Read Chapter 25: The Nest

The tunnel narrowed until Étienne had to duck, then crawl, then squeeze sideways through a crack that scraped the fresh bandage over his shoulder. Blood soaked through it again—Claire had done what she could with Giancarlo’s shirt torn into strips and a bottle of iodine from Marc’s pack, but the bullet had gone clean through and the wound was still weeping. Behind him, Giancarlo’s breath came wet and ragged, fever-sweat dripping off his face.

“Smell that?” François whispered from the rear.

Étienne stopped. The air had changed—earthy, musky, thick with the stench of urine and old meat. A low sound rose from ahead, a chittering that echoed off the stone walls and multiplied until it seemed to come from everywhere at once.

The tunnel opened into a chamber the size of a chapel. The ceiling arched twenty feet overhead, black with mineral stains, and the floor was carpeted in bone fragments, fur, and a thick brown sludge that stuck to their boots. And everywhere—covering the walls, hanging from the ceiling like grotesque fruit—were the creatures.

Claire raised her lamp. The light swept across dozens of shapes, each the size of a dog, mostly hairless, with wrinkled grey skin stretched tight over distended ribs. Their heads were too large for their bodies, jaws hanging open to reveal rows of needle teeth. They didn’t move. They didn’t blink. They just hung there, suspended by thin cords of sinew that attached to their spines.

“They’re cocooned,” Claire said. “Dormant.”

“Not one of them is moving,” Giancarlo rasped. “Where is the big one?”

Étienne stepped deeper into the chamber, counting. Twenty, thirty, forty of them. Immature, underdeveloped—the eyes were milky, the limbs shriveled. These weren’t the beast’s children.

“They’re not its young,” he said. “They’re the hosts. The ones Vannier released from the crypt.”

François crossed himself. “The parasite. It needs bodies to mature in. It left the crypt and found these poor souls.”

Étienne looked down at the bones beneath his feet. Human bones. Femurs, ribs, a cracked pelvis half-buried in the sludge. The creature hadn’t come to this chamber to nest. It had come here to feed its offspring on the remains of the dead who had been interred here centuries ago.

“Where is the alpha?” Claire asked. “The big one. It should be here.”

The chittering grew louder. Étienne spun, lamp beam cutting across the darkness, and saw it—a mass of pale flesh in the far corner of the chamber, half-hidden behind a curtain of hanging creatures. It was larger than Gaspard had been, bulkier, the skin stretched taut over a frame that had grown beyond human proportion. Its head was tilted to one side, milky eyes fixed on them.

But it wasn’t attacking. It was trembling, its claws digging furrows into the stone floor, its mouth opening and closing in a rhythmic, almost mechanical motion.

“It’s spawning,” François whispered. “This chamber is its nest. It’s laying eggs into the dead.”

Étienne saw them then—clusters of white, gelatinous sacs nestled among the bones. Each one pulsed with a sickly inner light.

“We need fire,” Giancarlo said. “Burn them all.”

“The ancient order—” François began, but Étienne cut him off.

“I know. The alpha must be burned with a specific wood. Ash from the high groves, or something like that. We don’t have it.”

He was already moving, circling the chamber’s edge, avoiding the hanging sacs. His brother’s memory flickered at the edges of his mind—Gaspard’s memories, bleeding through the bond they’d shared in the crypt. A door. Hidden in the stone, in the far wall of this very chamber, sealed with a lock that matched the copper key still hanging around Étienne’s neck.

He found it. A seam in the rock, almost invisible, traced with faint carvings. The key fit perfectly. The door swung open on silent hinges.

Inside was a recess no larger than a coffin. On a stone shelf lay a single object, wrapped in oilcloth that crumbled at Étienne’s touch. He lifted it out.

The rod was two feet long, forged of silver that gleamed even in the dim light, despite the centuries. It was topped with a small cross, and its surface was engraved with the figure of a stag with a crucifix between its antlers.

“Saint-Hubert,” François breathed from behind him. “The patron of hunters. That rod was blessed at the founding of the order.”

The alpha’s trembling had stopped. Its head slowly turned toward them, and its mouth opened wide enough to show rows of teeth slick with fresh saliva.

Étienne didn’t wait. He ran.

The alpha met him halfway, surging forward with a speed that belied its bulk. Étienne dropped low, feeling the wind of its claws pass over his head, and drove the rod upward—into the soft flesh beneath its chin, through the jaw, deep into the skull.

The beast screamed. Not a roar—a high, thin shriek that pierced the chamber and set the hanging creatures thrashing. The rod burned in Étienne’s hands, the silver growing hot enough to blister his palms, but he held on, twisting it deeper.

The alpha convulsed. Its bulk crashed into him, sending him sprawling across the bone-strewn floor. The rod stayed lodged in its skull, and the creature collapsed beside him, its shriek dying to a wet gurgle. Its legs kicked once, twice, then stilled.

The chamber fell silent.

Étienne lay on his back, chest heaving, staring up at the hanging creatures that had stopped moving again, their milky eyes now dim and lifeless.

Claire reached him first, hauling him upright. “Did you—?”

“It’s dead.” He spat blood. “And so are the rest of them.”