by R. L. King
“Exactly,” Ward said. “We’d have to go back and look at the chamber again now that we’ve worked out more of the symbols, but I’d say that we’re looking at multiple levels of redundancy here. The magical equivalent of putting several locks on a box and then wrapping it with welded metal straps. Whatever was inside that room, whoever put it there didn’t want it getting out.”
Verity gripped the table. “Does that mean…it wasn’t dead in the first place?”
“Like a vampire or something?” Jason asked.
“Probably not a vampire,” Eddie said.
“Are there vampires?” Ian contemplated the pizza boxes, then snagged another slice.
“Sort of,” Stone said. “Not the way the media portrays them, though. And they’re rare. Most of what people might think of as ‘vampires’ were really some of the nastier black mages.”
“So, what, then?” Verity asked. “Something magically talented, right?”
“Oh, without a doubt,” Ward said. “Some of those sigils were designed to create a sort of magical nullification field around the space inside—either the whole room or that stone coffin.” He pondered. “If I had to guess—and mind you, this is just a guess, with very little to back it up—I’d venture to say whatever was in there was in a sort of…suspended animation. The construction probably shook something loose, giving it the tiny opening it needed to break free.”
Stone stared at him. “Do you have any idea what kind of power that would have taken? Not just to do the ritual in the first place, but to sustain it until now?”
Eddied nodded. “Yeah, mate. We do. That’s why this is all so terrifyin’.”
“And now it’s out there somewhere,” Verity said. “And we have no idea who or what it is, or whether it hates Doc’s family as much as the echoes do.”
“That’s about it,” Eddie said.
“Was there anything in the journal about that sort of ritual?” Stone asked, pointing at it. “Anything even close?”
“That was our first thought,” Ward said. “But no. Nothing. There are warding rituals, of course, but they’re more concerned with protecting large structures, like the house. Nothing about keeping something imprisoned.”
“Well. This is bloody brilliant, isn’t it?” Stone stared at his hands on the table. He’d hoped Eddie and Ward could give him answers—and to some extent, they had. But those answers had come with a heaping helping of additional questions. “Now not only do I have to work out how to get the echoes out of my house without sacrificing myself because we don’t have the bones to bury, but I’ve also got to track down whatever super-powerful entity was shut up in a containment chamber in the basement.” He jerked his head up, knowing how manic he must look. “Anybody want a drink?”
Nobody answered. Jason and Ian continued eating pizza while Eddie and Ward paged through their notebooks and Verity studied the chunks of door spread out on the table. She looked up, obviously about to say something, when someone’s phone buzzed.
“That’s me,” Eddie said, pulling it from his pocket. He glanced at the number, his eyes widening in surprise. “’Ello, Poppy. Didn’t expect to ’ear from you this soon. Are you all right? Nothing’s come after you, ’as it?”
He listened a moment, then nodded. “Well, that’s good, at least. Wait, you’ve got what?” He shifted his gaze between Stone and Ward, his brow furrowing. “Wait, Poppy. ’Ang on a tick, will you? We’re at Stone’s place in London. I’ve got ’im and ’is lot ’ere, along with Ward. They’ll want to ’ear this too. Let me put you on speaker.”
He punched a button and laid the phone in the middle of the table, moving a pizza box out of the way. To Stone, he said, “She said she’s been ’avin’ odd dreams last night, and she thinks they might mean somethin’. Go ahead, Poppy,” he added in a louder voice.
“Hello?” she called.
“Morning,” Stone said. “I hope you’re doing all right. Is something wrong?”
“I don’t know yet.” She sounded odd, as if she couldn’t quite make sense of her own thoughts. “It might be nothing, but I figured I’d give Eddie a ring and let him know, just in case it isn’t.”
“I appreciate that. What’s going on?”
“Well—last night, after Eddie and Arthur took me home, I had trouble sleeping.”
“Not surprised. I think we all did.”
