Read The Dead Hamlets: Book Two of the Book of Cross for Free Online Page A

heal myself. I hated to waste the grace, but the skin was already peeling off my body. I shook my head and cursed my own carelessness. The Witches never failed to extract a price somehow.
    When I was back to normal, or as close as I come to normal, I joined the rest of the crowd in pushing for the exits and got the hell out of there before the Witches changed their minds and came back to demand a higher price.
    It was just like in Shakespeare’s time, all right.

SLEEPING AMONG
THE GHOSTS
    I expected the mist to lift when I went outside the theatre, but instead it grew thicker. It reminded me of the time I’d cornered Judas at Stonehenge with the help of King Arthur and his knights after that first unfortunate Morgana incident. Judas had summoned a similar mist, which had turned into a dragon that swallowed me. I would have been lost if Arthur hadn’t cut me free with Excalibur. I wondered if there was some trick that I was missing but everyone else knew. Maybe all the ancient supernatural beings carried around mist in a bottle just in case they needed a quick escape. If so, I could really use some of that.
    Then again, maybe it was just the normal London fog rolling in. It didn’t matter. It was a handy way to lose myself so I didn’t have to deal with any awkward questions from the other audience members or stagehands or even police officers.
    I went down the pedestrian pathway bordering the Thames as fast as I could without running and drawing attention to myself from the people who materialized out of the mist. I needed another place to hide, and quickly. The scene in the Globe may have drawn unwanted attention.
    I found my way to the Tower Bridge, then crossed it and took the Thames pathway on the other side, past the Tower of London. Thankfully, some of the mist, or whatever it was, had blown across the Thames and cloaked this side of the river as well. When I hit a particularly thick patch where no one could see me, I jumped over the side of the pathway and into the river. Even though my skin was healed from the Witches’ cauldron, the cool water still felt soothing. I swam down to the bottom and felt around in the mud where the riverbed met the foundation of the embankment. I had to go back to the surface a couple of times for air, but eventually I found what I was looking for. A rusted grille mostly buried in the muck, clogged with plastic bags and strands of rope and the usual underwater detritus. I cleaned everything away from it and then peered into the tunnel behind. It was an old, stone affair, mostly filled with more muck, but there was room for me to pass.
    I went to the surface for another breath of air and heard shouting on the pathway above. It could have been just drunks fighting, but it also could have been the authorities looking for me. Or other things looking for me. The angel Abathar had once tried to buy my mercy by revealing the Royal Family had a standing order to dispatch the Black Guard to any reported sightings of me. Which maybe explained the rise in riots and mass murders of late, as the Black Guard cleaned up after themselves and disposed of witnesses. It was time to disappear, just like I’d made Abathar disappear.
    I swam back down to the grille, placed my feet on either side, then grabbed the bars and pulled. In ye olden days, when this was a secret entrance, the grille had been bolted on too tight for anyone without grace to move it. But I’d used some grace on it in a past age and nobody had bothered to reattach it again since. Now it was just held in place by mud and time. I managed to pull it far enough back with my mortal muscles that I could slip through and into the tunnel beyond.
    It was a short swim to the end of the tunnel and the small stone chamber there. I pulled myself out of the water and up some steps onto a landing, where I spent a few minutes catching my breath. It occurred to me I may have been breathing the same air as the last time I’d come this way. Nobody