Page 67
Ahead of us, Malachi led the retreat through the service threshold, his bare torso streaked with soot, sweat, and the fresh crimson trailing from the deep gouge where the falling shelving had clipped his ribs. The silver mask concealed the upper half of his face, yet the savage set of his jaw told me exactly how much violence he had waiting for me once we cleared the immediate collapse. Rook guarded our rear like an iron monolith, the black muzzle strapped tight over his jaw, his heavy combat boots sloshing through the deluge as his cold gaze scanned every dripping pipe and shifting shadow for the hunt the House still demanded of him.
I threw my weight against an iron service hatch, shoving Zinnia through into a claustrophobic conduit lined with vibrating steam pipes and weeping brickwork. Malachi crossed the threshold next, with Rook stepping in last and slamming the heavy door shut against the deluge of loose paper and rushing water.
“Keep your pace up,” I said, wiping wet ink from my brow as I pointed down the descending corridor. “The House can twist the public galleries into whatever carnival nightmare it wants, but these service arteries run along the original foundations. We follow this conduit straight into the central nexus.”
Zinnia fell into step beside me, her breathing ragged and furious. “You knew what would happen back in that room. You didn’t push me into that filthy performance to expose a loophole, Khaos. You did it to see if you could make me bend.”
“I did it because the House cannot file a contradiction without choking on its own ledger,” I replied, keeping my eyes on the wet gloom ahead. “You wanted answers about your sister. I gave you the only currency this slaughterhouse respects.”
“You used the language of freedom to disguise your own sick appetite,” she snapped, stepping directly into my path to force me to a halt. “You’re no different than the rest of the monsters in this building. You just prefer to keep your hands clean with ink while you orchestrate the degradation.”
Before I could answer, Malachi’s hand clamped around my throat with the force of a hydraulic vice.
He drove me backward into the brickwork with enough momentum to rattle the teeth in my skull, the back of my head striking iron conduit. Black water rained down from the ceiling as his free hand drew back and hammered into my cheekbone. The crack echoed down the tunnel, the metallic taste of copper flooding my mouth as my head snapped sideways.
“You put your hands on her to test your own fucking theories,” Malachi snarled, his gray eyes burning through the slits of the silver mask as he pressed his forearm hard against my windpipe, crushing my airway until my heels kicked off the wet floor. “You treated her like an entry in your ledger because you think your little games make you immune to what we are.”
I spat a mouthful of dark blood directly across the pristine silver plate of his mask and drove a sharp knee into his bruised ribs. He grunted in pain, the grip on my throat loosening just enough for me to wrench free and drive my elbow across his jaw. He stumbled into the flooded gutter, water splashing high, but surged back upward with a feral growl, tackling me against the opposite wall before Zinnia stepped between us, shoving her hands against his bare, bloodied chest.
“Both of you stop!” she ordered, her voice cutting through the humid air like a scalpel. She kept her palm pressed against Malachi’s chest, feeling the wild, furious hammer of his pulse beneath her fingers, before turning her glare back to me. “I want the truth, Khaos. Not the riddle you hide behind to feel superior. Why are you really keeping those forged files?”
Wiping the blood from my split lip with the back of my knuckles, I leaned against the weeping bricks and stared her down. “Because twenty years ago, I realized this place doesn’t just devour bodies. It devours every human variable until nothing remains except four empty titles. I don’t give a damn about being a savior, Zinnia. I keep those contradictory records because I need someone with your bloodline to reach the entity’s core and make an unrecorded choice. If you refuse to accept ownership, the entire contract network fractures from the root upward. I get to watch Evangeline’s creation burn to ash, and I get access to the buried origin vault beneath it.”
“You want the core’s power for yourself,” she said, her voice dropping into a dangerous register.
“I want my debt cleared and the foundation shattered,” I answered cleanly. “If that makes me a parasite in your eyes, fine. But without my maps and my contradictions, you will never reach the bottom of this building alive.”
Rook raised a heavy arm toward the dark archway ahead. “Move now. The scavengers have caught the scent.”
From the shadows of the rusted crossbeams above, the Grinners dropped into the knee-deep water with sickening agility. Their faded satin costumes hung in tatters around their elongated limbs, and their porcelain smiles were fractured down the center, exposing double rows of serrated needle teeth. As they circled us in the murky water, their throats clicked and pulsed, spewing out distorted, layered imitations of the sounds Zinnia had made during our encounter in the archives.
“Please—”
“Tear it open—”
“Take what you want—”
Zinnia flinched as the mocking chorus echoed off the stone, her fists tightening until her nails broke the skin of her palms. “They’re twisting everything.”
“They’re gathering acoustic evidence for the entity,” I muttered, drawing a heavy brass tally-spike from my coat and stepping forward. “Do not answer them.”
The nearest Grinner lunged forward on all fours, its jaws unhinging to snap at Zinnia’s waist. Malachi moved with brutal efficiency, driving his steel-toed boot into the creature’s jaw and sending it crashing into the iron pipes. The beast shrieked, black oil spraying from its ruined mouth, while Rook caught a second Grinner by its elongated throat, lifting it clean out of the water and slamming its spine across his knee with a sharp, wet snap.
We pushed deeper into the flooded conduit, but the passage grew narrower as the walls began to warp. Black threads shot out from the cracks in the masonry, snaking through the water like hungry veins. The Seamstress stepped from a blind alcove, her silver mannequin held before her like an offering while her long, rusted needle flashed in the dim light. She drove the needle toward Zinnia’s shadow on the flooded wall, intending to pin the silhouette to the mortar and bind her flesh to the architecture.
Rook drew his hunting blade and severed the tension lines with a single vicious downward slice. The Seamstress let out a high-pitched hiss as the severed threads curled and withered in the foul water, vanishing back into the darkness.
Further down the bend, the brickwork bulged outward, tearing open to reveal the Mouth-Bearer. The second mouth carved into its sternum convulsed, spewing hot-pink fluid as it forced out a declaration in Zinnia’s exact cadence: “I surrender the title of the blood.”
Malachi lunged before the phrase could finish, driving his hunting knife straight through the mouth on the creature’s chest and pinning it to the brickwork until the grotesque lips stopped moving. He ripped the blade free, breathing heavily, his chest smeared with black bile and his own sweat.
“The threshold is right ahead,” I said, gesturing toward the arched vault where the water ceased to flow and the stone floor rose into dry, polished obsidian tiles.
We crossed the archway and entered the Room of Four Masks.
The circular chamber was vast, surrounded by towering walls of black stone that seeped hot-pink ink in rhythmic, arterial pulses. Four raised stone platforms formed an equidistant square around a central sunken pit, each dais marked with an engraved sigil and flanked by an iron pillar where a distinct mask hung suspended on an iron chain: the copper visage of the Devil, the bone-white muzzle of the Hound, the split-faced porcelain of the Madman, and a blank, faceless veil of white lace meant for the Keeper.
Zinnia stopped at the edge of the obsidian floor, her gaze fixed on the central pit where a low hum vibrated through the soles of our boots. “What is this place?”