“Yeah. Well, I had a little drink and finally went to bed around three-thirty. I didn’t think I’d get any sleep, but I figured I’d at least try to rest for a bit. Anyway, I didn’t think I’d nodded off, but the next thing I knew I was havin’ this vivid dream.”
“Is that unusual?” Stone asked.
“Dreams aren’t, but this one was…different. I get them sometimes—part of my work, you know? But this one was about your house.”
Stone leaned forward, gripping the table’s edge, his attention focused on Eddie’s phone. “Did you dream about the echoes? The spirits?”
“No. That wouldn’t have surprised me at all after what happened. I’m not even sure how I knew I was at your house, because I was…shut up inside something.”
All around the table, everyone exchanged glances. “Inside what?” Stone asked. “Do you know?”
“I don’t. It was dark, and there wasn’t much space. I…I didn’t feel like me, though. I felt like somebody else. A man, I think. And I was…angry. Like, really angry. Murderous. I wanted to kill the people who put me inside that dark space. And there was this overwhelming sense of betrayal.”
A chill ran up Stone’s back. “What happened next?” He was very much afraid he might know the answer.
“The rage kept getting stronger and stronger, until I thought I’d just explode with it. I felt like I was drifting up through something, and then I was in this strange room.”
“Strange room?” The chill settled at the base of his neck, fluttering outward. “Was it small and square? Did it have carvings or sigils of any kind on the walls?”
“I…don’t think so. You have to realize, all of this was…well…dreamlike. Everything was dark and swirling around and hard to make out. It almost seemed like I was in a big round room, not a small square one. But that’s crazy, right? It’s probably just that I was spinning around.”
“What did you do next?” Eddie asked. “Do you remember anything else? Were there any other spirits around?”
“No…I don’t think so. Just me. That was when I woke up. I was soaked with sweat, and my whole body hurt. I think I was…clenching my muscles in my sleep, to go along with the rage in the dream.” She paused. “When I woke up, I was still feeling that rage. I wanted to kill somebody. It scared me, until I got myself calmed down.” She drew a deep, audible breath. “Did that help you? Do you know the place I’m talking about? Do you recognize it?”
Once more, the group around the table looked at each other. “I think we do,” Eddie said after a moment. “Poppy, I’m sorry. I never should’ve brought you into this. Will you be all right? ’Ave you got somebody to look after you?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. I’ve got a couple of mates coming over in a bit, and we’re gonna go indulge in some retail therapy with all that money Alastair paid me. And get really drunk tonight.” She gave an unsteady chuckle. “Don’t you worry, Eddie. I’ll be fine.”
“Thank you, Poppy,” Stone said. “If there’s anything I can do for you—”
“That’s all right, luv. I think if you don’t mind I’ll just stay away from you and your lot for a while. A year or so from now, we can all have a drink and a laugh over this, but right now—”
“I understand. Thanks for letting us know about the dream, though.”
When Eddie had put the phone back in his pocket, Ian spoke for the first time. “Do you think she’s talking about the sealed room?”
“It would make sense,” Jason said. “Like she said, she was disoriented in the dream. And that feeling like she was shut up inside something—that would be that box, right?”
&nb
sp; “And whoever it is, it sounds like they hate the Stone family even more than the echoes do,” Verity added.
“But what do we do with that information?” Ian took the last slice from one of the pizza boxes and closed it. “Whoever was in that box is gone now—how do we find out who it was?”
“There wasn’t anything in the ledger about it, was there?” Jason asked Ward. “You know—records of any extra sacrifices, pages that didn’t have numbers, anything like that?”
“No, nothing like that. The ledger was very precise: forty-one sacrificial victims, each one corresponding to one of the alcoves in the chamber. Nothing extra.”
“We even examined all the pages with magical sight,” Eddie said. “In case there were any secret records. We’re fairly sure what you see is what you get.”
Verity frowned, glancing at Stone. “Doc? You’ve been really quiet. And you look like you’ve got something on your mind. What is it?”
