“Your daughter.” I finished the sentence for him. “Say her name, Mr. Brown.”
“I can’t. She’s not—“
“IF YOU WANT MY HELP, SAY HER NAME.”
It probably took a good ten seconds before he mustered a reply. “Help Mercy. Please, Alice. We have things you can use, things you might wield against her. Weapons that can defeat a creature of the night.”
“A creature?” I cocked an eyebrow.
“It’s a weapon that can stop Mercy. That can help her.”
“What kind of weapon?” I asked.
Mr. Brown took a deep breath. “Let’s just say I’d use it if I could. But I’m too tainted. All of us are. I’m afraid you are our best hope of wielding it against her… against Mercy and the devil that’s taken her.”
Chapter 8
George Brown waited for me in the vestibule, coat already buttoned against the cold. He offered a hand, not out of gallantry, but because he didn’t trust me not to run.
We walked side by side through the midnight streets, each footstep sinking into the frost-bitten crust of snow. Neither of us spoke. The moon hung low and mean, flattening our shadows across the frozen ruts. The further we went, the more the world seemed to shrink—houses drawing their curtains tight, not a single lamp burning in any window. Exeter was a town of watchers, but tonight all eyes were shuttered.
The church, when we reached it, was nothing but a silhouette. My own father’s sermons still rang in my head, the certainty of his voice rebuking all that lurked in darkness. I wondered what he’d think of his daughter summoned to the very bowels of this place by a man who saw devils in the faces of his own children.
We entered through the vestry, where the air smelled of beeswax and dying flowers. George led me to a narrow stairwell at the back, half hidden behind a curtain meant to keep out drafts. He did not light a lamp, only pressed a candle into my hand and struck a match.
“Down,” he said. His voice was scarcely more than a whisper.
I descended the stone steps. They were slick with moisture. I clung to an equally moist railing, afraid my feet might slip out from under me and I’d be left making the rest of my trip down the stairs on my rear end. Fortunately, one footfall after the next, I made it down safely as the steps led me into a small crypt-like chamber, the ceiling so low I ducked on instinct.
Candles burned everywhere. There were a dozen men, maybe more, all shrouded in dark coats and hoods. Their faces floated above their collars like pale moons, every one of them pinched by secrecy and the sharp tang of fear.
At the center stood a man I did not know. He was not tall, not broad, but he radiated authority like heat from fire. His suit was neat, the only spot of order in the entire miserable room, and his eyes flickered blue in the uncertain light. He did not speak at first, only looked me up and down, measuring my weight and worth with a single pass.
Mr. Brown cleared his throat. “She’s here.”
“I see,” said the man at the center. He had an accent that I could not place—maybe Boston, maybe somewhere colder. “You are Alice Bladewell?”
I nodded.
He pressed his lips into a close-mouthed smile. “Thank you for coming, Miss Bladewell. We have heard much of your… resilience.”
He gestured to the space before him. “Please. Stand here.”
I did. The eyes of every man in the circle bored into my back. I could smell their sweat, their anxious breath, the faint stink of garlic.
“My name is not important,” said the man at the center. “Tonight, I speak for the Order of the Morning Dawn.” He lifted something from the table beside him: a crucifix, carved from dark wood, its arms bound in iron. The metal looked black and pitted, as if it had once survived a fire. “We were told you might be able to bear this. That you have not been… touched, by what afflicts so many.”
He held it out to me. I hesitated.
“Take it,” he said, and there was no mistaking the command in his voice.
I reached out. The wood was warm—impossibly so, as if it had been pressed to a living body moments before. The iron bands bit into my palm. The moment I closed my fingers around it, I felt a crawling sensation behind my eyes, like a swarm of ants moving through my brain. The air shimmered blue-white around the crucifix, and every candle in the room guttered at once.
Someone gasped. Someone else said, “God above—“
I almost dropped it, but the leader’s eyes pinned me in place.
“That’s it.” His voice was urgent. “You see it too, don’t you?”