Contractbound

Graham woke up not long after and called Luuk over quietly using gestures. Luuk stood there in silence while watching what his partner was about to do without questions. Graham took out his lighter from Valentine"s leather jacket pocket and got ready to divine the safest entrance to the morgue. He purposefully wanted to do the divination in front of Luuk because he was also curious about what others saw during the process.

He triggered the lighter easily with one swift movement of his thumb and sparks were sent flying in the air around it. Shortly after, the flame shone brightly in the dark night; the wind was unable to disturb it because of the blockade of the two men"s bodies. Graham concentrated on the burning flame and controlled his breathing with the rhythm of the blaze while repeating a question in his mind.

"How to safely enter this morgue unnoticed?"

The surrounding area became darker and the fog covering the cemetery mysteriously disappeared. Luuk seemed to have noticed it as well with his curious gaze around. Slowly after that, a somewhat clear image appeared in the flame, and there was a grave shown there. It was one of those graves with an above-ground burial vault, one among many that existed in the cemetery. The one shown in the image, however, looked somewhat much older than the other ones.

The image then zoomed out to a bird"s eye view far up high in the night sky. The location of the target grave wasn"t marked, but Graham had memorized its point in the image. From above, it could be seen that there was a small, faint light shining in the dark, which Graham recognized as his lighter. Using his own position and the grave"s, he could approximate the distance and direction he needed to go.

Luuk was fascinated by what he saw; it was his first time seeing real-life divination after all. When he stared at the flame, he felt like he was seeing a cinemscreen-sized image, but when he looked away, the image disappeared completely. It was truly curious.

Slowly, the flame consumed the image until it disappeared completely. The surrounding area became normal, although it was still dark and foggy. Graham put the lighter back in his pocket and raised an eyebrow at Luuk, asking for confirmation since he couldn"t see Luuk"s reaction during the divination because he had to concentrate on the flame. Luuk knew what Graham meant right away and nodded firmly. With that, the two men went towards the direction Graham had calculated.

They went northeast from the morgue sneakily, stepping on the gra.s.s as much as possible instead of the soil. Graham went behind Luuk because he had no night vision while giving directions from time to time. Although his eyesight was superior to a normal human"s, it was still useless if there was no light to help him see.

The more east they went, the older the tombstones looked. The gra.s.s also got taller and several vines were growing around some tombstones. They stopped and hid behind a tall tombstone when they saw flashlights shining around. They breathed very quietly and stayed motionless.

The bright lights got closer and closer and they could hear the sounds of two people"s footsteps. They could also hear the two people"s conversation as they got near.

"I hate this area of the cemetery more the most," said a high-pitched male voice.

"Why?" asked a deeper male voice.

"These old graves just give me the creep. And those things always come out from this area as well," said the high-pitched voice scaredly.

"If those things appear again, we can just run and report it to those Police people," said the deeper voice indifferently.

By now, Luuk could see the two people with flashlights. There were cemetery guards, but different from the previous two that he and Valentine had hidden from. Seeing how many people they sent to patrol it, it seemed to be true that the cemetery was guarded rather tightly.

The lights were moving away from Graham and Luuk"s hiding spot, and after a while, they disappeared completely. The duo continued heading towards the grave that was shown in the divination.

It took them some time to reach an area with mostly above-ground burial vaults. And on them were various engravings that looked very old. Among the graves, there was one that caught Luuk"s attention. It was an ancient-looking grave with an above-ground burial vault without any engravings or decoration; it was just plain-looking.

Graham followed Luuk heading towards the ancient grave. Its paint had completely peeled off, leaving only the original stone slab that was used to build the vault. It was the size of an adult, and the tombstone was rather tall. Since there was no engraving, it couldn"t be determined whose grave it was.

The two men inspected the ancient grave carefully. Since it came up as the entrance to the morgue, there must be a hidden door or mechanism somewhere. Graham was touching every part of the grave searching for a b.u.t.ton of some sort, the cold hard stone rubbing against his gloves. He then thought that the whole grave could probably be moved since he hadn"t found any hidden switch or b.u.t.ton. He asked Luuk to help him push the grave to the side.

Slide...

It moved!

Graham and Luuk used all of their strength to push the grave further, and slowly, it revealed a hidden staircase underneath. They didn"t push it the whole way through, just enough for them to fit in the gap. Before going in, they searched for some plants to cover the gap in the ground so the cemetery guards wouldn"t notice

Once they were done disguised the secret entrance, Graham and Luuk walked down the dark staircase and entered a tunnel. It was pitch black inside, so Graham had to use his lighter to see, while Luuk had no difficulty at all.

