Over my shoulder, he pounds faster. Moving much too fast for a man his size. He’s a predator. A beast on the hunt. The thundering assault of his every powerful stride reverberates through my bones.
But I won’t let him win.
The narrow passage yawns open to an archway and a sprawling staircase that unfurls down into a vast and terrifying chamber. A place no one should ever see. There is a stillness beyond that ripples in the heat. The cold. It’s cutting and oppressive.
Below, at the foot of marble slabs, the room pulses. Beckons. It whispers secrets I have never told anyone, but they tell me. They carve each one into the cavity of my skull so I will never forget. They urge me closer. Promising me my heart’s greatest desire if I just come a little closer.
More.
Another step.
The tomb opens like the maw of a great beast. A monster waiting to devour me. Air brushes my skin.
Cold.
Sharp.
Razor blades kissing fine, sweet lines at my throat. My arms. Smokey tendrils weave at my ankles. Toys with the hem of my skirt.
They guide me to the bottom, into its clutches. My heart skitters in my chest, a collision of fear and something … something ancient and complex. Something no human is supposed to understand.
Around me, the cavernous ceiling hovers in shadows, a darkness that weeps down pillars of stone leading my path. Each is broken by marble archways the same black, run through with veins of crimson, as the floor. Seven feet high with alcovesguarded by angels. Creatures as beautiful as they are demonic. Wrong. A mockery of what should be.
Or maybe it’s only my fears tricking my mind because they are flawless. As if they’d simply closed their eyes and turned to stone.
Still, I tremble as I continue moving amongst them against my will.
At last, I reach the end. The black velvet drapes I mistook for shadows. The heavy cloak leaches the slivers of light from … somewhere.
Everywhere.
Like a window is open, but the glass is smudged with grime. Mute. Filthy. But unmistakable.
“Lenora?”
Marcus’s voice at the top of the stairs sends a spur of panic and excitement curling down my spine. It kicks the primal part of my brain, and I shove through the curtains with his voice ringing after me.
Chapter Ten
Lenora
Thehushisdeafening.
A vacuum pulling the very thump of my heartbeat from my chest so there is nothing but the endless void of such impossible silence. Yet the chamber breathes. The air itself shifts with every step I drift closer. Around me walls pull and coil, a shifting beast unwinding from an eternal slumber.
But what a beauty.
Even as every nerve in my body seizes with the fear of what I sense hidden in the shadows, my feet resume their path along the mosaic of stones. My body follows the pressure just behind my navel to the halo of light glinting … everywhere.
Candles. Long, tapered stems in the deepest black arranged with no direction throughout a chamber so beautiful it cinches around my heart. Cavernous arches, carved columns, balcony and towers. A gothic wonder right beneath our feet. I think it, even as it all makes sense.
Smooth, flat layers of marble rise in tiers up at the center of the room. A collection of stairs that end at a flat base with a gleaming box carved from onyx and wood at its middle.
But it’s the sight beyond it, beyond the candlelight, beyond the kneeling depictions of death with cloaked heads bowed in submission.
A throne.
No.
