The air in the hidden tunnel was tomb-cold and tasted of Thames clay and forgotten things. Alaric led the way with the unerring confidence of one who had walked these passages when they were new-cut, when the buildings above were fields. His footsteps made no sound on the worn stone. Kael's, behind him, were a soft, padding rhythm a wolf in a concrete den.
"This passage predates the Underground by two centuries," Alaric murmured, his voice barely disturbing the silence. "Built by a coven of plague-witches who needed to move bodies and themselves unseen. The Council sealed it in the 1800s. I unsealed it."
"Of course you did," Kael muttered, his eyes gleaming in the low light as they adjusted to the dark. "Because why use the front door like a normal immortal?"
They emerged into a coal cellar that smelled of disuse and damp plaster. A quick ascent up a rusted iron ladder brought them to a scullery, then into the stark, empty kitchen of a townhouse that had been quietly maintained, utterly unlived-in. Through a window, the misty glow of a London streetlamp filtered in.
"Two minutes," Alaric said, checking a slim, antique watch that didn't tick. "The southbound Night Tube to Tottenham Court Road is in two minutes. From there, it's a seven-minute walk to the Museum's staff entrance on Montague Place."
"Taking the Tube. With that," Kael said, nodding to the reinforced case now in his own grip. "You know those trains are monitored by the Council's transit wardens."
"Precisely. The most obvious route is often the safest, because it is the most brazen. A warden will note two supernaturals on a late train and think nothing of it London is full of us going about our business. They will be looking for furtive movements, ley-line jumps, shadow-walking. They will not be looking for a Progenitor and his werewolf bodyguard taking public transport like tourists."
Kael grunted, conceding the point. They slipped out a rear service door into a mews alley, merging with the thin, late-night foot traffic of Mayfair. The rain had softened to a drizzle, painting the cobbles and black taxis in slick, reflected neon. To the humans they passed a couple laughing under an umbrella, a solitary businessman with a thousand-yard stare they were just two more figures in the London night. One tall and pale in a dark overcoat, the other broad and purposeful beside him.
The Green Park station was a maw of light and stale, warm air. As they descended, Alaric felt the subtle, prickling scan of a transit warden's magic a stationed vampire, likely, tasting the metaphysical air of each passenger. He let a fraction of his own power seep out, not a challenge, but an identifier: Progenitor-class, registered, no active threats. The scan passed over them without pausing. See, he thought, just another ancient being going about his business.
The train car was nearly empty. A student asleep with headphones on, a cleaner in hi-vis vest weary at the end of a shift. Alaric and Kael took seats at the far end. The case sat on the floor between Kael's boots.
The rhythmic clatter of the train, the flicker of dark tunnels and sudden, startling station lights, was hypnotically mundane. It was in this false calm that Alaric spoke, his voice so low only Kael's preternatural hearing could catch it.
"The witch who made that book her name was Sorina. She was Dacian, like me. But where my people were warriors, hers were the capcăuni the keepers of places, the speakers to stone and stream." He stared at the adverts flashing past for musicals and language apps, seeing another world. "We were allied. Before the change. She believed the power we sought the power that made us what we are could be woven into the land itself, into a network. A living system. I believed it could be mastered, controlled, focused."
"Let me guess," Kael said, his voice a gravelly whisper. "It went badly."
"The ritual site was a Nemeton a sacred grove in the Carpathians. We were not the first to use it. Something was already there, sleeping in the bedrock. We didn't weave the power. We woke it. And it broke. It shattered into five fragments, and into us." His hand tightened on the metal pole beside him. "Sorina tried to contain the backlash with her blood magic. This book," he glanced at the case, "was her focus. It burned in the chaos. I saw it consumed. I felt her die."
The train slowed for Piccadilly Circus. The doors hissed open, no one got on or off. The silence stretched.
"If she died," Kael said slowly, "and her book burned what is in that case?"
"A ghost," Alaric repeated his earlier word, but now it was heavier. "Or a copy. Or a fragment that survived. But the message suggests knowledge. Someone knows Sorina's work survived. Someone knows I am connected to it. And that someone is using Scottish bell heather to tell me so."
"A trap, then."
"Always. But the bait is genuine. I must know what this book is now. And Elara Thomas, for all her chaotic methodology, is the best archivist of artifacts in Europe. If anyone can read the scars on that book without triggering its defenses, it's her."
They disembarked at Tottenham Court Road and surfaced into a different London wider streets, the looming bulk of the Centre Point tower, the vibrant, grimy energy of Soho giving way to the academic solemnity of Bloomsbury. The British Museum, when they turned onto Great Russell Street, was a monumental silhouette against the city-lit sky, a fortress of human knowledge that hid a deeper, darker library within.
At the discreet staff entrance on Montague Place, Alaric pressed a buzzer. A camera lens above it gleamed. He looked directly into it, allowing his eyes to reflect the distant streetlight for a fraction of a second a subtle, non-human glint that was the equivalent of a supernatural ID badge.
A click, and the heavy door swung open.
The man who greeted them was human, but his eyes held the flat, knowing look of one who worked deep in the belly of the secret world. "Lord Valerius. You're expected by the Keeper of the Arcanum." His gaze flicked to Kael and the case. "Your associate and property must be cleared."
"Of course," Alaric said smoothly. "But time is of the essence. Please inform Keeper Thomas that we have a Code Carmine artifact. Unregistered. Dacian origin."
The man's professional composure cracked for an instant. Code Carmine. A term for Progenitor-level magical materials of unknown and potentially catastrophic volatility. He nodded tersely and spoke into a lapel mic.
As they were led through a labyrinth of back corridors past crates of pottery shards, under the silent gaze of Assyrian lion statues in storage Alaric felt the immense, silent weight of the Museum around him. Here, amidst the plundered history of the world, his own ancient secret felt both magnified and diminished.
They reached an unmarked elevator. It descended further than the building's public floors should allow. When the doors opened, they revealed not a basement, but a vast, cathedral-like space of steel and glass, lit by the cool blue glow of spectral lanterns. This was the Arcanum.
And standing before a rack containing what looked like crystallized lightning in a lead case, was a woman with wild, dark hair tied in a haphazard bun, wearing a cardigan dusted with something that shimmered. She turned, and her eyes a startling, clear grey widened not with fear, but with furious, brilliant recognition as they locked onto the case in Kael's hand.
"Oh, you have got to be kidding me," Elara Thomas said, her Welsh lilt sharp with academic outrage. "You brought a Code Carmine into my archive without a containment report? What is wrong with you, Valerius? Is your immortality making you stupid?"
Alaric met her furious gaze. "Hello, Elara. We need your help. And I fear we have very little time before the artifact, or its owner, decides to make a more dramatic entrance."