Chapter 15 · The Hollow Cure - Chapter 15: Aldrus At The Door

"Open the door, Kael. Don't make me knock twice."

Kael's palm slammed over Lyra's mouth before she could gasp. The chapel floor was humming under his knees. Not shaking. Vibrating. Like the stones had teeth.

"I know you're in there with it," Aldrus called from the hall. His voice was calm. Pleasant. "I can smell the forbidden work from the street. Open the door and we talk like civilized men."

"How many?" Lyra breathed against his hand.

Kael lifted his fingers just enough to let her speak. His other hand was already braced on the altar, on the jar with the brain inside it.

"Six," he whispered. "Maybe eight. Heavy boots. And that priest with the scar."

"So we don't open it," she said.

"No. We don't."

The brain twitched in the fluid. A vein of light pulsed through it and the whole chapel pulsed back. The crystal veins in the walls — thin as hair a minute ago — were thickening. Spreading.

"Kael," Aldrus said, closer now. His knuckles rapped the wood. Once. Twice. "You took something that belongs to the Church. The dead man's mind.