House of Ravens (2 page)

If my brain were functioning better, I’d
take a closer look and learn something.

But I just keep blinking, rapidly, trying to
bring it all into focus.

“
Is he down
there?”

Cameron’s voice causes me to jump in alarm.
I had forgotten I had an audience above me.

I walk back to the platform and see the
faces peering down at me through the huge hole in the ceiling.
“No,” I try to say, but my throat is too tight, and the sound comes
out strangled. “It’s empty. Rath, did you know this was down
here?”

He’s pale, his expression stricken and sick.
He shakes his head. “No.” His own voice is strained.

“
I think you should see
this,” I say, fixing him with a solid, long stare. I just know the
same emotions are rushing through the both of us. Neither of us can
make sense of what is going on.

Rath squats at the edge of the opening and
hops down. Followed by him, is Ian.

A dozen more faces stare down at us, and
suddenly, I’m so terrified.

My father kept this space a secret, even
from Rath, all this time, and now I’ve shown it to half of my
House.

“
Nial, a word?” I say as my
voice quakes.

The others don’t have to be told directly.
They back away from the opening. The true thickness between the
ceiling of the…lab, and the ballroom is revealed when even I cannot
hear their footsteps retreat.

Nial hops down to my side, and his eyes
widen in wonder and awe as he looks around.

“
I don’t know what this
is,” I say as I look around. My throat feels dry, but in a human,
uncertain way. “Something…I don’t know. Something important was
going on here. But my father obviously meant to keep it a secret,
and I can only assume there’s a very real and very important reason
he did.”

I look around once more, still unable to
piece everything together. “They can’t say anything. Everyone
upstairs. To anyone. Not to each other. Not to the other House
members who aren’t here. No one. Not until we know what Henry was
doing down here.”

“
I understand, Alivia,” he
says. He can’t stop looking around, each new object he finds adding
more wonder to his expression. “Alivia, this… I beg of you to let
me come back down and investigate.”

“
Please,” I say, nodding in
agreement. “I… I don’t know…”

He nods when I don’t have words, and without
another of his own, he crouches for a moment before leaping
straight up and out of the hole above us.

I find Rath, standing in the center of the
room. He slowly turns, observing the space surrounding him. But he
doesn’t step foot from his place. He’s stiff, controlled. Unsure. A
million emotions are obvious on his face as he looks around. And I
feel for him, so much.

“
You really had no idea
this was down here, Rath?” Ian asks. He wanders around, looking in
the boxes on the shelves, reading small passages of the books that
sit open faced on the table.

“
No,” Rath says
quietly.

I step forward, though I have no idea where
I’m going or what I intend to look at. “When I first got to the
Conrath Estate, you said you lived in the workers’ house,” I say. I
stop just two steps away from Rath. I want to pull myself into his
chest and wrap my arms around him. For the both of us to find some
sort of comfort in the confusion we’re feeling right now. To go
back to the familiar.

But he’s so stiff and so tight, I’m afraid
the slightest disruption will cause him to explode.

“
You said it was the way
Henry preferred it,” I breathe. “I never understood that. Because
you said you and he were brothers, that you shared a bond. It never
made sense to me why he wouldn’t want you to live in the house with
him. But…” I falter as I look around.

“
This was why,” Rath
finishes for me, enlightenment in his voice. Understanding has
finally dawned on him.

“
He wanted it to remain a
secret,” I continue.

I wander back to the library and let my eyes
travel over the titles, not really taking them in. I hardly
understand the titles, much less what could be learned from their
contents.

“
I’ve known Henry so long,”
Rath says. He takes one hesitant step forward. Not really toward
anything, but I feel it’s a break of the extreme control he’s
trying to hold onto at this moment. “And suddenly, I feel as if I
never really knew the man, at all.”

“
This space,” Ian says as
he walks toward another wall that holds row after row of filing
cabinets. “It’s been here a long time. There’s no way it was
excavated after the original house was built. It’s been sitting
here all this time. What year was the house built?”

