by Becca Andre
He held the candle aloft, illuminating the stairs. The steps were rough and irregular, as if someone had dug the opening by hand, then added a few large stones to make it a little easier to navigate.
Elysia moved to his side, staring down into the darkness. “All the way to the bottom.”
“What?”
“At the cemetery, when I was offered Alexander’s flesh, Neil asked me how far down the rabbit hole I was willing to go, and I said—”
“All the way to the bottom.”
She looked up, meeting his eyes in the candlelight. “I’m glad you’re with me. I mean, I’m not glad you were taken and forced into this hell hole, but…”
“I get it. I’m glad I’m here, too.”
She took a deep breath and released it. “Okay. Let’s see how deep this rabbit hole goes.”
The stairs were narrow, so she had to settle for a hand on James’s shoulder as he led the way down the uneven steps. They were about halfway down when it occurred to her to send her senses outward.
“There are a lot of dead down here,” she whispered.
“Any moving around?”
“I would need to attempt to animate them to track individual movement among so many.”
“Okay. I’m sure it’s not anything you can’t handle.”
His faith in her should have made her smile, but after Doug’s criticism of her ability to use her magic, the comment depressed her instead. She chewed her lip and followed in James’s wake, hoping they wouldn’t have to rely on her magic to get out of here.
They reached the bottom of the stairs. A crudely dug tunnel stretched before them. How deep the tunnel went, Elysia couldn’t say. The light from the candle didn’t go far. A few feet in, two smaller tunnels opened to each side. James would have to duck if he chose to take one of them. He didn’t.
A short distance further down, they found two more openings, these also lower than theirs.
James stopped and lifted his candle. “The pattern of openings continues,” he whispered.
She squinted her eyes, trying to see what he saw. “Like rooms, at a hotel.”
“Like cells, in a prison. Some are occupied. I hear movement.”
Once again, she sent her senses outward, listening closer to the death around them. “They’re all occupied.”
“If they’re moving, they’re liches. What I don’t understand is why none have shown themselves.”
“Probably because their maker commanded them to remain in their cells.”
James glanced down. “Alexander?”
“That’s a high possibility, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the Nelson family used this as their personal jail. Perhaps they still do.”
“It’s really not a good thing to piss off a necromancer.”
“Especially the psychotic ones, and as you’ve no doubt noticed, there tend to be a lot of those.”
James grunted and continued down the tunnel. She followed, listening for shuffles of movement from the tunnels they passed. She soon lost count, but there had to be at least ten or twelve.
The tunnel they were following finally ended in a large hand-dug room. The center of the space was occupied by a heavy, wooden table. James continued forward, lifting his candle when he reached the table.
Elysia stopped inside the door, crossing her arms against a sudden chill. The candlelight cast odd shadows against the walls, unsettling her more. It was silly. The only things down here were the dead. What was there to fear?
“I smell blood,” James said, his soft voice echoing in the empty room. “Old blood and death.”
“This is a catacomb,” she said, keeping her voice low.
“Not the dead. Death, as in the act.”
“There’s a difference?”
In answer, he bent and lifted something hanging from the table. It clanked like metal. Then she saw that it was a shackle attached to a chain. An oil lamp similar to ones upstairs hung from the low ceiling, and she realized that this was an autopsy table.
“Yes, there’s a difference.” He dropped the shackle, and it swung by its chain before clanking against a table leg.
Elysia cringed at the noise, but James casually walked away, examining the room. He crossed to the far wall, and she saw another table, this one cluttered with a small collection of bottles, wooden boxes, and a few books.
A bracket on the wall held another oil lamp. James removed the glass chimney and touched the flame of his candle to the wick. When it caught, he took a moment to adjust the light, then pushed the base of his candle into the mouth of a half-empty bottle. She hoped the bottle’s contents weren’t flammable.
She crossed the room to join him. As she drew closer, she could see other things lying on the table. Tools. There were clamps, scalpels, forceps…embalming tools, though these were really old.
James was leaning close, looking at an open journal that lay to one side. He flipped a page, but maintained his silence as he studied the elegant writing that graced the yellowing pages. He read for a moment, then flipped a few more pages.
“What is it?” She rolled her shoulders, trying to work out the stiffness.
“Theories on…soul transference?”
“What?” She stepped up beside him.
“Is that even possible?”
“Transferring a soul from one body to another?”
He lifted his head. “Yes.”
“It’s a myth,” she whispered, hoping he didn’t hear the quiver in her voice. The myth also stated that only a soul reaper could do it. Why did everything keep coming back to that particular blood gift?
“The author of this journal doesn’t believe it a myth.” James turned back to the aged paper. Another moment’s silent study, and he gently turned another page. “Huh.”
“What?” She leaned in closer and saw what appeared to be a list and a set of numbered instructions.
