I’d never seen Kent open the way down to the basement; given that my binding circle was down there, I could simply teleport to it at Kent’s command. I could only leave the circle with his permission, and he’d usually phrased his commands in such a way that I had to immediately return to it when my tasks were done. The basement was a place I’d never wanted to step foot in again, never wanted to see nor smell nor come close to.
But here I was.
I knew the entrance was somewhere in his master bedroom, and I suspected it had something to do with the massive bookshelf against the far wall, with a strange gap at the bottom as if there was a track underneath. That was what I inspected first.
Playing with Rae, taking out my nervous energy on her as she did the same to me, had calmed some of my unease at being in this damned house. But it still lingered, a prickling of anxiety on the back of my skull. I hated this room. I hated the smell of it. I hated the perfectly clean carpets and white walls, and that there was still a faint smell in the air of those cigars Kent loved to smoke. I didn’t want to stay here for a moment longer than I had to, hearing Jeremiah and Victoria distantly in the house as they got drunker and louder. The temptation to go out there and slaughter them was strong, but Hell’s royals-in-charge frowned upon demons making spectacles of themselves in front of humans.
Slaughtering the Hadleigh siblings in front of a crowd of drunk college students sounded fun, but wasn’t worth the ensuing fall out from Hell.
“I take it you didn’t find the grimoire?” Rae asked from behind me, watching me as I felt along the underside of the shelves.
Oh, yes, I found the grimoire. But I’m too obsessed with you to leave you, so here I am, still risking life and limb to be near you, still driven absolutely mad by your voice and smell and eyes —
“No, didn’t find it yet,” I looked back over my shoulder and gave her a wink. “Lucky for you.”
The more I reminded her how “lucky” she was that I was still here, the more I felt like a complete asshole. Implying that the grimoire was the only thing keeping me from leaving was a vile lie, one she couldn’t possibly believe for much longer. I’d gladly admit I was generally a dick, but Rae made me want to be…nice…to her.
Only to her. Everyone else could get fucked.
In a far corner of the shelf, my fingers grazed over a cold metal plate set into the wood. I pressed it, stepped back, and the bookshelf moved silently across the track, slipping into the wall and revealing a stairway leading down into the dark. Rae gasped, stepping forward eagerly as if she was ready to run straight down into the dark. I pressed my hand against her chest, stilling her as fluorescent lights flickered on and illuminated the cold, concrete stairwell.
“Are there cameras down there?” she whispered, as if the stairs themselves might hear and tattle. “Or motion sensors?”
I shrugged. “Don’t know. There’s only one room down there I’ve been in. We need to be quick.”
She nodded determinedly. There was a flush to her face, and her heartbeat had sped up again. She was excited — of course she was. Facing down a dangerous adventure? Better than a walk in the park apparently.
There was something so painfully hot about this tiny woman’s foolhardy bravery.
She went ahead and I followed, pressing another metal plate on the inner wall to close the bookshelf behind us. We went down two flights of stairs, and more lights flickered on overhead.
“Wow.” Rae’s eyes widened as she peered around the space. “This looks like a supervillain’s headquarters.”
“It may as well be.” I was getting a creeping, nasty feeling up my back being in here. The black-painted concrete walls and wooden floors couldn’t disguise the claustrophobic crushing weight of this place. Demons weren’t meant to be underground, yet that was where the Hadleighs had always kept me.
“Is this his evil conference table?” Rae said, smiling at her own joke as she circled the long, shining wood table set up in the middle of the room, lined with chairs. She’d taken her phone out of her pocket, and as she wandered around, she held it up to record. I didn’t have much faith in human justice systems, but if the Hadleighs wanted to make my girl disappear, it would only be harder for them the more records that remained of her whereabouts. Recording her exploration here was probably a good idea.
“I’d hear them talking sometimes,” I said. “His closest members of the Libiri would meet with him here.”
“And behind all these doors?” She looked up and down the room, at the thick metal doors secured with keypads. “How can we get in?”
“Electrical locks are easy enough to influence,” I said. “Take your pick. I don’t know what’s behind any of them, except the one at the end.”
She looked toward the far end of the room and the nondescript metal door there. When I was under Kent’s command, the only way in and out of that room was with his permission. Now? I was far from eager to step foot in it again.
