That was enough for Will, as he adjusted his sight to make use of the starlight, but for the others it was barely enough to keep from stumbling. Laina made as if to cast a fresh light spell, but Will touched her arm. “If we’re lucky there’s none near, but they’ll see the glow from that light from blocks away.” A scream in the distance echoed down the lane, underscoring his point. It seemed a few people hadn’t obeyed the king’s order to gather at Wurthaven.
On one side of them, the cathedral loomed less than twenty feet away, with steps rising to broad double doors. Will had been right; it was indeed the east-side entrance. Laina leaned in, trying to see his face, and almost slammed her forehead into his nose. “No one can see. How are they going to find the door?” she hissed.
“Wait here a second,” he replied, and before she could object, Will moved up the steps to the cathedral entrance. Testing the handle, he found the door locked. Figures. Quickly, he cast the unlocking spell and then eased one door open, wincing as the hinges whined loudly. Then he summoned his rope and tied it to the door handle. He stepped back to the grate and handed the rope to Tiny. “Put their hand on it as they come up. It’s tied off at the entrance.”
The others began to ascend while Will and Laina moved just inside the cathedral doors. “It’s even worse in here,” she complained. “We have to have light to work by.”
Will guided her to the right, then put her hand on the closest of several tall candelabras. “One for now. We can light more once everyone is inside.” She nodded, and there was a tiny flicker as her fire elemental lit the closest candle.
The candle made quite a difference, even to those just coming up from the sewer, for it enabled them to see their target, and the rope was hardly needed after that, though it helped keep them from stumbling on the stairs. Twenty people were inside when a voice rang out from the galleries above, echoing in a manner that made it impossible to pinpoint. “I warned you, Will, but you wouldn’t listen.”
Everyone froze as a bolt of terror shot through their collective hearts. Unlike the others, Will could see clearly within the cathedral, and his eyes soon spotted a gray form moving on the balcony across from them. “Rob?” he called out.
The vampire laughed. “The one and only. I see you brought friends. This reminds me of the day you first came to Wurthaven. Do you remember? When we looked out the dorm window?”
Will remembered. “It wasn’t that long ago,” he answered, feeling sad. Rob’s fascination with the female student body had caused him to wax poetic. What had he said? “They lie before us like a banquet waiting to be supped upon.”
“That’s what you all look like to me now, Will. Delicious and bursting with vitality.”
Will avoided looking directly at his friend. Given the relative darkness, Rob would be seeing him primarily by his heart-light, and while the candle behind him would create a little glare, he knew his old friend would clearly be able to see where his gaze was directed. By looking off to one side, he hoped not to give away the fact that he could see Rob clearly. “Why don’t you come down here where I can see you, Rob? We can talk. Maybe there’s a way to fix this.”
Rob laughed again. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you? I’m not stupid. I know the things you can do. You’d end me the second you could see me. If our positions were reversed, I doubt you would care enough to try as much as I have.”
“That’s not true,” said Will.
“Then why didn’t you listen? Wasn’t I clear enough? Are you trying to force me to kill you?”
Will’s mind was racing. We are merely decoys. He still didn’t understand. The vampires couldn’t have known about his plan for a ritual when Rob had written the message, so it couldn’t have been part of their plans. He had hoped that his action would circumvent their plan, thinking they only knew about the king’s final contingency.
Yet Rob was there waiting for them, in the cathedral. How had he known they would appear there? “Decoys for what?” asked Will.
“That’s the beauty of Androv’s plan,” said Rob. “It doesn’t matter what you do. All roads lead to an ending with two results, a dead city, and a dead king. Both will happen, and even if you managed to prevent one through some miracle, the other would be all but inevitable.”
“Help me then,” Will pleaded. “Despite what they’ve done to you, you know what’s right. Help us.”
“You don’t know what it’s like. The pleasure, the hunger, the taste of someone’s life flowing through your lips. Even if I could return to my old self, I wouldn’t want to now. I only warned you out of some strange feeling of sentiment, a feeling that has almost faded away.”
“But you came here to warn me again?” asked Will. “Or is this an ambush?”
“This is farewell, my friend. Whatever you do here doesn’t concern me. Androv will protect me.” Rob began backing up, moving closer to the stained-glass windows that lined the galleries.
“Androv is dead!” declared Will.
“Believing that was your biggest mistake.” Rob’s body blurred into motion, and glass shattered as he flung himself through the window. Will’s force-lance passed through the space a half-second later. I wasn’t quick enough, he chided himself, but he knew it wasn’t true. He had hesitated because he couldn’t bear to hurt his friend.
Chapter 52
Janice and almost two-thirds of the rest were in the cathedral by then. She moved closer to Will and asked, “That was him, wasn’t it?”
He nodded, unsure what to say.
Her features carried a multitude of emotions, but she stuck to the issue at hand. “Is it going to be safe to continue? Do they know we’re here?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “But we don’t have a choice. We have to try.”
Laina glanced between the two of them, then went back to the doors to encourage the last of the line to hurry up. Soon Elizabeth Sundy and the baron were in, and they were at last able to shut the doors, though Laina found herself staring upward at the dark windows.
Elizabeth didn’t waste time. Moving to the altar in the center, she began pointing at people and barking orders. “You, we need the doors sealed with stone! You, over here, we’re going to chalk out the circle. Move everything; we have to clear a space. Someone light the candles so we can see.”
Laina was already covering the windows with stone, and soon it seemed they would be sealed inside the cathedral, like a caterpillar within a stone cocoon. Darla moved closer to make a suggestion. “You should leave one door open. Let me watch outside.”
Will heard the conversation and joined them. “Why?”