by A. W. Exley
I gazed at the lush, rolling paddocks surrounding the grand house. "We take it out in the field and one person will release it while everyone else stands well back. I don't want it distracted by us; its sole mission should be returning to its hive."
"No, don't even suggest it, Ella." Seth bit the words out, his jaw tense. His steady gaze met mine and he shook his head.
Blasted man obviously guessed what I had planned. But he overlooked one simple fact—Elizabeth wanted me. She wanted me to try to rescue my friend, and more importantly, she wanted to see me fail.
I laid a hand on Seth's arm. "If Elizabeth truly controls these things, then she would have told it not to harm me. Where is the fun for her if the creature bites or scratches me? She needs to see me struggle to save Alice. She needs to see me suffer. If I am Turned, then the game ends too soon. It won't harm me." Once I said it out loud, I could see Elizabeth plotting that. Undead, I would be doomed to spend eternity pandering to her every whim. The scullery maid forever. I hoped that wasn't an immediate part of her plan.
Seth took my hand and kissed my knuckles. "Do you know how hard it is for me to let you walk into danger?"
His touch warmed the entire right side of my body, but his words sent tingles racing over my skin. Though most women were expected to keep house and careers were frowned upon, he would hand me a sword and let me step forward to confront danger. Could I love this man any more? "Do you know what it means to me that you are at my back?"
"Could we move this party along? None of this is finding Alice." Frank paced, his hands fisted at his sides. The man was a seething mass of agitation, and every time he neared the vermin, it struggled on the ground like a landed fish trying to make it back to water.
With a sack snugly over its head, we managed to load the vermin onto a cart. One man drove while two others kept it prone on the boards by keeping their heavy boots on its body. We rode out to a nearby field, where the package was unloaded and then the men retreated to a safe distance. The creature was somewhat like a parrot whose cage had been covered. It was docile once the sack went over its head and so long as we kept Frank away. Or maybe it was the fact no one tried to slay it that lulled it into a false sense of security.
I wasn't so foolish. I knew one bite or scratch from the infected creature would bring the same change upon my body. I glanced behind me to a row of horses and the truck. They all waited.
"Now or never," I muttered under my breath, and I sliced the rope which bound the vermin’s body into something like a giant sausage. The blade ran from shoulders down to ankles, releasing the creature. At least I didn't have to worry about nicking its skin as I worked, since it was already dead.
I stepped back and waited. It lay still, only emitting a low moan. One last thing, then—time to uncover the parrot.
Approaching it from behind, I grabbed the sack and jerked it away. A loud snarl shot from its throat and I jumped a few feet back. The sword was a comfortable weight in my hand as the vermin pressed its knuckles into the dirt. It pushed off and rose to its knees first, then groaned as it stood on shaky legs.
It swung its head back and forth, as though scenting the air. Then it turned and fixed a dead, white stare on me. What remained of its lips pulled back and it snarled. It needn't have bothered, as I could see its bottom row of teeth through the tear in its chin. It took a lumbering step toward me, its claw-like hands reaching out.
I circled around it, keeping a distance with my katana held at the ready. "Now, don't do anything hasty. Elizabeth sent you to deliver a message to me. You need to take my reply to your queen. Tell her Eleanor is coming."
Part of me felt foolish for trying to hold a conversation with it. A crack in its skull showed very little brain matter inside the cavity. It had either rotted down or perhaps rain had got in and washed the pudding-like substance away. My mind wandered, trying to determine how the thing managed to stay upright and walk with most of its brain gone. Did Elizabeth do all the thinking for her subjects? That would be exhausting, imagine trying to co-ordinate what each was doing, when they were scattered around the countryside.
It wavered on its feet and swayed first one way and then another, like a sapling in a breeze. I seemed to have confused it, something to be expected when it only had a tablespoon of mush in its head. The vermin paused mid-step and its milky eyes rolled up into its head. It shook its head back and forth and wailed, a hideous noise that sent chills running down my spine. Then it groaned and lurched off toward the trees.
