The first thing Emily did when she got home was to lock the door and close all the curtains. The apartment was silent except for the hum of the refrigerator compressor. She leaned against the door, her heart pounding. The antique shop, the mysterious man, and the ring that couldn't be taken off his finger, all had an eerie air.
She rushed to the bathroom, turned on the tap and rinsed her hands with cold water again and again. She tried soapy water, Lube, even pliers, but the ring seemed to stick to her bone. The cold metal pressed against her skin as if it were part of her body.
A sense of being watched enveloped her. She always felt that there was something watching her in the dark corner, and the rain outside the window was mingled with whispers that did not belong to this world.
The landscape on the living-room wall, the shadows of the trees in it, now looked like distorted figures. She dared not turn off the lights and turned on all the lights in the apartment. The light dispelled the shadows, but it could not dispel the growing chill in her heart.
She couldn't help but start sorting the pots and pans on the sink.
Toothbrushes must be at a perfect 90-degree angle to the rim of the glass, the mouth of the hand sanitizer must be facing straight ahead, and even the edge of the towel must line up with the cracks in the tiles.
She adjusted the tiny details again and again, as if this micromanaging of the physical world would allow her to regain some breathing space from the out-of-control feeling of the larger world.
She made herself a cup of instant coffee, and the hot liquid revived some feeling in her fingers. She sat down at her desk and opened Jonathan's notebook.
This time, as her eyes swept over the glyphs again, a glow came from her ringed fingers.
The heat ran up her veins and into her brain. Those originally meaningless lines and patterns, in her eyes began to flow, reorganization, like alive.
One word came clearly to her mind: "Blood Moon.".
Then more bits of information poured in. "The sacrifice,""The gate,""The Night King...". ... these words were like a tide against her reason.
Jonathan her brother wasn't studying ancient ruins at all. He was searching for a secret buried in history. It wasn't archeology anymore. It was playing with fire.
On the last page, a scrawled map in red marks the end of the special reading room at the Library, where she works. There is also a line next to the word, written very hard, almost scratched the back of the paper: "Blood Moon Night, the door will open."
Emily glanced at the calendar. Tonight, it was a full moon. She can't wait any longer. She grabbed her trench coat and rushed out of the apartment.
The Library, in the middle of the night, was as quiet as a giant mausoleum. Emily swiped open the side door with her employee card, and the metal lock clicked far down the empty corridor. She deftly sidestepped the cameras and made her way to the special reading room.
This is where the most valuable and dangerous collections are kept. The air smelled of parchment and embalming fluid, once familiar to her, but tonight it smelled more like a tomb.
She followed Jonathan's map to the deepest shelf in the reading room. Instead of books, she found a row of life-size Egyptian sarcophagi. The sarcophagi are part of the library's closed collection and are said to have been donated by an eccentric nobleman in the 19th century. The map marks the location of the pharaoh's sarcophagus in the middle.
Emily took a deep breath and placed her hand on the cold lid. The touch of the stone reminded her of the eyes of the man in the antique shop.
The ring burned again. She saw on the sarcophagus's surface the reliefs of scarabs, which had been merely decorative, and where the eyes were, they all shone with the same dull red light as the eyes of snakes. The light was faint, but it stood out in the darkness.
"Chack-" there was a slight clatter, and the lid slid aside. There was nothing inside, no mummy, just a strong odor of decay mixed with dust and spices.
Emily used her cell phone to illuminate the interior of the sarcophagus. At the bottom of the sarcophagus, she found a line of small letters inscribed in ancient Hebrew. She leaned closer and read the words: "Wake the guards with blood."
She hesitated. Jonathan's notes mentioned that the Guardian was the force that protected the gate. But now she wasn't sure whether she was awakening an angel or a demon.
Just then, outside the door of the reading-room, there came a slight scraping of nails against the wood.
Emily's heart rose to her throat. She immediately turned off the light on her cell phone and hid behind the sarcophagus, holding her breath.
The sound grew closer and clearer. Not one person, but a group. They walk in a strange way, slow and heavy, with a wet, sickening sound, like someone in wet boots treading mud.
Two dark shadows seeped in through the crack in the door.
They were solid, two distorted, shifting shadows, barely visible in silhouette. They left slippery black tracks on the floor where they had passed, and the stench was like a sewer.
Emily covered her mouth so tightly that she couldn't breathe. She saw the two dark figures floating in the reading-room, as if searching for something. One of them was coming in the direction of her hiding place.
Fear gripped her heart. Her mind went blank, and her only thought was: it's over.
The Dark Shadows drew closer, and the stench almost choked her. She could"Hear" it buzzing like a million insects.
At the last moment, Emily remembered the words on the sarcophagus.
She didn't have time to think. She took the Swiss Army knife from her pocket and slashed her fingertips with a trembling hand. A drop of blood fell to the bottom of the cold sarcophagus.
The beads of blood seeped into the slate and disappeared.
The next second, the temperature in the reading room dropped abruptly. The two dark figures stopped, squirmed uneasily, and hissed in a shrill, nonhuman way.
Emily's ringed hand was suddenly pulled backward by a great force. She lost her balance and fell backward into the open sarcophagus.
The lid snapped shut. The absolute darkness and silence engulfed her.
Emily thought she was going to die, either from shock or from suffocation. But a few seconds later, she found herself breathing. The space inside the sarcophagus was much larger than she had imagined.
She stood up gropingly, stepping not on hard stones but on soft sand.
"Don't move."
A familiar voice sounded in the darkness. It was the antique shop owner.
Emily was startled and almost cried out. "What... What are you doing here?"
"I've always been here." In the darkness, a pair of gray eyes lit up and looked at her without feeling. "This sarcophagus, to be exact, is the back door to the raven and the key."
As soon as he spoke, the scene around him changed. The Darkness faded, and they were standing in the antique shop, as if time had turned back, and everything was exactly as it had been when Emily had left.
"What are those... things out there?" Emily's voice was still shaking.
"Nightcrawlers." The man went to the counter and poured himself a glass of something that smelled like blood. "The scum attracted to the blood moon smells of your indenture like flies smell of rotten meat."
He took a sip, and then looked at Emily, with a look of scrutiny for the first time.
"What's Your Name?"
"Emily Carter."
"Adrian Van Helsing." He put down his glass and introduced himself. "Your blood has activated the final compact. From now on, you have only two choices: leave me the ring and find a way to get out of London before dawn and never come back. Or you can stay and become the new guardian."
"What exactly is a Guardian?"
Adrian didn't answer directly. He held out his hand, palm up. The ring on Emily's finger fell off and flew into his palm.
"For centuries, the Carter Family's mission has been to keep this ring out of the wrong hands." He clasped the ring, "And we, the Van Helsings, are there to keep an eye on you. To make sure you... Don't steal from yourselves."
He handed the ring back to Emily. "Now, you choose."
Emily looked at the ring in his hand and thought again of Jonathan and the two terrible shadows in the library. She knew there was no turning back. Run? Will those things leave her alone?
She took the ring and put it back on her finger.
"I choose the second way."