“No, we should go on,” Danni pleaded. “Continue what we’re doing.”
“We will,” Natasha said in a calm voice. “Danni, the crypt isn’t going away. It’s been here all these years, and it’ll still be here after we take a few minutes to breathe some fresh air.”
“Yes, we need a break,” Father Ryan said. “Quinn, you lead. Your light seems to be the strongest. I’ll bring up the rear.”
Not surprisingly, it didn’t take half as long to retrace their steps.
Only Danni seemed to lag. Quinn was about to go back for her, but Father Ryan took her by the arm and hurried her along.
Quinn wanted to make sure none of them remained down there alone. He waited at the top of the steps, watching until everyone had passed him.
Back in the kitchen area, he was pleased to hear Danni laughing. He realized the others were laughing, as well.
When he came closer, he understood why.
“We all look like ghosts!” Bo Ray said. “Tomb dust!”
“Great. And no lovely shower with dual heads and steaming water,” Hattie complained. But she didn’t seem too distressed about the situation. Quinn had to admit he was impressed by the woman. At her age—and with her wealth and social standing—she was a pretty good sport. He’d bet the last thing she’d expected when she bought that damn painting was that she’d be crawling through a crypt.
“Let’s step outside. The road’s across from the lake. We can avoid a rush at the pump and see how the waters of Lake Geneva feel,” Bo Ray suggested.
“Yes,” Hattie said. “Let’s go outside. Beautiful, fresh, clean air would be such a treat right now.”
When the others headed for the door, Danni hung back. “What did Larue tell you?” she asked.
He’d been waiting for this question; she’d recognized that something was wrong, something he hadn’t told them.
“Three people were killed last night. Two middle-aged men and a woman, friends from Ohio. They were attacked on a side street, heading down to their hotel on Royal from a night of partying on Bourbon.”
Danni’s breath caught in her throat. “Killed—how?”
“Slashed.”
“Like with...a sword?”
He nodded.
She started past him, as if she was going to tackle the crypt on her own.
He clasped her gently by the shoulders. “No, Danni. Hattie and Ron were right. We needed to come back up. Staying down there too long would be dangerous without masks. We’ll have to make some because there’s just too much dust. I mean, look at yourself. Well, that would be hard,” he joked. “Look at me.”
She didn’t smile.
“Come on, let’s go outside. We’ll get some air. Then we’ll rip up some fabric and make masks. Okay?”
After a moment she nodded. He slipped his arm around her shoulders and they walked back through the great hall.
Danni paused there, looking up at the painting above the hearth.
“I wonder if he was the lord who built the castle,” she said.
“He isn’t wearing a helmet and it’s hard to judge by the armor, but I’m thinking maybe early 1600s.”
“Like the suits of armor.” She frowned. “I thought that kind of armor more or less went out at the end of the 1500s.”
“Breast and back plates were used into the 1700s,” Quinn said. “That’s a full suit he’s wearing, other than the helmet. The advent of more powerful guns—bullets with greater impact and velocity—made changes in armor necessary. Eventually more modern guns rendered it almost useless. That,” he said, pointing at it, “might have been dress armor.”
Danni was still staring at the painting. She shivered. “I don’t like him.”
Quinn laughed. “Oh, he looks okay in that portrait. Now, in the Hubert, on the other hand... Anyway, let’s not stare at him. Shall we go outside now?”
“You have to tell the others, you know. About the deaths at home.”
“I know. But I thought I’d wait until we found our body—and burned it to cinders.”
“Okay,” she said softly.
They finally headed out to join the others. Father Ryan stood with Ron by the gates, which were wide open. The others had crossed the road and were walking up a green hillock that led down to the other side.
Danni followed Quinn as he strolled over to join the two men.
“We were just imagining what it was like before this road was put in,” Father Ryan said.
