A featureless black mask, half hidden within the shadows of his hood, obscured his countenance.
Red glowing eyes gazed at me through two angry, downward-slanted slits, as though lit by the fires of hell.
Over the decades—the centuries—Lady Green, Lady Red, Sir Blue, and Sir White had all seen fit to drop in for some reason or another.
For as long as I’d been here, though, I’d never methim—Sir Black.
For a while, I’d even started to believe the Black Basin didn’t have a guardian.
That it was just a lawless, prisonlike bog for the souls that settled like silt to the floor of depravity, vileness, and evil.
About that, I’d been wrong.
At least about there being no warden…
The entity, taller even than me, loomed at a distance, his hood cinched to his head by that menacing crown.
Within? Blackness and a face that was no face at all.
In that way, we two were alike.
Never before had I stopped to think about how terrifying it was for those who did glimpse me. To be faced with a horrific specter that had no features. None that could be discerned…
Thismust be what it was like. To stare into an abyss that stared back, knowing all the while that abyss was there to get you.
I stood frozen for a moment longer, waiting for this… guest to speak or move. To do anything other than lurk… and stare.
“You have business in the Hallowed Halls,” I said at last, and itwasn’t a question so much as it was a prompt. A plea for this being—whatever he was—to end this intolerable standoff.
To reveal what I already suspected his appearance pertained to.
He didn’t answer. But still, an answer came when Cedric stepped out from behind the grim sentry, tugging his gloves more tightly into place like some pretentious asshole getting ready to take his Bentley on a summer drive through the countryside.
I should have known this was his doing…
“I assume no introduction is necessary,” said Cedric, gesturing toward Sir Black as he eyed me darkly, those frozen blues promising retribution even as he offered a congenial smile.
“What have you done with Johann?” I asked. Not that I could do anything for the old man at this point—or anyone.
“Sent him on a goose chase,” Cedric said. “Flora, too. I don’t have anything againstthem.”
I wanted to believe him.
“How the fuck did you even get out of that drawer?” I growled. Let alone Flora’s lantern.
“Lady Red came looking for me,” he replied. “Unbeknownst to you, she and I have been…friendlyfor some time now. I suppose I should thankyoufor introducing us.”
Wait. Was he implying what I thought he was? That I wasn’t the only one with a secret girlfriend?
He was seeing one ofThe Few?
Fuck me. Did that mean theywereNephilim?
And wasn’t that what I got for shoving him into Basins whenever he happened to get his ass killed and I stumbled across him in the wild?
Unlike me, Cedric hadn’t taken any sacred oaths forbidding such a union.
At least not yet.
