“You need me,” Bill said as he followed her toward the mine. “I’ve been running ice in those tunnels for a year. You ain’t never gone farther than the ore dump. Without me, you’ll get yourself turned about or trapped in a sinkhole.”
“If I need guidance, I’ll ask one of the men.”
“Those same men who say ladies oughtn’t be in the mine at all?” Bill shot back. “What are you gonna tell them, that your dead pa ran off with Alina?”
“When has anyone in this camp ever thought of me as a lady?” Still, he had a point. Her spell drew her toward Alina, but it couldn’t guide her through the labyrinthine twists of the tunnels.
“You’re scared for me, I know,” said Bill. “You worry like my own ma. But that’s my sister down there, and no walking corpse is going to stop me from getting her out.”
“You don’t know what he is.” Valerica’s father had been buried facedown, with sharpened stakes planted in the earth to impale his body should he try to return. It hadn’t been enough. Others had tried to warn them, urging her grandfather to burn the body, but he had refused. He hadn’t believed, and it had killed him.
Valerica had thought she would be safe in America, with an ocean between her and her father. The purity of water was one of the few things his kind feared. Had the ship gone down, or had he fallen overboard, it would have destroyed him. His body would have sunk quickly, drawn toward hell. She had seen it once as a child. Her father and his fellows had flung one of their number into a pond as punishment for some transgression. Like a twisted baptism, the immersion purified him, burning the very flesh from his bone.
She had underestimated her father’s determination. You are mine, little Valerica, to the last drop of blood in your veins.
“Please, Aunt V.”
Valerica bit her lip. If anything happened to Bill, Elizabeth ’s spirit would never forgive her. But without him, her slim chance to save Alina dwindled to nothing. “I’m sorry, love,” she whispered. To Bill, she said, “You may guide me through the mine. When we are close, you will stay hidden.” She raised a hand, chopping off his half-formed protest. “Promise me.”
Bill scowled, but nodded.
They walked in silence toward the square hole in the earth. To either side, iron pumps rested over narrow air shafts. With the pumps shut down for the night, the air inside would be hot, bitter, and stale.
The rattle in Valerica’s hand drew them down the ramp, into darkness.
Candlelight sent shadows flickering over the planks and timbers of the tunnel. The huge support beams locked together in an unending series of squares and triangles. Valerica’s hand was sweaty on the rattle.
“You still haven’t told me what your pa wants with my sister,” Bill said.
“He wants me.” Alina was born of dark magic, the strongest she had ever cast. That had to be what had drawn him from Romania. She had led him here. “He and his fellows taught me the black arts.”
She glanced at Bill. His face was pale, but he didn’t react. “So you’re some kind of witch?”
“The name is strigoi viu, those who are cursed from birth.” Her own evil paled beside the sins of those who returned, the ones who defeated death through blood and blackness. The ones like her father. “They teach their children the magic to escape damnation. To endure death and rise as strigoi mort.”
She wiped her face. “He would have burned me on the pyre to stop me from leaving.”
“Is that why he’s here? To kill you?”
“To reclaim me.” No doubt Alina as well. Her father’s blood pumped through Alina’s heart, too. She raised the candle. The tunnel leveled off here, opening into a loading platform. “We need to go deeper.”
“To the right,” Bill said. “The ladder’ll take us down.”
Bill had been right. Without his guidance, she would have been lost.
At the bottom of the ladder, she stopped to put a fresh candle into the holder. Wax dripped along the iron spike of the handle, singeing her callused fingers.
Bill pointed to a sign nailed to an overhead beam. “We’re at fifteen hundred feet. They closed this part down a week or so back, after the tunnel flooded.”
Valerica nodded, remembering the men who had barely escaped. Many had burns on their hands and faces from the steam.
“When they finally got it pumped dry, they lost a blasting team in a cave-in. Foreman wants to tunnel around, go after a more stable part of the vein. Don’t know why he didn’t-”
Valerica grabbed his arm. “He is there. In those tunnels.”
Bill swallowed.
“No matter what you hear, no matter how fear compels you, do not follow. If I do not return, run to the surface.” She handed him the extra candles and several matches, as well as Alina’s rattle. “Flee as if your soul depends on it.”
She expected an argument, but he only nodded. Perhaps he could sense it too, the smell of decay and the heaviness of the shadows. The walls were hot and damp, as though Valerica moved through the bowels of an enormous serpent.
Valerica drew her penny knife and jabbed the tip into her forearm. A thin line of blood tickled her skin.
A small spell, undetectable against the stench of magic that filled this place. She used it to draw the shadows close, wrapping herself in darkness. Her candleflame took on a blue hue, invisible to any but herself. She saw Bill searching, proof her spell had worked.
Her father had the blood of his victims to fuel his power. Valerica had only herself. But she had slipped past him once before, in Romania.
These deeper tunnels were rough and unfinished. Loose rock and dirt made her footing treacherous. She moved cautiously, testing the ground before each step.
She smelled the fire before she saw it, an oily smoke that dried her eyes and filled her nose with the scent of burned meat. She glanced behind to be certain Bill hadn’t followed, then moved closer. The tunnel split, veering off at right angles. Her father was to the right.
Knife raised, she moved closer. A knife blow wouldn’t kill him, but her blood gave the blade power. So long as she struck quickly, before he could defend himself, she had a chance.
“Hello, Valerica.” The dry voice plunged her into despair. “Come, let me look upon my only daughter.”
Running would only anger him. Praying Bill would have the sense to flee, she stepped around the corner. Her father was unchanged. He wore loose trousers and an embroidered, off-white shirt. His face was the color of old linen. Even his lips were bloodless. Dirty tangles of black hair hung past his shoulders. He reached for her, and his yellow nails were like claws.
Valerica raised her knife. “Where is Alina?”
He nodded to a broken rail car leaning against the wall, up the tunnel. Valerica could feel his power reaching for her, like insects burrowing through her skin. She ignored it, hurrying past the small fire to peer into the car. She jammed the pointed handle of the candle holder into the wall between the planks and reached for her daughter.
Alina lay naked, sprawled in a bed of dirt and straw. Blood crusted her round cheeks and pale chest. Valerica lifted her. Alina didn’t respond, and Valerica felt like her own heart had stopped beating. She forgot about her father, about Bill, about everything but the tiny, bloody body in her arms.
“Open your eyes, child.” She scrubbed desperately at the blood. The cuts were too shallow to have killed her. She fought to keep from shaking Alina. “Please.” She smeared her own blood over the cuts, using all of her strength to try to break her father’s spell.
Alina whimpered softly, and tears blurred Valerica’s vision. “You’re safe now,” she said, slipping into Romanian. “Tu eşti în siguranţă.”
“You thought I would harm her?” asked her father. “Why would I hurt one with such potential?”