“What’s in there?” Rae said, and I sighed, extending my energy across the room to influence the electricity in the door’s lock and pop it open.
“See for yourself.”
The creak of the door’s hinges was familiar. I could swear it was the only door in the entirety of this house that Kent allowed to squeak. And the smell inside — stagnant, damp, dust, mold. I turned away from the open door, just so I wouldn’t see the familiar flicker of its pale fluorescent bulb.
I used to break that bulb every day until Kent figured out what I was doing. Then he broke my fingers in return.
I didn’t want to be in here. I didn’t want to smell the cold damp concrete, the metallic iron. I didn’t want to hear the hum of the air filtration system through the vents. The walls were solid concrete except for those vents that blew in cold, sterile air. Air that smelled like nothing, air that was as oppressive and stifling as the walls.
“It’s empty,” she said. “It’s just an empty concrete room. It’s cold.”
“Look down.”
I suppose she did, to judge by her sharp intake of breath. I distracted myself with unlocking the other doors, until she called back, with a tremble in her voice, “Leon, did…did he keep you in here?”
I didn’t answer. She wanted a weapon besides me, so I’d damn well find her one. I wrenched open the first door once its lock was disabled, only to find a simple study within: desk, bookshelf, chair. Unhelpful. I turned for the next door —
And found her standing there, blocking my way.
“Leon.” Her voice sounded hurt. Pained. I hated it. I didn’t want her to sound that way. “Did Kent keep you in that room? That’s a binding circle on the ground, isn’t it?”
“So you really can learn magic from Google,” I muttered. It sounded mean, perhaps it was mean. I’d never given a fuck how I sounded until it came to her, until it came to seeing the emotion in those big brown eyes behind her glasses. I tried to step around her, but she got in front of me again.
“Yes, I was kept in there,” I said, sharper than I intended, but sharpness was the better option to pain — to fear. “On and off for a hundred years or so. This was the basement of the old house, before Kent rebuilt it with his fancy block of glass and concrete up there. I used to watch the roots grow through the dirt walls, until Kent poured more concrete and sealed the door, and there was no light, no warmth, nothing.” I glared over her head, back toward that room. I’d spent hours, days, weeks in there when the various generations of Hadleighs had no use for me. Just a tool, tucked away in the dark before they thought of a task for me again. Stuck in that damned tiny room, in that damned tiny circle, staring at the walls until my mind went numb.
It made me sick. It made me want to —
Her arms were around me. She wrapped them tight around my middle, her head against my chest. She sniffed, and squeezed a little tighter.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry.”
My first instinct was to pull away. I didn’t need comfort, I didn’t need her apologies, I didn’t need her feeling sorry for me. I hated pity. And her apologies were empty because it wasn’t she who had locked me down here. For centuries, humans had imprisoned my kind when they could, and run from us when they couldn’t. In return we’d tempted them, hunted them, used them. Humans were selfish and fickle, short-lived opportunists. They were not to be trusted, only good for pleasure.
But her arms were still tight, shaking around me as she sniffled again. Why the hell did this hurt her? Why did she give a damn what had happened to me?
Putting my arms around her in return felt…strange. Warmer than it should have. Softer. The longer she held on, the more I realized I didn’t really want her to let go. My greater instincts were still struggling, pushing, setting off every alarm bell to tell me that allowing myself to linger in this moment was weak and useless.
But this anger, this fury that kept me going, wasn’t for her. None of it was meant for her. I’d built up my walls to protect myself, not to shut her out.
“We don’t have much time.” My voice came out harsh, if only to keep it from being soft. She pulled back from me a little, and hurriedly wiped her eyes. I didn’t truly understand why she’d cry for me, but humans did strange things when they empathized with another.
Odd, to have a human think of my pain.
But it had been her gentle hands that had cleaned my wounds, too.
“Right.” She raised her chin, jaw set tight and determined. “Let’s find something to fuck these bastards up.”
I wanted to hold her again. I didn’t want her to have to fight. I wanted her safe, protected, mine. Instead I watched her open the next door, and her eyes lit up when the light flickered on within.
“Jackpot,” she said, and when I peered in over her shoulder, I quickly saw why.
The black walls within were lined with shelves, covered in artifacts that reeked of age and magic. More shelves were clustered in the center of the room, and there were water-stained crates with dead barnacles accumulated across them, stacked in the corners. Rae’s eyes were wide as she entered and gazed around.