Did they have some sort of vermin telegraph? Had it sent my reply to Elizabeth and received a command to return with me in tow? I hoped our scientists were earning their wages determining the answers to such questions.
Hoof beats thudded through the grass as Seth and Frank trotted up, my mare between them. Seth handed over the reins as I swung into the saddle.
"Let the hunt begin," he said.
"About bloody time," Frank muttered under his breath. He really did look shocking with red eyes and the rough growth on his chin. The bowler hat shoved low on his head did nothing to hide the wild hair, which sprang sideways over his ears.
Perhaps we should have tied him to a post back at the big house. In his current condition, he would scare Alice more than a seething mass of vermin.
We let our horses follow the lumbering creature from a safe distance, staying far enough behind that we could track its path through the trees, but not so close that any of us were at risk of being struck if it spun and attacked. The truck was confined to the roads, but the horses could follow wherever the creature went. A soldier shot occasional flares so Lieutenant Bain and reinforcements knew our locations and could stay in the same region.
Mile after mile, we dawdled behind the creature. Following a vermin seemed equivalent to letting your great grandmother loose in the garden after she's been in the sherry. It didn't take a straight path but wove back and forth, round and round trees, and often doubled back and started again.
"I thought the Turned were supposed to follow your death road straight to the catacombs?" I grumbled at Seth. “The thing is flitting around like some sort of grotesque forest fairy.” A road should mean a direct route, not weaving a pattern around trees. I had a strong urge to offer it a map, because the blasted thing didn't seem to know where it was going.
"Perhaps our bloodhound keeps losing the scent. Remember, the original roads were buried two thousand years ago." Seth rested his hands over the horse's wither and simply watched.
How did he have such patience? Frank looked like he might dismount and start kicking the creature to make it move on.
At times, the two men seemed so similar, then in other little things, the differences revealed themselves. Frank had less patience than I. I came to have a small amount of sympathy for the man; he was frantic with worry for Alice. I hoped he made things right when we finally rescued her. I resolved to give him a chance to remedy his mistake, and if he didn’t, then I would test a flamethrower on his sorry behind.
The vermin lurched toward a densely forested area. The twins studied a map with a compass in hand, checking our location and updating our route. We circled closer to the range of hills and farther away from the village. The forest was thicker here and older. Towering oaks and beech had stood for centuries, their trunks gnarled and weathered by time. The sunlight filtered through nearly a hundred feet of foliage as it sought to penetrate to ground level. Silence enveloped us as the forest watched. I doubted anyone had been this way for hundreds of years.
The horses found it harder going through the dense growth, and low-hanging branches made it dangerous to continue riding. We dismounted and walked beside the horses. Then, as I led my mare over a fallen log, we broke through to clearer footing. As we tracked our quarry, the trees seemed to part before us. Deep leaf litter paved the route, soft and springy under my boots.
If I hadn’t been so tired, I would have seen it earlier.
"Death road," I said, and pointed to the way ahead.
The trees seemed almost regimented along the edges, leaving a clear path between their neat rows. Small grasses and ferns were dotted along the way, but nothing any larger obstructed us.
The vermin picked up speed as though it scented home in the air. Now it lurched more or less in a straight line, bounded by the trees on either side. It only made the occasional detour to dance around a massive trunk.
Strange how one could spend one’s entire life in an area and then stumble upon something completely new. That area of forest was far from where Alice and I had roamed as children. I doubt we would have crossed into the foreboding trees with their twisted and aged bark. They seemed to reach out for us—or tried to hold us at bay.
"Where are we exactly?" I asked Jack and Jake as we headed along the quiet avenue.
"On a corner of the Leithfield estate," Seth answered.
I stopped and turned to face him. "We've circled back to Serenity House?"
A smile touched his lips. "Well, the estate is several hundred acres. We're not exactly in the back garden. But yes, it would appear we have come full circle."