Stone looked up from where he’d been gazing down at the table, ignoring most of what his friends had been discussing. Poppy’s words swirled in his mind. “I wonder…” he said, almost to himself.
“What do you wonder, mate? Did we miss something?” Eddie asked.
He stood with sudden intensity. “We’ve got to go back to the house.”
“Back?” Jason and Ian said in unison.
“Why?” Verity added.
“Because I don’t think Poppy was disoriented. I think she meant exactly what she said.”
“What are you talking about?” Ward asked.
Stone made a come on gesture, urging his friends up. “She mentioned feeling like she was in a large round room, not a small square one. Does that sound like anything familiar?”
“Are you talkin’ about the central ritual chamber?” Eddie frowned. “You think there might’ve been another sacrifice on that altar—one that wasn’t recorded for whatever reason? Maybe that whatever was shut up in that sealed room might’ve been prepared there first?”
“No,” Stone said, snatching his overcoat from the back of the chair. “I might be wrong—I hope I am, because it will add yet another unknown variable to our little puzzle—but I wonder if there might still be something, or someone, interred inside that altar.”
25
“You there, Doc?” Verity stood in the basement room, looking at the dark hole in the floor while she straightened her jacket. “We’re ready to go down.”
“I’m here,” Stone’s voice came back instantly through the radio. “Where else would I be?” Even over the connection, she couldn’t miss the bitter frustration in his voice. “Just—be careful, all right? If there is anything down there, it might not want to be disturbed. And keep the connection open.”
“Yeah, we will.” She glanced at the others. “Ready?”
“As we’ll ever be,” Eddie said.
When they’d returned through the portal to the house, Aubrey had already departed, his truck gone from the yard where they’d left it in their hasty retreat. The group had set up their command center in the garage again, with an impatient Stone and Ian remaining behind as the others set off for the house.
Eddie and Ward had both been skeptical about the idea that there might be something hidden within the pedestal in the ritual room, but they hadn’t argued much about the trip back because they both wanted to see the broken alcoves and have another look in the sealed room now that they knew better what they were looking at.
“Just don’t be disappointed if we don’t find anything, mate,” Eddie had told Stone before they left the garage. “I’ve never heard of anyone bein’ shut up inside a sacrificial altar before.”
Stone shrugged. “You’re probably right. But we can eliminate another data point. Just don’t take all day down there, all right?”
Now, Verity snapped her helmet into place and tightened her grip on her flashlight. “I’ll go down first, in case anything’s waiting for us down there. Send Jason down next, and then you guys come.” She glanced at her brother; he was watching her grimly, his hands wrapped around the handle of his baseball bat. This time he also had a sledgehammer strapped to his back.
When she reached the stone floor below, she scanned the area quickly with both magical and mundane sight. Nothing unusual stood out, except that the wooden door was open. Had they left it open before, or had the skeletons done it when they poured out?
“Okay. Looks safe. Come on down.”
A few seconds later, the others stood next to her. “Nothing so far, Doc,” she said over the radio. “We’re heading to the ritual room now.”
The circular room looked no different than they remembered it from their visit yesterday. The altar and the ritual circle beneath it remained untouched, with no sign of tampering. The rusting manacles lay quiet and undisturbed on top.
All three of the mages scanned the altar with magical sight, taking positions all around it. “Anything?” Verity asked.
“Not a thing,” Eddie said, shaking his head. “Looks as dull as ever.”
“Yes,” Ward agreed. “If there’s been any magical activity here, I certainly don’t see it.”
“Should we just…break it open?” Jason asked. “I don’t see any hatches or openings or anything.”
“Yes,” came Stone’s voice over the radio. For the moment, it was still working. “If you can’t find a way in, break it open if you can. If it’s solid, things will be more difficult, but we need to know that.”
“Right.” Jason pulled the sledgehammer from his back and paced around the altar, looking for a good spot.