Ron nodded. “This road is fairly new, from what I understand. At one time, the only road came around the corner from the hill on the other side of the castle. I believe that when they built the castle, the entrance was to the water side because they could go up into the towers and see the lake clearly—and attack intruders attempting to take the castle. If they were coming by land, they’d have to circle the castle to get to the entrance. This road was probably put in sometime around 1910 to provide for the ‘horseless’ carriage that was becoming so popular.”
“So,” Father Ryan said, “I was trying to imagine that summer of 1816. Henry Hubert’s guests would’ve come by water. They were staying just over there.” He pointed across the lake. “I’m surprised they made the effort. It rained almost every day that summer and the sky was overcast and wind was whipping around on a daily basis.”
“The world is a fragile place,” Danni added. “All of that was caused by an explosion of Mount Tambora—far, far away.”
“I think scientists decided that it was also a year in which solar flares were inactive—and that would’ve meant much less sun and heat, too,” Ron said. “I can just see them, though—Lord Byron and his party! There would’ve been five of them. Dr. Polidori, Clare, Mary, Percy and Lord Byron. They would’ve pulled their boat up on the shore somewhere over that little rise. They would have been full of life, laughing at the wind and rain, and yet eager to get in. And my ancestor—so in love with how ‘cool’ he was, how popular—would have been anxiously waiting. He’d have filled the house with alcohol and food and done everything in his power to welcome such guests.”
“The lake is beautiful,” Danni murmured. She left them, hurrying over the rise toward the water.
Uneasy, Quinn followed.
But Danni merely walked down by the lake and joined Natasha, Hattie, Billie and Bo Ray. Bo Ray was still in travel heaven.
“Have you ever seen anything as blue as the lake? And the mountains are so...awesome!” he said, plainly bereft of a more expressive vocabulary.
“France is over there, Bo Ray,” Hattie said, gesturing. “I think you’re right, though. This must be one of the most beautiful regions in the world.”
Danni looked out across the water. “We should get back. We need to find that tomb.”
“Yeah,” Quinn said. “We should.”
“A few more minutes,” Bo Ray begged.
“Just a few,” Hattie agreed. She seemed to enjoy the fact that Bo Ray marveled at the snowcapped mountains around them, the greenery that grew so lush, the color of the lake.
Focused as he was on the other side of the lake, Quinn hadn’t noticed that Danni had left them. When he turned, he saw that she was standing on the top of the hillock, staring at the castle.
The castle created a scene of discord, jarring the peace of the day. Time had aged the stone so that it seemed to be like a black rip or tear, a schism in the scenery. A lovely villa should have stood on the site, complete with manicured gardens and flowers blooming everywhere.
As he watched Danni, standing there, gazing pensively at the castle, the day suddenly began to change. Clouds moved across the lake as if they’d been thrown. The sun disappeared; the bright afternoon faded. Darkness seemed to be coming at an accelerated rate.
“Time to go!” Father Ryan shouted.
“Wait!” Natasha said, pointing.
They all looked at Danni. She stood on the hill, long hair flowing in the wind. She continued to stare at the castle—and started walking toward it.
/>
Quinn began to move, but Natasha grabbed his arm. “Follow her, but stay well behind. Let her lead us.”
He wanted to jerk free from Natasha so he could run forward and put an arm around Danni. He didn’t want her walking alone. The weather, the day, had changed so quickly. From light to darkness. She headed toward the stark and foreboding castle as though in a trance.
“Not too far behind,” he muttered to Natasha.
They all followed Danni back to the castle. It was going to rain, Quinn thought. He turned back to the lake for a moment.
Spring still seemed to remain there. He realized that sun still dappled the water.
The darkness was over the castle.
Just as they made it back inside, a tremendous brilliance lit up the world around them. It was a flash of lightning, succeeded almost instantly by a clap of thunder that seemed to shake the very earth and stone of the castle’s foundation.
“Good thing we don’t have any electricity to lose,” Bo Ray said. “We’re okay—aren’t we?”
“We’re fine in here,” Billie reassured him. “Generators don’t go out because of lightning and we’ve flashlights aplenty and batteries to keep them blazing.”
