Frank let out a low hiss from between his teeth that mingled with the eerie noise coming from the tunnel. "Cunning bastards. They were right under our noses."
It seemed the rock formation was more than it appeared. We grabbed our machetes and hacked at the overhanging trees and shrubs obscuring the entranceway. We gained a clear view of the light-sucking hole, and a shudder worked down my spine. I couldn't see more than two or three feet, and then the world disappeared into inky nothing.
"Alice is in there, somewhere." Frank pointed at the pitch black. His finger jabbed at the air and his body started to follow.
"Nobody goes anywhere until we are fully prepared. We are walking into a trap, after all. Elizabeth knows we are coming. Her creature has probably already told her we are knocking at the front door." Seth grabbed his half-brother by the back of his collar before he disappeared into the dark.
"It's been too long already. I need to find her." Frank fisted his hands and ground his jaw. He looked on the point of taking a swing at Seth.
"And there's a new hive down there. If you go charging in, it will be a suicide mission, not a rescue one. We wait for the truck and we plan this out. Remember the other goal of this mission. We need to know what Elizabeth has learned of the Turned objectives." The two men squared off. Seth kept his patient and steady gaze on the other man. A tic worked in Frank's cheek, but he looked away first with a brief nod of his head.
Personally, I thought Frank was mad to plough down the tunnel armed only with a rifle and a machete. I liked the idea of sending in a squadron of flamethrowers, if only I could guarantee they wouldn't turn Alice into burnt toast. I simply didn't trust anyone else when my friend's life was at stake. I had to go first.
"Did you know this was here?" I asked Seth as we checked our weapons, while we waited for the truck.
He glanced at the dark void and shook his head. "I never ventured this far, nor were there any whispers of the tunnel's existence. That would have drawn two bored lads out to hunt for it."
"Everything keeps circling back to Serenity House," I whispered. The itch took up residence in my brain, the one that said I was close to understanding something. I just needed to be brave and reach out for the answers.
"So it would seem. I think we need to dig deeper into the history of the house and this location." Seth strapped his claymore to his back and checked his service revolver.
Ghostly whispers ran over my skin and raised the hair on the back of my neck. Seth suspected the thread that bound everything together was a place. Instinct whispered that it was a person. Her name slithered through my mind like a worm through an apple—Millicent deMage.
I pinched the bridge of my nose and tried to concentrate. This wasn't the time to disappear down dark corridors in my mind, chasing long-dead ghosts. Seth and I would tackle this logically, one problem at a time. Rescue Alice, defeat Elizabeth, and then worry about what other skeletons lurked in the closets of his ancestral home.
Frank prowled the entrance to the tunnel like an agitated tiger, snarling and lashing out at anyone who got too close. After several minutes, we heard the steady purr of a big engine as the truck rumbled up the death road. They parked close to the horses, and men jumped from the back and started hauling out crates.
"I take it this is one of your death roads, captain?" Bain asked Seth. "We had to drag a few fallen trees clear to make our way in, then it was as smooth as a compacted road."
"Yes, I didn't appreciate how close they were to the old house." Seth watched as boxes were cracked open.
We pulled out the lanterns and started arraying them at the entrance, ready to be used. Like a snug entranceway in a small house, there was limited room inside the rock formation, and no one wanted to venture too far from the daylight. From what we could see of the tunnel, it seemed scarcely larger than the way into the burial mound. The ceiling was a scant six feet high. The taller men would have to stoop over, but at least we could walk two abreast.
I ducked just inside the tunnel and held my lantern high. The subdued yellow light revealed smooth walls, carved centuries ago and thankfully free of vermin fingers. Retracing my few steps back out, I ran a hand over the stone that acted as a lintel. Runes were carved deep into the surface, symbols that reminded me of those marking on the trees in my favourite glade. Were they connected? Had the same ancient druids touched both trees and rock?
The itch in my mind became a frantic need to scratch. So many things collided that it couldn't be coincidental; it must be by design. By what, or whose?
"How do you want to tackle this, captain?" Bain asked Seth.
"Rescuing Alice, if we can, is our priority. Then we need to capture Elizabeth so the War Office can interrogate her, but they will be lying in wait for us." Seth touched the hilt of his claymore, as though reassuring himself it was still there.
I had no quibble with the first part of his plan, but I baulked at the second part. I wanted to take off Elizabeth's head for touching my friend. Preferably with something blunt, so it would take a long time. Perhaps I could find a rusty spoon in the back of the army truck.
The lieutenant rubbed his chin and surveyed the crates the soldiers unloaded. "We could knock out their trap if we rolled a few kegs of explosives down the tunnel first?"
"No!" I had to jump into this discussion before someone blew Alice to bits. No one knew the twisted workings of Elizabeth's mind better than me. "Elizabeth wants me to try, and fail, to rescue Alice. That means I can probably get to her without problem. Leaving is where things will become sticky."
"We've had this discussion, Ella. You are not going alone." Seth shook his head.
