by A. W. Exley
Frank snatched up a lantern and disappeared. Guess we were off then. Seth and I followed Frank, with Jack and Jake taking up the rear. As we stepped under the lintel, we were swallowed by an eternal night. A few feet inside, the tunnel angled downward into the earth.
The low moaning curled and spiralled in the confined space and raised goose bumps along my arms. We walked several feet down the tunnel, until the outside world shrank to a small porthole behind us. I counted another ten steps and the circle of light disappeared, leaving us without any illumination except the lanterns.
In the swaying yellow light, Jack and Jake grinned as though we embarked on an adventure. Frank looked grim, a man with a single-minded determination to save his girl. Seth maintained his flawless composure. And me, well, my stomach churned at the thought of confronting Louise and Elizabeth. Again. At least this time I wouldn’t be troubled by thoughts of blood ruining the carpet.
I raised my lantern, trying to see farther than a few feet in front of my face. I walked next to Seth and glanced his way. "What did you tell Bain that made him swallow?"
He glanced at me and then looked away. "I told him that if none of us made it out, to blow the entrance and ensure nothing escapes."
Oh. There was an uncomfortable thought, being trapped down here forever. "I hope you gave us a reasonable time frame to rescue Alice and escape?"
He smiled. "Of course. I thought the rest of the day sufficient. He will collapse the tunnel at nightfall. I don't want anything escaping unnoticed in the dark."
The rest of the day didn't sound like very long to me. That gave us four or five hours at most. The ceiling seemed lower, pressing on our shoulders. "Is it just me or does it seem as though there’s not enough air down here?"
"Breathe, Ella. We'll make it. We've done this before, remember?" Seth reached out and took my hand.
I squeezed his fingers and took a breath. Apparently there was air after all. I could do this. The tunnel kept angling downward, but it started to widen as well. We stuck to one wall, and that was when we found them. The carved niches, hundreds of them of varying sizes. They covered the wall like cells in a giant honeycomb.
We spread out, each of us holding a lantern high, and then we simply stared.
The local myths were based on fact. We had found the lost catacombs from ancient times. The place where the Celtic Britons had interred their dead nearly two thousand years ago. They surrounded us and stretched into the tunnel as far as my lantern illuminated.
Could Elizabeth and other queens command the long-deceased, or did the vermin plague only work on the recently dead? There was a thought I didn't need rattling around in my head. If the bones reformed, they’d all scramble from their alcoves and swallow the countryside in a rising tide of vermin.
Deciding to be brave, I clutched my lantern and stepped closer to a cluster of cells. They ranged in size from something that would accommodate a full-grown man lying down to what I would call small cupboards. Places that seemed better suited to store your tea canister, or a sad collection of child-sized bones.
"Oh," I whispered. A ghost appeared before me of a grieving mother clutching her child to her bosom. A man taking the tiny bundle from her arms and tucking it into a carved out niche and pulling a blanket over the child' face, as the mother cried.
"Where are they?" Frank asked. He walked from cell to cell and stepped through the illusion I’d conjured. Did he expect to find Alice trapped within one? That would certainly be convenient, but wouldn't indulge Elizabeth's evil sense of fun. "Where is she?"
It was a risk bringing Frank. I worried that his need to rescue Alice clouded his judgment. We all wanted to find her, but we all wanted to get out again. If he made too much noise or charged off on his own, he’d put us all at risk.
"I imagine she will be somewhere Elizabeth can control her." And somewhere she can watch me struggle, but I kept that thought to myself.
"Let's keep moving, but everyone stay alert." Seth circled the chamber, waving his lantern. The bottom of the space contained two black holes, tunnels that each headed in a different direction.
"Which one?" Frank asked, pacing between the two.
We strained our ears, but the low wail seemed to emanate from each direction equally.
"The right one." I said the words without thinking. For that one seemed to curve back toward Serenity House, and the other pointed to where the village lay. If Seth's ancestral home was a clue in this game, then we needed to follow it.
Seth arched an eyebrow and then ducked into the right hand shaft.
