angel could be awoken and brought over to our world, and that whoever did so would be greatly rewarded. The requirement was a very specific offering: a gift of a dead heart that still had blood for him to drink. A perfect heart.”
Understanding slides into place. “And the New England Vampire Panic was an easy excuse to find it.”
Ezra nods. “Jacob learned what was happening overseas, that people were digging up relatives who died from tuberculosis and burning their hearts if they contained blood. They believed the lingering blood to be a sign of evil, even though it was likely old blood just settling in the circulatory system. It’s science.
The blood stops circulating, but it’s still there in your body.
It gets pulled down by gravity, collecting in chambers or other organs, making it look fresh.
It can last for hours—days, even. For Jacob, it was the perfect setup to get what he needed.
And no town had as many documented exhumations as Shoreview, Rhode Island.
So, he moved here. Ingratiated himself with the community.
Led dozens of exhumations and discarded the bodies—until he found the next example of a perfect heart. ”
“Lily’s heart.”