Page 118 of Red Masquerade

A breeze picked up the ends of my hair, warning me to return inside. The rumbling continued, those dark clouds creeping ever closer. The water of the Sound, gray and bleak, roiled at the growing storm. The humidity was tangible, a suffocating force, stealing the air from right before me.

My short skirt billowed around me, tossed around by the wind.

I shut my eyes and felt the tempest growing, welcomed the unsettling show of power. A moment later, water sprinkled from the sky, falling from that darkness looming over the manor.

It was coming right for the manor.

I stepped down from the veranda, fully exposed to the elements. It tossed my hair, my skirt; at first it was like the flirty peek of a lover, lifting the fabric and threatening to expose me, then it grew violent, gripping at me, pushing against me with invisible force.

Yes, yes, more, more.

The gates of the garden stood before me. The wrought iron creaked as the wind rattled against the bars. I found it unlocked, and pushed the gates open, slipping between the small crack I made in the iron.

The cypress trees swayed, the moonflowers shut against the dim light of the afternoon, protecting their waxy soft petals from the gusts of air. The gravel crunched under my shoes.

In the daylight, it became clear this was not simply a garden. Of course it wasn’t, nothing in this house was as it seemed. And if it’d been a church, then this must’ve been the graveyard—a detail I’d missed my first time within the gates, the midnight hour obscuring the true nature of these stone paths. .

The flowers were overgrown, and amongst them, large flat stones jutted upward. Marble, concrete, granite… all peeking over the closed blooms, wanting to be seen, remembered.

The one closest to me was stained emerald with moss. The moonflowers grew uncontrolled around it, their vines wrapping around the stone, creating a wall of greenery so thick I had to pull the branches away. It was plainly decorated, witha simple border, the name of the buried carved so shallowly I had to run my fingers over the relief to read the name. Myrtus Gaczko. The years underneath were lost to time.

I felt an energy in the stone, an acknowledgment of my presence.

Scanning the gardens, I saw many more.

And the statue of the nymph, overseeing them all, her creamy marble skin streaked and weathered.

The wind whipped my hair around my face, the raindrops pelting my skin. Lightning flashed, and the thunder was so much closer now, only seconds after the spark of light. The earth seemed to growl its displeasure, the sound rumbling in my bones.

I wondered how it would feel to stand with my feet in the water of the Sound and let the storm rage around me. Was I strong enough to withstand the pull? Or would I fall into the depths and get swept away? Then I would not have to worry about Vince’s true nature, or Lucas and Wright.

The next headstone was equally concealed, but the decoration was more ornate. And the next was weathered to a completely smooth surface. They sat in rows, tucked in amongst the brush and flowers, the walkways coming within inches of the stones. They’d been paved over, planted over. Visitors to the garden would walk over their bodies, six feet under, decaying and rotting into the lush earth, moistened by the Sound.

How many bodies surrounded me now? How many were underneath this earth? And how many had no markers, cursed to the endless obscurity of forever?

I touched each stone, laying my palm on the flat cool surfaces. I didn’t know what made me do it; it wasn’t a reverence for thesedead, because I did not know them. These souls, buried next to this manor that hosted parties to ruin—did they ever make themselves known? Did they ever appear as apparitions and warn the humans that wandered into their domain?

I came upon a hedge, a wall of thorns that reached up above the height of a man. It was indistinguishable from the other four walls of the garden, the stone packed so tightly with vines, but I knew, after only a few moments—this hedge was where I’d been cornered. When that vampire had begged for my blood, offered to change me.

I reached up into the vines, feeling the cool wall beneath my fingertips, damp with the growing storm, the vines creaking in protest against the wind. Trailing my fingers along those vines, plucking a flower for my hair, the petals fluttering in the breeze. The hedge formed a corner—and around the corner was a door, overgrown with moss and gorse and rose bushes.

A shed of some sort? No—this was a graveyard.

A tomb.

I hadn’t realized it in the dark that night, and the knowledge of it now sent the hairs on my neck upright. The vines moved like snakes in the wind, restless and slithering against the hidden exterior. The stone slab of a door, sealed shut with iron bars, much like that of the garden’s gates. But the lock was broken, and I swore I saw deep indentations in the stone block, gashes stained a deep rust color, and a large crack traveling diagonally from the mechanism. Like a great force had tried to get in.

Or out.

The wind howled, moaned. Ghostly and frightening, whistling through leaves and tree branches, debris from the plants whipping in the air.

The moan grew like it came from within that tomb. Agonizing, rattling me deep in my bones, a sound of anguish.

I jolted as a hand grabbed my arm.

“Helena!”

Séra whirled me around. Her approach had been covered up by the sound, the patter of rain.