When one walks through the dark, time loses all meaning. There is no sun to gauge the passage of the day. No rustling of leaves with the wind. No touch of moisture when rain threatens. We moved, yet we were suspended in a place where nothing exists. We had slipped from our world above into their world below.
The only thing that changed was the noise. The low, guttural moaning increased in pitch and covered the scuffle of our boots. We were nearing the source. Seth turned his wrist and glanced at his watch.
"How much time?" I had no concept of how long we had been travelling in the midnight world. Had we come so far that we would never escape before the deadline expired?
"Less than an hour. We have time. But I will send one of the lads back soon, to let them know we are still searching. I wouldn't want to cut our mission short." He smiled and I distracted myself by thinking how I would much rather pass the time kissing him. Or having him kiss other places on my body.
Onward we trudged. The tunnel curved and then disappeared, as though the dark swallowed it up and the ground fell away from under our feet. Stars exploded around us and it seemed I tumbled upward toward the sky. I gasped and reached out for Seth. My rock. Only his touch stopped the panic in my chest. The suffocating press of the tunnel had vanished to be replaced by the overwhelming sense of emptiness. As though I had been plucked from the dark and tossed into space.
"An illusion," Seth said. "This chamber is enormous and seems to have its own light source."
Fantastic. All of a sudden I was nostalgic for the burial mound that the first hive called its home. That had been cosy. Something enormous could house hundreds of vermin. I closed my eyes and found my bearings. The noise seemed to come from every direction.
My mind reminded my feet that solid rock was underneath us. Opening my eyes, I saw a mad landscape spread out before me, all washed in pale blue light as though the full moon shone overhead, except we were far underground. I craned my neck and peered up, curious about the stars that now lit our way. They winked in and out, making the sky sparkle, and then I realised what created the light.
"Glow worms." I breathed the word on a sigh. It should have been romantic and magical. Shame it wasn't.
Thousands, if not millions, of the little creatures clung to the roof of the cave and emitted their soft blue luminescence. Together, they produced enough to bathe the cavern in an eerie glow, adding to the nightmarish quality.
"At least now it's easier to see where we're going." Frank said.
Seth pointed to Jack and Jake. "One of you trot back, and tell Bain we are still on track but need an extra couple of hours. Tell him to hold fire until midnight."
The young men stared at each other and a silent communion passed between them. Then one nodded and saluted to Seth. He turned and trotted away, his lantern a soft, swinging light that was soon swallowed up by the tunnel behind us.
The remaining twin looked at Seth. "Jack will stay with Bain and I'll stay with you, captain."
Ah. So we had Jake. If the two really could communicate without speaking, it would certainly be handy if one could relay our progress to the other.
"Douse your lamps. It will be easier to see once our eyes are accustomed to the low light from above." Seth opened the glass of his lantern and turned the wick down, extinguishing the bright dot of light.
"I'm not sure I want to see where we're going," I murmured, but I complied.
With
the lanterns snuffed out, we stood in silence as our eyes adjusted to the change. Bit by bit, the room was unveiled to us. The underground moonlight revealed the true expanse of this new world. You could fit the entire Serenity House into the chamber with room to spare. From a distance, the walls looked exactly like honeycombs. Dozens and dozens of cells were dug into the rock. Some had filmy white coverings, as though something waited to hatch.
Unbelievably, trees had once grown down here. Twisted trunks reached up to vanish in the velvet sky. Skeletal limbs groped outward and upward, as though the trees also sought to escape. The gush of water came from one side, where moisture trickled down the rock and turned into a rivulet, and then became a flow. The water ran silver, as though the river were made of liquid mercury.
Here and there on the ground lay scattered man-made objects. Pages from a book, as though someone paced and ripped out pages as they walked. A child's doll, minus its head. A piece of patchwork blanket. Even a chair, tipped on its side. These weren't relics interred with the dead by the Britons, but were of far more recent origin. Did the vermin loot belongings from the homes they raided above ground?