“It smells like the ocean,” she said softly. I nodded.
“These all must have come up from the mine.” I ran my fingers along the cracking spines of several books piled upon one of the shelves. “I remember some of these things. After the mine flooded, and Kent’s grandfather, Morpheus, summoned me, one of the first tasks he gave me was going down into the mine and bringing up whatever I could.”
Back then, I’d had no idea what I had been brought into. It was the first time I’d been summoned in over fifty years, and unlike most of my summoners, Morpheus didn’t make any mistakes. He was careful, calm, calculated. He made every order clear. By all accounts, at first, he’d treated me fine.
Until the God got Its tentacles deeper into his head. Whispered in his ear. Turned his mind from simple curiosity to greed.
“The tunnels are all flooded down there,” I moved along the shelves, covered in so many trinkets I could recall bringing up. “I spent weeks swimming through them, finding this shit, bringing it up. And the longer you’re down there, the louder the God becomes. The more interest It gets. It tries to get in your head.”
Bowls, tools, candles. Books, statues, jewelry. Anything and everything I could get my hands on was kept here from the deepest inner chambers, the ones the miners had broken into by accident. Other people had worshipped the Deep One too, long ago, and it was their artifacts that Morpheus had wanted.
It was these artifacts that I’d feared Kent would figure out how to use, and turn against me.
We reached the far end of the room, where a glass display case held a series of black daggers. Their handles were intricately carved, wrapped in knotted red string, and the closer I got to them, the more certain I was that I couldn’t touch them. They vibrated with an energy powerful enough to turn my stomach, some old magic that had fermented with the years, growing stronger and more vicious until just the sight of those blades sent a shudder up my back.
“Those,” Rae said, “I need one of those.”
The case was locked with a good old-fashioned metal padlock, so it required an old-fashioned method of getting in. I slammed my elbow against the glass, shattering it, and Rae yelped in surprise.
“Jesus Christ, Leon,” she hissed. “You could have warned me!”
I chuckled, stepping back quickly from the case so I wouldn’t have to be near that unpleasant magical humming. “Take your pick, doll. And don’t call on Christ as if the bastard is going to come anywhere near me.”
She rolled her eyes at me, stared curiously into the shattered case for a moment, then carefully selected a knife from among the glass shards. She pulled it from its sheath, revealing a straight blade black as ink, as was the rope wound around its handle. She brandished it toward me playfully, and looked shocked when I jolted back. To her eyes, it would have looked as if I teleported six feet back.
“Woah.” She stared at the knife, then back at me. “Does this…does this actually scare you?”
“It’s unpleasant,” I grumbled. “There’s old, feral magic in it. Don’t get any ideas — if that thing cut me, it wouldn’t heal quickly. But it would be the same for the Eld.” I grinned. “Keep it close, but away from me. It smells bad.”
“I don’t smell anything.” She frowned in confusion, sniffing at the knife as if her human nostrils could somehow pick up that magical smell. I gave her a tap on the arm.
“Away, Rae. Tuck it away, shit.” She quickly tucked it into the band of her skirt, under her sweater. “We need to get out of here. The Hadleighs can’t possibly be happy that you’ve been out of their sight for so long.”
She nodded enthusiastically, as pleased as a kid who’d been given a piece of candy. She’d gotten what she wanted, but I didn’t feel any better. I didn’t want her to have to use some old knife, I didn’t want this small human fending off monsters. I was more than capable of protecting her myself.
Except I’d locked up my protection behind stipulations and deals, and she was determined to DIY her safety.
“I’d like to see the Eld come for me now,” she said, as we made our way back up the stairwell. I could hear the music pounding, drunk humans laughing and shouting. Too much noise to isolate out any individual conversation, which made me nervous. Even down here, the scent of cigars was strong. Perhaps even stronger than it had been in the bedroom. I hoped that knife was worth it, because lingering here was a risk we really shouldn’t have taken.
Rae reached the door first, and pushed the metal plate to slide the bookshelf open. “I’d like to see them try to get their claws in me and get a face full of — oh.”
Her oh dropped like a stone in my stomach.
Kent Hadleigh sat there, a cigar in his mouth, waiting for us.
