Page 118 of She Haunts Me Still

“Shhh.” He practically hauls her inside the armoire, coaxing her toward the opening in the back. “Don’t let them hear you.”

Mallory’s pulse hums. The elevator floor is covered in debris, and mold snakes up the back. The jagged lines of the gate have turned sea-green with age, and the rusted lever releases a grating sound as Ezra yanks it harshly to the left. The elevator groans through its descent, reaching the basement with a sigh.

Ezra opens the gate and snatches her hand again. She scrambles to register her surroundings: shadows clinging to the walls, sticky cobwebs in every corner, the smell of fresh earth. A circle of stones, something lumpy and dark in the middle, like a bedsheet thrown over mounds of dirt.

And Ezra, all but dragging her behind him toward an arched opening in the wall.

The tunnel. The one that once connected the sanitarium to the chapel, from the blueprints. The one that now leads to Thorne Hall. Her stomach plummets.

“Ezra,” she protests, “wait. Where are you taking me?”

“Away from this place,” he grinds out. “I’ll explain when we get to my room.”

She halts, boots skidding as he keeps pulling her. “No—no.Ezra, let go—I don’t want to go there.”

He flings an incredulous glance over his shoulder. “You want to stayhere? With those freaks foaming at the mouth to watch me stab you to death? No fucking way.”

“Wait.” She’s off balance, confused. “I don’t understand. Isn’t that why I’m here? Isn’t that what you want, too?”

Ezra turns abruptly, practically slamming into her.

“That,” he says, “is thelastthing I want.”

“What?”

He searches her gaze. “Don’t you know how much you mean to me? Don’t you think I’ve been losing my mind trying to figure out a way to stop this?”

Her breath rushes out. “What?”

Ezra’s arm hooks around her waist, trying again to coax her toward the tunnel. “Just come with me, and I’ll tell you everything, I’ll—”

“No.” Mallory twists away, heart hammering. Distinctly aware of how easy it would be for him to carry her into that tunnel if he wanted to. “No. I’m not going anywhere until you explain. Now.”

He drags a hand through his hair. “Alright—alright.Fuck.”

Mallory leans against the wall, trying to calm her breathing. Ezra stalks past her, pacing the room like a jaguar in a too-small cage. She tracks him with suspicion. A beast, especially a restless one, will eventually pounce.

“You were right when you said my family is in a…cult.” A muscle flickers in Ezra’s jaw. “I grew up thinking of it as religion. My grandfather, he always positioned it that way. And I didn’t know any better. For a while.”

“The entity your family worships,” Mallory says, “is a demon, right?”

Ezra takes a long inhale. He glances at the ceiling, like he’s afraid the creature might hear.

“In a way,” he says. “He’s an ancient deity of biblical times. A fallen angel, doomed to eternal life between worlds. Feeding from dead things, forever craving the blood of something living. Some think of him as the first vampire, although drinking blood from a living source cannot sustain him. Only blood harvested from a heart in a similar in-between state can extend his time on earth. He takes several forms in legends and is represented by the symbol of a raven. Most people call him the Blood Angel.”

“But you call him ‘Our Lord,’ ” Mallory says. “I heard you. Youworshiphim? Pray to him?” She narrows her eyes. “That’s why there are raven statues all over this campus. Your family put them there.”

“Yes.” Ezra swallows. “When my grandfather Jacob was young, before all this started, he was a religious scholar. He grew up in England, outside Oxford. Was born into a wealthy family. He began researching Enochian, an ancient alphabet of symbols believed to be the language of angels.”

Mallory looks down at Ezra’s hand. “Your rings. That’s what they are.”

He nods. “Jacob moved to Rome in search of a legendary book written in Enochian.The Book of Angels. He studied at Sapienza. He grew…obsessed. His professors and contemporaries all told him it was impossible, that people have been searching for the book for centuries. But Jacob found it in the possession of an elderly woman living in Matera, whosefamily had kept it hidden all the way back to the fifteen hundreds. Jacob befriended her. Tricked her.”

Mallory squints again as she guesses what came next. “Killed her.”

Ezra’s darkened stare says more than any answer could. “The book contained stories about the Blood Angel, supposedly written by other angels of his time, ones who followed him. Prayers. Evocations. Rituals to restore him to life, temporarily, despite his fall. Jacob learned the Blood Angel could be awoken and brought over to our world, and that whoever did so would be greatly rewarded. The requirement was a very specific offering: a gift of a dead heart that still had blood for him to drink. A perfect heart.”

Understanding slides into place. “And the New England Vampire Panic was an easy excuse to find it.”