Cage is the only one who has not spoken. He turns slowly to face them, his face drained of all color. “I must…” he begins, and then stumbles. “I must leave also.” He takes a few steadying breaths. “We should come back in the daylight hours. Do not ask me why I think so.”
“It seems obvious,” Rapley says. “Everything that’s happened occurred in the dark hours.” He looks to Roan, who stares into the gloom with a fixed gaze. She reminds him of a wolf on the hunt, and he smiles. “Roan. What do you think?”
She flinches at the sound of her name, then grumbles, “Very well.”
She turns and hurries for the stairs and the two men follow behind her.
“She is wild,” Cage mutters, staggering on the steps.
Rapley slips a shoulder under his arm and helps him up. “She is. The wildest thing I did ever see.” Rapley grins, and when he sees the look of bewilderment on his half brother’s face, he bursts into a peal of laughter that can be heard all throughout the dank, grisly room.
The entrance hall—the real entrance hall—is a sight for sore eyes. Even the feeling within the room is markedly different from the upside-down version beneath them.
“Better,” Emma says as she sits on the slate floor, heedless of her skirts or of propriety. Roan half smiles and sits beside her, noting with pleasure that some things never change.
“Tell me what you meant when you spoke of the tears. What did you see? What do you flinch away from?”
“I see… rips. Rips in the fabric of things. They look like tears in a tapestry, only the tapestry is the world. When they touch, they burn. They appear where there has been death. I do not know why.”
“And now?” Roan asks. “Do you see any of these tears now?”
“Some,” Emma says, glancing to her left. “But far off. Small.”
“What is taking the men so long?” Roan mutters. “Tell me again of male courage and women’s fear?”
Emma laughs hollowly. “Should we go back?”
Roan is getting to her feet when Rapley and Cage stagger out of the hole.
“Something’s wrong,” Rapley says, sagging under Cage’s weight.
Cage falls from his grasp and would have collapsed bodily onto the slate floor, only Roan’s hand flies out and Cage’s fall halts entirely. Then, his body is lowered to the ground gently. Rapley sees it then. The black of her eyes. The way they truly have no walls. Her Unclosed abilities pour forth as easily as water from a glass. Not like his. Not like the rest of them, whose abilities are a toil and a struggle and—somehow limited. He knows what he is, he found the symbol for what describes him… Sighter. But her? No one symbol can contain what she possesses within herself.
He shudders.
Cage looses a low groan and begins to shake where he lies. His eyes roll back and the shaking intensifies; his mouth froths, first white, and then pink.
“He’s turning blue!” Emma cries, crawling over.
Rapley tears his eyes away from Roan, but not before hearing her thought at that moment.
He knows. He fears me.
Emma cups Cage’s face. “Cage! Cage!” She heaves his shoulders up enough that his head rests on her lap, and she strokes his forehead until a long, long time later, when he lies still, his breathing normal.
“Just like Seamus,” Emma says, her eyes wet. “Just the same!”
Roan watches them with a deeper shock than she felt at finding the dungeon below. Emma. Little sprightly Emma… truly harboring feelings for this brutish man? The man who fought her at every turn and called her every name under the sun… The man who tortured and branded her?
“Will wonders never cease,” she mutters beneath her breath.
Rapley paces up and down the floor, his breathing fast. Roan desperately wants to know, needs to know, that he is all right. That he does not think less of her. But of course he does, and she cannot bring herself to speak. A prickling feeling at the corners of her eyes angers her. She does not cry. She should have expected this. Her father told her that no one could ever love her. No one could ever understand.
How wrong she had been about him. He had not hated her. He had loved her enough to teach her about her nature, loved her enough to teach her to control it and to control herself.
How badly she had misjudged him.
Her ruminations are broken by a BANG on the front door.
They stare at it as one.
B A N G
It is Rapley who turns to face the door, as though he is expecting it to shatter or cave in. She is enthralled by him.
B A N G
The way he curls his hands slowly into fists that look strong enough to punch a hole in the world, should it be necessary.
B A N G
The way his hair has come partly loose from the leather thong he ties it back with, and the curious color of it—like oak and coal. How his shoulders tense, and how his back responds, as though he is leaning into something.
B A N G
The sweat building up on his roped neck as he strains and fights. The effort of his will and the way she can see his use of his ability. Like a shield, how he keeps them all safe. How he keeps her safe.
He loves me, she realizes. He knows it. Knows my easy corruption. And he loves me anyway.
B A N G
She can feel it. His love for her. And how wondrous it is! How overwhelming. She is crying now because she finally, finally, has felt what she thought impossible. Because she loves him also. And she loves Emma and she loves Seamus.
And the thing beyond the door wants her. Only her.
Emma is asleep, slumped over Cage, when Roan slips away silently to the kitchen and out the scullery door.
Inside the house, Rapley breathes a small sigh of relief as his battle gets marginally easier.
Roan feels the change in the air the moment she steps outside. The pressure changes, the air thickens, and the wind picks up. All around, low-lying heather and moss break under the strain of the wind, which thrashes with a force the mountain has not seen.
