It was a small, wooden church, its white paint faded and flaking and its steeple leaning precariously to the left. The small patch of grass between the sidewalk and the sad old building was choked with weeds. The church was dwarfed by the more modern buildings that had grown up around it, but I guess some heritage regulation had kept the thing from being put out of its misery.
The sound of my knocking echoed inside the building. I waited, wondering if I had the right place. I knew I shouldn’t have put my faith in Google Maps.
Finally, though, I heard a thunk from inside, and then the hinges began to squeal. One of the doors swung open a couple of feet.
“So I guess crucifixes aren’t such a big deal for vampires after all,” I said.
Sonja Lockhart stood in the open doorway, draped in shadow. “Don’t believe everything Bram Stoker tells you, Mr. Turner.”
We stared at each other a long time. The anger came off her in waves. My fingers twitched toward the sunflare in my pocket.
“Aren’t you going to invite me in?” I asked.
Her face was too shadowed to make out her expression. Slowly, she stepped back and raised a hand, gesturing for me to enter.
Swallowing, I stepped into the church.
It was as sad inside as I’d expected. Most of the windows were boarded over and the pews were in disorder. A little moonlight seeped through the boarded-up window behind the pulpit, illuminating specks of dust that danced in the air. A smell of mold clung to everything.
With another squeal of hinges, Lockhart closed the door behind me. The place was plunged into near-total dark. As I fumbled to switch on the light on my phone, Lockhart slid a heavy deadbolt back into place, locking the doors behind us.
I finally switched on my light and pointed it at Lockhart. She just stared at me, not even squinting against the beam.
She didn’t look happy.
“How’s the chest?” I asked.
“How about I drive a stake into yours and see how you feel afterward?”
“Hey.” I raised a finger in objection. “I wasn’t the one who staked you.”
She swept past me. “Let’s hurry this along. I have things to get back to.”
“Sure.” I began to follow her along the aisle, toward the pulpit. “You’re still in charge, I see. Haven’t been overthrown yet. Long live the queen.”
“Booker is dead.”
“What?”
“I had him executed for treason alongside the goblin assassin. Booker’s flagrant disobedience in front of the ogres gave me just cause. His followers seem to have learned from his mistakes.”
I rubbed the back of my neck. “Well, can’t say I’m going to miss the guy. You sure you couldn’t have just given him hard labor or something, though?”
She ignored the question. Making her way around the back of the pulpit, she crouched down and pulled back the tattered carpet.
There, carved into the floorboards at the base of the pulpit, were a series of symbols that I vaguely recognized as belonging to one of the vampires’ ancient languages.
Lockhart touched her fingers to the symbols, then began to murmur something. It was the same sorcerous language vampires spoke whenever they turned themselves to mist or cast any of their more subtle spells. The words echoed strangely in my ears. I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stick up.
A small cloud of black mist oozed from the tips of her fingers, twisting and moving like some living thing. It settled around the symbols carved into the floor, filling them with darkness that not even the light of my phone could dispel.
“Give me your hand,” Lockhart said.
I hesitated. “You know, I think I’d rather not.”
“Do you want access to the archives or not?” She held out her hand to me.
Groaning, I stretched out my arm. She grabbed my wrist and pulled my hand into the mist alongside hers, so that my fingers were touching the symbols as well.
The mist swirled, dancing across my fingers. It wasn’t damp like real mist. But it was warm. Intimate, even. It felt like a fingertip brushing gently across the back of my hand.
It lingered there for a moment, then suddenly retreated as if in alarm. It fled back to Lockhart’s fingertips and she released my wrist with a gasp.
“What?” I said. “What is it?”
She was staring at me strangely, massaging the palm of her hand with her fingers.
“That was…I’ve never felt anything like that before.”
“Like what?” I said.
She shook her head, still staring at me. “I’m not sure. There was something. Just for a moment. I felt…”
“What?”
“Fire,” she said. “Like there’s a piece of the sun in you.”
I frowned back at her. “Well, they say we’re all stardust, don’t they? Something about supernovas making certain chemical elements, or…uh…you know, I wasn’t really paying much attention during the documentary. But—”
“Never mind,” she said forcefully, turning her attention back to the symbols on the church floor. “It’s not important. It should recognize you now.”
