Page 74 of Grotesque
The only locked door in Glamis. I’d never thought much of it, but I should have. Obviously, I should have. I had tried to open it once on my first day and then forgotten about it completely. Until I found the key.
Locked doors hid secrets, and in a place like Glamis, ruled by a fae creature, it had to be something good.
Or terrible.
Tiptoeing down the stairs to the ground floor, I held my breath as I slid the key into the lock. I waited a few moments, heartthundering in my ears, but Corban didn’t appear. Even without his looming presence, something about the key sliding home made my skin crawl.
I took a deep breath and turned my wrist. The door held, then gave way with a hiss of air. I pushed it all the way open.
The smell of something sweet filtered through the air. A sweetness that reminded me of overripe, rotten fruit. That smell, while vaguely pleasant… wasn’t right. I knew it wasn’t right and yet still I looked inside.
Steep, narrow stairs angled into darkness. I cast my eyes about and spied a switch on the inside wall. Flipping it did little, the weak light illuminating only the first ten steps, leaving the rest to be swallowed by the gloom.
Perhaps this door had been locked for a reason. I took a hesitant step down, my ears straining for any sound from Corban or from below me. The steps were so narrow I had to turn sideways to fit my foot on them comfortably. There was no railing to grab hold to, just dull red brick. No way this was a regular basement.
“Don’t let me break my neck,” I whispered.
BANG!
The sound was loud enough to make me jump straight out of my skin. My foot skidded and I dug my nails into the wall to keep from tripping to my death.
Bang! Bang! Bang!I whirled to face the still open door.
“Sorcha!” My name was followed by a series of garbled voices. “Do it, hurry up.”
I couldn’t tell if it was the same voice as the first but they sounded riled.I’d only made it down five steps, but I scrambled back to the top and darted for the front door where the angry voices were rising.
There was another bang against the door, splintering the frame. And just like that my fear was replaced with anger.
“Hey!” I yelled.Whoever thought they could come into my home and destroy it was in for a rude awakening.
The voices muffled. Someone peeked through one of the windows framing the door. Quint.
This fucker.
“Sorcha, let us in.”
Us.Fuck, had he called the cops? Quint alone would have been bad enough but bringing back-up? For what? Fuck, he really did have balls of steel to show up here after Corban had nearly killed him.
Or he was just a straight-up fool.
I jerked open the door. Mottled, dark green bruising crept out from beneath Quint’s collar. The red imprints of Corban’s claws looked fresh, as if he were still bleeding from the strangulation attempt. Petechia spotted along his face, matching the red coloring in his corneas. If anything, time had only made Quint’s battle wounds look worse.
Jeremy and three other men stood just behind him. One pulled his sun-faded baseball cap down to hide his face; his companion, a blonde, looked at the ground with him. The other wore a 90’s band tee. In his white-knuckled grip was a wooden bat.
Before my mind could register the weapon Quint grabbed hold of me as the men pushed inside.
“What the fuck are you doing? Hey! Get out of my house!”
“Where is he?” Quint asked.He jerked me roughly against his body, his head swiveling left and right, his bloodshot eyes darting furiously.
“Come out, come out,” one of the men called.
“I live alone, dickheads,” I snarled.
Quint pulled me so hard that my feet skidded against the ground, the toes of my shoes clipping the uneven, broken floorboards as he dragged me over the threshold to the frontporch. No–the floorboard were fine, perfect as always. I blinked away the wonky image of the house and whirled on him. “Let go. What the fuck is wrong with you?”
He stopped abruptly and looked down at me. “What the fuck is wrong withme? That fucking monster has been torturing you and when I tried to save you, he nearly killed me.”
