“No!” Her raw voice scrapes across my nerves, and her fingers tighten fiercely on my wrist. “Listen!”
“Okay,” I soothe her. “Okay, I’m listening. Please…just lie still.”
“I’m the watcher of this spot,” she says, each phrase punctuated by a labored breath. “Have been for decades. I remember when the Coast Guard had to abandon this dining hall. They said it wasn’t needed any more. But there were rumors it was haunted. The other Protectors and I knew the truth. Every week, I’ve walked around this place to pray, sing psalms, and sprinkle holy water. It’s been quiet, so quiet we thought it was at rest for good…so quiet they only needed one watcher for the task.” She blinks, and her chest trembles with a rattling inhale. “But for months now I’ve felt something working against me—a presence.”
My mind goes to the voice I heard. “A presence? Inside the building?”
“No—something outside.” Her voice is growing weaker, and I lean closer to make out the words. “I’ve found blood here, freshly poured, ancient knotwork among the vines, and wicked symbols. I reported it to the other Protectors, and they told me to walk and pray twice a week. There used to be more of us here, taking shifts to walk the grounds, but they lost their faith, left their post. And now the evil is growing, growing… It will consume us all.”
I turn to Dorian. A sick dread is coiling in my stomach, and from the look on his face, he’s unsettled, too.
“Someone has been feeding this ground,” Mrs. Dunwoody says. “And my fellow Protectors at Old Sheldon Church have reported the same thing. Dark signs on tombstones, blood-soaked ground, dead sticks rising to form unholy creatures. It’s worse there. They couldn’t spare anyone to help me, they said…”
“But what is buried here and under the church?” I ask desperately. “Is it a relic, a weapon—some source of supernatural energy? What is it?” I hesitate, unsure whether to voice the question beating louder and louder in my brain. Notwhat, butwho.
Who is it?
But before I can speak the words, the ivy on the walls gives a violent shudder. It’s not the wind; those vines are moving on their own, thickening, crisscrossing. Something is building itself together, forming half-a-dozen long, thorny tentacles reaching out from the ruined wall.
As the vines lash outward, Dorian grabs my shoulders and drags me up, away from Mrs. Dunwoody, away from the thrashing ivy. I shriek, half protest and half shock. The vines coil around Mrs. Dunwoody, wrapping her torso, snaking around her throat and face. Eyes blown wide, she chokes as thorns and sharp sticks pierce the flesh of her neck. There’s a horrible wheezing sound, and then she’s dragged against the wall of the building, pinned there while vines crawl over her with terrifying speed, concealing her body within seconds.
It’s a nearly soundless death. Just a single horrific crack from somewhere under the vines.
The trees above us are stirring, and the moss on the wall is shifting. From deep in the recesses of my mind, a voice echoes—a deep,thrumming voice, the same one I heard the day I met Dorian, but stronger now. Compelling, irresistible, quaking in my bones and vibrating the muscle of my heart, galvanizing the synapses of my brain, choking me with the vast, impossible power of its will.
Let me out, let me out, let me out!
I can’t move. And a skriken is beginning to emerge from the overgrowth of the building—a monstrosity pulling itself away from the wall, its wolflike head ringed with tentacle vines.
“Wake up, Baz!” Dorian orders, shaking me a little. “Come on! We’ve got to go!”
His voice shears the link that the Other Voice was trying to establish with me. I suck in a sharp breath, and I run.
We flee out of the tree-shadowed darkness onto the sidewalk, then back across the street to the Chandler. I keep glancing back, anticipating the shapes of skriken emerging from the shadows. But none appear.
“We should… We should call someone,” I stammer.
“We can’t be linked to the scene. Let someone else find her and call it in—if there’s anything left to find, which I doubt. Wipe your face, and try to act calm. At least there’s not much of her blood on you. We’ll wash it off when we get to the penthouse. Slow down a bit, love.” Dorian grips my wrist, slowing me to a forced walk as we enter the glass doors and cross the lobby.
In the elevator, Dorian plucks a black moth from my back. It flies up to the mirrored ceiling, leaving tiny, bloody footprints on the glass. I shudder, leaning mutely against Dorian’s shoulder. But within seconds, the moth’s soft body and feathery wings crumble and dissipate into powdery black dust, and the flecks of blood vanish as well. The only trace is a smudge of dust on the floor of the elevator.
In my mind, I compose an image: a moth with bloodstainedmouthparts, minuscule footprints trailing behind it, dry brushes of scarlet paint.
A minute later, we’re back in Lloyd’s penthouse, in the eerie quiet.
After washing up in the bathroom, I collapse onto a sofa, trembling, barely conscious of the clink of glasses at the bar and Dorian’s murmured swears.
He comes over, shoves a cold drink into my hand, and sits down beside me. The hand holding his glass is shaking, too. When he sees me eyeing it, he clears his throat and starts swirling the whiskey around to cover his tremor.
It helps a little, knowing he isn’t entirely unaffected by the horror we just witnessed.
“I guess it’s pretty clear now,” he says hoarsely. “That place is concealing a supernatural entity or object of some kind.”
“Did I wake it up?” I stare at him. “By coming to Charleston, visiting that place—did I cause all this? Did I get Mrs. Dunwoody killed?”
“Your presence may have awakened something.” His gaze captures mine, blue and clear and innocent. “But she shouldn’t have been there at night. Not alone anyway. Besides, you heard what she said about someonefeeding the ground. None of this is your fault.”
“You can brush it off that easily?” My voice cracks. “The death or pain of other people doesn’t affect you at all?”