“Alchemy,” he said. “It’s an alchemical formula.”
“What would an alchemist be doing here? Alexander hates alchemists.”
“I think…” His voice trailed off as he continued to read.
She rolled her shoulders again and realized it wasn’t stiffness, but unease that was tensing her muscles. She turned to look behind them. It almost felt like they were being watched, but there was no one in the room. Though the tunnel they had just traversed was an open mouth of inky blackness. If she listened closely enough, she could still hear the rustling from the prison tunnels—or had the occupants shuffled out into the main hall.
“Ha, I knew it,” James said, his tone triumphant.
She turned to find him studying the inside cover of the journal.
“Look.” He pointed at the words written on the flyleaf.
She leaned in for a better look.
Private notes of Ian Mallory, June 1823 to… There was no ending date.
“Ian was Made in 1825.” She rubbed her arms against the chill. “He wrote this when he was alive.”
“It looks like he was studying some dark stuff.”
Elysia frowned. What was he doing studying soul transference, the ability of a soul reaper? She remembered Alexander claiming that Ian had used the soul reaper ability as the basis of his curse. What did that mean?
“Addie needs to see this,” James said.
“She can read it after me.”
He looked up. “What are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking that Ian has some explaining to do.”
“True.” James reached out and picked up one of the clamps. “But he wasn’t the one working down here. Do you think Alexander was interested in soul transference?”
“A vain man who is now a rotting corpse?”
James lifted his eyes to hers. “Wha
t if the liches in those tunnels are the result of his experiments?”
“You might be right.” Elysia swallowed, hating to continue. “But it wasn’t Alexander. Soul transference isn’t his blood gift.”
James studied her, understanding lighting his eyes. “That ability belongs to a soul reaper.”
“Supposedly.”
Oh, it does, a female voice spoke from behind them.
Elysia whirled, but found the room empty.
“What is it?” James asked.
Would you like to see? The same voice asked, this time from the other side of the room.
Moans began to echo out of the black tunnel they had just traversed. A moment later, the first of the imprisoned liches shuffled into the room.
No one had bothered to give these liches robes. Quite a few appeared to have been in here as long as Alexander. Little flesh covered the desiccated muscle that clung to the exposed bones, and what clothing still hung from their frames was in tatters. Even so, Elysia could see that many wore styles from centuries past.
They drew closer, and her eyes were drawn to one with an odd, lurching gait. It wasn’t until it moved into the light that she saw what was wrong.
She took a hasty step back, bumping into James.
“Ely?”
“It has a hand where its foot should be.” She gestured at the lich with the odd gait. Even in the low light, it was obvious. She didn’t know if modern medicine could pull that off, but judging by the lich’s tattered clothes and state of decay, it had been in here since the early to mid 1800s.
James grunted. “Weird. It’s like someone mixed and matched the parts.”
She glanced up at him.
“What?” he asked.
“You. Doug’s right. This stuff does not faze you.”
“Why would it?” He leaned down, his mouth close to her ear. “I’m the scariest thing on the mortal plane.”
She smiled, oddly comforted by the statement, even as she watched two more liches shuffle into the room. That brought the total to eight.
“Do you have this one, or shall I take it?” James asked.
Elysia freed her soul and reached out to the nearest lich, the one with a hand for a foot. “Stop,” she said.
The lich paused, his weight shifting as he watched her from a single, glazed-over eye. Abruptly, he pushed back. The sensation was so unexpected that she instinctively pulled away from him.
Female laughter echoed around the room. He was blood bound by a soul reaper. Only the blood of one can take him from me.
Elysia stilled. “You’re a soul reaper?”
More laughter answered her.
“Who are you talking to?” James asked.
Elysia gave him a quick frown. “You didn’t hear her?”
“Hear who?”
Not again. She remembered how ghosts had plagued her after Neil had stunted her. No one else could hear them. No one except James. Until now.
“Ely?”
“There’s a woman. She claims to be a soul reaper, and these liches are hers.”
“Is she the one who mixed up the body parts?”
Elysia stared at that lich with renewed horror. When Ian had been dismembered, she had used her own blood to reattach his limbs. She thought she was healing him, but if what she saw before her was the same blood gift in action, then perhaps healing wasn’t the right word.
A soft chime of metal drew her attention to James. He had picked up a heavy cleaver from the table of more common embalming tools. She didn’t want to think about why there was a cleaver in this soul reaper’s chamber. What if this woman was one of Alexander’s daughters? What if this was the work of an ancestress?
“Here.” James tucked Ian’s journal into the large pocket of her robe. “Hold that for me. I don’t do well with pockets.”
“With clothes in general.” She picked up one of the scalpels, keeping an eye on the liches moving toward them. It was strange. All the liches she had met were like the living—personality wise. These behaved more like zombies with no consciousness of their own.