“Yeah, of course,” Bo Ray said.
Quinn barely heard them.
Danni paused in the great hall, looking up at the portrait of the medieval knight above the great stone fireplace. She studied it curiously, but there was no emotion in her features. She walked through to the kitchen and then the pantry—and straight to the archway and the stone steps that led down to the crypt.
Quinn felt Natasha’s hand on his arm. “Stay close, but follow her lead,” Natasha said again.
He turned to Father Ryan, who nodded grimly.
Danni walked down the steps; she hadn’t stopped for a flashlight. Billie came hurrying forward, supplying Quinn with one of their largest lanterns. He whispered his thanks, throwing light ahead of Danni. Maybe, in her current state, she could see in the dark.
And maybe not.
He was hardly aware of the others behind him as he tried to keep his distance—while staying no more than an arm’s length from Danni.
She passed the crypt that had been sealed, came to those that were broken and crumbling and moved into the oldest part of the crypt, where decaying and yellowed linen covered what was left of the mortal remains of the dead.
The air was filled with a dank scent, not so much of rot, but of time and decay and death. Perhaps because of the depth they were at or the cold that permeated the underground tomb here, some of the bodies had naturally mummified. From somewhere far behind him, he heard a muffled groan of horror.
Bones protruded here and there where the linen of a shroud had completely desiccated. Half of an eyeless, mummified face seemed to watch them as they moved closer.
Danni paid no attention to the bodies on their final beds. She walked until she could go no farther and stopped at the wall.
She turned to speak to Quinn as if she hadn’t been in a trance at all. “Quinn, I think he’s in the wall. Someone put up new—well, new two hundred years ago—plaster or some other building material.”
Quinn looked at her and then at the wall. He stepped forward, tapping the end of the giant flashlight against it.
A hollow sound greeted him.
He didn’t ask her how she’d known. He gestured at Billie. “Can you go up and grab a poker from the fireplace?”
“Aye, Quinn.”
“I’ll go with him,” Father Ryan said. “None of us should be anywhere in this place alone.”
Quinn was surprised that no one else said a word. No one asked Danni how she could possibly have known to come to the far back of the crypt to look for the body of a man who should’ve been in one of the newer sarcophagi toward the front.
Billie and Father Ryan hurried off. They returned with two pokers and an ash broom. Quinn lifted one of the pokers and slammed it hard against the plaster that covered the rear wall.
It gave quickly.
Father Ryan, big and heavily muscled, picked up another poker. Between them, they worked at the wall, and white plaster began to crumble around them. Only the support beams remained intact.
Billie took the broom and swept the floor, trying to clear away the rubble.
They all stood back.
The corpse had been positioned against the support beams for the false wall, held there with clamps. He appeared to be standing.
His arms were folded over his chest, frozen there by death or time.
He had mummified. Tight, almost black, skin was stretched across the bone; the eyes were closed and sunken.
And yet they appeared to watch. To stare at them with mockery and loathing.
And...evil.
Had the man been evil? He’d been vain—he had desperately wanted friendship with Byron and Mary and Percy. Had that covetous desire turned him evil? Or had he unleashed something terrible without knowing it? Had he somehow taken on the depravity of the man who had lived in the castle before him?
Quinn didn’t know the answers. He felt that what they were about to do was the right thing.
They had found him.
Henry Sebastian Hubert.
Chapter Thirteen
IN DEATH, HUBERT had been dressed in a poet’s shirt, now shredded and covered with the tomb’s dust. A rich silk coat was worn over the shirt and his breeches were tucked into leather boots, adding to the impression that he stood there, watching them.
As the seconds ticked past, Quinn realized he was staring at the corpse, wondering how so much evil could have been embodied in one man.
Wondering how it could seem that the man was somehow still alive, staring back at them in such a mocking fury.
Finally, he heard Hattie’s loud, shaky breath. “Oh, my God,” she said.
