However, there is one thing that is familiar.
His eyes are the same as Sullen’s. Deep brown with scattered pieces of amber. His body, too, is similar. Tall and broad, although he’s very thin and his skin is so pale as to be reminiscent of a cartoon ghost.
He’s probably in his sixties if I had to guess, dressed in a faded black suit and stained white shirt beneath. It’s smeared with something dark in too many places, like he fell down a chimney. Thick, cool ash hair streaked with gray, a hollow face and haunted smile curving his mouth.
He isn’t looking at me.
His gaze is solely for Sullen, and I dart my own between the two of them. From this angle, I can only see the side of Sullen’s face. His lips are pressed together, his brows bunched, and for one moment, I’m in awe of the fact his hood is brushed back andI can see his sharp angles and hard edges, the thickness of his hair.
But I don’t think he’s breathing.
I don’t understand why, or who this is.
The man had a lot of force, knocking down that door, spilling over my bookshelf. And he doesn’t seem at all out of breath, although as I glance at him again, I see he’s blinking rapidly, as if even in the dimness of the power outage, his eyes are having trouble adjusting.
“Sullen Bram,” he says quietly, and his voice is gravelly, much like Sullen’s.
Bram.
I never knew his middle name, if that’s what it is. A swelling of warmth grows inside my chest, obliterating all of the cold along my skin for a moment from being soaking wet inside the chill of the hotel room.
Sullen Bram Rule.I don’t know why, but I want to throw my arms around him, hug him in front of this stranger and never let him go. The name suits him perfectly. It’s gorgeous, like he is.
But I tense every muscle in my body and keep myself still as Sullen gazes back at the older man. He says nothing, and I take my cue from him.
“I have not been above the tunnels in years,” the man continues and I frown, thinking of the modern Hotel Number Seven. “Haven’t been inside a car, used money, gazed at the sky.” He glances around the hotel room, still blinking quickly, over and over. “I have not stepped foot in this place in… far longer. I think I prefer my hovel, truthfully.” He says the last part as if to himself before his eyes find Sullen’s again.
I know he must have seen me, but he acts as if I am not here at all.
“You don’t have much time, you know.” He states this plainly, without nerves. “And neither do I. Far less than you,hopefully.” He sighs, pushing his hands into the pockets of his pants as he glances down at the wrecked bookshelf before him. “I suppose you have a few questions for me?” He looks up through his lashes at Sullen, and the expression makes him seem younger.
“Just one,” Sullen says quietly, his tone guttural. “Who the fuck are you?”
The old man smiles, his hollow cheeks curving up with the movement. For the first time, his dark eyes find mine, and for a second, I wish he would look away. Being beneath his scrutiny is frightening, as if he carries the weight of centuries in his bones instead of decades.
But Sullen shifts his body so he blocks me entirely from sight.
I hear the older man laugh, a raspy sound. Then he says simply, “I am your father’s father. Your grandfather, as it were, although I never quite got the opportunity to claim that role.”
Chapter 3
Sullen
“We held meetings here. From the mundane to the marvelous, there is nothing this hotel hasn’t seen.” The man from the tunnel, the one who tried to tempt me to leave Karia behind, roams dark eyes around the second floor venue.
It’s a small room that seems even more so due to the black walls and same color marble flooring. There are black velvet armchairs and couches, a round, low table in the center of the space, and a wall of windows, which gives us our only light, the curtains spread apart like an animal flayed for vivisection.
SanfordRule, my grandfather, is seated closest to the window, one ankle bent over one knee in his formal, disheveled attire.
If it wasn’t for the fact he looks as if he’s spent years underground, I wouldn’t believe he is the man who whispered in my ear down in the tunnels. Yes, his voice is the same, slithering like a serpent, but I assumed my grandfather was dead.
And this man’s words come back to me. The things he said when he tried to get me to leave Karia behind.
“I warned your mother, when she met him in college. I tried to tell her there was something dark inside of him. I knew what his father did, the title he was passed down, the one he would never bequeath you, and truly, it is a mercy. Anyone within Writhe is cursed, Sullen. Do not forget it.”
I knew what his father did.
Of course he knew.
