Into the Twilit Gloom (2022)

2. A Chance Discovery

The church itself smelt musty, like a mixture of ancient brick and layers of dust. Elegant rafters loomed overhead, sweeping across plaster and emptiness. The whole place was pokier than she expected, with pristine white box pews blocking so much of the space that allowed other churches to breathe. Frankie edged over, running a finger across the top of one. Each pew was a little gated compartment. In fact, she'd seen something like this in one of the film adaptations of Emma that Viv had sat her through before she'd dropped her. She hadn't realised places like this actually existed. A heavy feeling tugged at her chest for a moment – Viv would've been so excited about this kind of thing, would've loved a picture, and maybe if she sent one it'd be the thing that would get a reply –

"I think it's the font." Meg's voice snapped her out of it. Her friend's footsteps echoed as her boots struck the parquet.

Frankie blinked, the pang for the past fading in a moment, and she rushed to her side as she knelt by the blocky stone font. It sat before a window that offered little light in the twilight, below the stubby tower that rose above them. Meg was running her fingers over the plain stone. Beside her, on a patch of smooth granite that could well have been an old grave slab, her phone was glowing up the roughly hewn rock above it. The map had an annotation, something about a button that would only react to demonhunter blood. Leaving Meg to the stem, she turned her attention to the font's bowl.

This again was plain, nothing like the ornate fonts she'd seen in other church buildings, that were covered in angels and apostles. She let her fingers run over the rim, dust clinging to her skin. Hundreds of years of fingers had smoothed this bowl before her, and she could sense it, could almost feel the spectre of dozens upon dozens of priests dipping their fingers into the cool waters. Except now it was bone dry and dusty.

Her finger rubbed against the centre of the bowl. A dull clunk, a gravelly scraping sound.

"You got it."

Frankie glanced down at her friend. She was pulling a narrow wooden box from the stem of the font where a small stone door had shifted open. "What's in it? What've we got?" She peered over Meg's shoulder as her fingers pried at the dried wood, a smile jumping onto her face with the thrill of their very first stash.

It opened with a dull pop and the contents clattered onto the parquet. A couple of stiletto knives, a snapped shortsword, a few empty scabbards, and other miscellaneous muck. Frankie's eyebrows shot up, lips sliding into a pout – was that it?

"Huh. Bit of a let-down." Meg was scowling in the growing dimness, her fingers running over some of the rusted steel.

That was one way of putting it. Frankie knelt beside Meg and started to sift through. "Well, I guess it is in the middle of nowhere. Maybe it's just not been restocked in a while?" A thought drifted through her mind, of her friend Emyr, gallivanting around London, his demon kills probably in double figures by now, never having to worry about a shortage of weapons. Her teeth clamped down on her lip and she shoved her hands into the clutter. Her fingers found a strange scroll, stiff, soft to the touch, and bleached white. She started to gently unwind it.

Meg snorted. "Y'know that's the first thing we'll have to do on our next patrol. Carting a bunch of runed silverware across these marshes is going to be such a pisstake." Something thudded onto the floor beside her. "There you go, a scabbard. Maybe we should even leave your old one here for someone to be disappointed by?"

But Frankie's eyes were on the scroll. The inside was a warm shade of buttermilk, and it rustled in her hands as she teased it open. Faded lines of ink criss-crossed the page like a spiderweb, drawing a path through unfamiliar territory. At the top, in peeling gilt lettering, something in a recognisably Celtic language. Except she'd only done one term on the Celtic languages in first year. Her heartbeat picked up under her leather breastplate. "Hey, Meg."