My Husband Dies Every Midnight

The Hollow Below

Elena ran because Maris told her to, but the decision had already been made for her. The crypt narrowed behind them, the air thick with something like the breath of the underground. Nathan's hand was like iron in hers, while Lila's footsteps were close behind, quick and uneven.

Ingrid did not immediately follow.

That was worse.

Elena glanced over her shoulder as they turned into the passage. The woman stood where the door had been, her silver hair loose around her face, her expression unreadable. She held the pages of the ledger in her hands, her fingers trembling slightly. Her lips moved as if reading the words aloud to an invisible audience.

The darkness around them grew impossibly thick.

The Taken had not disappeared. They had only fallen silent.

Maris shoved her forward. "Don't look at her," she snapped. "If she's reading the lines, the hollow is listening."

"The hollow?" Nathan asked, his breath coming in tight little sounds.

"The first chamber," Maris said. "The one the miners found before Saint Agnes was built. Before the pact was made. Before the church. It's older than the city."

Elena's stomach twisted. "And that's where we're going?"

"We're going where the door leads," Maris said grimly.

The passage turned sharply downward, carved from something that had long since turned to stone. Elena's fingers brushed against the damp walls as she moved, her touch leaving behind cold, wet prints. The ceiling lowered until they were all crouching, and Lila muttered an oath as her camera strap caught on something. Nathan turned back to free it, not saying a word.

It wasn't the silence that unsettled Elena, but the lack of other sounds. The drip of water, the sound of their own hurried footsteps, the shallow breaths of the people around her. Something else moved in there with them, something far below them, and she could feel it in her bones like the distant thrum of an engine.

"How much deeper is this?" she asked.

"Far enough that the city above can pretend it doesn't exist," Maris said.

That was exactly what frightened her. This hidden place, this buried wound in the heart of Denver, was far too much a part of the world to be forgotten. She had spent her life believing her mother's disappearance was a kind of death, but now she understood. Maris hadn't died. She had fallen into a second world beneath the first.

The stairs opened into a large chamber, the ground falling away into something too far to see. Elena's breath came out in a sharp sound as she took it all in.

It wasn't an enormous space, not in the way one might expect from such a deep excavation. It stretched out before them in a series of twisting rooms, the walls vanishing into the darkness. Pillars of stone jutted out at irregular intervals, wrapped in rotting rope. The floor was made of dirt, splattered with bits of bone and charred wood, and scattered with silver dust that glittered like the stars.

At the center of it all was a pit.

No altar, no offering, no sign of the things that had been sacrificed to whatever power watched over this place. Just the gaping hole in the earth, from which the air seemed to be slowly rising in cold, steady waves.

Lila let out a laugh that ended in a choked sound. "You have got to be kidding me."

"That's not a mine shaft," Nathan said grimly.

"It's a mouth," Maris said quietly.

Elena looked into the pit, her heart hammering in her ears. There was no evidence of anything inside it, and yet she had the irrational sense that something was watching her. The charm at her wrist had gone numb, then suddenly hot, as if it had decided whether or not it liked what it saw.

She pulled her hand away. "What was in there?"

Maris's face was unreadable for a moment, and Elena was suddenly aware of how many years had passed since her mother had last looked at her like this. "The first bargain," Maris said at last. "The first payment. The first thing the miners woke up to."

Nathan turned to her sharply. "You keep saying you woke. Woke what?"

Maris didn't answer right away, and something unpleasant twisted in Elena's stomach. Her mother was walking toward the pit, and all Elena wanted to do was stop her. Maris's face was oddly pale in the dim light. "The miners came here searching for silver," she said at last. "They found something that answered when they sang to it, to keep themselves from thinking about what they were doing down there. They believed it was a guardian, a spirit, something that could be bargained with." She turned to look at Elena. "They were wrong."

The walls of the chamber seemed to close in around them.

"Then what was it?" Lila asked quietly.

Maris's voice was barely more than a whisper. "A witness."

No one said anything for a long moment.

