Page 11

G eorge Brown waited for me in the vestibule, coat already buttoned against the cold. He offered a hand, not out of gallantry, but because he didn’t trust me not to run.

We walked side by side through the midnight streets, each footstep sinking into the frost-bitten crust of snow.

Neither of us spoke. The moon hung low and mean, flattening our shadows across the frozen ruts.

The further we went, the more the world seemed to shrink—houses drawing their curtains tight, not a single lamp burning in any window.

Exeter was a town of watchers, but tonight all eyes were shuttered.

The church, when we reached it, was nothing but a silhouette.

My own father’s sermons still rang in my head, the certainty of his voice rebuking all that lurked in darkness.

I wondered what he’d think of his daughter summoned to the very bowels of this place by a man who saw devils in the faces of his own children.

We entered through the vestry, where the air smelled of beeswax and dying flowers. George led me to a narrow stairwell at the back, half hidden behind a curtain meant to keep out drafts. He did not light a lamp, only pressed a candle into my hand and struck a match.

“Down,” he said. His voice was scarcely more than a whisper.

I descended the stone steps. They were slick with moisture.

I clung to an equally moist railing, afraid my feet might slip out from under me and I’d be left making the rest of my trip down the stairs on my rear end.

Fortunately, one footfall after the next, I made it down safely as the steps led me into a small crypt-like chamber, the ceiling so low I ducked on instinct.

Candles burned everywhere. There were a dozen men, maybe more, all shrouded in dark coats and hoods. Their faces floated above their collars like pale moons, every one of them pinched by secrecy and the sharp tang of fear.

At the center stood a man I did not know.

He was not tall, not broad, but he radiated authority like heat from fire.

His suit was neat, the only spot of order in the entire miserable room, and his eyes flickered blue in the uncertain light.

He did not speak at first, only looked me up and down, measuring my weight and worth with a single pass.

Mr. Brown cleared his throat. “She’s here.”

“I see,” said the man at the center. He had an accent that I could not place—maybe Boston, maybe somewhere colder. “You are Alice Bladewell?”

I nodded.

He pressed his lips into a close-mouthed smile. “Thank you for coming, Miss Bladewell. We have heard much of your… resilience.”

He gestured to the space before him. “Please. Stand here.”

I did. The eyes of every man in the circle bored into my back. I could smell their sweat, their anxious breath, the faint stink of garlic.

“My name is not important,” said the man at the center.

“Tonight, I speak for the Order of the Morning Dawn.” He lifted something from the table beside him: a crucifix, carved from dark wood, its arms bound in iron.

The metal looked black and pitted, as if it had once survived a fire.

“We were told you might be able to bear this. That you have not been… touched, by what afflicts so many.”

He held it out to me. I hesitated.

“Take it,” he said, and there was no mistaking the command in his voice.

I reached out. The wood was warm—impossibly so, as if it had been pressed to a living body moments before.

The iron bands bit into my palm. The moment I closed my fingers around it, I felt a crawling sensation behind my eyes, like a swarm of ants moving through my brain.

The air shimmered blue-white around the crucifix, and every candle in the room guttered at once.

Someone gasped. Someone else said, “God above—“

I almost dropped it, but the leader’s eyes pinned me in place.

“That’s it.” His voice was urgent. “You see it too, don’t you?”

“I—“ I wanted to say no, to hand it back, to have nothing to do with this. But the crucifix pulsed against my skin, vibrating with a low, hungry frequency.

One of the men in the circle crossed himself, muttering a prayer under his breath.

The leader turned to the room. “You see? She is the one. The key.”

Every eye swung back to me. Some full of hope, some of dread. None of them saw me, only the thing they wanted to see.

I tried to hand the crucifix back. The leader shook his head, his smile tightening. “Hold it. You must hold it until the vision passes. That is the first proof.”

My knuckles turned white. The blue light intensified, not in the room, but in my own mind.

I saw things: bones stacked like kindling; faces gnawed hollow by disease.

I smelled milk gone sour, and the sweet metallic rot of blood.

The crucifix throbbed with every image, as though it fed on my revulsion.

I gritted my teeth. “What is this?”

The man’s eyes softened, just a little. “It is the weapon that will end this.”

