Stepping through, I think of the steps to the basement back at Darius’s old in-town house. On my own descent, I remember Beth’s first look down that stone stairwell with its flickering torches and sharp curve. When I was staring at it through her eyes, I thought to myself…uh-oh. She’s going to put this thing to use—and the reader is going to be all, too-stupid-to-live, WTF-is-she-doing? À la low budget horror movies.
Except it was clean and tidy. (Come on, Fritz was in charge.)
In the book, I decided to focus on the fact that there was nothing nasty on the walls, no moist (*gag*), slimy stuff oozingout of the mortar joints. I also think it smelled of lemon, although I don’t think I put that in.
This stairwell is the same on the neat-and-tidy front, but there’s no dark romance going on. It’s only some gray painted walls and steps, with everything well-lit and heading for a bottom that’s just like the top: a steel landing with a steel door.
After I enter another code, I’m able to get through.
And the tunnel awaits me on the other side.
As I get to walking, my high heels clip-clip-clip again, and I go slowly because I don’t want to slip as the floor is polished nearly to a liquid. It’s funny how all the places in this universe have associations for me. Just like in real life. You walk through a room, drive down a street, catch a glimpse of a picture, a person, a dog, smell something, hear something, and you’re instantly somewhere in the past.
Qhuinn’s coming back to me now.
This underground pedestrian highway connects the Pit to the mansion, and both of them to the training center. It also goes farther out from that facility, and the far end is what I’m thinking of.
Well, actually before I go there, I’m picturing an oil drum in a hunting cabin.
And the subtle glimmer of a gold signet ring through a black, viscous liquid.
Luchas, Qhuinn’s brother.
The acceptable son. The one whose eyes matched, whose future was assured, who was proudly claimed by an aristocratic family.
Not Qhuinn, the gay, ocularly-challenged, disregarded and disgraced one.
It was the ultimate reversal of fate in so many ways, the unwanted offspring becoming a member of the Black Dagger Brotherhood, the golden child, future of the bloodline, capturedby the Lessening Society, tortured by the Omega, and kept in stasis by the enemy surrounded by the toxic swill that filled the veins of the evil.
Qhuinn rescued him, but Luchas’s body had been too abused, and after what must have felt like an eon of being treated, he took matters into his own hands. So yes, I’m thinking of when he disappeared from his hospital bed, and Qhuinn went to the terminal point of this thoroughfare and found the hatch open.
Into a brutal snowstorm.
This of course makes me go back toLover Awakened, and Phury’s broken vs. ruined commentary on his twin.
I know that whenever Qhuinn comes down here, he remembers that night, too, the lashing cold, the fierce gusts of wind, the horizontal snow. He imagines, once again, his fragile, mutilated brother walking into the blizzard, the sub-zero temperature stealing what body warmth there was, the collapse surely happening not far from the secret exit.
As I arrive at the door that leads into the training center, I look to the left. The ceiling lights extend into what seems like eternity.
I don’t know why mostly negative stuff is what is coming to me tonight. Maybe it’s because I feel like if I could just reframe some of these tragedies in this world, I’d be free to feel happy here.
Instead, this is just a catalog of sadness. Then again, I am sad.
The last twenty years have been incredible, and the idea that they’re over, and I can’t go through it all again and do it right this time bothers me. I was always so afraid of failing that I never really enjoyed all the wonderful gifts that these books brought me. At least that’s over now. For this second half of my career? I’m not wasting a single moment of the good shit.
This is the thought that’s going through my head as I push into the supply closet. I take a moment to breathe in deep. Another no-surprise is that I’ve always had a thing for paper supplies: Pens. Reams of loose-leaf. Paper clips, document clips, staplers and folders. I am so grateful I grew up in the seventies and eighties and got to take my notes and write my papers the old-fashioned way. By my last year in law school, laptops were starting to make an appearance in lecture halls and shoot me now.
If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s the clicking of keyboards.
Given what I do for a living, thank God for noise-canceling headphones.
Pushing my way out into the office, I expect to find Tohr at the desk, going through the logs of new trainees, or class schedules, or the curriculum.
He’s not there.
Frowning, I go over and push the glass door open. The first thing I hear freezes me where I stand.
Someone is dribbling a basketball down in the gym. The sound is muffled so it’s almost like a heartbeat, and I know instantly who it is.
