I’d seen the way Philip reacted, and he was certainly no shrinking violet. It was the only time I’d ever seen the vampire scared of anything. Maybe the stories were true after all. But even if the oracles were badass enough to frighten vampires, I still didn’t know what to make of them. I’d seen too much suffering and injustice to believe in destiny or prophecies. And yet, the oracles kept coming up, and so did their prophecy about an immortal storm. Even if they were charlatans, it had to mean something.
At the far wall of the cemetery stood a low, corbel-roofed stone structure covered in moss and vines. It looked like the tower battlements of a castle, if that castle had sunk deep into the ground a long, long time ago. A heavy iron door was set into the side facing us.
Bethany turned to me. “When we get down there, let me do the talking, okay? This is a very tricky situation, and the last thing you want to do is tick off the oracles.”
“What makes you think I’ll tick them off?”
She arched an eyebrow at me. “Who don’t you tick off? You act without thinking. You use your fists more than your words. Right now we need to be a little more respectful. So just leave this to me, okay?”
I shrugged. “Fine.”
She pulled opened the iron door. Inside, a spiral staircase descended into the darkness.
“Oh, before I forget, I have something for you.” Bethany pulled an amulet out of her cargo vest and handed it to me. At the end of a silk cord hung what looked like a slab of quartz, so thin and fragile I was worried it would shatter if I stared at it too hard. A vein of light pulsed inside it.
“A charm?” I asked.
“I’ve been giving some thought to your … condition,” she said. She started down the steps, using her mirrored charm as a flashlight, and I followed her. “Remember the shock Gabrielle experienced when she tried to read your mind? And what happened when the Black Knight tried to kill you? I think they were both the same thing, a kind of magical feedback. In some ways, magic is like electricity. It can flow from one source to another. The power inside you isn’t magic, or at least it isn’t like any magic we know, but it obviously works the same way, taking the life force from one source and giving it to another. So why can’t it be channeled the same way we channel magic?”
“You’re losing me,” I said. Our footsteps echoed off the close walls as we descended. I wondered how deep we were going. The staircase seemed to spiral endlessly downward.
“Okay, let’s put it a simpler way,” she said. “What if you could come back from the dead without anyone else having to die in your place? What if we could create a circuit that captures your own life force as it leaves your body and lets the power inside you simply take it back? A feedback loop, essentially. You wouldn’t need to take anyone else’s life force.”
I lifted the amulet to look at it again. It was so delicate I couldn’t believe it could be capable of something so monumental. “This can do that?”
“You told me you were tired of all the death. I figured maybe we could do something about it, starting with your own.” We reached the bottom of the steps at the mouth of a dark, musty corridor. She turned to me and said, “It’s made from the shell of a giant volcanic ammonite. Their shells are known for their conductive abilities, especially with magic. There’s also a stasis spell inside the charm to trap your life force before it escapes, but I had to tune the charm specifically to you to keep the circuit whole.”
“How did you do that?”
“It’s got your DNA in it,” she said. Then she turned quickly on her heel and started walking down the corridor.
“Wait, what? How did you get my DNA?” But even as I asked, the answer came to me. Back at Citadel I’d watched Bethany clean my blood off the carpet with a tissue, then pocket it. I hurried after her again, half shocked and half revolted. “The blood on the tissue?”
She sighed. “I know, it’s disgusting, I don’t even want to talk about it. Look, just be careful with the amulet. No one has ever engineered one of these before. It’s utterly unique, and giant volcanic ammonites are extremely rare. There are only two of them left in the world, and I don’t have any more shell on hand, so don’t lose it and don’t break it.”
“Are you sure it’ll work?”
“There’s no way to test it short of killing you, and right now I need you focused and upright. So even when you’re wearing the amulet, try not to die, okay?”
I slipped the silk cord around my neck and tucked the amulet inside my shirt, letting it rest against my chest. It felt unexpectedly warm. I thought of the little boy in the crack house, and the homeless man in the CHILD OF FIRE T-shirt. If the amulet worked, Bethany had given me a way to put an end to all the needless death. No one would be in danger from the thing inside me anymore.
“Thank you,” I said. The words sounded embarrassingly feeble, unworthy of the gift she’d given me, but I didn’t know what else to say. Maybe she was right about me being better with my fists than my words.
“Let’s just hope you never need it,” she said.
I watched her walk in front of me, silhouetted by the glowing charm in her hand. There was no way I could ever repay her, not for something this big. I owed her so much, this stranger who’d befriended me from the start, who’d fought beside me and forgiven me for betraying her. I had the overwhelming desire to pick her up in my arms and—
“You’re awfully quiet back there,” she said.
I took a deep breath and collected myself. “So, um, what are you going to call it? All magic charms have names, don’t they?”
“Most do,” she said. “Usually it’s a combination of the primary engineer’s last name and the function of the spell, like the Avasthi phalanx or the Mamatas silencer.”
I thought about it a moment. “I suppose the Savory lifesaver is out of the question?”
“Yeah, I think we can do better,” she said. “But I don’t care what they call it. I only care that it works.”
“You knew I’d come back,” I said. “Even though I told Isaac I wouldn’t.”
“Of course I knew. You’re like a bad headache, Trent. There’s just no getting rid of you.”
“If I didn’t know better, I’d think you actually missed me.”
She barked out a sharp laugh. “Actually, I was enjoying the relative quiet in your absence. You weren’t gone long enough to miss.”
“But if I had been, you would have missed me.”
“Keep it up and I’ll put that amulet to the test after all,” she said.
We walked through an arched doorway into an enormous, underground Gothic chapel. We passed through rows of tombs arranged along the floor, stone sarcophagi with carvings of knights, kings, and queens lying in repose on the lids. In the light of Bethany’s charm, I saw more sarcophagi inside the numerous nooks carved into the walls. We went through a door on the far side of the chapel and descended more stairs. Once more I had the feeling we were descending into the depths of a great tower that had been swallowed by the earth. At the bottom of the steps, the corridor branched off in three different directions. Without a moment’s hesitation Bethany started down the passageway on the right, and I realized then what I should have from the start: Bethany knew exactly where she was going. In a dark underground labyrinth like this, with no map and no guide, that could only mean one thing.
“You’ve been here before,” I said.
“Once, a few years back,” she answered. “I had questions about my parents, who they were, why they abandoned me. I thought the oracles could tell me, or at least help me find them.”