What’s Trey doing here?
Is Vincent going to hurt him to prove a point in front of the club?
Fire pressed against my palms, ready to escape and wreak havoc if I needed. My eyes glued to the door.
Vincent rapped on the wall a couple of times. After a moment, the door opened, and a figure strode across the floor to stand beside Vincent. The flames wreathed his body, outlining a familiar silhouette.
Not Trey.
Ayaz.
Chapter Thirty-Two
What? He’s not Vincent’s son.
He can’t be here for any good reason.
Ayaz glided into the room like a figure-skater, his dark hair picking out shadows from the flickering fire. In his hands, he held Parris’ book. His eyes flicked nervously from face to face, distress etching into his features as he took in their aging bodies.
The club members leaned forward hungrily, desperate to lap up whatever Vincent laid down.
Are they going to hurt Ayaz?My fingers itched, longing to draw out the flames. One flick of my wrist and I could devour them all in fire.
One inferno and this would all be over.
But Ayaz was in the room. There was no way I could burn them all and save him. I didn’t know what happened to an edimmu if their body was burned, but I wasn’t about to find out.
Besides, I rationalized to myself, trying to force down the rage, these people had answers. If Vincent knew how to raise the power needed to free the god, then he might have what we needed to bring the students back.
Ayaz set the book on the table.So this is why he needed it back so badly.
Elena Delacorte whimpered with disgust as she spied the leather cover. “That thing is disgusting.”
“Shut your mouth, you ungrateful whore,” Damon spat. “Vincent has given you everything, thanks to that book. Show a little reverence.”
The answersarein that book.
Quinn’s whole body tensed. I glanced over at him. In the gloom, all I could make out was the outline of his face, his jaw tight, his usually sparkling eyes narrowed and cold. Even knowing what his mother had done to him, that old protective streak in him still ran strong.
Elena sat back, her mouth pressed shut against Damon’s attack.
“I’d like to start by thanking Vincent for the opportunity to speak to you. It’s an honor to be in your presence today. As you know, Vincent placed this book in my care. He had me keep it safe here at Derleth Academy, so that it could never fall into the hands of one of his political enemies. Twenty years ago, much of the book was untranslated.” Ayaz cracked the spine and opened the book. Everyone in the room leaned forward to see. “I’m proud to say I have not wasted my fine education. I have taught myself many ancient languages and have nearly finished a complete decoding of Parris’ book.”
“Spit it out, rag-head,” Damon snapped.
My body stiffened at the insult, but Ayaz showed no signs that it registered. He thumbed through the pages, stopping on a particular illustration to smooth out the edges and spread out his pages of notes. I longed to see what page they stared at. I sat up on my knees to get a higher vantage, but Quinn’s hand on my shoulder shoved me back down again.
He was right. If we made any noise, we’d be dead.
“As the new student leader of the Eldritch Club, I take my role seriously.” Ayaz flashed his intact tattoo to the elders, and they nodded. “At the start of the third quarter, Vincent charged me with a task – to figure out how Parris made the god’s prison so that we could continue to strengthen it.”
No, Ayaz, you beautiful idiot. Of course Vincent lied to you. How could you not see that?
“We always believed Parris accidentally unleashed the god from slumber when he dug his tunnels into the bedrock, and that he hurriedly created the prison while he tried to figure out how to harness the god’s powers for himself. I’ve recently cracked one of the most difficult translations in the book – he wrote it in a cuneiform cipher – and discovered that according to his very words, this isn’t true.
“Smugglers have long used the natural caves in the cliffs to hide their contraband. Of course, when Parris was in Salem with his father the Reverend, he heard stories about something that attacked the smugglers. Sailors called it the ‘soul eater’ and told tales of how evil things lived in the darkness of the caves, of how men would go missing only to be found later – not dead exactly but their bodies numb, their minds and spirits utterly broken. Parris came to Arkham specifically to seek out what was inside the caves.”
“Please, be thorough with your explanation,” Vincent prodded Ayaz, as several of the parents glanced at each other in confusion. “Many members of the Club are not as familiar with our founder’s history as you or I.”
