Crimson Born - Amy Patrick Page 0,23

met my eyes and smiled.

“Welcome to the Bastion, Abigail. Imogen will be happy to know you’ve arrived...” His attention swung over to Kannon. “... at long last. We thought this guy was losing his touch.”

Kannon exchanged a few more joking remarks and back slaps with his friends, and then we were moving again, deeper into the cavern.

“What did they mean? That you were losing your touch?”

He swept a hand through the air in a dismissive gesture. “Nothing. They’re just ribbing me. We’ve been working together for years. They’re Bloodbound like me. It’s a brotherhood—we give each other a hard time, but it’s all in good fun.”

He gave a humble dip of the chin. “I have a reputation among the Bloodbound for being able to bring in even the hardest cases, quickly and cleanly. You were supposed to be an ‘easy’ job, by the way.’”

He shot a grin at me, and I returned his smile. “But I was difficult.”

“You certainly were. Because you were hanging onto your humanity so hard.”

“Yes, well, I learned my lesson on that.”

“I hope so,” he said as we left the first chamber. “Because Imogen doesn’t take kindly to human-lovers.”

11

The Bastion

We moved through the various chambers that made up the cavern, and I tried not to trip as my eyes moved from side to side, taking in the spectacle of the place.

I’d learned a little geology in school, had even seen some photographs of caves and their basic calcite formations.

These were not basic, and this was no mere cave.

Some chambers were thirty feet high, some had to be at least a hundred fifty feet. And we actually had to duck our heads when passing through some of the corridors between them.

Each room was illuminated by light sources that were hidden from my view but that highlighted the fascinating natural ornamentation on the ceilings and walls.

There were crystal-clear pools and shimmering draperies of snow-white stone, shawls and scarves of flowstone that ranged from translucent to pink and orange.

It was neither cold nor hot inside but comfortably cool, and the air smelled fresh. I felt utterly dwarfed by the size of the rock formations and astounded at their beauty.

All of this, underground for thousands of years before humans had even known it existed. No wonder tourists had flocked here.

“Where’s your room?” I asked, then worried I sounded too forward, added, “I mean, where do you and your family live?”

“The Bloodbound are my family. There’s a barracks in the east tunnel where we all sleep.”

“Oh. None of you are married?”

Most Amish men married by age twenty-two, and almost no one in our community stayed single.

He shot me a grin. “Just to the job. It’s forbidden for us to take a mate. Relationships would be a distraction from our duties. We don’t have any possessions either.”

“Oh. Like monks,” I said.

His grin grew. “Like monks—only way more badass.”

Finally, we reached a set of large, metal doors set into the rock on either side of a corridor. Kannon rapped on the door in a pattern of taps and knocks that sounded something like a song.

The heavy doors swung outward slowly, and we proceeded down a long, dimly lit tunnel before emerging into an open cavern lit with plentiful wall torches and even more torches in heavy iron stands around the room.

The echoes of our feet resounded off the stone walls as we approached a long, wooden table in the center of the room.

Several people were seated around it, studying some papers and a map. All their heads lifted in unison as they heard our approach.

Imogen was one of them. She smiled when she saw me. Pushing back from the table, she stood and opened her arms out to the sides.

“Abigail. Splendid. Our little lost sheep has found her way home—with some help. Thank you, Kannon. That will be all.”

Though I should have been bereft at the departure of the only person I knew in this place, I wasn’t. Quite the opposite. I barely noticed him leaving.

All my attention was focused on the woman who stood before me in a black sheath dress and black pumps.

Her dark hair was pulled back into a sleek chignon that somehow looked completely different than the bun hairstyles worn by women in my community.

She was very slim—her belted waist couldn’t have been any more than twenty-two inches, and I doubted she weighed much over a hundred pounds.

Naturally, being Amish, I hadn’t grown up watching television or movies, but we’d made frequent use of the library.

I’d had a secret