“My darling,” he heard his wife say.

He tossed the priest aside, ignoring the man’s cry, and the thud his body made when he hit a wall, and Mars continued striding.

They turned left as Ellie had said, and all saw it up ahead.

It couldn’t be missed.

The ornamentation was spartan, but regardless, the colossal circular building was grand.

And they went right to it.

They pushed through the double doors, but they barely took five steps in before they all stopped.

Not because what lay before them, in a round, was spectacular.

The acres of curved shelves at the outer walls that rose stories and stories up high and were filled with books. The ornately carved, whitewashed desks scattered about with the long feathery, white plums of the quills drifting in the air, stuck at an angle in their beds beside ornate ink pots made of white porcelain. The white marble floors with veins of gold.

No.

They did so because they all felt it.

Farah spoke first and it was tremulous.

“True.”

Mars looked to her as True demanded, “Take the women outside.”

“They stay with us,” Aramus decreed.

“Then cover their eyes,” True shot back.

But it was too late.

He heard his wife gasp.

Gods bloody damn it.

He walked that way and saw another piece of lore that it was clear was passed through the generations as successfully notated information.

The demons drank from the necks of their victims.

Three mauled corpses lay behind a short shelving unit, heads torn from bodies, pools of blood forming from the separation.

The heads were not close to their remains. They lay some ways away. There was gore at the neck, but no blood had leaked out onto the floor.

“They might still be here,” Cass said low.

“Then we all must stay close,” Aramus decreed.

“Fuck, fuck, shite,” Mars bit, not wanting his Silence anywhere near this madness, but taking hold of his wife and pulling her to his back.

Pushing aside his mantle, she curled her fingers around the waist of his trousers.

When she had a hold on him, he lifted his hand behind his neck, grasped the hilt of his sword and released it from its scabbard.

He heard the other men do the same.

They advanced together, Cassius with Elena and Aramus with Ha-Lah at the lead, Mars and Silence fanned to their left, True and Farah to their right.

In this manner, they walked down the center aisle to the middle of the spherical building.

“By Chas!” they heard exclaimed.

The priest had caught up.

None of them slowed.

They found more carnage amongst the desks and shelves and stacks.

And more.

The center of the great building had a circular railing, and peering over it, they could see the structure led into the earth. The shelves that rose above them were accessed by ladders of varying lengths that rolled along the walls.