Blood Child Read Online Free

and intrigue held her tightly in place. She thought they would merely be depositing the crate and returning momentarily. After all, there was no place for the men to go except the way they came. She crouched as low as she could while still keeping an eye on the strange group.
    Her father raised his arms and began muttering in Latin. When he finished, a section of the wall slid back, and the ensemble entered the newly formed doorway. Em nearly snickered at her father’s horrid elocution; had she demonstrated such poor pronunciation, she would have received a beating that would continue until she corrected the error. Consequently, she and her siblings practiced continually, drilling one another until they had mastered each lesson. Mihaly led his younger siblings in these drills. Sometimes they sneaked into one another’s rooms to prepare for assessments. No matter how intensely they practiced, their father and the tutors always found a reason to punish them.
    The door closed as quickly as it had opened. Curiosity may have killed the cat, but it didn’t deter Em. This mystery was too much for her to pass up, so she waited, watching, shivering on the icy floor. The Minotaur was safe for another night.
    By the time they came out of the chamber, Em had nearly fallen asleep; only the return of rhythmic footsteps sounded just in time to keep her from nodding off completely and banging her head on the floor.
    She waited until after the stomping sound had ceased to echo before she moved to investigate. It didn’t take her long to find the floor latch and open the crypt’s door. Secretly, she praised the Hardy Boys novels she had recently finished for helping her quickly locate the trigger for the door. Not that she would ever tell Mihaly, who had suggested the series. It just wasn’t proper to let your big brother know you thought he was cool or appreciated his advice.
    The chamber was lit from an aperture running around the perimeter between the wall and stone floor. A shiver dashed down her spine when she noted the eerie similarity of this chamber to the one in Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Pit and the Pendulum.”
    In the center was a stone sepulcher with her father’s name etched into it, along with his birth date and an epitaph—the date of his death waited to be carved. Along the walls three ebony boxes exactly like the one she had seen carried in were standing on end facing the sepulcher, except these boxes appeared to have glass fronts. There was one for each of the three walls before her.
    Had Em been a fearful child, she would have run from the room and not taken another step. However, the physical and emotional abuse she had endured prevented her from experiencing the normal fears of a six-year-old child; she had seen too much and knew it wouldn’t kill her.
    The boxes were like shiny bobbles left out for a magpie to snatch; the least she could do was inspect them. Em moved towards the one on the left for no other reason than her eye had turned in that direction. As she advanced on her target, an unexpected queasy feeling built in her stomach. She attributed it to the cook’s latest experiment, not knowing any better.
    There are some things in this world that every child should be prevented from seeing, but Em continued forward, as she always had and always would. It only made sense in her mind to keep moving. She had no way of knowing what the crypt truly held or how similar its contents would be to one of Poe’s chilling tales.
    The faint light caused her eyes to strain; however, the figure of a woman was becoming clear. Forward. Always forward. A foot away from the glass, details came into focus. Another chill ran through Em. The woman’s face was obscured by a veil, so Em tried to balance on her tiptoes for a better look. Her failure landed her face first on the frigid stone floor.
    Her head ached, but her eyes widened when she read the name—Marcella E. Bath, her mother’s name—etched on the base in golden