Page 88 of Hell Bent

Alex gave him a quick squeeze on the shoulder. It was easy not to take Tripp seriously, but he was here facing the same shapeless dread as the rest of them, and he hadn’t complained once. “See you on the other side.”

They moved on, passing into another narrow hallway that would take them to the University Librarian’s office. It was even darker here, the walls crowding in on them. The office felt less empty than suddenly abandoned, the desk chair askew, papers in messy piles.

There was nothing remarkable about this door, but emblazoned on the other side of it was a large stone sundial and two stained glass knights standing guard.

They made fresh cuts and daubed the door jamb with their blood, ready this time for the gap of darkness that opened and the icy wind that blew through.

“Keep your head straight,” Turner said as he took up his post.

The secret door was right behind them, beside the big stone fireplace with its grumpy Latin, barely visible unless you knew where to look for the outline hidden in the paneling. Alex and Dawes passed through it and into another dark, tiny vestibule that had no real purpose—unless you were trying to circumnavigate the courtyard.

They emerged in Linonia and Brothers, on the opposite end of the room from the niche where they’d hidden. Here again, it felt as if the place had been abandoned, as if the absence of the human could be felt.

At last they stood at the original entrance to the courtyard, Selin’s name emblazoned across the stone lintel in golden letters.

Alex didn’t want to leave Dawes there. She didn’t want to be alone in this dark cathedral of a building.

“The niches are all empty,” Dawes said.

“They are?” Alex asked, completely lost.

Dawes had the silver pitch pipe in her hands and her voice was quiet but steady. “All over the library, you can see these spaces, these stone frames where a sculpture of a saint should be, like in a cathedral. But they’re all empty.”

“Why?”

“No one really knows. Some people think they ran out of money. Some people say the architect wanted the building to look like it had been sacked. All of its treasures stolen.”

“What do you think?” Alex asked. She could feel they were in uncertain territory, that this story, these words were what Dawes needed to keep going.

“I don’t know,” Dawes said at last. “We all have hollow places.”

“We’re going to bring him home, Dawes. We’re going to make it out of this.”

“I believe you. At least the first part.” She took a deep breath, set her shoulders. “I’ll be watching.”

Alex smeared her blood onto the entry. Dawes followed. This time the big double doors looked like they collapsed in on themselves, folding like paper as the wind howled through. It was louder now, moaning, as if whatever was on the other side of the darkness knew they were coming.

“Look,” Dawes said.

The script above the door had shifted into a different language.

“What does it say?” Alex asked.

“I don’t know,” Dawes said. She sounded breathless. “I don’t even recognize the alphabet.”

Alex had to force her feet to move. But she knew it wouldn’t get any easier. It never did.

“Be ready,” she told Dawes, and then she was rounding back past the entrance and down the nave once more. The soldier. The one to walk alone. Alma Mater gazed benevolently down at her, surrounded by artists and scholars, flanked by Truth, naked in her allegory.

It wasn’t until Alex was right in front of the mural that she realized what had changed. They were all staring at her now. The sculptor, the monk, Truth with her mirror, Light with her torch. They were watching her, and whatever human features the artist had granted them did not seem quite natural anymore. Their faces looked like masks, and the eyes peering through them were too bright, alive and keen with hunger.

She made herself keep walking, resisting the urge to look back, to see if somehow one of them had pried itself free of the frame and crept after her. She passed beneath the Tree of Knowledge, noting the sculptural niche at its center. Empty. How had she never noticed that before?

Finally, she arrived at the glass door that would lead her to the courtyard. A panel of yellow and blue stained glass marked the entrance. She had looked it up. Daniel in the lions’ den.

“We’re coming for you, Darlington,” she whispered. She could hear the soft ticking of the metronome.

Once more she touched the porcelain box in her pocket. I have been crying out to you from the start. She dipped her thumb into her blood and dragged it across the door.