19. Vesper #2
Last night, when he thought I was sleeping, I heard his whisper, and it echoed through me like a cathedral bell.
After everything with my ex, I swore off dating.
A thirty-one-year-old single mom and business owner doesn’t have much time for dating, regardless.
So I’ve focused solely on the shop and Bethie.
It’s always been enough, but I never could have imagined what would be more than enough.
The words are there, on the tip of my tongue. They’re simply waiting for the moment I’m brave enough to let them out. And I have the strangest feeling they won’t stay contained forever.
The GPS chimes. In four hundred feet, turn left.
St. Brendan’s Catholic Cemetery appears through the passenger window first—old iron fencing gone soft with rust, rows of pale headstones disappearing into a low coastal fog, a stand of cedar trees along the far edge older than anything I could put a number to.
The church beside it is small and white, so still, it seems as if it’s been praying for a very long time.
I pull in through the main gate and cut the engine. We sit for a moment in the quiet.
“The crypt,” I say.
“It will be below the church, most likely,” Valefar says. He scans the building, his head slightly tilted, and something in him shifts—alert, focused, the same quality he had in the kitchen with the pan in his hand. “Or beneath the oldest section of the grounds.” He opens the door. “Shall we?”
I get out. The air hits me, cold and salt-sharp and smells of fog and old stone. I love the scent. Maybe we’ll take a little drive and bring Bethie this way sometime.
Valefar comes around the front of the car and falls into step beside me, close enough that his arm brushes mine. At least the ground doesn’t seem to hurt him. The gravel crunches under our shoes.
He catches me staring and squeezes my hand. “It is like a faint ache, Ves. But closer to you, it’s like breathing the air of Eden.”
I shake my head with an airy laugh before leaning into him. I’m so whipped for this Big Guy. He’s a demon. He’s immortal. And he’s being hunted. Everything is against us. I know I should be more prudent.
But when you’ve spent years forging yourself into a blade just to survive, and someone comes along who doesn’t try to dull you—he simply becomes the shield—you fight like hell to keep that shield.
Along the eastern wall of the church, almost hidden behind an overgrowth of lichen-covered stone, a door is set directly into the ground—iron handle, stone frame, inconspicuous.
“Well,” I say.
“Yes,” Valefar agrees.
We go toward it. The old padlock hangs uselessly from one side of the latch, rust having eaten through part of it. The iron itself is bent and warped, leaving enough give that the door can be pulled open. Valefar says nothing. His tail pulls in and coils tight at his side.
The temperature drops.
Not gradually, the way ocean air does when the fog rolls in. It’s sudden, like stepping through a seam in the world. The goosebumps move up my arms in time with Valefar’s.
But we need the stone. Everything will be fine. Because we’re doing the right thing. And it’s about high time the universe rewards someone for doing the right thing.
I pull the iron door up, and the smell hits first—stone and cold and something older and darker than the underground air. A narrow set of stone stairs drops away below us, slick with moisture, no light.
Valefar goes first. I follow.
At the bottom, the crypt opens into a single chamber, and it’s far more elaborate than anything prepared me for.
Ribbed stone arches climb into a narrow vaulted ceiling.
All the old Gothic details carved into the walls must have cost someone a small fortune generations ago.
Time has dulled everything, but not destroyed it.
At the far end, a waist-high iron fence encloses the raised burial platform and stone coffin.
Barred windows are set high into the surrounding stone, little more than slits to let in the weak grey light from outside.
Apparently Elias Doran believed in being subtle above ground and dramatic as hell beneath it.
Above the coffin, carved directly into the wall, is a line of Latin. I squint at it. “I’m a little rusty,” I admit.
“Veritas sola aperit viam,” Valefar reads. His voice moves differently down here, flatter, absorbed by stone. “Only truth opens the way.”
I stare at the coffin. “You think the stone’s inside?”
“Most likely.” His gaze tracks over the carved markings around the lid. “These are not decorative, Ves. They are instructions.”
I step closer, brushing my fingers over the Latin etched into the stone edge. Truth alone opens the way. “So, the coffin only opens if someone tells the truth?” I wonder.
“Not merely tells it,” Valefar says quietly. “Confesses it.”
Something in my stomach flips. The crypt falls silent around us.
Then something clicks under my feet. The carved letters above the coffin flare once, pale gold, and then dim.
The lid shifts a fraction of an inch, the seal releasing, the way a pressurized jar gives when the vacuum breaks. We both stare at it.
“It would appear,” Valefar says, “the crypt is waiting.”
For what? An eerie sound comes from beside the crypt entrance.
My hackles rise. Ice creeps into my blood.
I jump at the sound of a low, resonant crack.
Stone grinding against stone. And then something that is not stone anymore, something that was stone for God knows how long, not merely decorative—it comes off the wall.
It’s enormous. The shape of a dog, but something dark, something wrong.
“Hound.” Bethie’s word from the park pierces my mind like an icy needle.
The hound’s body is skeletal, joints grinding, ribcage exposed, and its eye sockets burn red. It opens its jaw, and the sound it makes is not a bark. It’s unholy, ancient, spine-chilling.
I choke on a breath.
Valefar’s hand shoots out, and he shoves me behind the iron fence surrounding the burial platform. “Get the stone.” He squares himself to the hound. “I’ll handle Fluffy here.”
“Fluffy,” I repeat from beyond the fence, because apparently that’s what my brain latches onto. “Was that a Harry Potter reference?”
“Stone!” he shouts.
I spin back toward the coffin. And blow out a breath. “I really should have paid more attention in seminary.”