Page 9 of Unholy Bond
“The Well predates the cemetery.” I pricked my thumb; a bead fell to center. The air went concave. “They paved a garden over a wound and called it holy.”
Wind stalled. Heat folded out of the world. Beneath us, the stone flexed—not in world, in idea. A hum came up through my bones, steady and low. In the static I caught her: apple blossom and ozone, sweetness sharpened to wire. Close. Not reachable. Not yet.
“Status,” Levi said, clipped.
“Open enough to trace. Not enough to eat us.” I unrolled lambskin, set a sliver of obsidian, matched the pins’ pulse, and spoke three syllables that cut clean. The sliver vanished without spectacle. Pressure etched a line along my palm—coordinates, if you’re fluent in cruelty.
Aziz: “Well?”
“Fifteen down, eight east, then a turn sane people don’t take.” I flexed numbness out of my fingers. “There’s gate work—old, industrial, insulted that we still exist. We won’t brute force it. We’ll need a key or a king’s temper.”
“We have a key,” Levi said. The word had edges.
“And a temper,” Aziz said. Calm like a drawn blade.
“They’ll taste something when we come,” Levi added.
“Not us,” I said. “I can foul the reading.”
Levi’s mouth thinned. “Do it.”
I breathed with the pins, shifted two degrees, bled a second mark. The roof buckled in theory and settled. The hum eased to a purr. The Well disliked restraint. Noted.
“What about her?” Levi asked. The name didn’t need saying.
“When we move, the calculus changes.” Iron on my tongue. “Lucifer talks in force. Lilith talks in want. If she draws on us to win, that isn’t theft. That’s strategy.”
Aziz held my gaze. “Then we make it easy.”
“Yes.” I packed the compass. Each click neat as stitches.
A tremor dusted grit from the eaves. The Well wanted us back. Good.
We crossed the roofline. The cemetery lay below in wet geometry. At the hatch, Aziz said, “Timing.”
“When the gate believes we’re inevitable,” I said. “Soon.”
Levi’s voice stayed low. “She’ll be small on purpose when we find her.”
“She isn’t small,” I said. “She’s patient.”
We dropped into the stairwell. The world remembered its temperature.
In the parking lane, under the oaks, the rain thinned to mist.
Aziz palmed the ring from his pocket and held it between us; rain ticked on the metal.
“We go as one,” he said.
“We come back the same way,” I said. “No splits. No heroics.”
Levi’s eyes were knives. “We don’t split her. We guard her.”
“She’s ours,” I said. “She doesn’t belong to him.”
Aziz put the ring away. The night stopped pretending to be gentle.
“You ever think we’re the wrong kind of monsters for her?” Levi asked. No smile.
