Free The Darkest Gate by S M Reine Page B

hole. Light glowed on the other side, faint and gray, like early morning.
    She returned the falchion to her spine and ripped clay bricks from their moorings. Once she removed enough of it, the wall fell apart on its own, and she soon had a hole as big as her last one. She squeezed inside.
    That faint light didn’t seem to come from any single source, but the chamber on the other end was obviously manmade. The walls and floor were chiseled, an old stone table stood in the corner, and there were engravings on the walls. A recession had been built into the stones at the opposite end of the room, just eight feet away. It was a different kind of rock than everything else: white and smooth, rather than clay-colored. The platforms and etchings made it look like a monument or altar. And the bowl Mr. Black wanted was trapped inside of it by bars.
    The bowl was smaller than she expected—barely any bigger than her fists. It looked mundane, dusty, and boring, but the way it vibrated in her veins told her it was ethereal, which meant it was none of those three things.
    Elise tried to jiggle it free. It wouldn’t budge.
    She scanned the symbols surrounding it. A crucifix formed the center, surrounded by obscure symbols that most educated kopides would have realized were ethereal in origin. There was no other language like it, human or infernal. And no other kopis would have known the symbols were also a lock.
    Elise looked at her hands. She wore thick leather gloves with a strap across the back, which she had recently shoplifted from a motorcycle shop.
    James would tell her to leave. He would tell her to forget.
    He would probably be right.
    Her fingers shook as she ripped off the Velcro strap and removed the glove with her teeth, baring her hand to the dry air of the chamber.
    Black lines marked her palm, like a freshly-inked tattoo that hadn’t had time to heal. The skin was red and swollen around the edges. But Elise had never been under the needle of a tattoo artist, and she never would have chosen the design if she had. The marks didn’t match the symbol on the altar, but it was close.
    The stone vibrated to life when she stretched out her hand. Silver-blue light traced along the marks at the base.
    Elise drew back. The vibrations slowed.
    “God help me,” she muttered. It was not a prayer. She never prayed.
    She pressed her palm to the altar.
    A strange singing filled her skull. The vibration vanished in an instant, and so did everything else—the room surrounding her, the stone under her hand, the darkness. A veil of heavy gray light pressed against her.
    There was a face on the other side of the veil.
    Elise…

    That single word made her eardrums ache. The voice was great and terrible, tender and surprised.
    She wrenched her hand free with a gasp.
    And she was holding the bowl.
    Elise blinked at her hands. She hadn’t consciously moved the bars aside, but the bowl was no longer captive in the wall, and it was humming. It liked being held by her. There was no sign of breakage or shifting in the altar, so she shouldn’t have been able to remove it.
    She set the bowl on the ground and took a big step back to study the chamber. It didn’t feel so empty anymore. Now the hollows looked like watching eyes, and spider webs swayed in the corner as if ruffled by a passing breeze.
    She pulled her glove back on.
    “I’m coming for you,” she whispered, just to break the silence. “This is going to end.”
    Shucking her shirt, Elise wrapped the bowl so that none of the stone was exposed. Wearing nothing but a camisole was chilly, but it was better than feeling the ethereal artifact recognize her. It didn’t hum so much when it was out of contact with her skin. The gray light dimmed as she stepped further away from the altar until she climbed out of the room in total darkness.
    It was hard to climb the short, muddy slope to the surface again, but with enough grunting and wiggling, Elise emerged from the hill.
    Three men were