We planned all afternoon until the light faded at the window, and Warrens snuck in and turned on the new electric lights. We detailed what we would need for our expedition, then we said our goodnights and I rode home. At least I had good news to share this time—Alice was alive. Wasn't she?
Dinner was lively; an undercurrent of expectation ran through every comment. Or every glance, in the case of Henry. I loved these people and their unshakable belief that I would rescue Alice. But I feared disappointing them. I struggled to imagine Elizabeth keeping Alice alive, and I steeled myself in case we found only a vermin version of my best friend. I still couldn't sleep, but this time energy bubbled through me as though I were a shaken bottle of champagne. Sleep came in snatches, creeping up on me unaware, but at last morning dawned.
Magda forced me to eat breakfast, declaring I couldn't charge off on a rescue mission on an empty stomach. It did no good to tell her of the nausea that gripped me, wondering what we would find. Was I ready to face Elizabeth? A tiny voice inside me whispered no, but then my hand tightened on my sword and I knew I would remedy my mistake.
At Serenity House, Seth rallied the troops and gave out orders, and soon our little group was ready. Frank had bloodshot eyes, and I took some comfort in knowing I wasn't the only one unable to sleep. As I gazed around the courtyard, I thought we looked like a medieval mob, out to scour the countryside for witches. We lacked pitchforks and lit torches, but thanks to modern advancements, we could slay these demons with flamethrowers.
Since we were going to track the vermin across countryside, we decided it would be best to have a mounted patrol. Each rider was armed with their choice of blade and a rifle.
Lieutenant Bain would follow in the truck with more soldiers and more weaponry than I had ever seen. Frank and Seth had cooked up another batch of Greek fire and loaded up the flamethrowers. I hated the idea of using fire in a confined underground space. What if we couldn't get out? Then there were crates containing machine guns, grenades, and lanterns. Lots and lots of lanterns, enough to bring light to whatever dark corners our prey occupied.
The lieutenant and three men dragged out our trussed and snarling tracker dog from its cage. The men encircled it with bayonets affixed to their rifles. They exchanged glances; no one liked the idea of letting it go.
"What now?" Bain asked.
Good question. I suspected as soon as we cut its ropes, it would attack. If we had to lop its limbs off to stop it attacking, it would then take days to crawl back to Elizabeth. Days we, or Alice, didn't have. Which meant we needed to reduce numbers around it before setting it free.
I gazed at the lush, rolling paddocks surrounding the grand house. "We take it out in the field and one person will release it while everyone else stands well back. I don't want it distracted by us; its sole mission should be returning to its hive."
"No, don't even suggest it, Ella." Seth bit the words out, his jaw tense. His steady gaze met mine and he shook his head.
Blasted man obviously guessed what I had planned. But he overlooked one simple fact—Elizabeth wanted me. She wanted me to try to rescue my friend, and more importantly, she wanted to see me fail.
I laid a hand on Seth's arm. "If Elizabeth truly controls these things, then she would have told it not to harm me. Where is the fun for her if the creature bites or scratches me? She needs to see me struggle to save Alice. She needs to see me suffer. If I am Turned, then the game ends too soon. It won't harm me." Once I said it out loud, I could see Elizabeth plotting that. Undead, I would be doomed to spend eternity pandering to her every whim. The scullery maid forever. I hoped that wasn't an immediate part of her plan.
Seth took my hand and kissed my knuckles. "Do you know how hard it is for me to let you walk into danger?"
His touch warmed the entire right side of my body, but his words sent tingles racing over my skin. Though most women were expected to keep house and careers were frowned upon, he would hand me a sword and let me step forward to confront danger. Could I love this man any more? "Do you know what it means to me that you are at my back?"
"Could we move this party along? None of this is finding Alice." Frank paced, his hands fisted at his sides. The man was a seething mass of agitation, and every time he neared the vermin, it struggled on the ground like a landed fish trying to make it back to water.
With a sack snugly over its head, we managed to load the vermin onto a cart. One man drove while two others kept it prone on the boards by keeping their heavy boots on its body. We rode out to a nearby field, where the package was unloaded and then the men retreated to a safe distance. The creature was somewhat like a parrot whose cage had been covered. It was docile once the sack went over its head and so long as we kept Frank away. Or maybe it was the fact no one tried to slay it that lulled it into a false sense of security.
I wasn't so foolish. I knew one bite or scratch from the infected creature would bring the same change upon my body. I glanced behind me to a row of horses and the truck. They all waited.
"Now or never," I muttered under my breath, and I sliced the rope which bound the vermin’s body into something like a giant sausage. The blade ran from shoulders down to ankles, releasing the creature. At least I didn't have to worry about nicking its skin as I worked, since it was already dead.
I stepped back and waited. It lay still, only emitting a low moan. One last thing, then—time to uncover the parrot.
Approaching it from behind, I grabbed the sack and jerked it away. A loud snarl shot from its throat and I jumped a few feet back. The sword was a comfortable weight in my hand as the vermin pressed its knuckles into the dirt. It pushed off and rose to its knees first, then groaned as it stood on shaky legs.
It swung its head back and forth, as though scenting the air. Then it turned and fixed a dead, white stare on me. What remained of its lips pulled back and it snarled. It needn't have bothered, as I could see its bottom row of teeth through the tear in its chin. It took a lumbering step toward me, its claw-like hands reaching out.
I circled around it, keeping a distance with my katana held at the ready. "Now, don't do anything hasty. Elizabeth sent you to deliver a message to me. You need to take my reply to your queen. Tell her Eleanor is coming."
