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Can you lead me toit?
I shalltry.
It was a testament to how strange my life was that I wanted to be takentowardthe copious amounts of blood and not away fromthem.
Sindari headed right, took a left at another intersection, and then opted for a sloping ramp heading upward instead of stairs leading deeper underground where a moist mildewy odor wafted up from below. The idea of this place having multiple levels daunted me. Seattle was at sea level, so it was hard to imagine that the dark elves could have dug many extra tunnels down here without water creepingin.
My lungs did not like that mildew scent, so I took a puff from my inhaler. Better to use it preemptively now than need it in a fightlater.
New noises joined the clangs and thuds, a clanking and grinding. It sounded like machinery—did they have pumping equipment running downhere?
As the ramp led us higher, the rumble of cars driving somewhere above us also seeped down through the layers. Lastly, I heard the chanting of voices. A lot ofvoices.
They rose and fell in a creepy cadence. If they were speaking a language, it was one my charm didn’t know how to translate. Maybe it was nonsense. It had the repetitive nature of some ancientmantra.
I slowed my pace.I don’t think this is the way to the alchemy lab. Not unless it’s a popularplace.
What if the lab was where this ritual would take place? Surely not. Who sacrificed goats or virgins or whatever in a sciencelab?
Sindari glanced back.We are still going toward the smell ofblood.
This place probably smells like blood allover.
That is not untrue, but it is stronger up ahead. I also detect charcoal. You mentioned that,yes?
Yes.Reluctantly, I kept going. After all I’d faced in my life, I shouldn’t be afraid of a little blood and chanting, but something about this place gave me thecreeps.
For the first time, we reached a series of doors along the sides of the tunnel. Some were open, some closed. Some were made of sturdy metal full of rivets, some of old rottingwood.
I peeked inside the open doors, hoping for the lab, but they appeared to be personal quarters, meeting rooms, and storage areas. One of the latter was full of shelves of knives, skulls, and human body parts in jars. Torture implements, some I could name and far more that I couldn’t, hung onracks.
My stomach lurched queasily, and I reached for the pouch of grenades I’d brought, but I thought better of it. As much as I’d like to blow up all of their evil torture stuff, that would only draw the dark elves down on me. As it was, we likely had only minutes before the two who’d found the female reported back. That would put an end to the chanting and a beginning to hunt-Valtime.
We rounded a bend, traffic still audible rumbling by overhead, and for the first time since I’d left the surface, light reached my eyes. Infrared light, similar to what Zoltan had brightened his laboratorywith.
The tunnel ended at a wide balcony lined with a metal railing and overlooking a chamber below. The source of the red light was over on the far side of the chamber, a huge two-story statue of a multi-limbed, insectoid figure with four heads. If that represented their goddess, she was hideous. The statue was made entirely from bones, some human, others from larger animals. The four heads were the fossilized skulls of dinosaurs. The bones appeared to be morerecent.
As I crept closer, drawn by curiosity—or maybe it was the dragon’s influence—the backs of the heads of dozens, maybe hundreds, of dark elves came into view. Some were hooded, and some had their hoods back, their white hair tumbling to their shoulders. The dark elves stood chanting as they faced the massive sculpture and dais. Nobody stood on the dais yet, but a vat of a dark liquid gurgled over a fire pit where a pulpit in a church might have been. Was it blood?Whose? On a table next to the vat rested Zav’s cracked-eggshell artifact and apaintbrush.
The urge to fling myself over the railing to sprint up and snatch it surged into me, and my legs carried me three running steps before I slammed an anchor down on that urge. I planted my hand against the wall, bracing myself before Zav’s compulsion could force me onto the balcony and into a suicidalact.
Val?Sindari spoke into my mind.Back here. This is where I smell the charcoal. There is also blood inside, though not as much as is in thatvat.
Though I had to struggle against my will—against Zav’s will—I stepped back. But after only one step, a squirming girl with red hair was brought out, bundled in a blanket and toted on two male elves’shoulders.
From the balcony, I could only see part of her face, but it was enough to read the terror in her eyes. How had she ended up down here? She was my daughter’s age, maybe a littleyounger.
I stared in horror. Was she their sacrifice for thenight?