According to Graham"s acute sense of direction, the tunnel should lead back to the morgue, so they were definitely going the right direction. They walked down the dark s.p.a.ce in silence, for they didn"t want to potentially alert anyone keeping guard.

The sounds of their quiet footsteps faintly echoed in the small, cramped s.p.a.ce. The ancient stone walls felt cold to touch and rough on the surface. The hard stone floor was uneven; they could easily trip and fall if they were not careful.

It took them shorter to reach the end of the tunnel than the amount of time they took to find the ancient grave. There was a rusty metal ladder at the end, leading up to a trap door. However, since they didn"t know what was waiting on the other side, they had to be extra careful. They both stopped and Luuk was waiting for a command. He saw Graham concentrating on his lighter flame and knew right away what his partner was doing.

"Is it safe to exit through the trap door right now?"

Since his divination power had been upgraded, it was simpler to use fire scrying than paper burning divination for a yes or no question, and on top of that, he wouldn"t leave any trace behind. He could even get a broader answer sometimes.

The flame slowly formed an image that Luuk could also see, while the surrounding area turned from dimly lit to pitch black once more. It was the other side of the stone trap door in a room that looked like storage. There were a lot of earthen jars and shelves with a bunch of different things on them. There was no one in the storage room, so it should be safe to exit right now. The image disappeared gradually after that.

Before they exited through the trap door, Graham did one more divination. He stayed on his spot and concentrated once more.

"Who are the Contractbounds that are guarding the morgue tonight?"

The flame burned brightly and an image formed in it. It was two people, a man, and a woman, who were sitting in a room with a lot of mirrors. The two people were occasionally looking at the mirrors as if looking at something through them. It seemed that they were somehow using the mirrors as monitoring devices via Contractbound power. Graham didn"t recognize neither the man nor the woman, but he recognized the blue coats they were wearing; those were the Police coats.

The image disappeared little by little after that. With his new revelation, he was sure that the tunnel was safe; otherwise, the two Police Contractbounds would have found out about them by now. He turned to Luuk and asked almost whisperingly,

"What did you see in the flame?"

"Two Police people watching mirrors; probably monitoring the building," he explained shortly in a low voice.

It was indeed the same image as the one Graham saw, so it meant that other people could see his divination without problems, as long as they were within the vicinity. He would like to do more experiments later.

"Those mirrors must be connected to something. Most likely other mirrors, so we have to avoid them," Graham said almost surely.

He then went back to staring at the lighter flame and concentrated again. Since his divination limits had been raised as well, it would be a waste not to abuse them. He always kept count of how many divination attempts he had done for the day, and for today, he should still have a lot more chances.

"Where are the locations of all the mirrors in the morgue?"

The flame flickered and after a while, it showed the image of the whole morgue building with red dots dispersed all around it. The red dots were the mirrors inside the morgue, with a room having a concentration of red dots inside it. It should be the security room that they had seen through the previous divination. Graham memorized all the locations of the mirrors as well as the security room. The image then disappeared.

I can only see the divination image, but cannot hear the question he asked. What do those red dots mean? Judging from his previous guess, they must be mirrors. There were so many of them, I couldn"t remember them all... thought Luuk.

Once he was done with his divination, Graham gestured at Luuk to be ready to exit through the trap door. The storage room didn"t have a mirror in it, so they should be able to enter the building safely. Those Police Contractbounds didn"t seem to know of the existence of the hidden exit.

Graham climbed up first and carefully opened the trap door. It was rather heavy because it was made of hardwood, just like the material of the storage room floor. The storage room had no lighting in it, probably because it was no longer in use. Graham still had to rely on his lighter to see and through the dim light, he could see the many cobwebs decorating the room. There was only one door leading to the other part of the building, and it should be safe to exit since the two Police Contractbounds were in the mirror room.

Graham went closer and noticed that the door looked rather modern. The place"s interior most likely had undergone renovation. The metal door handle didn"t look shiny anymore and some spots of rust had appeared, however, so the renovation should have happened a while ago.

He twisted the handle to open the door but it wouldn"t budge. The door was locked. Graham could probably try to pick the lock but since Luuk was there, he gave the honor to Luuk instead. He looked at his partner with an expression that was saying "Can you?"

Luuk nodded and got closer to the door. He inspected carefully for a while, making sure he knew what he needed to steal in order to open it and started chanting quietly.

"I, in the name of the Deity of Theft, declare the lock"s deadbolt mine!"

He made a swiping motion with his right hand and a small rectangular metal object appeared there. It was the lock"s deadbolt that he had removed. He discarded it safely and tried opening the door again. Now it was unlocked.

"Shall we?" he looked at Graham and asked him politely with a proud smile.