Page 29

T he basement steps creaked beneath my feet as I descended into darkness.

Each wooden plank protested my weight with the shrill complaint of ancient timber, announcing my arrival to those waiting below.

The damp air pressed against my skin like a cold, wet shroud, carrying the metallic scent of old blood and the musty breath of forgotten places.

I had come seeking monsters, only to find broken reflections of myself.

A single lantern guttered in the corner, throwing wild shadows across stone walls slick with condensation.

Its weak light barely penetrated the gloom, but my eyes—changed as they were—needed little illumination.

The basement of the Order’s hideout stretched before me like a tomb, its low ceiling and narrow confines a prison for those who had once been human, who’d been free.

They huddled together in silence, these women I had hunted. These women I had believed dead by my hand. Their faces turned toward me as one, eyes gleaming with an unnatural light that mirrored my own. The witches who weren’t witches. The innocent I had condemned. Now Nightwalkers like me.

“You,” hissed the older woman, her gray hair hanging limp around hollow cheeks. “Come to gloat over what you’ve made of us?”

I stepped forward, keeping my spine straight the way Daddy taught me when facing sin. “I’ve come to lead you.”

Bitter laughter rippled through the small cluster of women.

“Lead us?” The younger one with tired eyes scoffed. Her name escaped me—I had known her only as the fire-worker, the one who could coax flames from nothing but breath and will. “You led us to slaughter once already.”

“I need to know your names.” I held my voice steady despite the guilt that threaded through my chest. “All of you. Your real names.”

Silence fell heavy as a burial shroud. The women exchanged glances, a silent communication passing between them. I recognized the bond of shared suffering—they had been reborn in blood and darkness together, while I had suffered my transformation alone.

“Why should we tell you anything?” asked the woman from the forest. “You could have resisted Silas, instead you did his bidding. You didn’t care about our names then.”

“I believed what I was told. I thought—“ I swallowed hard. “Silas told me I was doing God’s work. Deep down, I knew it was wrong, but you have to understand. I’d lost everyone. It’s not an excuse for what I did, but I didn’t choose to become like this, either.”

“And now?” The grandmother’s voice cut sharp as a filleting knife.

“My name is Alice,” I insisted. “And I need yours. We’re bound now. Whether we want to be is irrelevant. The Order has made sure of that.”

The hunger pangs struck. A sharp reminder of my fast. Three days without blood left me weakened—at first it made everything dull, but somehow now, it strangely heightened my senses. The others wouldn’t know this feeling yet—they were being kept fed, docile.

“Martha,” said the grandmother finally, her chin lifting in defiance. “I was Martha Holloway before your Order took everything from me. I was trying to save my granddaughter from the consumption with remedies my mother taught me.”

I nodded, committing her name to memory. “Martha,” I repeated.

“Ruth Simmons,” said the tired-eyed woman, the fire-worker. “Not that it matters anymore.”

“Sarah,” whispered the forest woman. “Just Sarah. They took my family name when they took me from my home.”

The healer with the herbs remained silent, her eyes fixed on me with undisguised loathing.

“And you?” I pressed gently.

“Elizabeth Porter,” she said after a long moment. “Though I doubt that matters to the Lord anymore, now that I’m damned.”

“We aren’t damned,” I said automatically. “We didn’t choose to be what we are. We can choose what to do with what we’ve become.”

“Listen to her,” sneered Ruth, the fire-worker. “Still spouting their gospel. Tell me, Alice. If we’re so redeemable, why do they keep us chained here like animals?”

I glanced at the iron manacles attached to the far wall. They weren’t wearing them now, but the chafe marks on their wrists told their own story.

“This wasn’t what I ever wanted, either,” I said, my voice dropping lower. “But we can make the best of what we’ve become. We must rise above our natures, find something bigger than ourselves. Ironically enough, fixing our eyes on something above keeps our feet firmly planted on solid ground.”

The words felt hollow even as I spoke them. But they’d come from Father O’Malley. A bit of advice that had borne fruit—but was it for naught? After this mission, could I ever make it back to him, to finish what I’d come so close to completing?

Martha snorted, a surprisingly human sound from her inhuman throat. “Pretty words from the preacher’s daughter. Did you believe them when you were draining the life out of me?”

“When can we get more blood?” A fifth voice piped up from the shadows.

She was younger than the others, barely more than a girl.

