Chapter 86: His Silent Partner

Lucian and Lara were in the visitor’s dining room, a hall with high windows that let in a blinding white light.

Sister Elena stood in front of them.

Her hands were clasped inside her wide sleeves.

“Brother Raziel has suffered a severe episode of spiritual fatigue,” she said. “It is common in novices who try to bite off more than their core can chew. Exarch Caelum pushed him too hard.”

Lucian gritted his teeth.

’Lie,’ he thought. ’It’s a damn lie.’

“I want to see him,” Lucian demanded.

Elena didn’t blink.

“I’m afraid he is in medical isolation, young Valerius. The contagion of mana instability is a real risk.” She leaned slightly toward Lara, who was sitting on a wooden bench. “Especially now that you are also here to learn to control your gift, dear. You wouldn’t want your empathy to interfere with his recovery, right?”

Lara didn’t answer.

“Rest,” Elena said, ending the conversation. “Tomorrow we will begin your lessons, tonight, pray for him.”

The woman turned around and left the room.

CLICK.

The door closed.

Lucian waited three seconds.

Then he let out the air he had been holding and kicked an empty chair.

CRASH!

“Shit!” Lucian shouted, running his hands through his coppery hair. “They have him! They know we know something and they have him!”

He turned to Lara, expecting her to tell him to calm down, that Raziel had a plan, that everything was part of one of those crazy strategies.

But Lara didn’t move, she was trembling.

“Lara,” Lucian lowered his voice, his protective instinct activating instantly. “What’s wrong? What did that witch do to you?”

Lara’s eyes, usually warm and expressive, were dilated, full of terror.

“It’s not fatigue,” she whispered. Her voice sounded raspy, as if she had been screaming for hours in her mind. “He isn’t resting, Lucian.”

“What do you feel?” Lucian took her hands.

“Noise,” she said. “There is… there is too much noise here.”

Lucian looked around, the dining room was empty, there was no one else but the two of them.

“I don’t hear anything.”

“Not you,” Lara closed her eyes tightly. “But the floor… the floor is screaming.”

They waited for night to fall.

The shadows lengthened in the white stone corridors.

There were no visible guards, which was worse.

It meant they didn’t need guards because no one left this place.

Lucian opened the door of his room carefully.

He had used a makeshift lockpick with a wire he pulled from his own tunic.

Lara was already in the hallway.

She had changed her novice tunic for tighter clothes she brought in her luggage.

“Which way?” Lucian whispered, pulling out a short dagger he had managed to hide in his boot.

Lara pointed north, toward the old wing.

“Down,” she said.

They walked sticking to the wall.

Lucian moved with the grace of a trained swordsman.

Lara followed him, but every few yards she stopped, took a deep breath and shuddered.

To Lucian, the hallway was deserted.

To Lara, it was a minefield of psychic echoes.

She felt the fear impregnated in the walls.

She felt the despair of patients who had walked through here years ago.

“Stop,” Lara said suddenly, grabbing Lucian by the arm.

They stopped in front of an intersection of hallways.

“Guards?” Lucian asked, tightening his grip on his dagger.

“No.” Lara leaned against the wall, breathing with difficulty. “I need… I need to know how many there are.”

“How many what? Enemies?”

“Victims.”

Lara closed her eyes.

She didn’t block her gift, she did the opposite.

She lowered all her mental barriers, she let the dam break.

THUMP!

The air felt heavy, dense like water.

Lara moaned, but didn’t pull away.

She extended her mind downwards, going through the stone, the wood and the earth.

She felt the cold, the dampness, the smell of old blood and excrement.

And she felt them.

They were focuses of incandescent pain, stars of agony in a black sky.

One, a man praying to die.

Two, a woman who didn’t remember her name anymore.

Three, someone who only felt hunger.

Four, Five, Six…

The count went up and Lara gritted her teeth until she tasted blood.

Raziel, she was looking for Raziel.

Until she felt a familiar spark.

He was there and he was alive but he was surrounded by darkness.

Lara opened her eyes suddenly, gasping as if she had just surfaced after almost drowning.

Lucian held her before she fell to the floor.

“Lara? Lara, look at me!”

Lara clung to Lucian’s tunic.

“Forty-seven,” she whispered.

Lucian was confused and alarmed by her state. “What?”

“There are forty-seven people screaming beneath our feet,” Lara said, and her voice cracked. “And no one listens to them, Lucian.”

Lucian looked at the floor as if he expected to see the faces of the damned through the tiles.

“Screaming?” he asked. “I don’t hear anything.”

“Not with their mouths,” Lara put her hand to her chest, over her heart. “With their soul, they are broken, Lucian, they are breaking them on purpose and Raziel is one of them.”

Lucian’s face went from fear to fury. “I’m going to kill that bitch,” he growled. “I’m going to burn this place down!”

“Shh!” Lara covered his mouth with her hand.

Her eyes drifted toward the end of the hallway. “Someone is coming.”

Lucian didn’t ask.

He simply dragged her into a dark alcove, behind a statue of Saint Sophia that seemed to cry marble tears.

They crouched in the dark.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

A figure emerged from the cross hallway.

It was an older woman, with a kind grandmother face, carrying a silver tray in her hands.

On the tray were surgical tools.

But what froze Lara’s blood weren’t the scalpels.

The Sister was humming a soft melody, a lullaby.

“Sleep little baby, sleep now… or the Mother will come and eat you…” the nun crooned, changing the lyrics with a creepy naturalness.

She stopped in front of a wall, where there was nothing but a painting of the Church’s foundation.

The Sister reached out and pressed the eye of one of the embroidered figures.

CLACK-RUMBLE!

A section of the floor sank and slid to the side with a well-oiled mechanism.

A black stone spiral staircase appeared, descending into the darkness.

The Sister smiled, oblivious to the two novices watching her from the shadows, and began to go down the stairs, still humming her lullaby.

“…if you don’t sleep, the Shadow will come…”

Her head disappeared, then her shoulders, the light of the candle she carried faded.

The floor panel began to close slowly.

Lucian looked at Lara. “That’s the entrance,” he whispered.

Lara nodded, wiping the blood from her nose with her sleeve.

“Raziel is down there,” she said. “And he is afraid, Lucian.”

Lucian gripped the dagger until his knuckles cracked.

“Then let’s go for him” he said, and ran toward the stairs before they closed completely.

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