Shapes hid in the gloom. The river split around a strange teardrop-shaped island. Far ahead, where the ground levelled out, standing stones seemed to ring the source of the constant moaning. Was I looking at rocks, or clusters of vermin bodies? There wasn't sufficient light to be able to tell the difference.
"Over there seems like the best starting point." I pointed to the circle.
"Alice, we're coming," Frank whispered, and we headed in that direction.
Before we walked more than a few feet, a shadow broke away from the cavern wall and formed before us. This creature was of similar height and build to me. It wore a long, red felted coat, the colour so deep it reminded me of congealed blood. Dark hair hung loose and tangled around its shoulders. The head raised and I met a gaze full of hatred.
Louise.
13
Louise's lips curled in a smirk. "At last, the tardy scullery maid reports for work. We do need someone to clean up around here. It's terribly dirty and I could just kill for a cup of tea."
For the thousandth time, I cursed the tired action that turned Louise from a thorn in my side to an undead thorn shoved under my fingernail. Or was she? Garden variety vermin weren’t usually chatty.
Ignoring her dangling insult, I narrowed my gaze. "What are you, exactly? You don't look like one of Elizabeth's mindless minions."
Had she Turned from Elizabeth's bite, or had one of the vermin subsequently scratched her? It was hard to tell if her heart had stopped beating when I wasn't so sure she had one to being with. She seemed too … well, alive.
There were obvious changes from the Louise of old. This version was no longer groomed and coiffured. She wore a black shirt underneath the strange coat that looked like it once belonged to a man. Her legs were clad in trousers with stripes made of dirt smears, and scuffed black boots encased her feet. The whites of her eyes were either bloodshot or had changed to red. I couldn't tell which, but the effect made me shudder. Her hair was tangled and wild, but I couldn't deny the predatory intelligence peering out from her bloody gaze.
Louise tilted her head as she stared at me. The action reminded me of a crow that watched a mouse and waited for the right moment to swoop down and break its back with its beak or claws. "I am more than I used to be. Mother's bite created something new within me. I am unique, yet still eternal. I am the right hand of our queen."
Unique was something I bet the army scientists would love to get their hands on. One of the Turned, but suspended between life and their undead state. The daughter of their queen in every way. Louise was vermin, but had retained her intelligence. We would need to coin a new name just for her. Pariah? Rodent? There were so many epithets that I could attach to her new condition.
"Louise, wish I could say it's a pleasure, but it's not. You're looking terrible, does Giselle no longer do house calls?" Seth had the aristocratic ability to ask a painfully polite question while disembowelling you verbally. Giselle was a French hairdresser who was famous in our region for her styling. Something Louise was in desperate need of, given her tangled and matted locks.
My step-sister squinted and her mouth opened, but no words came out. She always was a bit slow to catch a barb and sling it back. "I am at the forefront of an entirely new style. Magazines will be devoted to my look."
"Gardening magazines, perhaps," Seth murmured. "You look worthy of a double page spread about things dug up behind the privy."
I snorted and bit the inside of my mouth. Fortunately, Louise hadn't heard. There was no need to antagonise her too much, for she did hold Alice. We could stand around and snipe at each other, or continue on our rescue mission.
"Still retain your aspirations to grandeur, I see," Seth said in a louder tone.
Louise cackled, a dry sound like breaking twigs. "I once dreamed of being your duchess, but now I am royalty. My mother commands legions, and soon all of England will bow to her rule. On that day, I can have whatever hairdresser I want and my pick of couture gowns."
Somehow I doubted the House of Worth would rush to dress vermin. Clothes didn't hang well on skeletons; they would look like bags of bones wrapped in tea towels. But hopefully her delusions meant she had given up on recruiting Seth for their undead family. Mrs Linton had whispered that they needed more. Now we had it confirmed, Elizabeth sought to be the vermin Queen of England. We should have known. She always aspired for more. If she succeeded in toppling King Edward, would she stop at England's border or seek to style herself vermin empress of the world?
