Page 72 of Bitten & Burned

Thirty-Nine

TRAPS

Dun Drummond, Sol, Verdune

“Very good, Ashborne. You brought her back to me. I told you she’d come back.”

I swallowed, narrowing my eyes at the man in front of me. His gaze was steady. Too steady. He looked in our general direction, not at any one of us. If this were really Silas, he’d be staring right at me.

I reached for Quil’s arm, grabbing it and holding on. He looked back at me, puzzled and snarling.

“It’s not him,” I whispered. “Another trap.”

“She’s right,” Vael murmured. “See how his gaze doesn’t land on any of us? It’s a projection.”

Quil calmed slightly, and my hand dropped.

And, like I expected, the glamour flickered like a bulb burning out, disappearing and revealing what was actually behind it: a snare set to snap the leg of anyone who stepped into it.

“That’s two,” Cassian muttered.

“He’s setting traps for us,” Dmitri said.

“To get Rowena alone?” Anton asked, sheathing his dagger.

“Or get us out of the way,” Quil replied. “Either one serves his purposes.”

“So what do we do?” Anton asked.

“We move forward. Slowly and carefully,” I said.

“Rowena knows how to spot these. This man was her teacher,” Vael said. “We follow her, and we listen to her. If she says stop, we stop. Got it?”

The others nodded in agreement.

My stomach knotted up as we moved forward, down the corridor, side-stepping the snare as we did. I tried doors. Ones that seemed innocuous. One that turned out to be just a red herring as well.

And then one that looked too good to be true.

That one, I touched through the fabric of my skirt, turning the knob and opening it. The corridor stretched out in front of us, endless, but I knew that couldn’t be true, considering what I knew to be the footprint of the house.

I checked the doorway for runes, for sigils, for wards. Once I was satisfied, I stepped through, and the others followed me. We moved forward slowly.

It was like this for a while before I saw it. A flash of black wool. Green eyes. Dark hair.

Me.

I swallowed and stopped, squinting into the low light before me. “Did you see that?” I murmured.

“See what?” Quil asked.

Footsteps, then a small sound, like a squeak. Similar to the sound I made when something surprised me.

“Rowena?” Dmitri was the first to break ranks as he stepped forward, ready to chase my likeness down through the halls, but I shook my head. “No, Dmitri!”

Cassian stopped him, but just barely, nodding over his shoulder at me.

Dmitri blinked like he couldn’t believe his eyes. Then he shook his head. “Fucking hells, I’m sorry… you’re right here, what… I don’t understand.”

“It’s alright,” I soothed. “It’s a good double of me. It calls to you. That’s what it’s supposed to do.”

“I was nearly ready to give chase, too, but I saw her here beside me,” Quil added.

“What do we do?” Vael asked, clearly shaken.

“We go in the opposite direction of my double. Now, she’ll be showing up again as we make our way to wherever this leads. You have to be strong and remember I’m right here. I’m safe. I’m with you. I slipped my hand into Dmitri’s, and we began walking again.

Just as expected, my double reappeared, again and again. Through the walk, Anton nearly had to turn back because he swore I was gone, for the split second he saw the double, and panicked.

Even Vael had to stop walking and blink, rubbing his eyes and staring at me, the real me, before we continued. Once I saw a doorway at the end of the hall, it felt like it was over. At least, this part of it.

Just as I reached the door, my sigil flared again, I looked back, and my double was…

Fuck, she was burning.

Screaming, silently, as the visage burned into cinders.

My thigh throbbed, and I nodded at the door.

Vael opened it and gasped.

The others froze.

I straightened and shouldered through them, stopping cold when I saw why.

A table stretched out before us, set and dressed with all the trappings of a gourmet meal. Except that, laid out on the surface, were no serving dishes, no salads, no slabs of roast beef to carve.

No, instead, there were bodies.

Twitching, writhing bodies.

Worse still, they were bodies I recognized. I lurched forward, a cry stuck in my throat as I approached the table.

My father, split open chest to navel, heart beating visibly as his chest rose and fell in shallow breaths. His mouth opened as if to speak, but all that came out was my name.

“Rowenaaaaaa.”

The voice was ghastly and full of air and blood.

“Father?” I murmured.

“Rowena?” Horrified, I looked towards the voice.

Thalia.

“Thalia…”I whispered, noting with a shudder that her throat had been slashed, and her blood fell in never-ending rivulets and pooled beneath her before dripping onto the floor.

“This is what you want,” my father rasped. “What you’re giving them.”

“I’m not,” I whispered. “Gods, I’m not, you have to believe me.”

