Darkness Watching by Emma L. Adams

Author:Emma L. Adams [Adams, Emma L.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: BA
Published: 2016-07-07T23:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The Library

I couldn’t stop looking around as we made our way through the dark streets, Cyrus leading the way. I didn’t see any of the strange birds swooping overhead, but somehow that made me more nervous, as though we were being watched by unseen eyes. We crossed the town square in silence, like thieves, and slipped into the alleyway between the art gallery and the cathedral.

“Where are we going?” I whispered to Claudia.

“The library entrance is hidden in the cemetery,” she replied. Sure enough, Cyrus jumped over the stone wall onto the damp grass that surrounded the gravestones.

“Really?” I said, following him over the wall. “Seems a weird place to hide a library.”

It was even creepier at night. The sense that the dead were present all around us was almost suffocating. An almost-full moon was caught between two spires reaching from the cathedral into the indigo sky, surrounded by a halo of ghostly light. Black shapes flitted overhead. Knowing they were sinister messenger birds, belonging to the Venantium, did nothing to ease my apprehension.

“The Venantium seem to have a thing for creepy places,” said Claudia. “This place has been around as long as the library itself―about five hundred years. I’m guessing they figured no one would go snooping around a graveyard at night, right under their noses.”

“They thought wrong,” said Howard. “I’ve sneaked in there a dozen times, at least.”

Cyrus stopped in front of a pedestal, on which stood a large statue of a weather-beaten gargoyle. The rough stone was covered in so much moss; it was impossible to make out any of its features. The foot of the statue was on a level with Howard’s head and towered over the rest of us.

Cyrus rummaged in the pockets of his jeans and pulled out a silver key.

“I didn’t steal it,” he told me, before I could ask where he got it. “Leo borrowed it from our guardian, who used to work for the Venantium.”

I wanted to ask more, but he’d already inserted the key into a hole on the side of the pedestal and turned it once, clockwise. With a grating sound, the front of the stone pedestal swung open, revealing the top of a dark staircase.

“Lights,” whispered Cyrus, and five small white lights flared up in the others’ hands. I concentrated hard on the connection to the Darkworld, and it responded, my hand igniting like the others’. I hoped it wouldn’t go out.

Down we went into the darkness. At once, the sense of claustrophobia hit me, but I forced back my panic and concentrated on keeping up with the others. The staircase gradually grew steeper, and the walls became narrower until Howard’s shoulders brushed them on either side.

Just as I thought we must be a hundred feet underground—or more—the stairs opened into a wide passageway. I saw several tunnels branching off it, but Howard led us in a straight line. Candles cast an eerie, blue light from old-fashioned brackets either side, each clasped in the claws of a crudely carved, stone bird.

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