Hotbloods 5: Traitors

“That’s the cruel beauty of death—you only ever remember the good things,” he mused, smiling. “Don’t get me wrong, me and Naya used to fight like savage beasts, but we’d always kiss and make up. The funny thing is, now I can’t even remember what we used to argue about. Small, stupid things, probably.”

It was almost refreshing to know that a seemingly perfect relationship had the same problems as everyone else’s. Throughout my childhood and into my teens, my role models in love had been Jean and Roger, and though they adored the very bones of each other, they always argued over silly things, too. It seemed it wasn’t just human nature, but universal nature.

I was just glad I hadn’t taken any relationship goals from my biological parents. Who knows where I’d be if I had.

With Ronad leading the way, we descended into the basement. It was colder down here, where the rest of the house was deceptively warm. Ahead of us lay a wide hallway, which opened out into a cavernous room. The walls were made of exposed brick, and the vaulted ceiling was drenched in shadow, the whole place dimly lit by two feeble lamps.

It didn’t look like anyone had been down here in a long time, but the floor was surprisingly clean, although the bric-a-brac that surrounded us was covered in a thick layer of dust. In fact, there was sheeted furniture scattered all over the place. This was evidently the dumping ground for things the Idraxes no longer wanted upstairs.

“Why have you brought me here?” I asked, confused.

“You’ll see.” Ronad weaved through the junk to the far corner of the room, where a large piece of furniture stood, draped in a moldering sheet of white fabric. He pulled the sheet to one side, revealing a tall wardrobe, the doors of which were fastened shut.

With a look of determination, Ronad whipped a pin of some kind out of his pocket and set to work picking the lock of the wardrobe door. I watched, enraptured, until I heard the subtle click of it opening. However, what followed was something of an anticlimax. Ronad opened the wardrobe door, and I expected to see something incredible beyond, but there was nothing inside except a rail and a wooden backboard.

“Are we going to Narnia?” I joked.

“I doubt there are any fauns where we’re going,” he answered, impressing me with his knowledge of Earth literature. Stepping into the wardrobe, he pushed hard on the back of it. Something whirred as the panel slid back.

I waited with bated breath, only to be disappointed again. There was nothing behind it except more exposed brick. I couldn’t see anything amiss at all, until I took a closer look. There, subtly carved into the masonry, was a faint outline—the merest hint of a doorway.

Ronad grinned, turning over his shoulder to look at me. “It’s a secret passageway!”

I guessed we were about to find out what lay beyond it.





Chapter Four





I gawked at the outline as Ronad fiddled with a button at the bottom of the brickwork. A moment later, the door swung outward, revealing the passageway.

“How did you even know this was here?” I asked in disbelief.

Ronad smiled. “I’ve lived here most of my life. When something new is added, I notice! Not a lot of people pay the same kind of attention to detail as I do, but it pays off,” he explained. “I was down here earlier, looking to see if the Idraxes had thrown away any old comm devices. That’s when I noticed the wardrobe. It wasn’t here a few days ago, when I came here to try and find a box of my old things—which seemed really weird to me. I took a closer look and knew there had to be something hidden behind it. The thing is nailed to the floor, for Rask’s sake, and who in their right mind locks a wardrobe door?”

I had to hand it to Ronad: he was a master of deduction. I would have glanced around the basement, seen a bunch of junk, and moved on.

“Where do you think it leads?” I wondered, peering into the darkness beyond.

“No idea, but I say we find out,” Ronad replied, stepping into the passageway itself. “I have a feeling Jareth built this in the wake of Gianne’s growing nuttiness. It makes sense to have an escape route, especially if your family members are known defectors.”

I grimaced, feeling slightly responsible for the situation the Idrax family was in. Then again, a man like Jareth would find a way to endure whatever came his way, with or without an escape route.

Before following Ronad into the shadowed passage, I pulled the dusty sheet back down and closed the wardrobe door firmly behind us, not wanting to leave any evidence we’d been here. Realizing he needed to re-lock the door, Ronad came back through from the passageway and squeezed past me in the cramped interior of the wardrobe. He paused.

“Something the matter?” I asked.

He pulled a face. “I think I’ll leave it unlocked for now. Just in case.”

I didn’t need him to elaborate. If we had to make a quick exit, messing around with locks would only slow us down. Besides, as long as it looked closed from the outside, it was probably good enough.

I moved into the pitch-black corridor, feeling my way along the walls. A set of lights flickered to life. Apparently, the passage was equipped with motion-sensor lights, illuminating the darkness. I breathed a sigh of relief, glad to see my hand in front of my face.

Behind me, Ronad slid the panel shut and closed the passage door. I waited for him to catch up before continuing down the corridor. It was wider than I’d expected, with a ceiling high enough to comfortably allow a coldblood to walk along it. Even Navan would’ve had a bit of room to spare above his head.

In fact, it looked almost like a cylinder of chrome, the floor clean and clinical, the sides curved and metallic. Whatever this passageway was for, it had not come with the house when it was first built. Most surprisingly of all, however, was the heat that hit me, in a stifling gust of air that engulfed my senses. It was musty and stale, like the warmth of an ancient attic, feeling very at odds with the cleanliness of the tunnel.

“This reminds me of the storm drains we used to play in as kids. We’d challenge each other to run through them and put our mark on the wall. Whoever got the farthest won,” Ronad said thoughtfully as we moved along a short hallway, which curved back on itself. At the end of the snaking passage, two more tunnels branched off to the left and right.

“Who played?” I asked, feeling the tickle of dust in the back of my throat.

“Me, Bashrik, Navan, Ianthan, sometimes Harko—he’s one of the lesser evils of the Idrax brothers.” Ronad smirked, his voice tight.

I smiled at the thought of a young Navan playing in the storm drains of Vysanthe, charging through the water to put his mark on the wall. Knowing him, I imagined it had brought out his competitive streak.

“I bet Navan used to win a lot, right?” I said.

Ronad snorted. “You’ve got to be kidding! Navan hated when we played in the storm drains. They were pitch-black, and we were only allowed to carry a candle—it was part of the challenge. Naturally, the candle would blow out within a few seconds of getting into the drain, with all the icy wind, which used to freak Navan out,” he said. “For years, he was afraid of the dark. He’d always have to have a nightlight on. Jareth hated it, of course, seeing it as a sign of weakness, but Lorela talked him down, saying Navan would grow out of it. I suppose he did, in the end.”

I stared at Ronad in shock. I couldn’t imagine Navan being afraid of anything, let alone something as innocuous as the dark. It was like hearing that a world-champion wrestler was afraid of spiders. Truthfully, it made me love Navan even more, to imagine him as a vulnerable child, with the same fears as other kids.

“He was really afraid of the dark?”

Ronad nodded. “Don’t tell him I told you so, though. He’d kill me.”

“So, what changed? How come he’s not afraid anymore?”

“He saved my life in those storm drains. After that, he was never afraid again,” Ronad said with a smile, as we pressed on down the hall, reaching the fork in the tunnel.