Damp drips, and our footsteps echo, but other than that and our heavy breathing, it’s silent. So silent I wonder how a place on earth like this even exists, I wonder how deep we are. How close to the earth’s core. To Hell.
“Milus and his twin brother, Stryder, were brought up together at an old water mill out in the country. For decades the Blackwell family men had been ‘fixers’.” She keeps pulling me along, our feet a plodding speed walk. “Working for the mafia, the mob, any criminal underbelly gang organisation that hired them to ‘clean up’. But, Milus, well, he wanted more. Bigger, better. He didn’t want to work for someone else any longer. Milus thought it beneath him.”
Dolly takes us through another tunnel, narrower, darker, but she doesn’t hesitate, still talking in a hush the whole time.
“The Blackwells live by a code, ‘Blackwells don’t tell lies’. They eat, sleep, breathe it.”
“Liveby it?” I question her use of present tense.
She smiles as we exit out of the narrow tunnel and take some rotting wooden steps up.
“Yes,live.” Dolly’s fingers lace through mine, pulling me through another door. “Anyway, Stryder, the easy-going one of the two, he just went along with whatever Milus wanted, let him lead, did whatever he wanted even if he didn’t approve, like building this place. Stryder liked the mill, but was happy to move to somewhere bigger, grander, as long as it meant he could continue to be with his brother, continue to live by the Blackwell family code. They worked well that way for a while, quickly moving up in the underworld, growing their name to mean more than mere cleaners.”
“But then a woman came into Stryder’s life, Milus didn’t like it, the attention not on him for a change. He got jealous, tried to seduce her, and when that didn’t work, he killed her in cold blood, made it look like a big crime family in Southbrookhad done it so Stryder would agree to go to war with them. Something Stryder had been vehemently against when Milus had earlier proposed the same thing, wanting to eradicate them and take over their territory. But Stryder had said no, not understanding why Milus couldn’t just be happy with what they had.”
My feet stop moving, and Dolly stills, turning back to look at me, tugging at my hand.
“So they went to war?” I ask her, my mind racing with the knowledge there are other Blackwells out there somewhere.
Dolly shakes her head, “No.” Leading me once again by the hand. “Stryder was informed,” she pauses, swallowing, “by a woman who had been witness to his lover’s murder. Milus had tried to keep the woman quiet, but she told Stryder anyway.”
“Why didn’t Milus just kill her as well?” I question, failing to see why he would spare her when he never has anyone else.
Dolly pulls us through another tunnel, releasing my hand to pick up a metal pole lying on the ground, tapping the end of it four times on what looks like a lock box on the wall.
“Because she was carrying Gore,” Dolly tells me quietly, facing away from me towards the end of the corridor.
Bright light erupts at the end of the passageway, Amaranthine’s pale face staring out at us from it. Dolly reaches back for my hand, but instead of pulling me along again, she turns to face me, our lips barely an inch apart, her blue eyes searching mine.
“Milus had broken their family’s one sacred vow, to never lie,” Dolly continues. “So from that day forward, Stryder separated himself from his brother. Leaving behind only one little piece of himself that Milusstillhasn’t gotten completely worked out.”
“What’s that?” I ask, confused, my forehead creased.
Dolly smiles, and it is wicked.
“These tunnels.”
Chapter 34
BILLY
London is a cold that doesn’t just bite, it burrows. It finds the cracks in your coat, your bones, your resolve.
December wind tunnels through the narrow streets like a living thing, gnawing at the edges of everyone it passes. Christmas lights try their best to soften it, little strings of gold, glowing in shop windows and strung between lamp posts, but the cold swallows even those.
I’ve been walking for hours. Maybe days. Time’s beginning to lose its meaning.
It’s been a month since Penelope disappeared, of following trails that lead nowhere, of questioning people who can’t look me in the eyes, of chasing ghosts. She slipped through The Obsidian’s fingers with a grace I didn’t know she was capable of, and through mine like smoke.
No one escapes Raven Ridge Hallow. No one outruns The Obsidian’s reach. No one vanishes completely.
Except her.
The woman who was never meant to be caged in the first place.
The air tastes like cold metal, sharp on the tongue, brittle in the lungs. Snow gathers in thin, whispery sheets along the pavements, just enough to make it feel like everything is covered in frostbite.
I walk with my hands shoved deep into my pockets, the hem of my long grey wool coat tickling along the backs of my calves with every step. Scarf pulled high, covering my ears and nose as I dip my chin, looking up at the path ahead from beneath my lashes. Thicker flakes of white fluff falling heavier now, crunching beneath my feet.