He stepped closer. “Do you know why we called you here? Why it has to be you?”

I shook my head, but the blue light made everything swim. My pulse pounded so hard I thought I might faint.

He gestured to the men in the circle. “All of us, at one time or another, have failed. We have succumbed to seduction, trickery, or force, compromising with evil to defeat it. We bear the stain. But you, Alice—your faith is pure. Untainted.” He said it like an accusation.

“The vampire cannot touch you. The witch cannot corrupt you. You are the shield.”

I tried again to hand him the crucifix, but it stuck to my palm, as if magnetized. I had to force it away, and even then my hand ached from the effort.

“It’s wrong,” I said, my voice shaking. “It doesn’t feel holy. It feels—“

“Dead?” The man smiled, as if this was a compliment. “That is the way of such things. The relic was forged for a single purpose. To destroy the thing that is neither dead nor living. Only one whose heart is still wholly alive can wield it.”

I realized I was shaking.

“You’re asking me to kill Mercy Brown.”

The word “kill” was a stone in the air. None of them flinched.

The leader nodded. “She is already dead. Therefore, she is not your friend. Not even your enemy. She is a vessel for the darkness that walks in this world. You must empty her.

I felt the room squeeze in around me. “No. I can’t.”

“You will,” he said. “Or she will destroy everything you love.”

My mouth was too dry to argue. I looked around at the circle of faces—men I’d known since childhood, who’d traded goods with my family, who’d shared hymnals in the pews.

All of them wanted me to be the key.

The circle of men drew in, close enough I could hear the nervous grind of their teeth.

The leader studied my hand, the crucifix clamped between whitened knuckles, as if he might will it to do something more dramatic.

I waited for a sign—a dove, a tongue of fire, anything to justify the tremor now working its way up my arm.

It finally came, though the manner of the sign took me by surprise.

A blue-white glow emanated from the wood, causing the room’s shadows to retreat into the crevices.

“Now,” the leader said, “Pass it to Mr. Brown.”

I wanted to drop it, but my hand refused.

George Brown stepped forward, his expression an uneasy blend of expectation and dread.

He took hold of the crucifix, and for one lurching second our hands overlapped—the stubble on his knuckles rasping my skin.

As I let go, a whine like an overstrained wire sang in my ears.

George held the crucifix before him, arm rigid as a gun barrel. He stared at the wavering aura, now pulsing faster, the blue-white edge creeping up the iron bands toward the outstretched figure nailed to its center. The wood smoked, faintly, as if resisting the change.

Someone behind me gasped. The sound echoed off the stone, then ricocheted around the circle. Mr. Norris—always the first to doubt—took two steps back. “That’s not natural.”

The leader spread his hands. “It is not natural. That is the point.” He looked around, daring anyone to meet his eye. “This is the sign we were promised. The power of the angels, awakened by one of pure faith.”

He turned to me, the pinpoints of his gaze knitting my limbs to the floor. “The Order thanks you, Miss Bladewell.”

I shook my head. “I haven’t given you anything.”

“You don’t have to,” the leader said. “Faith is not a coin to be spent. It is a force that—“ He smiled, teeth wet and white. ”—persists, lingers, that others might benefit from its embrace.”

Embrace? I was incredulous. I hadn’t done anything on purpose.

How had I turned this strange crucifix into a beacon?

What about me really made it work? I had faith, of course, but was it actually pure?

My gut told me something else was going on—they needed me to awaken whatever magic lingered in this relic, but was it really a miracle, a gift of angels as they seemed to suggest, or another “spell” stolen from the likes of Moll Dwyer, only passing as a gift?

The one thing I’d learned about the Order of the Morning Dawn in the short time I’d known of their existence was that they were not beyond hypocrisy—provided their compromises produced what they believed were desirable results.

George Brown’s hand shook as he lifted the crucifix higher.

The blue light brightened, throwing moving shadows across the hoods of the gathered men.

The leader watched with the calm of someone who’s already seen the future.

“With this,” he said, “we can finally put my daughter to rest! We can destroy the demon that’s imprisoned her soul! ”

I stood in the ring of men, pulse hammering so hard in my throat I thought it might choke me.