Onward she walks, feeling the wind grow stronger, stronger, until the rocks themselves begin to blow away, tumbling down the hillside or into the air where they circle her, deadly and sharp.
Her steps are easy, for the winds, now swirling defiantly as a tornado, carry her in the eye of the storm, which she is, up and up and up to the place revealed in her dreams.
Rocks collapse under her feet as she steps, higher, higher.
When she reaches the mouth of the great cave, which sits beyond and above the circle of slate teeth, where she saw the earth devouring all in her delirious dream, she finds that the ram—that He—is waiting for her already.
And as quickly as the storm came, it is gone.
Girl and Devil converse.
ZOEY
NOW
Chapter 39
MORTAL
We’ve run out of food.
We have enough water for another week.
After that—
I’m too tired to write.
Zoey Camera Footage
Date: November 4
Zoey sits in front of the camera on the floor of the kitchen.
“Len got the fire working. The chimney is fine. Didn’t need cleaning. It’s nicer in here than anywhere else in the house. I can pretend we’re just preparing a big meal.”
She looks around, then turns back to the camera with a sleepy sigh.
“I’m sorry, Mum,” she says, and then she breaks down. “I—I—” She swallows and takes a few breaths. “I’m sorry. You were right. Coming here was a mistake.” Wiping her nose, she looks up at the ceiling. “I thought I was risking my sanity, not my life. I was so sure that I was meant to come here, find some magical fix or explanation, and come home to find Dad fixed. Cured.”
She laughs derisively, then sits staring into the camera for a while.
At last, she shakes her head and turns it off.
Camera Footage
Zoey holds the camera in h
er hand, which shakes. She is sitting outside on a slate surface, the sky a darkening gray behind her.
“Still too tired to write. But I feel a compulsion to record everything. Maybe someone will find it. Pass it on—”
She looks behind her and the camera picks up the red hair of Len.
“What are you doing on the roof?” Len calls.
“Thinking!”
“Couldn’t you think closer to the ground?”
Zoey laughs and turns back toward the camera. “She’s worried about me.” A roll of her eyes. “She thinks I’ll fall.”
A moment later, Len has slid in behind Zoey, putting her chin on her shoulder. “You haven’t had your share of the water.”
“I know. I just felt like talking.”
Len looks into the lens. “Who are you talking to?”
“Sometimes my mum. Sometimes my dad. Other times, to whoever finds this.”
Zoey lifts the camera so that they are both in view. “My name is Zoey. Pleased to meet you. This is Len. We’re trapped in a house in the middle of nowhere and are probably going to die.” She gives a falsely cheery grin. “We’ve tried to leave a few times now. But it’s always the same. We can’t.”
“Don’t,” Len says softly. She gets to her feet. “Let’s go inside. It’s freezing out here.”
Camera Footage
Zoey and Len are sitting in the kitchen talking to the camera about what has happened, when Poulton stalks into the room. He is carrying a long ancient-looking knife in his hands.
“Look,” he whispers, scratching his neck with the point.
Zoey jumps up. “Pole!”
Len stands as well. “Poulton, put the misericorde down.”
“Please, Pole.”
Pole smiles. “It’s a rondel,” he says, looking at Len. “But close. You know something about the weapons in my room, then?”
“Poulton!” Zoey snaps. “Stop it! You’re scaring me.”
“I know everything about them,” Len says calmly. “Now put it back.”
Pole cocks his head. “Nnnnnnnnno.”
He advances on them. Zoey jumps up, but Len stands slowly. She walks around the table to face Pole.
“Give it to me,” she says, holding out her hand.
He sneers. “I know what you are, little witch.”
“We’re both little witches, Poulton,” Zoey says, inching closer. “Len, be careful. I have a bad feeling about this.”
Len holds out her arm. “Stay back.”
Pole mimics her voice. “‘Stay back.’”
His lips are ringed in white gunge.
Len steps forward. Pole steps back.
And then, unexpectedly, he lunges forward, plunging the rounded dagger into Len’s chest before running from the room.
Zoey’s scream is earsplitting as Len hits the floor.
Chapter 40
HIS SEED
When dawn peeks through the front window, Rapley collapses from his long vigil, his shield having kept whatever evil was outside at bay, and Emma starts awake. The light is a surreal reminder that the world is still here. They are still alive.
“Thank the Lord!” Emma cries when Cage opens his eyes.
He blinks several times, frowning up at her. “Did you just say… ‘thank the Lord’?”
Emma rolls her eyes. “Pf! Get off me, you oaf of a man and don’t you dare accuse me of such foolishness. You banged your head, is all.”
Cage gets up onto his elbows and grins as Emma stands and rubs her legs, muttering about his fat head and how she’ll never walk again.
Rapley grins despite himself, and Cage shrugs at him. “Women are strange creatures. Where is Jenny? She might have come to see that we are still living and thought to offer refreshments, if there are any to be had.”
“She was hiding in her room when last I saw her. Perhaps she has gone home, as she ought to.” Emma looks around. “Where’s Roan?”
There is no sign of her.
Rapley’s face pales. “You let her leave?”
“How could I have stopped her? I didn’t hear her go!”