"I don't intend to. I only mean getting in will not be the problem. But we will need to adapt to the situation once we are in Elizabeth's territory and have rescued Alice." I would succeed. Elizabeth consistently underestimated me, and I prayed she continued to do so to our advantage. It was tempting to grab all the men and weapons at our disposal and run down the tunnel. Would we find an undead army of thousands waiting for us, or just a handful? I would rather sneak in and find Alice first, then let the army lads have at whatever vermin were hiding beneath our feet.
Seth made a noise in the back of his throat, and I hoped his military brain was thinking along the same lines as mine. "We take a small squad in and find Alice. With any luck we can snatch her from under Lady Jeffrey's nose."
"What about capturing the queen and getting out, Captain deMage?" Lieutenant Bain awaited his orders with all the polite patience of a butler serving at a fancy dinner.
Seth scanned the assembled soldiers and signalled two forward. "We'll take Jack and Jake and send one back with word once we know the lay of the land."
"Pick your weapons, privates." Lieutenant Bain gestured to the open crates. The two men may have been short of stature, but they packed enough explosives around their bodies to propel them both to the moon.
Seth picked up a grenade from an open box and placed it in my hand. "Remember what I told you."
I nodded and tucked the explosive in my jacket, hoping it didn't accidentally detonate on me. I preferred a blade over secreting grenades about my person.
I checked my blade and waited while Seth had a quiet conversation with Lieutenant Bain. The other man paled but nodded his head. Then Seth walked over to us. "Ready?"
Frank snatched up a lantern and disappeared. Guess we were off then. Seth and I followed Frank, with Jack and Jake taking up the rear. As we stepped under the lintel, we were swallowed by an eternal night. A few feet inside, the tunnel angled downward into the earth.
The low moaning curled and spiralled in the confined space and raised goose bumps along my arms. We walked several feet down the tunnel, until the outside world shrank to a small porthole behind us. I counted another ten steps and the circle of light disappeared, leaving us without any illumination except the lanterns.
In the swaying yellow light, Jack and Jake grinned as though we embarked on an adventure. Frank looked grim, a man with a single-minded determination to save his girl. Seth maintained his flawless composure. And me, well, my stomach churned at the thought of confronting Louise and Elizabeth. Again. At least this time I wouldn’t be troubled by thoughts of blood ruining the carpet.
I raised my lantern, trying to see farther than a few feet in front of my face. I walked next to Seth and glanced his way. "What did you tell Bain that made him swallow?"
He glanced at me and then looked away. "I told him that if none of us made it out, to blow the entrance and ensure nothing escapes."
Oh. There was an uncomfortable thought, being trapped down here forever. "I hope you gave us a reasonable time frame to rescue Alice and escape?"
He smiled. "Of course. I thought the rest of the day sufficient. He will collapse the tunnel at nightfall. I don't want anything escaping unnoticed in the dark."
The rest of the day didn't sound like very long to me. That gave us four or five hours at most. The ceiling seemed lower, pressing on our shoulders. "Is it just me or does it seem as though there’s not enough air down here?"
"Breathe, Ella. We'll make it. We've done this before, remember?" Seth reached out and took my hand.
I squeezed his fingers and took a breath. Apparently there was air after all. I could do this. The tunnel kept angling downward, but it started to widen as well. We stuck to one wall, and that was when we found them. The carved niches, hundreds of them of varying sizes. They covered the wall like cells in a giant honeycomb.
We spread out, each of us holding a lantern high, and then we simply stared.
The local myths were based on fact. We had found the lost catacombs from ancient times. The place where the Celtic Britons had interred their dead nearly two thousand years ago. They surrounded us and stretched into the tunnel as far as my lantern illuminated.
Could Elizabeth and other queens command the long-deceased, or did the vermin plague only work on the recently dead? There was a thought I didn't need rattling around in my head. If the bones reformed, they’d all scramble from their alcoves and swallow the countryside in a rising tide of vermin.
Deciding to be brave, I clutched my lantern and stepped closer to a cluster of cells. They ranged in size from something that would accommodate a full-grown man lying down to what I would call small cupboards. Places that seemed better suited to store your tea canister, or a sad collection of child-sized bones.
"Oh," I whispered. A ghost appeared before me of a grieving mother clutching her child to her bosom. A man taking the tiny bundle from her arms and tucking it into a carved out niche and pulling a blanket over the child' face, as the mother cried.
"Where are they?" Frank asked. He walked from cell to cell and stepped through the illusion I’d conjured. Did he expect to find Alice trapped within one? That would certainly be convenient, but wouldn't indulge Elizabeth's evil sense of fun. "Where is she?"
It was a risk bringing Frank. I worried that his need to rescue Alice clouded his judgment. We all wanted to find her, but we all wanted to get out again. If he made too much noise or charged off on his own, he’d put us all at risk.
"I imagine she will be somewhere Elizabeth can control her." And somewhere she can watch me struggle, but I kept that thought to myself.
"Let's keep moving, but everyone stay alert." Seth circled the chamber, waving his lantern. The bottom of the space contained two black holes, tunnels that each headed in a different direction.