Part of me felt foolish for trying to hold a conversation with it. A crack in its skull showed very little brain matter inside the cavity. It had either rotted down or perhaps rain had got in and washed the pudding-like substance away. My mind wandered, trying to determine how the thing managed to stay upright and walk with most of its brain gone. Did Elizabeth do all the thinking for her subjects? That would be exhausting, imagine trying to co-ordinate what each was doing, when they were scattered around the countryside.
It wavered on its feet and swayed first one way and then another, like a sapling in a breeze. I seemed to have confused it, something to be expected when it only had a tablespoon of mush in its head. The vermin paused mid-step and its milky eyes rolled up into its head. It shook its head back and forth and wailed, a hideous noise that sent chills running down my spine. Then it groaned and lurched off toward the trees.
Did they have some sort of vermin telegraph? Had it sent my reply to Elizabeth and received a command to return with me in tow? I hoped our scientists were earning their wages determining the answers to such questions.
Hoof beats thudded through the grass as Seth and Frank trotted up, my mare between them. Seth handed over the reins as I swung into the saddle.
"Let the hunt begin," he said.
"About bloody time," Frank muttered under his breath. He really did look shocking with red eyes and the rough growth on his chin. The bowler hat shoved low on his head did nothing to hide the wild hair, which sprang sideways over his ears.
Perhaps we should have tied him to a post back at the big house. In his current condition, he would scare Alice more than a seething mass of vermin.
We let our horses follow the lumbering creature from a safe distance, staying far enough behind that we could track its path through the trees, but not so close that any of us were at risk of being struck if it spun and attacked. The truck was confined to the roads, but the horses could follow wherever the creature went. A soldier shot occasional flares so Lieutenant Bain and reinforcements knew our locations and could stay in the same region.
Mile after mile, we dawdled behind the creature. Following a vermin seemed equivalent to letting your great grandmother loose in the garden after she's been in the sherry. It didn't take a straight path but wove back and forth, round and round trees, and often doubled back and started again.
"I thought the Turned were supposed to follow your death road straight to the catacombs?" I grumbled at Seth. “The thing is flitting around like some sort of grotesque forest fairy.” A road should mean a direct route, not weaving a pattern around trees. I had a strong urge to offer it a map, because the blasted thing didn't seem to know where it was going.
"Perhaps our bloodhound keeps losing the scent. Remember, the original roads were buried two thousand years ago." Seth rested his hands over the horse's wither and simply watched.
How did he have such patience? Frank looked like he might dismount and start kicking the creature to make it move on.
At times, the two men seemed so similar, then in other little things, the differences revealed themselves. Frank had less patience than I. I came to have a small amount of sympathy for the man; he was frantic with worry for Alice. I hoped he made things right when we finally rescued her. I resolved to give him a chance to remedy his mistake, and if he didn’t, then I would test a flamethrower on his sorry behind.
The vermin lurched toward a densely forested area. The twins studied a map with a compass in hand, checking our location and updating our route. We circled closer to the range of hills and farther away from the village. The forest was thicker here and older. Towering oaks and beech had stood for centuries, their trunks gnarled and weathered by time. The sunlight filtered through nearly a hundred feet of foliage as it sought to penetrate to ground level. Silence enveloped us as the forest watched. I doubted anyone had been this way for hundreds of years.
The horses found it harder going through the dense growth, and low-hanging branches made it dangerous to continue riding. We dismounted and walked beside the horses. Then, as I led my mare over a fallen log, we broke through to clearer footing. As we tracked our quarry, the trees seemed to part before us. Deep leaf litter paved the route, soft and springy under my boots.
If I hadn’t been so tired, I would have seen it earlier.
"Death road," I said, and pointed to the way ahead. The trees seemed almost regimented along the edges, leaving a clear path between their neat rows. Small grasses and ferns were dotted along the way, but nothing any larger obstructed us.
The vermin picked up speed as though it scented home in the air. Now it lurched more or less in a straight line, bounded by the trees on either side. It only made the occasional detour to dance around a massive trunk.
Strange how one could spend one’s entire life in an area and then stumble upon something completely new. That area of forest was far from where Alice and I had roamed as children. I doubt we would have crossed into the foreboding trees with their twisted and aged bark. They seemed to reach out for us—or tried to hold us at bay.
"Where are we exactly?" I asked Jack and Jake as we headed along the quiet avenue.
"On a corner of the Leithfield estate," Seth answered.
I stopped and turned to face him. "We've circled back to Serenity House?"
A smile touched his lips. "Well, the estate is several hundred acres. We're not exactly in the back garden. But yes, it would appear we have come full circle."
I didn't like that. The more we learned, the more everything pointed back to Serenity House. Death roads criss-crossed the estate, and if our theory was right, catacombs lurked on the back doorstep. What mysteries did the estate keep and what secrets had Millicent deMage known when she’d asked the first duke to build his house there?
"It's disappeared!" Frank called out. He thrashed at the shrubbery with the machete he pulled from a sheath attached to the horse's saddle.
I was so busy musing that I took my gaze off our vermin. The trees surrounded us and soared toward the sky and muted the sun. I tried to penetrate the thick growth on either side of the road. Blast! Where had it gone? The thing vanished quick as a rabbit down its hole.
"It can't have got far," the twins said in unison. They split off, taking parallel paths through the undergrowth.
We hitched our horses to trees, and Frank shot off a flare to let the others know our whereabouts. Then we approached the dense scrub where we had last seen the vermin. Ferns, shrubs, and low-hanging branches raked our boots and clothing as we looked for any sign.
"Here!" Jack called. He stood by a low, rocky outcrop. He pointed to greenery around the stone that had been trampled by lumbering feet. He grabbed a dangling branch and pulled it to one side. Jake let out a soft exclamation. A black hole loomed before us. It sucked in the light and gave nothing in return except the low moan of an unnatural wind. A sound we had heard once before, from the burial mound.
We had found the catacombs.