“What should?”
“The lock. Try it. Put your fingers here.”
I gave Lockhart a sideways glance, then reached out and touched the symbols.
I felt that tingle again, the hairs-standing-on-end feeling. And then the pulpit began to move.
It slid forward silently. There was no mechanism that I could see—it was just like a puck sliding on an air hockey table. After a few feet, it came to a stop, revealing a stone staircase leading down below the church.
“Secret door.” I nodded my approval. “I like it.”
“Come on.”
She stood and began to make her way down the steep staircase. I followed.
The staircase was too narrow for us to walk side-by-side, and the low ceiling forced me to bend my neck. I shone my light at my feet, making sure I didn’t slip on the worn, narrow steps.
The stairway descended deeper than I expected. After switching back on itself twice, I finally caught sight of the bottom. A pale blue light shone through an archway. I switched off the light on my phone and followed Lockhart out through the doorway.
I stopped and stared. “Whoa.”
“Quite something, isn’t it?” Lockhart’s voice echoed endlessly.
“You weren’t lying when you said it was extensive,” I said. “I’ll give you that.”
It wasn’t just roomy. It was cavernous.
The stone ceiling had to be two stories high, supported by great brick pillars. Mounted on the pillars were glass lanterns. Inside each was a pale blue light. I’d seen lights like that before: in the tomb of Morley the Profane.
I couldn’t make out the far wall from here, but the place had to be as long as a football field. It stretched nearly as wide as one as well. A couple of heavy, wooden tables and chairs were crammed up against one brickwork wall.
The rest of the space was filled with rolling stacks. Judging by the style of the shelves and the metal cranks on the ends of each stack, they’d been installed a long time ago, though maybe they weren’t as old as the archive itself.
Going to the nearest stack, I hauled on the crank. At first it didn’t budge. Then, finally, the stack began to roll along its rails, groaning as it opened up an aisle.
“Hell,” I said, panting. “You’ve got magic lights, but you have to move the shelves by hand. Great planning.”
I peered down the aisle that had opened up. Not much of the magic light actually made it down the aisle, but I could make out shelves packed with tomes, loose papers, and boxes. I glanced at the shelves themselves, but I couldn’t see any helpful hints as to how any of it was ordered.
“Well,” Lockhart said, “I’ll leave you to it.”
“Wait.” I turned. “Where do I start?”
She considered for a second. “Probably somewhere in the middle.”
“The middle?”
She gestu
red vaguely. “Over there somewhere. The oldest items are at the back. The newest are up here. So I imagine you’ll want the middle.”
I stared at her, then at the endless shelves. “This is going to take me years.”
“Not to worry. You’ll have access for as long as you need. I’ll even allow your revenant to come and help you in your search, if you like.”
I shook my head. I’d told Lilian what I was coming here to do—that I was going to try to find some clue to her identity, or who had killed her, or what had happened to the child in that photo.
But I didn’t want her coming here. Not yet. Not when things from her past could cause her so much pain. Not when they threatened to tear away her humanity and reveal the monster inside her. I couldn’t afford for her to stumble onto something like that unprepared.
“No,” I said, staring at the jumbled mess of the shelves. “No, I’ll just look by myself. I’ll…uh…I’ll listen to a podcast or something while I work.”
“Please take care with anything you find down here,” Lockhart said. “You’ll find gloves in that drawer over there. Wear them.”
“You got it.”
“Good hunting, Mr. Turner.”
She turned away. Her footsteps clicked softly against the stone stairs and then faded away entirely.
Swallowing, I turned back to the archives and the shelves towering above me. With a sigh, I grabbed some gloves out of the drawer, strode down an aisle, and started searching.
“The things we do for love,” I muttered to myself.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chris Underwood spends an unhealthy amount of time in his imagination. Luckily, his partner and daughter are very tolerant. He writes the kind of urban fantasy he has always loved: stories set in perilous, darkly beautiful worlds filled with magic, monsters, and just a touch of hope.
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www.chrisunderwoodbooks.com
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