"Which one?" Frank asked, pacing between the two.
We strained our ears, but the low wail seemed to emanate from each direction equally.
"The right one." I said the words without thinking. For that one seemed to curve back toward Serenity House, and the other pointed to where the village lay. If Seth's ancestral home was a clue in this game, then we needed to follow it.
Seth arched an eyebrow and then ducked into the right hand shaft.
When one walks through the dark, time loses all meaning. There is no sun to gauge the passage of the day. No rustling of leaves with the wind. No touch of moisture when rain threatens. We moved, yet we were suspended in a place where nothing exists. We had slipped from our world above into their world below.
The only thing that changed was the noise. The low, guttural moaning increased in pitch and covered the scuffle of our boots. We were nearing the source. Seth turned his wrist and glanced at his watch.
"How much time?" I had no concept of how long we had been travelling in the midnight world. Had we come so far that we would never escape before the deadline expired?
"Less than an hour. We have time. But I will send one of the lads back soon, to let them know we are still searching. I wouldn't want to cut our mission short." He smiled and I distracted myself by thinking how I would much rather pass the time kissing him. Or having him kiss other places on my body.
Onward we trudged. The tunnel curved and then disappeared, as though the dark swallowed it up and the ground fell away from under our feet. Stars exploded around us and it seemed I tumbled upward toward the sky. I gasped and reached out for Seth. My rock. Only his touch stopped the panic in my chest. The suffocating press of the tunnel had vanished to be replaced by the overwhelming sense of emptiness. As though I had been plucked from the dark and tossed into space.
"An illusion," Seth said. "This chamber is enormous and seems to have its own light source."
Fantastic. All of a sudden I was nostalgic for the burial mound that the first hive called its home. That had been cosy. Something enormous could house hundreds of vermin. I closed my eyes and found my bearings. The noise seemed to come from every direction.
My mind reminded my feet that solid rock was underneath us. Opening my eyes, I saw a mad landscape spread out before me, all washed in pale blue light as though the full moon shone overhead, except we were far underground. I craned my neck and peered up, curious about the stars that now lit our way. They winked in and out, making the sky sparkle, and then I realised what created the light.
"Glow worms." I breathed the word on a sigh. It should have been romantic and magical. Shame it wasn't.
Thousands, if not millions, of the little creatures clung to the roof of the cave and emitted their soft blue luminescence. Together, they produced enough to bathe the cavern in an eerie glow, adding to the nightmarish quality.
"At least now it's easier to see where we're going." Frank said.
Seth pointed to Jack and Jake. "One of you trot back, and tell Bain we are still on track but need an extra couple of hours. Tell him to hold fire until midnight."
The young men stared at each other and a silent communion passed between them. Then one nodded and saluted to Seth. He turned and trotted away, his lantern a soft, swinging light that was soon swallowed up by the tunnel behind us.
The remaining twin looked at Seth. "Jack will stay with Bain and I'll stay with you, captain."
Ah. So we had Jake. If the two really could communicate without speaking, it would certainly be handy if one could relay our progress to the other.
"Douse your lamps. It will be easier to see once our eyes are accustomed to the low light from above." Seth opened the glass of his lantern and turned the wick down, extinguishing the bright dot of light.
"I'm not sure I want to see where we're going," I murmured, but I complied.
With the lanterns snuffed out, we stood in silence as our eyes adjusted to the change. Bit by bit, the room was unveiled to us. The underground moonlight revealed the true expanse of this new world. You could fit the entire Serenity House into the chamber with room to spare. From a distance, the walls looked exactly like honeycombs. Dozens and dozens of cells were dug into the rock. Some had filmy white coverings, as though something waited to hatch.
Unbelievably, trees had once grown down here. Twisted trunks reached up to vanish in the velvet sky. Skeletal limbs groped outward and upward, as though the trees also sought to escape. The gush of water came from one side, where moisture trickled down the rock and turned into a rivulet, and then became a flow. The water ran silver, as though the river were made of liquid mercury.
Here and there on the ground lay scattered man-made objects. Pages from a book, as though someone paced and ripped out pages as they walked. A child's doll, minus its head. A piece of patchwork blanket. Even a chair, tipped on its side. These weren't relics interred with the dead by the Britons, but were of far more recent origin. Did the vermin loot belongings from the homes they raided above ground?
Shapes hid in the gloom. The river split around a strange teardrop-shaped island. Far ahead, where the ground levelled out, standing stones seemed to ring the source of the constant moaning. Was I looking at rocks, or clusters of vermin bodies? There wasn't sufficient light to be able to tell the difference.
"Over there seems like the best starting point." I pointed to the circle.
"Alice, we're coming," Frank whispered, and we headed in that direction.
Before we walked more than a few feet, a shadow broke away from the cavern wall and formed before us. This creature was of similar height and build to me. It wore a long, red felted coat, the colour so deep it reminded me of congealed blood. Dark hair hung loose and tangled around its shoulders. The head raised and I met a gaze full of hatred.
Louise.