Chapter 6
Voren
Finding a place to crash for the night, or the next several nights, is a challenge in Blackfen Edge. It’s a small Irish town on the west coast, too far off the beaten track to be too touristy, especially in autumn. It hasn’t changed much over time. Not really. The bare bones are still here. The old church, the town hall, the big mansion on top of the hill that looks kind of decrepit now…
“Hmm,” I murmur and drift into the night air, reappearing on the hill overlooking the sea.
The undead presence is strong, and I breathe it in, enjoying the ripple of unease as they sense their god among them. “I’ve been gone too long, my tasty morsels,” I murmur. “But I’m back now.”
The salt-laced wind whips at my duster, cold and invigorating after centuries of stagnant air in the Pantheon realm where no one needs to breathe, eat, sleep or fuck. Dullsville, in other words. From here, I can see the whole town laid out like a sleeping child, oblivious. The mansion before me, however, is wide awake. Marrow House, the locals used to call it way back when. I can hear the namewhispered on the wind, carried by the souls still tethered to its damp stones.
The whispers are thick here. A chorus of the forgotten, their stories of misery, betrayal, and sudden ends, clinging to the place like ivy. It’s perfect.
While Dreven is off playing shadow-games with his new favourite mortal, I’ll find my own entertainment. The dead are so much less complicated. They don’t talk back, and their despair is a vintage I’ve come to appreciate.
A faint, spectral light flickers in an upper-storey window. A welcome from the residents. The lost always recognise their shepherd.
I stroll towards the rusted iron gates, my boots scuffing on the overgrown path. The gate swings open with a groan that sounds like a final breath, inviting me in. The exterior of the house is as intact as a stone construction can be after several centuries, even if the windows are either boarded up or missing. The huge iron-studded oak front door gives me a little tingle as I push it open. It will keep the nastier monsters away, but not me.
The air inside is cold, but not with the damp of the sea. It’s the chill of a hundred last breaths, trapped and replayed on a loop. I breathe it in, enjoying the scent. Dust motes disturbed from my entrance dance in the slivers of moonlight cutting through the grime-caked windows, each one a tiny ghost in its own right. The whispers intensify, a symphony of regret and rage that caresses my skin. They know I’m here.
A translucent figure of a woman in a tattered Victorian gown drifts at the top of the grand staircase, her mouth open in terror. Others peek from behind rotting doorways, their forms flickering like candles in the wind.
They fear me. They should. Fear is a fine starting point for respect.
“Settle down,” I say, my voice echoing in the cavernous hall, carrying a weight that makes the very foundations of the house groan. The effect is immediate. The whispers quieten to a respectful hum. The woman on the stairs solidifies slightly, her spectral eyes wide with dawning recognition. They feel the pull. Their master has returned.
I stroll into the centre of the hall, my boots leaving the first clean prints in a century of dust. “This will do nicely.” I run a hand over the rotting velvet of a chaise longue, the fabric disintegrating under my touch. The air is thick with the residue of forgotten lives. I can taste their final moments: the sharp tang of a young woman’s betrayal, the bitter ashes of an old man’s regret, the metallic shock of a sudden, violent end. It’s a library of despair.
The dead hold all the secrets. They see everything and forget nothing. This town’s history is etched into the air of this house.
“Tell me,” I command, my voice resonating with the authority of the veil itself. “Tell me about the slayers of this place. Tell me everything.”
The spirits of Marrow House stir, compelled to obey.
A woman appears, blitzing in and out of sight like lightning is striking her. “Nyssa,” she hisses.
“She’s the latest, yeah? Who came before her?”
The spirits swirl, their forms coalescing and dissolving like smoke. An old man, his throat a mess of spectral wounds, flickers before me. “Ciara,” he rasps, the name a dry whisper of dead leaves. “Her aunt.”
Images, not words, flood my mind. A gift from the dead. A montage of violence and duty. Ciara, with the same amber-hazel eyes, fighting on the beach down belowagainst a creature of scaled flesh and too many teeth. Her death is a sharp, metallic taste in the air—a blade meant for the beast finding her side instead. Betrayal.
Before her, a man with a hard jaw and tired eyes. His end was slower, a wasting sickness inflicted by a Fae curse, his body withering while his spirit raged. On and on it goes, a grim tapestry of the Vale line, each slayer a bright, furious flame extinguished too soon.
They are a lineage bred for one purpose, dating back to the First Slayers, the Order of the Veil.
Of course. They gave themselves a fancy name. Mortals and their desperate need for dogma. A whole lineage, bred like prize cattle to stand between the worlds and get themselves killed in spectacularly grim ways. It’s almost admirable in its futility.
While Dreven is off getting his leathers damp in this incessant drizzle that is blowing in through the smashed windows, trying to intimidate his new favourite toy, I’m getting the real intelligence. The dead don’t have agendas; they just have stories, and they are all too eager to tell them to someone who will finally listen.
I ascend the grand staircase, my boots silent on the stone. The spirits part before me like a tide of grey mist. The woman in the tattered gown bows her head.
“This is my home now,” I announce to the listening silence of the house. “And you will be my eyes and ears.”
A collective sigh of cold air answers me. Acceptance. Resignation. It makes no difference to me. I have a crown of dust and echoes, and from here, I can watch the whole pathetic, beautiful game play out.
Walking down the first-floor hallways, I find a room that was probably once the master of Marrow House’s bedroom. The windows are boarded up here, but the windwhistles down the enormous fireplace chimney. The stone feels cold and permanent beneath my feet, a solid anchor in this new, fluid world.