“What are you doing with that?” James asked.
“Apparently, only the blood of a soul reaper can take these liches.”
“I thought we decided you weren’t a soul reaper.”
“What if I am?”
He reached over and captured her wrist. “I got this one.”
“You’re bound in iron.”
He shrugged, then stepped forward to meet hand-foot guy. The lich reached for him, but James easily ducked the grab, then came back at the guy so fast that it was still reaching for the place James had been when James cleaved his arm above the elbow.
The arm dropped to the floor and broke into pieces, much like the zombies Elysia and Doug had used earlier. The lich stared at its fallen arm, not even looking up when James used the cleaver a second time to take off its head. This time, the entire body crumbled.
“See?” James said. “Nothing to—”
The remaining liches charged forward, their silence as unsettling as their appearance. Had their decaying bodies robbed them of the ability to speak?
James growled, then ran right at them.
Elysia pressed a hand to her mouth. Had he forgotten that he no longer possessed the strength of the dead?
With reflexes more animal than human, he sidestepped the closest lich and somehow sprinted through the group without a single one touching him. He rolled beneath the reaching hand of the last in line and lashed out with his cleaver, catching the lich above the knee. The decayed flesh broke apart, sending the lich to the floor. James turned and brought the cleaver down on the lich’s throat. Two down.
James sprang to his feet and continued across the room. The rest of the crowd turned and ran after him. Elysia realized that he was decoying them away from her. He vaulted the autopsy table in the center of the room, landing on the far side before he faced the liches. None were as agile as he was, and they were forced to circle the table, coming at James from both ends, thinning their numbers so he only faced one or two at a time.
One of the liches stopped short of the table and slowly turned to face Elysia.
Your man is smart and agile, the same voice whispered in her mind.
“Yes, he is.” Elysia glanced from side to side, but saw no evidence of the speaker. The lich walking toward her lacked a lower jaw. The woman couldn’t use him to speak.
“Stop.” Elysia threw her soul into the vessel before her, and the lich froze in mid-stride.
Suddenly, her soul was snapping back, and she grunted at its powerful return.
You don’t listen very well.
Elysia ran the scalpel across her palm, grimacing as it bit deep. She stepped forward and shoved her bloody hand into the lich’s face. “Drink.”
She once again threw her power into him, and he was momentarily hers. With his lack of a proper mouth, the drinking was more symbolic than actual, but it wasn’t the act of drinking that was important. He had to take that bit of her soul, contained within her blood, into himself.
She took a quick glance at James and saw another pair of liches at his feet. He was holding his own against the remaining three who had made it around the table. James backed away, keeping them occupied and uninterested in her, though his own gaze flicked in her direction often.
Elysia closed her eyes, following her blood into the lich. She found his soul and looked closer. As she did, the bonds that held him to his physical form became visible to her.
For one long moment, she simply stared. She had never tried to take a lich that had been bound to another. The single Making she had performed had been an act of desperation and nothing more than fumbling in the dark. But this time, she looked.
Imagining tha
t she held the lich’s imprisoned soul in her hand, Elysia pictured claws replacing her nails, much as James frequently did. She slipped a claw beneath one of the old bonds and sliced upward. It gave with a pop she could feel, if not hear.
What are you doing? Was the invisible woman worried?
Elysia didn’t answer, moving to the next bond.
You shouldn’t be able to do that.
An alien presence suddenly surrounded her, or rather, that bit of her own soul within the lich. The image of his bound soul winked out. Alarmed, Elysia pulled away, magically and physically.
The lich grabbed her by the front of her robe and lifted her from the floor.
Who are you? the woman’s voice whispered in Elysia’s mind.
Chapter 9
Out of the corner of his eye, James saw the lich grab Elysia and lift her off her feet. “Ely!”
He cut down another lich as it reached for him, then threw the cleaver at the lich holding Elysia. The heavy knife wasn’t intended for such a purpose, but even bound in iron, James was every bit the Hunter his brothers were. His aim was true, and the cleaver slammed into the lich’s head, and as its name suggested, cleaved the skull in two. Like the other badly decayed liches, the breaking of the brittle bones caused the whole structure to disintegrate. In this case, the lich’s head collapsed into bone fragments and dust. His hands released Elysia’s robe, and the rest of the body crumbled to the floor.
“You okay?” he called to her.
“Yes, I—” Her eyes went wide, looking beyond him. “Behind you!”
He was already turning. Two more liches shambled in from the hall. With the two remaining already too close for comfort, James ran at the newcomers. He dropped into a slide at the last minute, and knocked the pair to the ground as the others charged after him from behind. Lacking any kind of coordination in their rotted bodies, these two became tangled with the ones on the floor, giving James time to regain his feet and run back to the autopsy table in the center of the room.