“
1799,” Rath says without
hesitance. He takes another step forward, in no particular
direction.

“
You think the other House
has one, too?” Ian asks.

The thought makes my heart skip twice. “It’s
possible,” I say. “This house holds so many secrets and hidden
things. If Henry felt the need for them, I don’t know why Elijah
wouldn’t have, as well.”

“
Damn,” Ian breathes.
“Crazy vampire brothers. Sure know how to keep the spook in all
that lore.”

“
I will advise you not to
speak ill of either Elijah or Henry Conrath,” Rath
growls.

Ian holds up his hands in surrender, and
he’s wise doing so. Rath is deadly, dangerous when he needs to be.
I still don’t understand what Rath is or what he’s capable of.

Once, months ago, when all of this was just
beginning, I saw him without a shirt. His body was covered in
scars. I still don’t know how he got them, but without a doubt,
Rath has a deadly history.

“
The smell,” I say as I
take in a deep breath through my nose, “it’s hard to tell how long
it’s been since he was down here. All the chemicals and equipment
are messing with my senses.”

“
Same here,” Ian says. He
walks over to a cabinet and opens the doors. Inside, he reveals
bottles full of chemicals. He moves to the next cabinet, but it’s
locked. Same with the one after that.

“
Alivia, do you really
think…” Rath can’t even finish that sentence. His throat chokes up
and the words can’t leave his lips.

“
I… I don’t know,” I say
shaking my head. “What we found in Colorado-”

“
Shit,” Ian says as
suddenly the pieces slide together for him. “This is what you got
so weird about when we were at your old apartment.”

I nod. Just last night, Ian and I were back
in Colorado, at my old apartment. We found the entire building
abandoned and when we went into my unit, the scene that greeted us
was a grim and unexplainable one. Blood everywhere, splattered on
the walls, saturated into the worn out carpet. Multiple people had
lost their lives in that space. There was no doubt about it.

But the thing that spooked me the most was
what rested on my old desk. A few small candles, battery operated,
and two pictures. One of my mother, the one used in her obituary.
And another of me. From when I was eighteen, at prom. It was taken
from a weird angle, likely from the shadows.

The reverence in that shrine. The
viciousness in the room.

I nod once more. “I couldn’t think of anyone
else capable of that level of violence.” My mind flashes to a night
in 1875, when Henry lost someone he loved, and the kind of
retaliation he’d been capable of. He snapped. He killed over thirty
citizens of Silent Bend that night. “Or who would have cared enough
to place a picture of both me and my mother there.”

Ian just shakes his head and turns back to
investigate the space.

“
And did it…” Rath tries to
talk. “Did it smell like Henry?”

I shrug my shoulders and shake my head. “I
don’t know. There was so much blood there. The building had been
abandoned. I’m sorry, Rath. I’m just not sure.”

“
Whoever put that stuff
there, it had been within the last four months,” Ian says. “So if
it was Henry, then he’s very much still alive.”

“
It’s kind of hard to
question and deny an empty tomb,” I say as my voice lowers.
Emotions are rising up in me. My thoughts are running a million
different directions.

Just minutes ago, I opened Henry’s tomb,
only to find it very much without a body.

It’s been one of my biggest desires since I
came to the Conrath Estate. To know my father. To have Henry at my
side. To learn about this man who created the other half of my
DNA.

Now, standing in this chamber, I realize
there is so much more to him then I had ever realized.

“
Rath, I need you to tell
me every detail about the morning my father was killed,” I tell
him. I walk forward, and for the first time since he left me
because of the choices I had made, I touch him. I take his hands in
mine and draw his eyes to me. “All of the details. Small, big.
Maybe we can figure this out.”

Rath nods, his eyes already growing distant.
When his knees seem to weaken, I lead him to a stool at one of the
tables and help him sit.

