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The tree was even worse than I’d thought from several yards away. Hand bones, skulls with hollow eye sockets, and broken rib cages created the frightening masterpiece. I marveled at how they fit together without any string or binding—they’d simply been woven together.
Femurs were bunched together, making up the center of the trunk. Rib cages faced each other, caging the leg bones as if they were bark. Eyeing the area around the base of the tree, I noticed stacks of bones lying in heaps, perhaps waiting to be assembled. Some of them still had bits of flesh and sinew attached. Not all of these skeletons were old. A chilling thought.
I realized I was holding my breath, terrified of making too much noise. I wanted to hurry, and yet this place made it impossible to not pause and gape at each new horror. Like the one before us now.
Sitting beside the pile of bones was a large claw-foot tub. It was filled to the brim with dark red blood, the scent of copper stinging my nose. It was likely a trick of my senses, but I swore something bubbled from within its sanguine depths. Thomas stilled, his attention latched on to the bathtub as he held an arm out, stalling our movements. I dared not wander close to it, the fear of what my mind would conjure too great. Thomas continued staring at it, shoulders tensed. We’d found the missing blood of the Impaler’s victims—the ones we knew of and God knew who else. The murderer was close. Too close. My whole body tingled with anticipation.
It felt as if we’d traversed deep into Dante’s Inferno, unaware.
“‘Abandon all hope ye who enter here.’ It’s so disturbing,” I whispered. “I cannot fathom how anyone would fashion an entire crypt from bones. Or that tub… poor Wilhelm and Mariana.” I shivered, knowing my damp clothing was only partly to blame. “The Order is quite gifted with psychological war games.”
“It is a literal bloodbath.” Thomas tore his gaze from the tub, expression grim. “Someone has a very dark and very twisted sense of humor.”
I closed my eyes, demanding that the rapid pounding of my heart slow down. We needed to find Daciana and Ileana. I kept repeating that thought until fear released me.
We quietly moved away from the tub of blood, but the horror of it clung to us. I felt it behind me, waiting, as if it were beckoning me with its nightmarish essence. I would not even consider what we’d do if another clue was located within that bloodbath monstrosity. If the villagers were superstitious about desecrating the dead, I could only imagine their reaction should they ever stumble upon this blasphemous burial site.
“There must be over two hundred human bodies that went into making this morbid sculpture.” Thomas held the lantern toward the top branch. A cluster of phalanges were strung together as if they were white leaves. “Perhaps the rumors of Vlad Dracula being immortal are true.”
I ripped my gaze from the bone tree, inspecting my friend for any signs of trauma. He shot me a crooked grin. “You’re most delightful when you stare at me like that, Wadsworth. However, I’m only teasing. Judging from the bath of blood, I do believe whoever’s amended that nasty little poem for you visited this spot. Maybe we’ll find a clue regarding Daci.”
“Do you see any Roman numerals carved into the tree?” I focused on the graveyard and mausoleum; I couldn’t stop myself from being intrigued by our surroundings. Flesh-free skulls lined the walls. Actually, the skulls were the walls. They were stacked on top of one another, packed so tightly I doubted I could stick my fingers between them.
Thomas shook his head. “No, but according to that sign, one must climb the tree to pluck its fruit.”
I stared at the plaque nailed to the bone gate. It was etched in Romanian, the letters rough as the tool that had been used to mark it. I stepped closer, reading it to myself.
Smulge fructe din copac pentru a dobândi cunostinte
Thomas was correct; it basically stated that one needed to pluck fruit from the tree to gain knowledge. I trailed my gaze over the tree limbs, searching for any sign of this so-called fruit. Bird skulls of all sizes were strung in intervals, their beaks facing this way and that. I pointed them out. “Perhaps those skulls? In some sickening way, they almost resemble pears.”
Something faint bubbled from behind. I spun around, searching, my heart near-ready to gallop from my body. The blood was undisturbed, the surface dark as crimson-tinted oil.
“Did you hear that?”
Thomas took a deep breath, his attention methodically scanning the room and the chamber behind us. “Tell me again why we aren’t using this time more wisely. We could be wrapped ’round one another instead of”—he motioned in front of us—“all this.”
“We need to hurry, Cresswell. I have a horrible feeling.”
Without saying another word, Thomas faced the tree and reached forward, placing his weight on a rib cage as he slowly scaled the ivory-colored bones. He put his left foot on another rib, testing it nimbly before transferring his entire weight.
He repeated the movement twice more, barely making it a few feet off the ground, when a horrible crack rent the air, echoing like a switch that had been slapped across knuckles. I lurched forward to catch him, but he gracefully leapt down unassisted.
“Seems I won’t be harvesting any ripe fruit from this tree after all.” He wiped his hands off on his trousers, mouth pressed into an annoyed line. A few drops of blood appeared like rubies on his fingertips before he sucked them away. “Read the poems once more for me, please? One of them has to be relevant to this situation. There aren’t that many to choose from.”
I pulled the worn old book from my pocket and handed it to him. I didn’t care to speak the dreadful words aloud any more than was necessary.
While Thomas read the poems to himself, I quickly unfastened my overskirts. Time was slipping from our grasp. One way or another, we had to pluck whatever knowledge we could from this dreadful tree before heading back to the academy. By this time, Moldoveanu and Danesti were probably aware we were missing. We might as well come back with something useful if we were about to be expelled. Plus, I did not want to be caught here by the murderer.
The buttons on my bodice popped off with ease. Their tiny tinkling struck the ground as my heart struck my rib cage with vigor. Thank the heavens I’d changed out of my more complicated dress earlier that evening. I had no bustle or corset to wrestle out of. Before I could change my mind or find reason to be embarrassed, I stepped out from my underskirts, feeling exposed in my chemise and smallclothes, though they covered past my knees and had several inches of Bedfordshire Maltese lace. They were not so different from my breeches, I reasoned. Though my breeches were less… frilly and delicate.
Thomas dropped Poezii Despre Moarte along with his jaw, it seemed.
“Not one word, Cresswell.” I pointed toward the top of the tree of bones. “I’m lighter than you and should be able to scale the tree. I think I see something in that skull up there. See it? Looks like a piece of parchment.”
Thomas kept his attention fixed on my face, his own reddening each time it slipped to my chin. I half wanted to roll my eyes. Not one part of me was uncovered aside from the scandal of my arms and a few inches of leg not covered by smallclothes or stockings. I had evening gowns that showed more décolletage.
“Catch me if I fall, all right?”
