Page 29 of All Hallows Masque

He snorted. “I’d think your eyesight would have evolved by now. How sad.”

“Oh, fuck you.” I could really do without this asshole’s condescension.

“Sure, if you’re into necromancy.”

The hell…?

“How did you hurt Tor? Back in the garden. You scratched him and he lost all his strength. How?”

“I am the product of months of development and evolution. That ability was honed through every wave of subjects until Poppy was able to create me. Perfect in every way.”

Not that he was big-headed.

I curled my hands into tighter fists, following him into a dim tunnel when the stairs ended. “You were her lab rat. Nothing more. She might have pretended to care about you, she was good at that, but caring about someone means you don’t experiment on them.”

He whirled, advancing a step and sending my heart into overdrive. I held my ground, refusing to back up. Rage held him in a tight fist, coiling his fists, cocking his head at an arrogantangle. Poppy was certainly a sore spot. But he was delusional if he thought her affection was genuine.

“I fell for it, too,” I said, ignoring the stab of sympathy in my chest. “But she was lying. Her experiments were the most important thing to her.”

He scoffed, snapping forward another step like a striking cobra. Frissons of warning crawled across my skin but I held still, trying to see under the shadow of his hood. The plummy accent, the cockiness, the cadence of his words brought me right back to Ford. He’d been one of us, a subject like Virgil and I.

A student?

“You don’t know anything.” His voice echoed off the close tunnel walls, giving the unsettling illusion that there was a whole army of Stalkers. “We were her finest work, her proudest achievement.”

“And yet we’re people, who should be loved as more than just a scientific achievement.”

“God, it must be nice to live in your rosy, naïve little world.” His lip curled in a sneer and he moved back just as I was about to launch forward and rip his hood off. “People can be opportunistic and use you and still have genuine affection.”

“Who are you?” I demanded when he set off walking again, his body language rife with anger. It was the fact he managed that rage that made me shudder. Thecontrol.“And what is this place?” I added as I realised the tunnel stretched ahead as far as I could see. Which admittedly wasn’t much. Had we traveled all the way beneath Darkmore by now?

“A priest hole,” he replied, his hostility not lessening one iota. “They were common in houses built around the Elizabethan era, when Catholicism was illegal. Catholic families built these secret passageways so their priests could hide when priest hunters came knocking. It runs from one end of the manor to the other and then down into Darkwood village.”

Okay, this whole thing was bizarre, from the moon shining on a secret trail to a hidden door and finding the Stalker, dressed like a normal person and talking, albeit in an unsettling, raspy voice, like any other student at Ford. But I drew the line atpriest hunters.“You just made that up. Priest hunters? As if.”

“They existed. They used to round up priests, usually for money, like bounty hunters.”

“How do you know so much about that?” I asked suspiciously, trying to make out any details or identifying features of the tunnel. I could only see darkness and the faint emergency lights that had obviously been installed after the reign of Elizabeth I. A fire sconce or torch would have helped me see better, though.

I kept my eyes on the Stalker, partly because he unsettled me and I couldn’t predict his moves, partly because I didn’t want to smash into his back.

“I like history,” was his vague and surprising response.

Silence stretched out again, our footsteps rattling off the walls and not helping my nerves. “Do I know you? From Ford?”

“No.”

“Liar.”

His back rose and fell with a sigh. “Life would be much more peaceful if I could kill you.”

“Why don’t you?” I reached for my jaguar just in case. Cruelty’s tests had done one good thing; I had better control over my beast, and I was close to being able to call it at will.

“Cruelty would be less than impressed.”

Hm, that was interesting. When he spoke about Poppy, there was a manic reverence in his voice, but Cruelty earned his derision. He didn’t like her one bit, and wasn’t loyal to her like he was to the mad scientist who fucked with my blood. I remembered the whole wall full of vials, all dosed with the serumcapable of changing our biology. They were still there, in Ford’s grounds. That wasn’t ominous at all.

“Where are you leading me?” I asked warily. It better not be to my untimely demise, or I’d be so pissed off. “Are you taking me to Death?”

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