Page 28 of Curiosity Killed The Vampire

Con exhaled, the sound low and controlled, then moved past me to check the next section of the tunnel. “Fine,” he said. “Then stay behind me.”

I smiled despite myself. “You’re impossible.”

“So I’ve been told,” he said, the edge of dry humor creeping back into his tone.

We moved on, stepping over the shattered remnants of the trap. The spears still glowed where they’d struck, humming with spent energy. I cast one last glance back—the scorch marks, the shimmering runes still alive in the stone. Whoever built this place didn’t want intruders; they wanted graves.

But I wasn’t about to let a mountain stop me.

As we pressed deeper into the tunnel, the glow from the runes along the walls began to change—paler now, pulsing in rhythm with something below us. It was slight at first, but it grew stronger with every step.

Whatever lay at the end of this path was awake. Watching.

And I had the distinct, crawling feeling that we weren’t just uncovering an artifact. We were walking straight into its waiting jaws.

The tunnel bent downward, opening into a narrow stretch where the walls closed in tight, the ceiling dropping low enough that even I had to duck. The floor was uneven, slick with moisture, the stones worn smooth from centuries of running water and shifting earth. The air had grown thick—damp, metallic, humming with an old kind of pressure that prickled at the edges of my senses.

We had been descending for nearly half an hour, the passage twisting like a wound vein through the belly of the mountain, when the whisper of air movement caught my ear. A current where there shouldn’t have been one.

I raised a hand for Con to stop. “Do you feel that?”

He nodded, scanning the darkness ahead. “A draft. There’s another chamber not far from here.”

I was about to take a step forward when something caught my attention—the glint of metal along the floor where the flashlight beam passed. Not a rune, not a glyph. Just a thread-thin wire, half-buried under grime and dust.

I crouched, brushing the surface clean with my glove. “Another trap,” I murmured. “But this one isn’t magical.”

Con leaned over my shoulder, eyes narrowing. “A pulley system. Old. Probably attached to the ceiling.”

“Then someone set this before the witches sealed the place,” I said. “This predates their wards.”

He straightened, scanning the low ceiling above. The wood there was black with rot, and the stone arches looked brittle, like they hadn’t held their weight properly in decades. “Could be a dead mechanism,” he said.

Before I could answer, he stepped forward to test the ground.

The unmistakable click of stone shifting beneath his boot.

I froze. “Con⁠—”

The sound that followed was deafening—a groaning, grinding crack from above.

I looked up just in time to see it—a massive timber log, as thick as a tree trunk, swinging down from a recessed alcove in the ceiling. It came at him fast, trailing dust and fragments of stone, the air splitting with the rush of its descent.

He moved in an instant, his reflexes blurring into motion. Instead of dodging, he pivoted and caught it—arms braced, feet digging into the uneven ground as the sheer weight of it slammed against him. The force shook the tunnel, the impact echoing through the stone like a cannon.

For a heartbeat, I thought it would crush him.

But Con gritted his teeth, muscles coiled, and pushed.

The log shuddered under his strength, halted mid-swing, then crashed harmlessly to the side with a thunderous thud that sent dust and debris raining from the ceiling.

The sound faded, leaving only the echo of our ragged breathing.

“That,” he said, straightening and brushing splinters off his jacket, “was primitive.”

I exhaled a laugh, half relief and half nerves. “I’ll take primitive over enchanted spikes any day.”

He glanced at the collapsed mechanism, the old ropes and gears lying in tangled ruin. “The wards are failing,” he said, his tone shifting to something more serious. “They’re too old. Whatever power was holding this place together is thinning.”