David Baldacci - The Keeper

“Look at the names on them, Delph,” I said as I eyed them.

Mullins, Dinkins. And KRONE?

Jurik Krone ’s ancestors were buried here? They let anyone in here, didn’t they?

Delph said, “Look, there’s a Picus and a Mulroney. And... and...”

His voice trailed off and I could see why.

The name on the lichen-stained gravestone was Barnabas Delphia.

He read the epitaph out loud. “Barnabas Delphia, loving father and devoted husband to Lecretia.”

“Did you ever hear of them from your father?” I asked.

Delph shook his head. “Never. Not once. I can’t hardly believe I’m seeing it.”

I left Delph standing there and moved down the row of graves. When I saw the name on the simple gravestone, I caught a breath and moved closer.

ALICE ADRONIS, WARRIOR TO THE LAST BREATH

I looked down at the sunken mound of dirt and then back at the leaning gravestone. I held my wand up high and gazed at it. Alice had given me the Elemental on a great battlefield far, far in the past. She had done so with her dying breath, telling me that I had to survive.

I suddenly jerked because the wand had started to move in my hand. As I watched, shocked, it bent forward so that its point was directed at Alice’s grave.

I didn’t understand for a moment, but then I did.

The thing was bowing to her, its former mistress.

I felt the tears cluster in my eyes. But I also, for the first time, felt a powerful connection between Alice and myself. Astrea had said that Alice and I could be related, and that was why the Elemental worked as a wand for me. As I looked down at that sunken mound of dirt, it occurred to me that I had a great deal to live up to. Alice had evidently thought that I needed to survive for an important reason. I hoped I was up to the challenge that the Quag was certainly going to present.

The grave I saw next was that of my ancestor Jasper Jane, the creator of the Fifth Circle. His gravestone simply held his name with no accompanying description. A sorcerer steeped in dark magic, Astrea had said. I shivered when I thought about what he might have put in the final circle.

The next two graves also captured my attention.

Bastion Cadmus. His epitaph read THE ONE WHO LEADS US. The other gravestone read THE STRENGTH OF LOVE, THE FALLACY OF YOUTH. I could make neither head nor tail of that. The name on the gravestone was Uma Cadmus. I didn’t know if it was Bastion’s mate or perhaps his daughter.

“Vega Jane!”

I turned and saw Delph farther down another row of graves. He was frantically motioning for me to come. Harry Two and I raced over to where he stood.

“Lookit that, Vega Jane,” he said.

He was pointing at a number of graves.

I read down the list of names. I exclaimed, “They’re all Prines. This is Astrea’s family.”

“Too right. So if she knew about this place, why didn’t she tell us, eh?”

“So what else hasn’t she told us?” I asked. My belly felt like it was full of ice.

I was going to say something else, but I never got the chance.

Something had reached up through the ground, grabbed my ankles and pulled me downward, through the dirt and below to where the dead lay.

Just as I had in falling into Thorne’s labyrinth, I endured the sensation of plummeting a long way. However, this time I remembered I had on Destin and thus was able to lessen the impact when I hit bottom.

I was up in an instant, my wand at the ready in the pitch-darkness.

“ Illumina ,” I cried out.

The place was instantly lit and I saw Delph and Harry Two slowly getting to their feet.

“Are you okay, Delph?”

He brushed off his clothes and nodded, though his face was ashen. I looked down at Harry Two. His hackles were up and his fangs were bared. I looked wildly around, certain that my canine had sensed danger coming.

We were in a low, darkened tunnel with stone walls that were awash with age and slime. I looked in one direction and saw a blank wall. At the other end of the tunnel was an opening. I looked at Delph to find him staring at the same spot.

I glanced up expecting to see dirt above us, but there was only stone.

“What grabbed us?” I said breathlessly. I looked down at my ankles. “That’s blood on my trousers,” I exclaimed. “But it’s not mine.”

“Same with me,” said Delph, indicating his legs.

I looked at Harry Two and saw red streaks on his forelegs.

I once more gazed at the stone ceiling. “The graves are up there,” I said.

“What’s below a grave?” asked Delph, miserably. “Nothin’ good, I wager.”

“If something yanked us down here, it must still be around.”

“And the only way out looks to be through there.” He pointed ahead.

I squared my shoulders and tried to make myself feel confident and brave though I felt neither. I held my wand in front of me and marched toward the opening with Delph and Harry Two alongside me. We reached it and, deciding that waiting would just make it harder, I walked right through it.

At first, there was nothing. Then there was something.

Set into the walls were little beads of light that blinked on and off. For a moment, I thought they were pieces of glass or metal. But when I wandered closer to the wall, I leapt back in horror.

They were eyes. Blinking eyes!

I looked over at Delph. He was obviously stunned as well.

As I looked again, I could tell there weren’t just eyes on the wall. There were mouths. They were opening and closing along with the eyes, but no words were coming out. It was as if they were silently screaming.

I turned and ran.

Right into him.

He was a little taller than I was and so lean that he looked like bone with a bit of skin lying over it. Yet he was as hard as a tree, and I toppled over from the collision. My wand fell to the rock floor.

He was dressed in a long coat of black, trousers and a slimy shirt. His face was as pale as goat’s milk. His beard was blacker than his coat and lay tightly to his face where his cheekbones protruded like hard nuts. A strip of black fuzz arched over his mouth, which was set in a grim line. He also had on black boots up to the knees.

I looked madly around for Delph and Harry Two. To my horror, they both were pinned flat against the wall. Delph’s mouth was open, but no words were coming out. I scrambled to my feet and started to run toward them.

“No,” the creature said in a raspy voice.

It was like my feet were sunk into the rock.

I looked back at him over my shoulder. In his hand was a wooden cudgel intricately carved with evil-looking figures I did not recognize. He smacked one end of the cudgel on the rock floor, and my feet were released.

I turned to face him.

He leisurely circled, looking me over.

His nose was unlike any nose I had ever seen. It had three openings instead of the usual two. And it had two humps in the bone as though it had been broken more than once. And it was so long it very nearly overtook the mouth on the way to the chin, which was as sharply angled as a cutting knife. And the eyes above the elongated nose were solid black. Not just the little orbs in the middle. Where I had white, his entire eye was black.

I glanced down at the hand curled around the cudgel. It wasn’t really a hand. It was a claw, nails longer than my fingers. And they were covered in blood. That answered the question of where the blood on our clothes had come from. This bloke had pulled us down here.

He pointed one claw at me. Destin seized up around me, lifting me off the ground, and I hung there in midair. My spine was nearly cracking as I was forced backward, my head growing perilously close to my heels.