“Rowena, you know they would eat us in a heartbeat,” rasped Thalia.

“And you still want to be with them. They’re monsters. And they made you one as well,” hissed another, a deeper voice. Tears pricked at my eyes, and I saw him: Bram, his body covered in bite marks, tears, his skin barely holding on in places.

“No, no, no…”I whispered. “No…”

“Rowena, love…” Vael’s hand was insistent in mine. “It’s not real. Another visual manipulation. Witchling….”

It wasn’t Vael, but Anton who broke me from my stupor.

He was snarling, growling, clawing at Dmitri’s arms as the much bigger man held him tightly, kept him from barreling forward into the table.

“Let me go,” Anton growled.

“No, Anton, don’t… they’re not real. And they’re Rowena’s people. Rowena’s people,” Dmitri growled in response.

I looked back at the table, and the corpses on it looked at me. Dead eyes. No recognition.

Vael was right. Visual manipulations. Nothing more.

I shook my head. “Anton, love? Look at me,” I whispered, reaching for him.

He jolted at the brush of my fingers, but he was still; he looked at me, dark eyes wild.

“They’re not real, Anton. Stop. It’s a trap.”

“A trap,” he murmured, his muscles relaxing, the tight cords at his neck relaxed and released, and he fell back with a sigh against Dmitri.

“Gods, I’m sorry,” He murmured. “I was going to do it, I was going to eat them… and they’re your—”

“They aren’t,” I corrected him. “They’re manipulations. I know you would never do it.”

“I was about to,” he countered.

“They weren’t real. Corpses don’t talk, Anton. Do you really think you would have tried to eat corpses? And even if they hadn’t been, you wouldn’t have been called to eat them like this, not without Silas’ hand being involved. They’re illusions. Bewitched illusions.”

He shook his head, tears still gathering in his eyes as Dmitri loosened his hold. I gathered him into my arms and pressed kisses to his face, to his lips, his fangs. “Darling, it’s alright.”

He swallowed and nodded, straightening and squeezing me into a hug before fully returning to himself. “I really, really want to get this man.”

As we stepped through the next door, I groaned because it was yet another long-ass corridor.

Of course, as I turned, I saw that no one else was with me. It made no sense because they’d come in with me. I spun around, looking for them.

It was then that I heard the most awful sound I’d ever heard in my life.

Screaming. In pain.

I blinked.

Quil.

It was Quil. And he was hurt. And I had no fucking idea where he was.

“Quil?!” I called, walking towards the sound. Something held me back. I thrashed as something grabbed my arm, holding me back from going to him.

“Quil?!” I struggled and tried to rip my arm from whatever was holding me, but I couldn’t. “QUIL!” I called, my voice no more than a choking sound because I could hear him, hurt and dying, and I couldn’t go to him. “I’m coming, Quil!”

“Rowena!”

I blinked as I looked around. Quil’s face was in front of me. Worried as hell, but not hurt.

“Quil?” I whispered, reaching for him. He gathered me in his arms, and I clung to him. “I’m sorry, I was trying to get to you, but something kept holding on to me and—”

“That was me,” he murmured. “I was holding you because you were about to run down a hallway without us. A dark hallway.”

“No, you were screaming and I—”

There was a dull laughter echoing through the halls now, and my face burned and my eyes narrowed. “That was another fucking illusion.”

Quil nodded, and the others did as well.

Fuck this. I needed to end this now.

I slammed the door shut in front of me and took a deep breath as I glanced around the room. I willed all other thoughts from my head but the ones I used while navigating ruins. And that’s all this place was. Ruins.

Pre-ruins, if I had my way.

I turned and looked around the now-empty room. I’d previously thought this was the dining hall, but now I could see it was actually more of a sitting room with a window to the outside. The moon was visible.

If I knew Silas, and I was fairly certain I did, he wouldn’t have his main lair in the basement. He was always upset that his own offices had been assigned to the ground floor at the Arcanum. He’d have them up high. We had to find the main room with the stairs.

I turned back through the door from whence we’d come, back down the hallway where my double had driven the others crazy. I turned in a new direction, pushing open every door and sighing with relief when I finally saw the staircase, big and expansive, leading to the upper floors.

“Come on,” I said.

The next part wasn’t difficult, thankfully. If we’d have kept going through Silas’s funhouse from the hells, we’d have been in here all night. But I was a better student than he’d ever expected, than he’d ever have allowed me to be on my own.

As it was, when I opened up the stone door on the top floor, I’d like to think I scared him just a little.

But only a little.

He looked surprised to see us, but he gathered his wits rather quickly. A skill common among cursebreakers.