⊹ Book 2 of the Aldergrove Duology ⊹
{ONC 2023 Shortlister}
Desperate to see his dead mate again, Sebastien makes a deal with the Devil. But the price he has to pay is much more complicated than simply handing over his soul.
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Sebastien read over all the information Caedis had given him along with the papers he found on the desk in the bedroom.
Caedis' man, Henry, was in Alder Estate to investigate some strange animal sightings the locals reported. Henry had documented and followed several of the animals, and in the pictures he'd managed to get of them, they looked like walking corpses. And as for the strange things he'd been seeing inside the house.... Well, his reports were enough to unsettle anyone, but the pictures had Sebastien feeling a little hesitant.
"What the hell is going on out here?" he asked himself, examining the pictures of the walking corpses and the strange blurs in the photos Henry had taken around the house. Some of the blurs looked human-shaped, but some looked more animal-like.
Henry hadn't gotten to the bottom of anything, though. There were leads, however—leads that Sebastien could follow and perhaps use to get answers. Caedis just told him that the estate's groundskeeper started feeling sick after coming out of the basement, so that was where Sebastien would start. He was a demon after all, so he didn't have to worry about catching anything.
With a quiet sigh, he put the papers in his hands down and glanced at the file with Henry's information on it. It said that Henry was a two-hundred-year-old demon; if whatever might be lingering here was able to take him down—if he was even dead—then Sebastien needed to take caution. He wasn't going to be careless.
He got up and left the room. As he made his way through the house, the floor creaked at his every step, and the walls rattled as though there were rats crawling around inside them. It reminded him a little of Aldergrove Academy, and for a moment, he let himself wonder...what if this place was home to a hungry, ancient spirit, too? He'd learned from experience that spirits liked taking hold of large, old buildings like this.
No. If this house was possessed, he'd be able to feel it. After all, he was a creature meant to serve and feed ancient entities.
But he didn't want to think about any of that. Aldergrove Academy was behind him.
Sebastien headed downstairs and found the door to the cellar in the service corridor. He didn't head straight down, though. First, he used his ethos to see if there were any auras down there...but there was nothing. The room at the bottom of the stairs felt as empty as his heart.
So, he made his way down into the darkness.
But that was when the smell returned. That repulsive, suffocating stench of rotting meat—a smell that could only belong to a corpse that had been left to decompose.
This time, though...it was moving.
The smell twisted around inside Sebastien's nostrils, ensnaring his heightened senses. He stopped dead in his tracks, focusing on it.