I didn't like that. The more we learned, the more everything pointed back to Serenity House. Death roads criss-crossed the estate, and if our theory was right, catacombs lurked on the back doorstep. What mysteries did the estate keep and what secrets had Millicent deMage known when she’d asked the first duke to build his house there?
"It's disappeared!" Frank called out. He thrashed at the shrubbery with the machete he pulled from a sheath attached to the horse's saddle.
I was so busy musing that I took my gaze off our vermin. The trees surrounded us and soared toward the sky and muted the sun. I tried to penetrate the thick growth on either side of the road. Blast! Where had it gone? The thing vanished quick as a rabbit down its hole.
"It can't have got far," the twins said in unison. They split off, taking parallel paths through the undergrowth.
We hitched our horses to trees, and Frank shot off a flare to let the others know our whereabouts. Then we approached the dense scrub where we had last seen the vermin. Ferns, shrubs, and low-hanging branches raked our boots and clothing as we looked for any sign.
"Here!" Jack called. He stood by a low, rocky outcrop. He pointed to greenery around the stone that had been trampled by lumbering feet. He grabbed a dangling branch and pulled it to one side. Jake let out a soft exclamation. A black hole loomed before us. It sucked in the light and gave nothing in return except the low moan of an unnatural wind. A sound we had heard once before, from the burial mound.
We had found the catacombs.
12
Frank let out a low hiss from between his teeth that mingled with the eerie noise coming from the tunnel. "Cunning bastards. They were right under our noses."
It seemed the rock formation was more than it appeared. We grabbed our machetes and hacked at the overhanging trees and shrubs obscuring the entranceway. We gained a clear view of the light-sucking hole, and a shudder worked down my spine. I couldn't see more than two or three feet, and then the world disappeared into inky nothing.
"Alice is in there, somewhere." Frank pointed at the pitch black. His finger jabbed at the air and his body started to follow.
"Nobody goes anywhere until we are fully prepared. We are walking into a trap, after all. Elizabeth knows we are coming. Her creature has probably already told her we are knocking at the front door." Seth grabbed his half-brother by the back of his collar before he disappeared into the dark.
"It's been too long already. I need to find her." Frank fisted his hands and ground his jaw. He looked on the point of taking a swing at Seth.
"And there's a new hive down there. If you go charging in, it will be a suicide mission, not a rescue one. We wait for the truck and we plan this out. Remember the other goal of this mission. We need to know what Elizabeth has learned of the Turned objectives." The two men squared off. Seth kept his patient and steady gaze on the other man. A tic worked in Frank's cheek, but he looked away first with a brief nod of his head.
Personally, I thought Frank was mad to plough down the tunnel armed only with a rifle and a machete. I liked the idea of sending in a squadron of flamethrowers, if only I could guarantee they wouldn't turn Alice into burnt toast. I simply didn't trust anyone else when my friend's life was at stake. I had to go first.
"Did you know this was here?" I asked Seth as we checked our weapons, while we waited for the truck.
He glanced at the dark void and shook his head. "I never ventured this far, nor were there any whispers of the tunnel's existence. That would have drawn two bored lads out to hunt for it."
"Everything keeps circling back to Serenity House," I whispered. The itch took up residence in my brain, the one that said I was close to understanding something. I just needed to be brave and reach out for the answers.
"So it would seem. I think we need to dig deeper into the history of the house and this location." Seth strapped his claymore to his back and checked his service revolver.
Ghostly whispers ran over my skin and raised the hair on the back of my neck. Seth suspected the thread that bound everything together was a place. Instinct whispered that it was a person. Her name slithered through my mind like a worm through an apple—Millicent deMage.
I pinched the bridge of my nose and tried to concentrate. This wasn't the time to disappear down dark corridors in my mind, chasing long-dead ghosts. Seth and I would tackle this logically, one problem at a time. Rescue Alice, defeat Elizabeth, and then worry about what other skeletons lurked in the closets of his ancestral home.
