Chapter 6
Terror clawed at Rogue’s cheeks and throat with scrabbling fingers she couldn’t ignore, slowing her footsteps, making her feet drag in protest, the sound a sick scraping over the ground. She stared at it, the broken concrete pattern that was occasionally overcome by dirt, looking so much like spider webs that it put her teeth on edge.
The concrete path she followed was tall enough to stand, but her shoulders almost brushed each side. Her eyes and her light bounced around the coffin-like tunnel, looking for bugs. Not just any bugs. Spiders. Those roly-poly things that had a million legs. Centipedes clinging on the ceiling, just waiting for the right moment to drop into her hair. Rogue cried out and covered her head with an arm, scraping her elbow painfully on the wall as she did so. She forced herself forward, her arm bent over her head, her tiny light shaking in the fingers of her other hand.
Bugs. There was nothing she hated more than bugs. Nothing she was scared of but bugs. Except maybe being underground where bugs loved to live. So far, she hadn’t seen one, but she was only a few feet in. She knew there would be many and she had no idea how she’d forced herself in there.
The voice. It was stronger down here.
No bugs. We have cleared them from your path in preparation for your coming.
Rogue stopped walking, startled, then spoke, her voice small and strange in the enclosed space. “Are you reading my mind?”
No, we are reading your being. We know you, Rogue. We are of you.
The overwhelming smell of oil choked her, forcing her to take tiny little sips of air in through her mouth. At the same time, the comforting presence of whatever had called her filled her, giving her courage, threading it through her bones and flesh. She looked around a little more confidently. She didn’t see one bug. Anything that would and could do that for her couldn’t be bad, right?
The humming power in her body felt constant and strong. She had no backdrop for what was happening to her, and yet, she somehow knew it was right, natural.
To her right, the faint sound of a noise like a scream caught her attention. It seemed to come from directly inside the concrete wall, maybe fifty feet away if it had been open air? She stared at the rough wall, then dragged her finger across it to make sure it was real, then knocked on it. The sound it made was only in her bones, not in the wall. It was solid concrete. She must have been mistaken, so she pressed forward.
The tunnel twisted, even as it continued its downward slope, heading back under the doorway, and back in the direction of the post office. Rogue shivered, realizing the tunnel she was now walking in was the source of that yawning openness she’d always felt from inside the building above. The Englewood post office sat on the site of Chicago’s most famous “murder castle” from the year 1893.
Rogue didn’t believe in ghosts, but she did believe in something, trapped energy maybe. And evil. Anyone who had heard the stories of this place had to believe in evil.
The noise came again, this time from her left. She stared at the seemingly-solid wall, distressed to feel a cold wind buffet her cheeks and lift her hair.
The strong, feminine voice came again.
Ignore them. They cannot hurt you. Even if they could, we are stronger than them. We would never allow it.
Rogue swallowed, hard. “Ignore them?” She was getting her feet under her, and her own voice sounded stronger to her. “What are you?”
She stopped while she waited for an answer, shining her light down a short flight of concrete stairs.
Come and see.
An image of teeth, shiny and white and huge, flashed through her mind. Fangs. They made her think of animals, wolves even. An attractive thought to her. She’d loved wolves since she was a little girl. She shivered again, even though the tunnel was not cold. Some unknown yearning spiked in her midsection, but she boxed it up, pushing it away so she didn’t have to deal with it, then started down the steps, making no noise in the almost-dark.
She reached the bottom of the stairs, still not one spider seen, and entered a small room with one chair and one table. She could see at a glance it was empty and apparently bug-free. Nothing moved, nothing creeped, nothing waited to ambush her. On the table sat a lantern, and her eyes were dragged to it like an anchor to the bottom of the ocean. It was what had been calling to her.
A faint glow peeked out through the cracks of the lantern- something inside. She rushed to it and picked it up. As her hands touched it, the bottom clicked and turned, and fell to the ground with a clatter. She flipped the lantern onto its side quickly, so whatever was there would not fall out onto the ground also.
She didn’t need her light any longer, so she stuck it in her pocket. An ethereal glow pulsed through the dark cloth the two items there were wrapped in. The light touched her, played over her chest and face. With a steady hand, she reached into the bottom of the lantern for her prize.
Her fingers grazed the cloth and she felt a great evil turn a ragged eye toward her. Rogue sucked in a breath, feeling small and scared, wanting to hide somewhere, and despising the desire. She clamped down on it, negating it, making it not so. She was scared of nothing. Nothing with less than eight legs, anyway.
The voice spoke, and although she still felt it in her chest, it also emanated from the bundles at her fingertips.
Do not fear Khain. You were born to defy him.
Rogue felt the truth of the statement in her bones, even though she didn’t know what it meant. She bared her small white teeth at the open air, turning in a circle and growling into the empty room. The evil presence slipped away, but she knew she had not made it go. Something had hidden her from it.
Rogue turned her attention back to the small bundles wrapped in cloth. She dropped the lantern to the ground and kicked it aside, putting one bundle softly on the table and focusing on the other. She unwrapped it slowly, holding her breath until the small package inside was revealed.
It was an inch-high pendant on a strong gold chain, with a wolf on one side and an angel on the other, light pulsing in the eyes of the two creatures. Power emanated from it so clearly, she could feel the pulses pushing through her fingers, pumping her blood the wrong way. A quick peek at the other bundle revealed it was a similar pendant.
Mine. She stared at it in awe, running her fingers over it, knowing it meant something to her, something that would explain much of her life. She also knew that it was not quite hers. It was her sister’s.
Rogue startled as the thought went through her brain. Sister?
As a small part of Rogue’s mind worried that thought independently of her being, she stared at the wolf and caressed its smooth cheek, sinking down onto her knees to cradle the pendant in her hands and focus more intently on it. Her cop and the wolf, they were connected somehow. And the angel? Did it mean something?
Her head bowed, she stared and thought, thought and stared, losing herself in a way that would have horrified her if she had realized what was happening.
***
Rogue lifted her head and looked around at the dark room, blinking her eyes, shifting her weight from knee to knee, aches and pains telling her she’d been kneeling for a long time. Her light had begun to dim, telling her the batteries were in danger of dying.
She’d done it again. Damn it!
She looked down at the now silent pendant in her hand. That odd, comforting hum she’d felt in her body was gone.
She squeezed her fingers around the small piece of jewelry. “What now?” Her voice echoed through the small room in a way that made her think of the tunnel outside.
The voice came again, but it was faint, not as urgent as before.
Go about your life. You’ll know when the time is right to reveal us.
“Reveal you to who?”
That image of an identity-less, cocky cop came again, making Rogue lose awareness of her own body as her mind went where it wanted, pulling her away from reality.
She drifted to the dirty, but bug-free, floor, lost in a dream she didn’t want, but couldn’t shake free of.