A year or two younger than me. Her eyes were fever-bright, her movements jerky with need.

I didn’t remember biting her—but then again, some of the attacks were like fever-dreams, a blur.

During those first few weeks, when Silas let someone’s blood loose, it was like something else took over, everything became a blur.

“They said we’d get fed if we listened to you. ”

“Rebecca,” Elizabeth murmured, placing a restraining hand on the girl’s arm. “Patience.”

“I’m hungry,” Rebecca whined, looking at me with naked longing. “You smell different. Cleaner.”

“I’ve been fasting,” I explained, taking an instinctive step back. “It helps with control.”

“Control?” Ruth laughed. “Why bother? We’re monsters now, aren’t we? Might as well embrace it.”

“No,” I said firmly. “That’s what they want. To make us believe we have no choice but to obey. We’re more than what they’ve made us.”

Sarah moved closer, her movements graceful despite her weakened state. “What exactly does your precious Order want from us, Alice? Why create us only to cage us?”

I hesitated, then decided truth was the only currency that might buy their trust. “Silas has assigned us a mission. There’s a coven they want subdued.”

“More witches to hunt?” Martha’s voice dripped with disgust. “So we become the hunters now?”

“It’s our chance to prove ourselves. To show we can be trusted beyond these walls,” I explained, unsure if I even believed it myself anymore.

As they debated among themselves, my attention suddenly snagged on something else—voices from beyond the thick stone walls.

My fasting had sharpened my hearing beyond what even these newly-turned Nightwalkers could detect.

Silas’s familiar cadence reached me first, then another voice—cultured, with an accent I couldn’t quite place.

”—eliminate the Papists interfering with the Order’s plans.“ Silas’s words filtered through the stone like water through sand.

“St. Mary’s will be cleansed by dawn,” replied the stranger. “The priest has been meddling too long.”

Father O’Malley. My stomach twisted with dread.

“Alice?” Sarah’s voice pulled me back. “What is it?”

I blinked, realizing I’d gone rigid with shock. The others hadn’t heard—their senses weren’t as acute as mine.

“Nothing,” I lied, even as my mind raced. “Just thinking about the mission.”

Two paths stretched before me, equally treacherous. Follow Silas’s orders, lead these women against another supposed coven, earn the Order’s trust while condemning more innocents. Or rebel, risk everything to save Father O’Malley, perhaps doom us all in the process.

I moved like a shadow among shadows. The basement extended beyond our holding cell, a labyrinth of stone chambers connected by narrow passages. I pressed my back against the damp wall, inching toward the faint voices that had caught my attention.

A slash of amber light spilled from beneath a heavy oak door ahead. I crept closer, careful to avoid the betraying floorboards I’d mapped in my mind during previous visits. Silas’s voice drifted through the wood, measured and deferential in a way I’d never heard before.

”—appreciate your journey from Amsterdam,“ he was saying. “The situation here has progressed faster than expected.”

“Clearly,” replied another voice, cultured and precise. Dutch, it seemed. “Though I question the wisdom of entrusting such delicate matters to... novices.”

I eased closer to the door, finding a small gap where the hinges had warped with age.

Through it, I glimpsed a chamber lit by several lanterns, their flames throwing wild shadows across stone walls lined with weapons.

Silas stood with his back to me, shoulders squared beneath his austere black coat.

In front of him stood a figure that chilled my lifeless blood even more than usual.

He was tall and impossibly thin, dressed in garments that belonged to another century—a severe black doublet with a starched white collar that emphasized the marble pallor of his skin.

His face might have been sculpted by a Renaissance master, all sharp angles and aristocratic planes, untouched by time yet somehow ancient.

Silver-white hair was precisely trimmed.

But it was his eyes that froze me in place—amber like a wolf’s, golden almost. Not red like the rest of us—but he was unmistakably a vampire.

Desiderius. That’s what Silas called him. He’d led me to believe I was the first Nightwalker. Clearly, that wasn’t the case. This vampire predated me by centuries , but seemed more cozy with Silas than you’d expect from an ancient vampire whose existence the Order officially opposed.

“Our Boston chapter has been cultivating their own brood for nearly a decade,” Desiderius said, his long fingers tapping a rhythm against a leather-bound tome. Apparently, I wasn’t even the first Nightwalker in America. “We require skilled lieutenants, not frightened girls playing at redemption.”