Frank prowled the entrance to the tunnel like an agitated tiger, snarling and lashing out at anyone who got too close. After several minutes, we heard the steady purr of a big engine as the truck rumbled up the death road. They parked close to the horses, and men jumped from the back and started hauling out crates.
"I take it this is one of your death roads, captain?" Bain asked Seth. "We had to drag a few fallen trees clear to make our way in, then it was as smooth as a compacted road."
"Yes, I didn't appreciate how close they were to the old house." Seth watched as boxes were cracked open.
We pulled out the lanterns and started arraying them at the entrance, ready to be used. Like a snug entranceway in a small house, there was limited room inside the rock formation, and no one wanted to venture too far from the daylight. From what we could see of the tunnel, it seemed scarcely larger than the way into the burial mound. The ceiling was a scant six feet high. The taller men would have to stoop over, but at least we could walk two abreast.
I ducked just inside the tunnel and held my lantern high. The subdued yellow light revealed smooth walls, carved centuries ago and thankfully free of vermin fingers. Retracing my few steps back out, I ran a hand over the stone that acted as a lintel. Runes were carved deep into the surface, symbols that reminded me of those marking on the trees in my favourite glade. Were they connected? Had the same ancient druids touched both trees and rock?
The itch in my mind became a frantic need to scratch. So many things collided that it couldn't be coincidental; it must be by design. By what, or whose?
"How do you want to tackle this, captain?" Bain asked Seth.
"Rescuing Alice, if we can, is our priority. Then we need to capture Elizabeth so the War Office can interrogate her, but they will be lying in wait for us." Seth touched the hilt of his claymore, as though reassuring himself it was still there.
I had no quibble with the first part of his plan, but I baulked at the second part. I wanted to take off Elizabeth's head for touching my friend. Preferably with something blunt, so it would take a long time. Perhaps I could find a rusty spoon in the back of the army truck.
The lieutenant rubbed his chin and surveyed the crates the soldiers unloaded. "We could knock out their trap if we rolled a few kegs of explosives down the tunnel first?"
"No!" I had to jump into this discussion before someone blew Alice to bits. No one knew the twisted wor
kings of Elizabeth's mind better than me. "Elizabeth wants me to try, and fail, to rescue Alice. That means I can probably get to her without problem. Leaving is where things will become sticky."
"We've had this discussion, Ella. You are not going alone." Seth shook his head.
"I don't intend to. I only mean getting in will not be the problem. But we will need to adapt to the situation once we are in Elizabeth's territory and have rescued Alice." I would succeed. Elizabeth consistently underestimated me, and I prayed she continued to do so to our advantage. It was tempting to grab all the men and weapons at our disposal and run down the tunnel. Would we find an undead army of thousands waiting for us, or just a handful? I would rather sneak in and find Alice first, then let the army lads have at whatever vermin were hiding beneath our feet.
Seth made a noise in the back of his throat, and I hoped his military brain was thinking along the same lines as mine. "We take a small squad in and find Alice. With any luck we can snatch her from under Lady Jeffrey's nose."
"What about capturing the queen and getting out, Captain deMage?" Lieutenant Bain awaited his orders with all the polite patience of a butler serving at a fancy dinner.
Seth scanned the assembled soldiers and signalled two forward. "We'll take Jack and Jake and send one back with word once we know the lay of the land."
"Pick your weapons, privates." Lieutenant Bain gestured to the open crates. The two men may have been short of stature, but they packed enough explosives around their bodies to propel them both to the moon.
Seth picked up a grenade from an open box and placed it in my hand. "Remember what I told you."
I nodded and tucked the explosive in my jacket, hoping it didn't accidentally detonate on me. I preferred a blade over secreting grenades about my person.
I checked my blade and waited while Seth had a quiet conversation with Lieutenant Bain. The other man paled but nodded his head. Then Seth walked over to us. "Ready?"