Page 55 of Where The Devil Kneels

Ceremonial runes. Invocation patterns. Doorways.

At strategic points around the circles, small objects catch the weak morning light, bone fragments, their ends charred black as if from exposure to intense flame. Black feathers, not Silas’s protective token, but larger, crueller specimens, are arranged between the bones, forming a secondary pattern that overlays the ashen circles. The entire configuration pulses with malicious intent, even in its stillness.

I fumble the burner phone Nora had shoved into my hands, “just in case”, and nearly drop the damn thing as I try to open the camera. My fingers won’t cooperate, trembling like I’ve had five espressos and no sleep. Click. The overall pattern. Click. Those creepy-as-hell bone fragments. Click. The feathers arranged in that sick design. The blue glow from the screen feels like I’m waving a goddamn lighthouse beacon around, but I keep going, making sure I get everything. If I’m gonna die in this house, at least someone will know why.

These are the exact markings Nora showed me in her archives, “blood ritual configurations,” she’d called them, dating back to the town’s earliest days. Ceremonies performed by the founding families, primarily the Garrows, to maintain their power, their influence, their unnatural longevity.

Ceremonies requiring sacrifice.

My foot kicks through a pile of ash. Something pokes out of the grey dust—fabric. I squat and brush it clear with shaking fingers. Oh god. A scrap of Silas’s shirt. That deep blue one he was wearing when I last saw him.

The cotton is soft from years of washing, the little hand-stitched patch on the edge I’d noticed the night we fought the fires. I press it between my palms as if it could somehow tell me where he is. If he’s alive.

That’s when I spot the trail. Someone dragged something heavy through the dust, and beside it, dark droplets spaced irregularly along the same path—small at first, then larger, leading straight to the library.

I swallow hard, my throat closing around his name. Part of me wants to scream for him; the other part knows silence might be the only thing keeping me alive. I follow the blood trail into the darkness, hating myself equally for my courage and my fear.

The blood gets worse with every step. It’s not just drops now, but a whole trail, slick and shiny in the dim light. My hands cramp from gripping Nora’s knife so tightly, but I can’t let go or calm my racing heart. I follow the trail down the hallway, which doesn’t even feel like mine anymore. When I reach the library door, my breath catches. It’s cracked open, with a bloody handprint smeared on the handle and a puddle of blood drying at the doorway.

My palm meets the door, pushing with a patience I don’t feel. Each millimetre of movement threatens to wake the hinges I know too well. They whine anyway, a tiny sound that might as well be thunder in this dead quiet. I don’t breathe. I wait for pounding feet, for voices, for anything. Nothing breaks the silence. The metallic tang of blood mingles with dust and paper and leather, my library’s scent, now corrupted.

The library is destroyed. Bookcases toppled, books scattered everywhere. The old lamps I loved are smashed, their coloured glass across the floor. The curtainshang in shreds, morning light cutting through in strips that make the shadows seem even darker.

But the worst part is what they’ve done in the middle of all this mess. They’ve knocked over the bookcases in a circle, not just trashing the place, but building a wall around something. Like they’re hiding something they don’t want me stumbling across too easily. Something they plan to come back for.

My stomach drops as fresh fear floods my system. Silas.

I tiptoe through the mess like I’m playing the world’s worst game of “the floor is lava.” The pile of junk stands as high as my chest, so I’m climbing. I wedge Nora’s knife into my belt and grab the edge of a toppled bookcase, hauling myself up with a grunt. The old wood creaks under me, and a bunch of fancy leather books go sliding off, hitting the floor with these heavy thumps that make my teeth clench. So much for sneaky.

I peer over the barricade’s edge, and the air leaves my lungs in a silent rush of horror.

Silas slumps in one of Grandma’s fancy dining chairs, his head hanging at an angle that turns my stomach. His dark hair is soaked through with blood, not just a few spots, but completely drenched like someone dumped the stuff over him. It’s dried all down his neck in these awful streaky patterns, and his blue shirt isn’t blue anymore, just a stiff, crusty mess. They’ve tied him up with electrical cords pulled so tight around his wrists they’ve disappeared into puffy flesh, with the same brutal handiwork at his ankles and chest. Every shallow breath he takes shows where those restraints have cut right down to the bone. All around him lies the wreckage of his careful work, screens smashed in like someone took a baseball bat to them, cameras bent and broken beyond repair, wires ripped from walls and chopped into tiny pieces scattered everywhere, like some twisted little celebration of bringing him down.

My heart stops. The still form slumped in the chair looks like nothing more than an empty vessel, another sacrifice in Garrow’s sick collection. I can’t breathe, can’t move, can’t process what I’m seeing. Then, almost imperceptible, his chest rises with a shallow, ragged breath. The air rushes back into my lungs as desperate hope surges through me.

I scramble over the barricade, scraping my palms on splintered wood in my hurry, barely registering the sting. I drop to the floor beside his chair, hands trembling over his injured form, afraid to touch him, afraid not to.

“Silas,” I whisper, the name barely audible even to my own ears.

I touch his face, tilting his head up carefully. His skin feels cool but alive. The blood comes from a deep gash at his hairline. Split lip. Swollen right eye. Bruised left cheekbone. He’s hurt badly, but not fatally.

“Silas, please,” I murmur, cupping his face between my palms. “Wake up. I can’t do this without you.”

Something cracks open inside me. My fear doesn’t fade; it turns to ice, sharp and deadly, right under my heart. The edges of what I can see go dark. Every painful breath Silas takes lights another fuse in me, and God, there are so many fuses now. They didn’t just rough him up; they took him apart like kids pulling wings off flies, one nerve ending at a time. I can practically hear them asking their questions and see their stupid faces get all excited when he screamed. Then they just left him here, trussed up like some kind of sick trophy, like bait in a trap, like a promise they’d be back to scrape away whatever bits of him were still hanging on.

I move around the chair, examining the complex knots securing his wrists. The cord bites cruelly into his skin, raw abrasions showing he fought against the restraints. I retrieve Nora’s knife, sawing carefully at the bindings while bracing his arms to prevent additional pressure on already damaged skin.

The knife’s serrated edge catches and drags through each fibre of the cord, too slow, too goddamn slow. “Come on, you piece of shit,” I hiss through clenched teeth, sawing harder as sweat drips into my eyes and my pulse hammers in my throat. The blade slips—fuck, fuck, fuck—nearly slicing my thumb open. I’m about to scream in frustration when a sound freezes my blood, a wet, guttural groan that claws its way from somewhere deep inside Silas’s broken body.

I move back around to face him, hope and fear tangling in my chest. “Silas?”

His eyelids flutter, a grimace of pain crossing his features as consciousness returns. He struggles to focus, gaze disoriented and clouded with confusion. Then his eyes find mine, recognition dawning slowly through the haze of what must be a serious concussion.

“Elara?” His voice emerges as a raspy whisper, so unlike his usual measured tones. “You can’t be here. It’s not safe.”

A choked laugh escapes me, something between a sob and hysteria. “Yeah, I noticed. Hold still—I’m cutting you loose.”

I return to working on his restraints, hands steadier now with renewed purpose. The knife finally slices through the cord around his wrists, and he brings his arms forward with a barely suppressed groan of pain. Deep welts circle both wrists, blood seeping from places where the bindings cut through skin.