Chapter 8: Release

The mark did not wash off.

Zara tried soap in the coffee shop bathroom. She scrubbed until the skin around it turned red, but the black lines remained beneath her skin—dark and cold.

Adisa stood outside the door. Behind him, the waiter watched them with growing suspicion.

“We need to leave,” Adisa said when Zara stepped out.

She pulled down her sleeve. “Where are we going?”

“The chapter house. There may be something in the archives about the mark.”

They took the Tube toward Islington.

The train was crowded. A woman read a newspaper beside Zara. Two schoolboys argued over a phone. A little girl in a red coat sat across from them, swinging her legs beneath the seat.

The train entered a tunnel.

Then... it stopped.

The lights went out.

A few passengers groaned. Someone laughed nervously.

The little girl began to scream!

Her mother pulled her close. “What is it? What can you see?”

The child pointed upward.

Zara followed her finger.

A shadow was crawling across the ceiling.

It had too many arms... and a head that turned upside down as it moved. No one else seemed able to see it.

The creature dropped toward the child.

Zara stood.

It struck her first!

She flew against the train door. The passengers shouted as if she had fallen without cause.

Adisa raised one hand.

The metal walls bent inward around the creature, trapping it between two poles.

“Zara!” he shouted.

She pushed herself up.

The spirit fought against the metal. Its mouth opened—and the sound of crying filled the carriage.

Not one cry.

Hundreds.

Zara looked deeper.

She saw an old woman beneath the darkness. Afraid. Bound. Forced to serve.

“You are not this thing,” Zara told her.

The spirit stopped fighting.

Adisa tightened his hold on the bent metal. “Whatever you are going to do, do it now!”

Zara reached into the darkness.

“I release you.”

The shadow split open!

For one second, an elderly woman stood before them in white cloth.

Her face was tired... but peaceful.

“Stop him,” she whispered to Zara.

Then she disappeared.

The train lights returned.

Passengers blinked in confusion. One of the schoolboys stared at the twisted metal pole, while the woman with the newspaper moved quickly away from Zara.

The little girl ran to Zara and held her hand.

Her mother pulled her back, embarrassed.

“Sorry,” the woman said. “She does not usually do that.”

“It is fine,” Zara replied.

At the next station, Zara and Adisa stepped onto the platform.

“You freed it,” Adisa said.

Zara looked back at the dark tunnel. “It was trapped.”

“No Ori record describes anything like that.”

She faced him. “Then the records are incomplete.”

Adisa glanced at the mark beneath her sleeve.

“Who was she warning us about?” Zara asked.

He was quiet for too long.

“Elder Taiwo,” Adisa said at last.