“Wait,” Eddie said, holding up a hand. “I want to look at the alcoves and the sealed room first, just in case Stone’s right and something nasty ’appens when we open that thing up.”
“Eddie—” Verity began. Now that they were here, she found herself caught up in Stone’s curiosity. She wanted to see if he was right as much as he did.
“No, he’s right,” Stone said. “Have a look around, but don’t take too long.”
They stayed together again, none of them willing to wander off alone and make the search go faster, but even so it only took a few minutes to determine that their hypothesis about the skeletons had been at least partially correct: every one of the bricked alcoves had been blasted open from the inside, with bricks and pieces of bricks littering all four of the hallways. Their spot checks inside the alcoves found no evidence of skeletal remains, and some of the manacles holding the bones to the wall had been broken.
Verity relayed that information back to Stone as they trooped back to the center room and checked the remaining hallway with the formerly sealed chamber.
“No surprise there,” he said. “If you hadn’t found that, I’d have wondered where all those skeletons came from. Would have needed to check the cemetery, I suppose. What about the sealed room?”
His voice carried well to the others, and Eddie, who’d gone ahead, answered. “Everything looks fine here. No sign of disturbance. I want to get some more notes, but that can wait until after we’ve examined the altar.”
“Assuming something doesn’t jump out and eat us,” Jason muttered.
Verity ignored him. “Come on. Let’s do this. The suspense is killing me.”
They’d lowered the stand lights back down through the hole from upstairs, and Ward switched them on, bathing the chamber in bright light. Eddie crouched next to the altar, pressing his ear against it and rapping with his knuckles.
“Anything?” Ward asked.
“’Ard to say. If it’s ’ollow, the sides are too thick to resonate. I think we’re gonna ’ave to crack it.”
“Okay. Stand back,” Jason said, handing the bat to Verity and hefting the sledgehammer.
The others retreated to the edge of the room, keeping a close watch on him. Verity noticed that, like her, both Eddie and Ward had magical sight up and stood tensely, ready to spring up shields around Jason if anything should leap free of the pedestal and attack him. “Here goes, Doc,” s
he said. “Keep your fingers crossed.”
Jason paused, sizing up the space, and then cocked the hammer back and swung.
Everyone held their breath.
The hammer’s substantial head hit the side of the pedestal and cracked through, leaving a ragged hole six inches in diameter and scattering bits of crumbling stone around the edges.
“Yes!” Verity called through the radio. “It’s hollow. Jason just busted through.”
“Is anything inside?” Now Stone sounded eager, all his frustration gone.
“Don’t know yet. Hang on.”
She, Eddie, and Ward hastily approached as Jason pulled the hammer head free of the hole and began poking at its edges to widen it.
“Can you see anything?” Eddie thrust his hand, surrounded by a bright light spell, forward.
Verity used magic to help clear the hole, and after a moment Ward and Eddie did too. In only a few minutes they’d cleared it to a diameter of one foot.
Jason backed off with the sledgehammer. “You guys look. I break things—you analyze ’em.”
“What do you see?” Stone demanded from the radio. “Tell me! Is anything in there?”
After a quick exchanged glance between Eddie, Verity, and Ward, the latter two backed up. “Go on,” Verity said with a chuckle. “Take a look, before Doc’s head explodes from curiosity.”
Moving slowly, almost as if he didn’t want the suspense to end, Eddie crouched in front of the ragged hole and pressed his face to it, moving his head to the side so he could get his light spell in as well.
“Well?” Jason called.
“Bloody ’ell,” Eddie breathed, his shoulders tensing.
“What is it?” Verity crowded in closer.
He stepped back, pulling off his safety glasses to wipe sweat off his forehead. “Stone was right. There is somebody in there.”
“Somebody? Who?” Stone’s voice from the radio was louder. “Damn it, Eddie, give me details. Is it a body? A skeleton? A mummy? What?”
Eddie put his glasses back on. “We need to open this up more. It looks like a decayed male body. I can’t get a good look because the hole’s too small.”