Back then, I’d had no idea what I had been brought into. It was the first time I’d been summoned in over fifty years, and unlike most of my summoners, Morpheus didn’t make any mistakes. He was careful, calm, calculated. He made every order clear. By all accounts, at first, he’d treated me fine.
Until the God got Its tentacles deeper into his head. Whispered in his ear. Turned his mind from simple curiosity to greed.
“The tunnels are all flooded down there,” I moved along the shelves, covered in so many trinkets I could recall bringing up. “I spent weeks swimming through them, finding this shit, bringing it up. And the longer you’re down there, the louder the God becomes. The more interest It gets. It tries to get in your head.”
Bowls, tools, candles. Books, statues, jewelry. Anything and everything I could get my hands on was kept here from the deepest inner chambers, the ones the miners had broken into by accident. Other people had worshipped the Deep One too, long ago, and it was their artifacts that Morpheus had wanted.
It was these artifacts that I’d feared Kent would figure out how to use, and turn against me.
We reached the far end of the room, where a glass display case held a series of black daggers. Their handles were intricately carved, wrapped in knotted red string, and the closer I got to them, the more certain I was that I couldn’t touch them. They vibrated with an energy powerful enough to turn my stomach, some old magic that had fermented with the years, growing stronger and more vicious until just the sight of those blades sent a shudder up my back.
“Those,” Rae said, “I need one of those.”
The case was locked with a good old-fashioned metal padlock, so it required an old-fashioned method of getting in. I slammed my elbow against the glass, shattering it, and Rae yelped in surprise.
“Jesus Christ, Leon,” she hissed. “You could have warned me!”
I chuckled, stepping back quickly from the case so I wouldn’t have to be near that unpleasant magical humming. “Take your pick, doll. And don’t call on Christ as if the bastard is going to come anywhere near me.”
She rolled her eyes at me, stared curiously into the shattered case for a moment, then carefully selected a knife from among the glass shards. She pulled it from its sheath, revealing a straight blade black as ink, as was the rope wound around its handle. She brandished it toward me playfully, and looked shocked when I jolted back. To her eyes, it would have looked as if I teleported six feet back.
“Woah.” She stared at the knife, then back at me. “Does this…does this actually scare you?”
“It’s unpleasant,” I grumbled. “There’s old, feral magic in it. Don’t get any ideas — if that thing cut me, it wouldn’t heal quickly. But it would be the same for the Eld.” I grinned. “Keep it close, but away from me. It smells bad.”
“I don’t smell anything.” She frowned in confusion, sniffing at the knife as if her human nostrils could somehow pick up that magical smell. I gave her a tap on the arm.
“Away, Rae. Tuck it away, shit.” She quickly tucked it into the band of her skirt, under her sweater. “We need to get out of here. The Hadleighs can’t possibly be happy that you’ve been out of their sight for so long.”
She nodded enthusiastically, as pleased as a kid who’d been given a piece of candy. She’d gotten what she wanted, but I didn’t feel any better. I didn’t want her to have to use some old knife, I didn’t want this small human fending off monsters. I was more than capable of protecting her myself.
Except I’d locked up my protection behind stipulations and deals, and she was determined to DIY her safety.
“I’d like to see the Eld come for me now,” she said, as we made our way back up the stairwell. I could hear the music pounding, drunk humans laughing and shouting. Too much noise to isolate out any individual conversation, which made me nervous. Even down here, the scent of cigars was strong. Perhaps even stronger than it had been in the bedroom. I hoped that knife was worth it, because lingering here was a risk we really shouldn’t have taken.
Rae reached the door first, and pushed the metal plate to slide the bookshelf open. “I’d like to see them try to get their claws in me and get a face full of — oh.”
Her oh dropped like a stone in my stomach.
Kent Hadleigh sat there, a cigar in his mouth, waiting for us.
Kent didn’t look angry, he didn’t even look surprised. He sat in a thickly-cushioned leather chair, puffing his cigar, the vanilla-mahogany scent of it wafting around the room. His pale gray suit was unbuttoned, as if he’d just settled in for a relaxing evening.