Rapley attempts to stand. “We have to find her—” Cage grabs his arm as his legs buckle beneath him.
“Wait, brother. Please. I must tell you what I’ve seen—”
“Let me go, I have to find her!”
Cage’s grip tightens. “I must tell you something first! Listen—Do not struggle so! Listen to me!”
Rapley wrenches himself free and half runs, half stumbles to the front doors, where he collapses, panting, hanging on to the handles as though to a life raft.
Emma hurries over to him. “Listen to Cage, you fool! Roan’s life may depend on it. Curse you!”
Rapley releases the handles. “Speak quickly, then. Brother.”
“My seizure… they happen from time to time. When they do, I… I…”
“You see things,” Emma finishes. “Like Seamus.”
Cage nods stiffly. “Yes. Like Seamus, and like Rapley, I see things. I am Unclosed also. And Rapley too.”
Rapley’s fury could not be more complete. “You fiend—you hurt Roan! You hurt her for being Unclosed, yet here you stand. Snake!”
Cage places his palms together as though in prayer. “It is difficult to take in, but you must. I think that perhaps Dr. Maudley is Fostos.”
“Maudley is gone.”
“Conveniently, yes. He was the first to disappear, and we have seen no body, no blood—nothing. Maudley brought you all to this place, he owns it—how, I do not know. But he is connected. You have lived here with him for some years, have you not?”
Rapley covers his face. “Yes.”
“And did you not think him peculiar?”
“I avoided him.”
“He brought us together for some purpose,” Emma says. “I have been thinking, myself, about the root of it all. Why did he come to Ireland and collect my brother and me? Why us? It felt too convenient for me. It always did.”
“He was a father bringing home his children,” Cage says.
“To what end?” Rapley says through clenched teeth. “To play happy family?”
Cage looks away. “You know why. Like I said before—he needs souls to barter with—”
“And did he summon you, as well?” Emma asks.
“No. I came looking for Fostos on my own.”
“It makes no difference to me,” Rapley says. “Roan is out there and I’m going to find her. Damn anyone who tries to stop me.”
“But don’t you see? Those organs we found—that’s his work. Who knows how many people have been dissected in his quest for yet more time. And Roan—she is everything he has been trying to create!”
Rapley storms over and shakes him. “How? Why?”
“She has more than one ability. Can you not sense her before she even enters a room? She is the Conjure, she is the Devil’s Tongue. A culmination of all his power. She is a storm, Rapley. She is evil.”
Rapley laughs harshly. “So those words before, about fighting her dark side… they were lies. They were mere manipulations.”
“She needs to have hope, even if there is none. She would not have left to deal with—” Cage breaks off.
Rapley goes very still and his voice is as dangerous as a scorpion sting. “You best be straight with me, brother. Where has she gone? To deal with what?”
Cage glances at Emma who frowns. “What have you done?”
“She would never have left if she thought she was evil. If she had hope, she would go. I knew she would. Go and barter her own deal.”
“Her own…” Emma’s voice is strangled. “By God, Cage… she’s gone to deal with the Devil…”
Rapley hits Cage. Hard.
The bulky man staggers back, clutching his jaw.
“You blaggard!” Rapley roars. “She was bait!”
“She’s a vessel for great evil,” Cage corrects, wiping blood from his lip.
“You knew this all along,” Rapley says, his wolfish
teeth on full display. “And you did nothing to warn us. You did nothing to save Seamus from being taken. You took Roan prisoner, you tortured her. And you knew this all along.”
“I thought… I thought her in league with the Foul One. I thought her a witch.”
And Rapley would have hit him again if Emma had not rushed between them. “You are Unclosed yourself! We are all witches!”
“I made a terrible mistake before with her. But do not let it lead you astray.”
Rapley shakes out his fist and Emma covers her mouth.
“I need to find her,” Rapley snaps.
“Fostos is here, Rapley. He never really left, I don’t think.”
Emma uncovers her mouth. “What do you mean? Speak plain.”
“The man who built this house. The miller. He was Fostos. He built this house atop the desecrated caverns where he made his deal. He has been here for generations. We need to stop him before he gets to Roan. And the best way to do that is to go find him, not race after her.”
Emma’s scream cuts through their talk. “Seamus!”
Cage is beside her at once, but she is stumbling back, away from him.
“Seamus, oh God, Seamus!”
“Tell us what you see,” Rapley demands.
“A t-t-tear! A rip in the world.” Her eyes are huge in her haunted face, her lips quivering with raw fear. “It is so big… It is so black.” She sobs, her chest heaving. “It is Seamus! I know it is!”
Cage looks at Rapley and their eyes connect.
“We have to go back down,” Rapley says.
Cage pauses. “The Underneath.”
The only light is dim and red, and it glows low by the ground like some small revelation of the fires that burn far below. It reveals in silhouette the shape of a man… and of a beast. Tall, proud horns, larger than any she has seen on any animal, seem to grow from his head, twisted, gnarled, and old.
This is an ancient creature.
Roan stands before it, considering the darkness, considering herself, and then she sits down, getting comfortable.
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