“
It now seems I know far
too little,” he says as his eyes fix on a non-particular spot on
the floor. “I was just arriving at the House in the morning. Your
father didn’t often sleep, so I was expecting a full day’s worth of
work for the two of us. He only slept maybe once a week, and that
day was not a day for him to sleep.”

Rath lets go of my hands and carefully folds
them in his lap. The crow’s feet around his eyes darken as they
tighten. His gaze grows even more distant. “I heard a disturbance.
No one should have been at the house, and your father was…is, not a
clumsy man. So, I ran. Heard his yell of pain. I ran through the
front doors, and saw, just as the man raised his hand, your father
on the floor in the foyer.”

Rath closes his eyes for a moment.

“
There’s no doubt, it was a
snake branded into the back of the man’s hand. Perhaps it is what
distracted me for just a second too long. I didn’t react fast
enough before the man swung that arm down, stake in hand, and drove
it through your father’s chest. He dragged your dying father out
onto the front steps, where the sun was rising.”

“
That’s the first weird
part,” Ian says, stepping forward with his arms crossed over his
chest. “A stake through the heart normally kills a vampire pretty
much instantly. Henry was still alive though when he was taken
outside?”

Rath’s eyes suddenly flick over to Ian. The
wheels are once again turning in his head. “Yes,” he confirms. “In
a tremendous amount of pain, but alive.”

“
For how long?” I ask, even
though it’s breaking my heart. I don’t want to be imagining my
father’s death, to try to build the scene behind my eyes. But…but
what if we can figure something out? Something that leads to
Henry?

“
Perhaps two minutes,” Rath
answers. His voice is thick. If this is difficult for me, it’s
nothing to how it is for him. “There was so much blood. More than I
think there should have been. I was trying to stop the bleeding, I
yanked the stake out. I wanted to take him back inside, to get him
out of the sunlight, but I didn’t dare move him.”

“
Did Henry say anything
before he died?” Ian asks, his brow furrowed.

Rath’s eyes jump from Ian
to me. My skin grows very cold, and I’m not sure I want to hear
what he’s about to say. “Only two words,” he whispers.
“
Guide her
.”

Tears spring to my eyes, but I refuse to let
them fall. My bottom lip begins to quiver, but I roll my hands into
fists and swear I will be strong.

“
And then what?” I choke
out.

Rath looks away. There’s something that
looks a lot like shame and disappointment in his eyes, and I know
it’s there because of me. Rath tried his best to fulfill my
father’s last request, but I ruined it all.

“
He died. I checked his
pulse, felt it stop. Wept as his body cooled and began to gray.”
Rath clears his throat, attempting to dislodge the emotion. But his
voice remains rough.

“
I carried him back inside
the House. Laid him there,” he points to the crest, which all this
time was a platform, hidden on the ballroom floor. “And I watched
him. For perhaps a day. Just waiting…” Emotion takes his ability to
speak for a moment. “Waiting for him to wake up. Waiting for him to
move. For him to sit up and ask me to prepare him some tea. But he
didn’t.”

My eyes flick to Ian’s as Rath falls quiet
for a long moment. There are so many things to be read off of Ian.
Doubt. Wonder. Shock. Hope.

And it’s all there, reflected inside of me,
as well. I don’t dare hope, but I also can’t ignore what is before
me.

“
So, the next morning, I
made phone calls. The lawyer. To have a new tomb built. All the
plans that your father had laid for me to carry out should he meet
his demise somehow. He’d already had a plan in place should
something like this happen.”

“
Maybe that’s another
clue,” Ian says. “He told you what to do should he die. He already
put the puzzle pieces together, so he could somehow fake this
death, for whatever reason.”

Fake his death.

It shakes my bones.

Fills my lungs with ice water.

Why?

Why would he do that?

“
Perhaps,” Rath says,
clearly as rattled by the words as I am. “But his procedures were
long laid out ones. He told me of certain plans, and those changed
after he learned of Alivia’s existence.”