Page 138
The lives they used to open such a dangerous chasm in the world is a consequence the entire town is waiting to face. I swing hard and the well-built bronze candelabra smashes evenly across her face. A slash of blood smears her nose and she staggers backward.
“You tried to kill me?” Seething rage pours out with every letter rolling across my tongue.
“How did you get out?” She barely whispers, hands hovering above her new wound.
“Believe it or not, the soul has capacity for much more than the physical body does.” I approach, weapon still pointing at her. There’s no time to process the trauma of what just occurred, all I know is I have to find Kieran and when I find Kieran, I find Christian, and when I find Christian, we burn this place to the ground.
“I’ve killed much more than you, and elegantly too.” She spits.
Grabbing her by the hair, I pull her close to me. I smell of blood and that makes this even better. “You used me to party in another realm? To hunt lingering souls? You’re worse than the Devil itself.”
Souls weren’t supposed to look like desiccated remains. They were simply on a mission to find their purpose and move beyond that realm. But they hadn’t, they’d been hunted and turned into mere husks of their former selves, chained to a man with uninhibited desires.
“Where the hell is he?” I ask.
Blood trickles down her chin, making her look every bit the petulant brat she was.
The relic swings between us like a ticking metronome, jostled by my movements.
“You know where.” Again, she spits blood into my face, earning another strike, this time it knocks her out and she lays there spread-eagled in a bejeweled dress and a mind full of lies.
I will never protect another woman who knowingly leads another to slaughter.
Daisy. This was her plan and now her body is likely lying buried somewhere deep below this house, trapped forever unlike the rest of us. Did Arik know he was trapped in the beyond? When did Kieran’s mother die? There are so many questions. But I keep moving. Pulling aside a bookshelf, I allow it to fall carelessly beside Cassandra’s unconscious body and walk into the curved tunnel set into the wall.
Darkness surrounds me, but I feel my way through the walkway, running through the curves, hands sliding along the jagged stone, knowing these labyrinths by feel. Down and down, I descend. If there was light, I would surely feel the descent’s dizzying spiral.
The sound of water hits me first, then the scent of salt and bone which is really formaldehyde and ammonia.
Soon, I’m dumped into the space below the house.
Here it gets confusing. The cave system connects to Kieran’s lab, and the other offshoot connects to the cave right underneath the pond. The rest of the tunnels are unknown, likely barren. It would take days to unearth all of its shadowed corners. I take an easy step forward, gravel crunching beneath my shoes. A shiver wracks my frame. Pausing, I listen for the path of the wind. Once I establish the draft, I walk with it whispering by my side.
The cave below the estates are not as magnanimous as the rumors ever made it to be. They are old and shabby and could likely crumble within the next decade. There is no secret cove that houses the Devil, no that’s just Kieran himself.
Drawing near the lab, I’m met with the familiar rusted staircase that leads to the lab. Two steps at a time I climb. When I push through, I search for any sign that Kieran or lackeys might have been here already.
Everything is exactly as it was in the below. Even the tidiness of the tapes and the red room at the rear. Only, this anteroom appears to be untouched for quite some time. Not wanting to waste another second, I turn around and run the other way, my legs carrying me way faster than the exhaustion I know is building within me. I find the offshoot of the cave and scale the incline where I find the carved-out space awaiting me.
It’s a massive, wide cavern filled with rusty, stained equipment. In the middle of the room are two men, hunched over a body. Quickly, I recognize the one attaching a tube above the chest of the manas Kieran. An object clatters to the ground, rolling in my direction. I duck behind a set of tables, skewed with test tubes, thick electrical wiring and cluttered with vials of varying substances.
A chill perseverates. This wasn’t in the below.
Topographically, this cavern should be right under the lake. And there should be a cave above this—or connected to this one—formed by fallen rock and years of erosion.
The cavern is dimly lit, a few amber sconces flickering within their frosted glass cases. There’s a shackled man on the table. Dangling above, is a sphere filling or creating a dark substance that pumps in and out of the man’s body.
Immorcantem is the serum of immortality—of prolonging life. It is the basis of Kieran’s work, of the greed that threads its way through the very foundation of this estate.
The man lays still, unmoving. I wonder if he is an experiment just like I had been. My brow creases. There are tattoos all over this man’s body. Dark hair. Golden brown skin prickled with blood and sweat. A strong crooked nose.
A slow horror washes over me and I have to stifle my disgust at who I know is laid out beneath the spherical device.
Christian.
Had his soul traveled beyond death and found me? Was this what he had tried telling me all along? How many times had I died and been revived in that chamber? Over and over again, drowning only to be revived by Immorcantem
Around the cavernous space are more chambers filled with bodies, all floating listlessly. What was the outcome of this? What did Kieran Lazarus want from the living he kept barely dead? What did these bodies serve? Were they mere powerhouses? Or a show of hubris? Trophies maybe. It didn’t make sense. None of this ever matched up to the young man I once knew and loved.
