Page 7 of Unraveled
He won’t see me coming.
Chapter 3
I followIrene and Skylar through a mazelike series of long corridors. My breath stutters out of me as I cross my arms to shield my body from the surrounding cold.
The building trembles once again, and I fear it’ll collapse at any moment. What kind of magic does the beast possess to take down a magical structure like the veil?
Steam clouds my vision as we step inside the machine room. Based on everyone’s sweaty faces, I expect it to be a furnace, but it’s even colder than out in the streets.
There’s a distinct ticking, like a clock, somewhere in the background.
Tick, tick, tick.
The team hustles around us, distracted by their own tasks. They wear similar clothing to my sister and Skylar, simple brown woolen trousers and white shirts. A few have masks over their faces, made of brass and aged leather.
I’m speechless. Not at their strange getups or the building so massive it could rival the library. But at the feeling of... death, lingering in this place.
Cold. Slimy. Unwelcome and wrong.
“The beast is gone.” A woman’s shout breaks through the loud hissing of steam. I can’t place her with my limited vision of the crew, nor can I see the infamous machine.
“Maybe he gave up and is searching for a victim instead?” another person says, rushing out of the mist while their eyes scan the wooden crates next to me.
The steam thins, and now, I can see a pyramid made of bronze that looms over every inch of the room. Different-sized panels cover the entire geometric shape, along with gears that click a mechanical rhythm. Around it, walkways wide enough to fit a person wrap the pyramid’s body, and a scientist tightens a tube caked in a viscous substance to the wall.
I blink and shift my gaze to another using a pulley to haul a sack of clinking metal parts over the side of the pyramid. This is not what I thought it would be.
I pause just before I step in a pool of liquid that’s run off from a hose nearby, and wrinkle my nose at the dark color. Burgundy, maybe even purple, and smelling of rotten meat.
“Don’t stop working to fix whatever that monster destroyed. We haven’t seen the last of it. I fear it knows what we have here. I’m not sure how, but we have to stop it before it succeeds at ripping apart what’s left of the veil. For our people,” Skylar says from the entrance of the room. He tucks a strand of golden hair behind his ear, his dark brown eyes fix on me, and my stomach hollows.
He’s speaking to me, maybe sensing I’m on the edge of backing away from this madness. His scrutiny is intense and makes me squirm. I reach for the hood of my cloak and pull it forward farther so it covers my face in its entirety.
A ray of light stutters and then shoots into the sky from the pyramid’s point, blinding me as I look through the glass dome over us.
The hair of my arms stands on end, lifted by static. Then, the scent hits me like a wall of decay, burned hair, and alcohol.
I search the room for the source and find a man in a jumpsuit using leather straps to pull a dead person out of a bronze chamber connected to the pyramid. I stumble back and crash into a broad, warm body.
“Easy there,” Skylar whispers against my ear, his hands steadying my floundering steps. His touch is hot like coals on fire, and when I try to move out of his grasp, he tightens his hold.
I’m too distracted to ask him to release me. All I can focus on is the body’s gray skin pulling into the crevices between ribs and wrapping tightly over the thick bones of kneecaps.
“W-what are you doing here?” I gasp and shove him away as horror settles in the pit of my stomach. A bitter taste drenches my palate and my lips quiver.
“We’re protecting our people, which is more than I can say for you, librarian...” Skylar moves past me, gesturing at the body. A bald, ratlike face. Bone structure that’s more angular than a human. Its blank eyes stare at nothing, red irises hazed by death.
Not the corpse of a person, but a beast. Somehow, I don’t feel better about it.
“Mia, are you alright?” Irene says, with the same placating tone Mother used when we were upset as children. Whatever she’s trying to accomplish, it only disturbs me further.
Who could be okay with this? How can all these people be so casual around a dead being? I gag, in spite of my empty stomach, but calm my body before I’m sick over my only good pair of boots.
“Nevan, we have company. Get that thing out of sight.”
The man drops the dead beast from the leather strappings. He glances in our direction warily, wiping the sweat that drips from his bald head, before he rushes to pull out a large canvassheet and drape it over the body. As if that makes everything better. I look away so I don’t fixate on the dark spots already staining the fabric.
How many times have they done this, hidden a corpse from a visitor?