“Wait! How...how do we know it’s him?” Bo Ray asked.
Quinn told himself the man was a corpse—just a corpse.
He walked closer, studying it.
There was no resemblance to images he’d seen of Henry, and he found it difficult to tell one mummified corpse from another.
“The clothing is right for the era,” Natasha said.
Quinn bent down; something had fallen to the stone floor within the wall. He picked it up. It was a brass plaque.
Dusting it off, he read aloud, “‘Henry Sebastian Hubert. Disturb not the dead, nor shall any man awaken the soul that rests in peace and darkness.’”
“This plaque with his name is a pretty good sign, I’d say,” Hattie suggested dryly.
“Let’s get him out of here,” Quinn said, looking at Billie.
“Wait.” Father Ryan made the sign of the cross.
Natasha might have been a voodoo priestess worshipping gods with other names, but she made the sign of the cross, as well.
Father Ryan beseeched God’s blessing and begged His protection, for they now walked through the valley of the shadow of death.
He finished with an “Amen” that they all echoed.
“Natasha?” Father Ryan said next.
Natasha nodded and stepped forward. She clasped one of the talismans she wore around her neck and began to chant in singsong Creole. Finally, she, too, stepped back and said, “Now. Take him. Billie, come with me. I want gas and accelerant to be used. We want him to burn and then we’ll send his ashes to the four corners of the world.”
“I’ll help,” Bo Ray cried, following her. He was obviously eager to leave the crypt behind.
Ron Hubert was motionless, staring at the corpse of his ancestor.
Danni, who was just fine now, took Ron by the arm. “We’ve found him. Now all we have to do is really bury the past,” she said. “Or put an end to it, anyway.”
Ron nodded, still staring at the corpse. Then he blinked. “Yes, yes, of course. It’s just a little...”
“A little shocking to see a corpse like this—especially when that corpse is an ancestor. I can only imagine,” Danni said
. “Let’s get out of here. Hattie? Will you come with us?”
“Of course.”
Danni led Ron Hubert and Hattie out.
“Father, help me?” Quinn asked as the others left, their footsteps loud in the quiet of the crypt. “Billie, if you’ll position yourself so...”
As they disappeared, Natasha said matter-of-factly, “I’ve got the light and I’ll keep it trained on the wall if you gentlemen will disengage the body.”
“Billie, please stand in front,” Quinn said.
Billie stood braced to catch the corpse if it fell as Father Ryan and Quinn struggled to remove it from the beams set in to create the false wall.
Quinn was glad Ron Hubert was gone. When they dislocated the corpse from its position, it was so dry an arm and a foot snapped off.
“Make sure we have all the pieces,” Natasha said.
Quinn scowled at her. As if he didn’t know that.
She smiled, reading his mind. “Sorry. I’ll see that nothing...is left behind,” she said.
He nodded.
He’d had no idea just how hard it would be to carry a broken corpse. They didn’t get more than a few feet before the brittle neck broke and the head fell off.
They stood there, gaping at one another.
“You men,” Natasha said. “You stay here. I’ll get a sheet or something to wrap it in.”
“Hey, you didn’t figure on this, either!” Quinn called after her.
They all suddenly noticed that she was the only one who’d had a flashlight on—just as she left with it.
Quinn searched for where he’d set down his own light, but Father Ryan had already found it, as well as his own.
“Human nature to fear the dark,” Ryan said cheerfully. “Our ancestors had to fear the nightly predators, so naturally they preferred light.”
“Good logic, Father,” Billie agreed. Quinn saw the older man’s face. Billie didn’t rattle easily, any more than he did, but they were all somewhat spooked at being in the crypt, with decaying corpses on slabs around them—and the mummified and now-broken body of Henry Sebastian Hubert in their keeping.
At least they didn’t have to wait long; Natasha hurried back with a large sheet, Danni on her heels. “Billie and Hubert built up a nice fire outside. They found some old crating to lie the...the corpse on.”