Page 75 of Lethal Kiss

She’s still pissed and terrified. Though to be honest, doesn’t the danger make it more fun?

“How much farther?” Lacie pants.

We’ve already gone the half mile back to campus; we’re inside the walls ringing the quads. I lift my head and the chapel looms in front of us. “Just a few more steps.”

“How many more?”

“Goddess, I don’t know! Stop whining. You’re going to attract attention we most definitely do not need.”

But then a vicious pain hollows me out at my core and I gasp, stumbling. What the fuck was that? It rips through my chest, forcing a cry I catch behind my teeth.

Lacie stops and I stumble. “Are you okay?”

The pain pulses behind my eyes now, wriggling deep into the back of my head. Get it out. Get it out, getitoutgetitoutgetitout—

I drop a corner of the cooler and press a hand to my forehead, only to find it slick with sweat.

“Marcella?”

“Fine,” I bite out, every letter a battle.

And then, as quickly as it arrived, the pain seeps away into nothingness. Groaning, I squash the heel of my hand against my temple, and the thing ripples, quiets.

“Are you—”

“Stop asking me that. I’m fine. I don’t need anyone’s help.”

Lacie has the good sense to not ask again, which is good, because even as the white-hot lance of pain disperses, I’m wobbly on my feet. “Sorry,” I finally say as I gather up the edge of the cooler again. “Must have indigestion or something.”

I tuck this pain, something I haven’t experienced in so long, into the back of my mind. Because there’s only one thing that hurts like flaying your skin off like that, only one thing that feels like maggots with bladed feet crawling into the back of your brain.

It feels like turning. Clenching my teeth, I’m glad Lacie can’t see my face. It would be one carved with panic, and she needs less of that, not more.

It’s well after midnight now, the sky inky black and moonless after the snow squall passed. The only lights here come from an emergency button beaming bright blue at the side of the quad (nice touch) and a few stray lanterns that’ll click off at around 2 AM.

We slog toward the chapel’s door. But to call it a chapel is to reduce it to something it most certainly is not. Preston’s absolute cathedral looms at the end of its long drive. From the university website I know that in the spring, it’s ringed by the bloom of hundred-year-old cherry trees and magnolias, its massive Gothic spire rising high into the sky. It’s possible, I’ve read, to climb the ninety-six steps up to gaze out over campus and see Boston’s suburbs from its bell tower. However, I am presently nauseated by that fact; there’s nothing worse than hanging in the air, protected by only stone gargoyles and a flimsy chicken-wire fence.

A body could shatter that way.

Preston’s chapel, standing stolid in its Gothic might, all gray granite and rosette windows, has a dark underbelly, too. There are whispers that the Div School, nestled to its right side, houses a satanic cult that meets in its crypt once a semester. Based on the fact that I’m currently lugging the desiccated body of a vættr behind me, the rumors may be partially correct.

Vættir, like so many of the undead, inspire much worship and pomp. But those fools don’t know what they’re getting into, if so: though some vættir act alone like Dr. Sims seemed to, many travel in droves. Landvættir, for example, love nothing more than cozying up in their grave barrows, up to one thousand strong. How, you ask? By turning unsuspecting idiots who think they’re praising some risen god.

Vættir, one million; satanists, zero.

By the time I cease my musing, Lacie and I have mounted the slippery bluestone steps comprising the dais in front of the chapel. I ease the heavy oaken door open, hinges screaming like disturbed bats. With a collective grunt, we shift the cooler over the threshold and into the cathedral’s antechamber.

In the apse, a red glass lantern burns with a flickering light to the left of the altar, solemn and mournful. The air smells of frankincense, heady and thick, probably from a recent Mass. Though Preston is nominally nondenominational, the church here is still an active Catholic sanctuary. Unlucky pleb Protestants practice in a side chapel in the Div School, some ugly modern thing. But here, the windows are all stained glass: regal crimson and cobalt and aubergine. In the dark of night, the eyes of saints appear as onyx holes, burning and full of shadows. But back in the shadowed narthex, where some judicious soul has stashed pamphlets and hymnals, Advent-tide church bulletins and choir flyers, we’re safe from their prying eyes.

A shudder runs through me. I do not love being inside a church. It reviles me, and I, it.

Lacie stops suddenly, dropping her side of the cooler at her feet.

“I need a minute,” she huffs. “My heart is going to explode.”

Twisting my head side to side to assess the threat outside the cathedral’s walls, I can only feel the distant, slow heartbeats of sleeping students. I hum. It’s not smart to pause, but I want to make her happy. “Fine, just a moment.”

Leaning over her knees, she gulps deep breaths of the perfumed air. “Where are we going now?”