I ascend the stairs, round the stone altar. My feet disturb centuries of soot.
Grit.
Blood.
Layers that cake the underside leave prints in my wake. But I never take my eyes off the top where the steps end and the real reason for the room comes into view.
A wound.
An aberration rising from the scarred granite of the wall like an implant being rejected or swallowed. But it clings with no foundation. No wood or stone. A wall of congealing shadows. Living. Pulsing. Drifting along the spiraling edges. Soaking into glass.
And in the center of it all, I stand. Mesmerized. Eyes wide. Searching for a reflection and only falling deeper into absence and feeling that void stare back from the other side. Everything in me tells me I should be terrified. This thing is not natural. It’s without question evil. That is the very reason I don’t flinch away.
Evil doesn’t announce itself.
Evil is subtle. A snake offering an apple. Unassuming and sly.
But this thing is trying so hard to push me away, it only lures me closer. My fingers barely tremble when I lift to touch.
“Lenora!”
I flinch at the sound of my name. The crack of it echoes across the chamber with a wrongness that doesn’t belong.
Marcus is at my side, eyes dark with a fury that mirrors the grip he forms around my hovering hand.
“What the hell are you doing?” he snarls, wrenching me away, pulling me back.
“What is it?”
Eyes still clouded with anger lift from my face to take in our surroundings. I expect him to know, but the confusion as he pulls me to him makes me think he had no idea this existed either.
“Protège-moi du mal.”The soft prayer whispers off his lips before he adds in English, “We need to leave.”
He’s dragging me down the steps. Away from the thing in the mirror.
“Wait…” I protest.
“No, you will not come back here. Whatever this is, it’s evil.”
So, he feels it, too.
I turn my chin back over my shoulder to find the tendrils swirling faster. Agitated. There is restlessness in the motion, an anger I can feel warming against my skin like the rising of the sun.
“Marcus, wait,” I try again.
He’s dragging me past the altar. My feet slip on stone with every effort to pull free. His hold is crushing. My bones are rubbing together beneath the grinding of his. The pain has me crying out.
“I will not,” he announces. “Don’t look back, Lenora.”
Behind us, thick, congealing darkness spills down the steps. In a world that made sense, I could believe it’s a shifting of light from all the candles. A pressure change in the room.
But the descent is too precise. Too focused. It slithers at our heels, moving too fast for shadows.
Then we’re back on the other side of the curtains, facing a long row of stone angels who haven’t moved, yet I swear are breathing.
I grip Marcus’s fingers, throat tight with a fear that is all encompassing.
“Stay close,” he mumbles, eyes fixed on the statue nearest us.