Frank pushed to the front. "I always told Seth to steer clear of you, that you were a mad bint. You're certainly touched in the head if you think you will win this war. Now where's Alice?"
Louise's gaze narrowed as she swung her head to Frank. "Ah. Another bastard servant. I don't normally talk to those so far beneath me, but I do so want the games to begin. The kitchen maid is waiting for her chum to rescue her. In our garden."
She stepped to one side and gestured with her hand to the island, surrounded by the silvery water. I squinted in the low light at what Louise called their garden. There seemed to be a narrow walkway from the main cavern across to the island. The small isle was a mad landscape of twisted trees and monstrous hedges. The entire mass appeared impenetrable; there was certainly no sight of Alice.
"Right then." Frank stepped toward the tangled island.
"Not you. Only Eleanor steps on the island." Louise held her hand higher and a low hiss rumbled from the cavern. Shapes slid from the nooks and crannies dotted along the sides of the cave. Shadows slunk over the ground and flowed toward us. Highlighted from above by the glow worms, vermin scuttled to Louise's command like kicked dogs crawling on their bellies.
"We should have bought more supplies." I reached for Seth's hand. We were grossly outnumbered, and I wished we had brought his flamethrowers loaded up with Greek fire. I had changed my mind about his quiet approach; burning this lot to the ground first now seemed preferable. If only I could walk backwards and rewind time and convince him otherwise.
"Do you plan to kill us all, then?" Seth asked my nemesis.
I stared at him, willing him to be quiet with my mind. Why did he have to give her ideas?
Louise laughed, and the vermin at her feet chortled in answer. They still didn't stand, but crouched or sat behind her. Waiting.
"You make it sound so callous. It wouldn't be killing you. Think of it as liberation from mortal concerns, or a transformation to a higher state. But he is not required." She waved a hand at Frank and the mass behind her slithered closer. Then a lump broke off and undulated along the ground to encircle us.
At that point, I realised we were a man down. Jake should have been standing next to Frank. But he wasn't. I glanced around but couldn't spot his form in the blue-lit gloom. I bit my tongue, no point in calling attention to the fact the private was on the loose.
/> Seth stepped close to Louise, as though he would embrace her. "Nobody touches my man."
Louise laughed. "My mother's army outnumbers you a hundred to one. And what does it matter anyway? He will soon be one of us. I only need you and the scullery maid to keep me entertained. You cannot stop us."
Seth pulled something from his pocket. "I beg to differ, old girl."
"What's that?" She squinted in the false twilight.
"Grenade, old thing. If any of your filthy undead bite, scratch, or otherwise touch Frank, I'm going to pull the pin, shove this in your chest cavity, and send you straight to Hell. Do we understand each other?" He held up the green apple and caressed the silver pin with one finger.
Any man who tells Louise he is going to replace her heart with a live grenade can most certainly have mine.
Louise took a step back, her wary gaze locked on the grenade. "There's no need for such extreme actions, Seth. We were practically engaged after all. But if the servant means so much to you, then very well, you may keep him. For now."
For now. There was a reminder I didn't want to hear. We knew we were walking into a trap, but I had hoped to rescue Alice before we were drowned under a tide of vermin. When would they surge forward and attack us? I wished I had moved things along faster with Seth if I was going to die here. He still owed me an explosive night.
"Eleanor, what about Alice?" Frank bounced on the balls of his feet. If he had to wait any longer, he was going to throw himself into Louise's vermin ocean and try to swim to the island.
"I thought you wanted to play a game, Louise? Does Elizabeth instruct you to end us so soon? I wonder why she bothered with the note." My words were a risk, but years of being tormented by these women had taught me they liked to see me suffer, and they’d prolong it however they could.
Alive, dead, or undead, it seemed Elizabeth still very much controlled her daughter's actions. Louise's back straightened and one eye twitched. A line of black crept from the side of her head, slid through the red iris and disappeared toward the bridge of her nose. "She will go. Mother does so want to see her struggle and fail. Again. You two will stay with me." Louise overcame her fear of the grenade and reached out and stroked Seth's cheek.