“Father Uncquist was quite forthcoming with details.” Bella chuckled. “We know quite a bit.”
Maxine laughed and shook her head. “Never trust a monk. Let alone one who drinks as much as he does. Nice man, but a bold-faced liar. And he cheats at cards.” The way the three hunters laughed revealed they did indeed know Father Uncquist and were aware of his predilections.
“Let me explain to you, then, precisely what I can do. Then you can tell me exactly how someone like me can help you defeat a vampire king.” She couldn’t believe those words had left her mouth. She had no clue vampires had existed until this moment, although she knew the myths and legends as well as anyone. Her world was often bent toward morbid endeavors by nature of her gift, and often she had been told of creatures that stalked the night that were no longer human. Or who had never been. While she had never seen proof of one for herself, she had no issues taking things on a little faith. The hunters were not lying. “I deal in souls, as I said. In the simplest fashion, it can be reduced to that. I hear them, I sense them, and I can touch them.”
“What do you mean…you can touch souls?” Bella furrowed her brow.
“I mean precisely that.” She put her hand on the table, palm up. “I wear these gloves to protect us both. I am an empath, yes. But that is the same as claiming a sparrow is a bird only because it has two wings. I experience the emotions of those around me as if they were my own, but it is because I can hear their souls whispering to me. If I were to touch you, skin to skin, I would be reaching far deeper than that. It allows me to see into a person’s very being. It is unsettling at best for both parties, as you can imagine. And dangerous.”
“I…see. Father Uncquist told us you aided him in finding the other half of a broken artifact.”
“I did. Humans are not the only things that carry souls, or something akin to it. Objects carry a history to them, as do buildings and locations. People know this instinctually. You can tell if you hold a blade in your hand that has taken lives or one that is used to slice butter. Everyone has the gift that I have. You feel connections to people around you, to the places you visit, and to the things you touch as I do. I simply can hear it much louder.”
The three of them sat there quietly for a moment, watching her with various degrees of interest and curiosity. Bella seemed to be nearly overflowing with the need to ask her questions but kept glancing at Alfonzo to see if their leader would speak first.
“If you were to hold that brooch, what would happen?” Alfonzo asked after a long and thoughtful pause.
“I suspect I would see a memory. Objects carry the past with them. They contain threads of everything that has happened around them, imprinted by the emotions of what they have witnessed. Some memories are far more impactful than others. Think of them like rocks thrown into a river. If I were to hold a steak knife in my hand, for example, I could not see every meal it has shared in. They are small pebbles. Barely enough to disturb the surface. If I were to throw a boulder, I could change the course of the stream. If the steak knife took a life, that is more unique. More notable.” She looked down at the brooch and felt only dread at the idea of holding it. “From that, I think I will find a continent dropped into an ocean.”
“You are correct in being wary to touch it.” Bella folded her hands in her lap. “That belonged to him.”
“I guessed.” With a reluctant sigh, Maxine picked up the item in question. She could feel it pulse even through the layer of black silk protecting her. It did not contain just one memory—it contained many. It was a tangled web of all it had witnessed. “I am not sure how it will help you find him. I can only see what this has witnessed, not where he is or where he will be.”
“Let me ask you this.” Alfonzo leaned his arms on the table as he talked. “Can you identify one soul from another?”
“Of course.”
“Then if you were to see the memories of whomever owned that jewel and found yourself in a room with him, could you identify who it was?”
She blinked. She laughed and leaned back, watching Alfonzo with renewed respect. He was better at cards than she had given him credit for. “Clever. Very clever. Yes, I could.” She turned the brooch over. Nothing was etched on the back. “You want me to play bloodhound and sniff out the King of the Vampires.”
Alfonzo smiled. “Exactly. We will keep you far away from danger. You will never see a battle. We only need you to lead us to him.”
“I expect this will be exceedingly dangerous, even with your assurances.” She ran her thumb over the ruby of the brooch. “I have not seen the things that howl in the darkness…but anything that has the magic to turn the moon to blood would make mincemeat of me in less than a heartbeat’s span of time.”
“We can protect you,” Eddie insisted. “We promise.”
She smiled sadly. “I believe you mean your words. I do not doubt your intentions. But I have seen enough tragedy and witnessed enough horror through the minds of others to know that intentions do not beget reality.”
“I won’t mislead you, Miss Parker,” Alfonzo added grimly. “You are correct. We have come here to save this city, not to spare our own lives. We are prepared to pay the ultimate price to save the lives of the innocents who call this place home. You must be willing to do the same.”
“Well.” She placed the brooch back on the table and took off the glove of her right hand. “Let me see this King of Terrors for myself, and perhaps that may convince me.”
Picking up the brooch in her gloved hand, she paused. Taking a deep breath, she readied herself. She did not know what waited for her in the ruby’s dark depths, but she knew it was not going to be pleasant. She dropped it into her bare palm.
It was a throne room.
That was an assumption, to be fair, but she could think of little else for which a room such as this could possibly be used. The ceiling soared overhead easily a hundred feet, disappearing into the darkness of the dimly lit space, giving it the illusion that it could go on forever. Gothic archways with their austere finials rose from the corbels of columns and stabbed like jagged claws at the shadows.
From the heads of large, carved gargoyles dangled burning cauldrons on thick iron chains. The monsters were grotesque, resembling the art of Hieronymus Bosch, and were equally disgusting in the way the chains were mounted—impaled through the lower jaw, upper, or both, or wrapped around the maw, or through the eye sockets of their skulls. They screamed in silent torture.
And there, at the end of the corridor, was a throne. It sat up on a row of long stairs that were carpeted in deep crimson fabric that matched swaths of fabric that hung in the wings.
The throne was equally as horrifying as the gargoyles. It was a twisted monument of monsters and their prey, creatures with claws and wings and horns writhing around bodies of humans caught in terror and death.
Whoever had designed a place like this had one singular goal. They had one simple message.
Fear me.
And Maxine could not deny that it worked. This place carried a sense of death and danger. She knew the carpet was stained red from more than dye. This was a place of suffering.
But it was only a dream.
It was a memory, caught in the jeweled broach she held. It could not hurt her. This was merely imprinted on the stone. But the one thing she knew—simply knew without question—was that this room belonged to the man who had owned the gem. Even without the hunters having told her it had belonged to a king, the nature of the two were one and the same.