The bullshit was the smell, the spider-webs, and the moldy dirt underneath me. I held the flashlight in my mouth and moved at a steady pace.
There were some fallen beams and spiders the size of my hand watching me from them. Their beady eyes seemed to say, “You aren’t supposed to be here.”
Going out on a limb and adding mice or rats as another species that lived under here wouldn’t be a far stretch.
“You good back there?” I whispered to Jeremy. I didn’t want to turn and blind the kid with my flashlight.
“Yes, my liege,” he answered respectfully.
I rolled my eyes and huffed.
Little pebbles pressed into my palms. I shuffled forward, dragging my jegging-clad legs.
The crawlspace opened up after another few minutes into a circular area. Aiming the light, I spotted the old door in the ceiling that led into the church.
To get to it, all I had to do was crawl over a small graveyard of bones. My flashlight beam bounced off three skulls, one much smaller than the others. The rest of the bones I couldn’t offhandedly identify. None of them were together anymore, and the skulls all sat in different places, coated in dirt and cobwebs.
“I would like to go first, my liege,” Jeremy said softly.
“Its Cali,” I reiterated for the fourth time since we’d been down there, moving out of his way.
He crawled past me towards the door. I kept the flashlight aimed up so he was able to see better.
I had no idea how he was moving so gracefully and not passing out from heat stroke, wearing his black robe.
The door lifted right up, which I found anticlimactic as fuck. Jeremy slowly eased himself up and out of the crawlspace.
I listened for a few minutes and waited. There was a soft thud right above me but no voices. Just when I began to think he’d been caught, his head popped back down and he gestured me onward.
Moving to him, I did my best not to crush any of the remains. I wasn’t that disrespectful as to screw with someone’s resting place. Even if this more than likely wasn’t their number one pick in terms of burial sites.
Jeremy lifted me out of the crawlspace with ease, gently shutting the hatch behind me. “The back end of Jericho seems to be empty as of now, but there are voices coming from the front. I believe it’s some sort of meeting,” he quickly explained, opening the door of the small wine room we were in.
I shut off the flashlight, no longer needing it, and followed him out into an open foyer. “You get the back door open and let the others in. I’m going to eavesdrop.” I took one step towards one of the halls that split off the foyer before he blocked me.
“I was told to stay with you. I—”
“Well, I’m telling you to go open that door. They could say something useful, and every second you stand here trying to stop me is another second wasted.”
He stared at me without saying a word—or I imagined he was. I couldn’t see his eyes beneath the mask. “Don’t worry about me, I’ve done this before,” I reassured him, and didn’t wait to see if he responded or not. I darted down the hall.
I set my pace at a quick jog, trying to keep my steps quiet on the old wooden floor. Jericho’s age showed everywhere I looked. Old woodwork and arches portrayed a design from a different era.
It was beautiful in its own special way. Too bad, really, because I wanted it burned down.
The place was just as large on the inside as it looked on the out.
I slowed when I got as close to the front room as I dared, hearing voices just like Jeremy said. Peeking around the corner, I saw the room was set up to my advantage. The pews all sat horizontally in the opposite direction.
I’d just spotted Bishop Jonah at the front of a group of delegates when the room exploded into a flurry of activity. Acolytes rushed in from the opposite hall.
Jonah didn’t waste one second, taking off at a run for a stairwell in the back of the room. I debated what to do for only a split second. Pews were shoved backward, screeching across the floor and slamming into the ones behind them with loud, echoing booms.
It had gone from a meeting to a bloodbath in a matter of seconds, and the Savages had nothing to worry about.
The acolytes were ruthless. They were an impenetrable shadow that moved as one.
Anyone in their way was heinously cut down. This wasn’t even a fraction of them; I couldn’t picture dealing with the entire army.