Even the dripping water seemed to pause.

Maris turned back to the pit. "The Warden was never the source of the curse," she said. "It was the jailer. The thing below is older, and it was sealed here because it could not be killed, only contained. The miners opened a path to it, and when they realized what they'd done, they made a pact to ensure that it would never wake again." She looked up at them. "They paid with future generations."

Elena's skin prickled. "You're saying there's something worse down there than the Warden?"

Maris nodded. "It doesn't care whether it's contained or not. It only cares whether it is hungry."

The pit gave a great, deep sound, as if something inside it had been waiting for this moment. Lila stumbled back, nearly falling, but Nathan caught her by the elbow, his face grim. Elena's heart was pounding so hard she thought it might burst from her chest.

The earth gave an uneasy lurch, and a seam of light ran along the far side of the pit, cutting into the chamber. Dust rained from the ceiling. Something deep within the walls ground against something else, a sound like stone on stone.

"It's awake," Maris said, her voice hushed.

Elena took a step backward. "Because of the sacrifice?"

"In part." Maris's gaze was fixed on something in the darkness, something only she could see. "The pact was the lock. The wards kept it contained, but when we broke part of it, the chain was weakened." She looked up at the pages of the ledger, which were still tucked against Ingrid's side somewhere above them. "Ingrid kept the city safe by paying the debt, but she also kept the thing below asleep. She did not tell you the full truth because if you knew what it was, you might not have agreed to it."

Elena stared at her mother, her stomach turning. "You knew there was something down here."

Maris's face was tight with something that almost looked like guilt. "I knew the debt had to be paid. I did not know the seal would fail so soon."

The chamber gave another great lurch, and one of the pillars near the entrance split from end to end. A length of the old rope that had been wrapped around it fell to the ground, a withered snake.

Nathan grabbed her by the shoulders. "We need to get out of here."

But before they could do anything, a beam of white light spilled across the far end of the chamber. It was clean, bright, and impossibly pure, cutting through the darkness like a knife. There was a figure standing there at first, and then another, and then more, until it looked as if there was a whole line of them.

They were all children, small and pale, their bodies hanging loose and limp as if their bones had turned to something softer. One of them turned its head, and Elena's breath caught in her throat.

It wasn't a child at all.

It was a woman with a bent spine, her arms too long, her dress old-fashioned and covered in dark stains. Her face was hidden beneath her tangled hair, but there was something wrong with the shape of it, something that made Elena's stomach turn. Her eyes were gone, replaced by two pale, empty hollows.

Lila let out a sound like a whimper. "No."

The thing smiled.

Its mouth stretched impossibly wide, revealing too many teeth. Maris made a strange sound, something like a prayer. "Don't let her hear your name."

Elena felt the blood drain from her face.

The creature tilted its head back and inhaled deeply, as if it could smell them.

Then it spoke, in a voice like broken glass. "Elena Hart."

Nathan put himself in front of her immediately. “Don’t you dare come near her.”

The thing smiled wider.

Something deep beneath them pounded twice, like a great heartbeat.

The creature's head turned toward the sound, then back to them, amusement blooming across its face. "She remembers," it said.

Maris went rigid beside Elena. "What does she want?"

The creature's blind face turned toward her. "You brought the daughter."

Maris's lips parted, but no sound came out. The thing laughed, a sound like the tearing of fabric. The chamber trembled again, and a long seam of black water ran down one of the far walls, pooling in great, thick rivulets on the floor.

Nathan swore. "Get out of here!"

The creature raised one skeletal hand and pointed right at Elena.

Something massive moved beneath the earth, something so large the very ground beneath them seemed to rise and fall with its breathing.

Elena grabbed Nathan's hand and ran.

Behind them, the blind woman's laughter rang out, light and airy.

And from the pit came the first sound of its kind, a voice too deep and old to belong to anything that walked the earth.

"Bring me the one who remembers."

Elena ran faster because she knew, with a sick certainty, that the voice was not speaking to her mother.