The Blood Bracelets #3: Soul Scarred

Chapter Three

When Zed mentioned that Kato's wasn't open to the public, he hadn't been wrong. The entrance to Kato's shop was along the pathway that ran parallel to the Yarra River, behind Flinders Street Station. It took several long minutes until Ace and Eljae found the entrance, and realised they had walked past it three times.

The only hint that the entrance even existed was the mismatching brickwork set into the wall. A passing glance wouldn't have noticed it.

Reading over Zed's instructions, which was written in his illegible handwriting, Ace stepped up to the entrance. He glanced back to Eljae who was watching impatiently, and then checked that no one else was nearby. With it all clear, he pulled off the glove from his blackened hand and then pressed his palm into a portion of the entrance where it met the actual wall. He pushed, and Ace felt the portion of the wall underneath his hand shift - right before something pricked his palm, like several little needles. Ace flinched in surprise, but didn't remove his hand until he felt the brick slip back into place.

Looking at his hand, his found ten little pin-pricks welling blood across his palm. Eljae stepped up beside him, frowning.

'What was that about?' she asked.

'Blood that isn't human or Immortal is needed to enter,' he told her. 'I'm technically neither, in this hand anyway.'

Tainted blood, Immortals called it.

Eljae frowned. 'Why didn't you use mine?'

He looked at her for a moment, but when the entrance began to open like the bricks were dragging themselves aside, Ace turned away and said, 'Because I don't want Kato knowing what you are.'

And no one is getting their hands on you again.

Ace gestured Eljae to follow him into the passage, which was lit only by the light of the setting sky behind them. They entered cautiously, and as soon as Eljae had crossed the threshold the brick wall closed with an almost impatient slam. Eljae hissed at it.

With the entrance sealed, however, the passage was pitch-black. Ace's eyesight was hopeless in the dark, and his other senses were only slightly better than an average mortal, so he pitched his voice over his shoulder to Eljae and said, 'Can you see anything?'

'Bugs,' she replied.

'What?' Ace shrieked, jerking away from the wall beside him only to bump into the wall opposite, and with another high-pitched noise he jerked away again so he was standing very tightly in the middle of the narrow passage.

Then he felt something touch his shoulder and Ace jumped with a sudden, terrified yelp.

'Ace!' Eljae hissed. 'It's just me. You hunt demons for a living and yet you're afraid of bugs?'

He turned back around in – what he hoped – was the direction toward Kato's. 'Bugs are disgusting. Demons are just stupid.'

'Excuse me?'

'Except for you.'

Ace didn't need to see Eljae to know that she had probably just given him a very rude gesture.

They walked in silence, save for the crunching beneath their feet that Ace pretended weren't bugs, and felt the passage start to slope down. He briefly wondered if the passage was manmade, the walls rough and jagged with hard earth and rock but fresh with crumbling dirt when Ace unintentionally brushed up against it.

'Oh!' Eljae said suddenly. 'Watch out for—'

But she was too late, because the next step Ace took sent him hurtling down an abrupt drop in the ground, as if a portion had been pulled out from underneath him like some ridiculous trapdoor. Light hit his eyes as he fell out of the darkness – and then he hit the ground with a sudden thump, his shoulder jarring against floorboards. Dust lifted in a plume around him and Eljae – damn feline – landed on her feet beside him.