"I swear, if one more person asks me if I've seen the Yellow Bloody Sign, there will be murders."
Black growled his frustration as the little group made their way towards the governor's mansion, where warm light and activity promised a party. He stomped up between the waving palms that lined the road, forcing his friends to hurry to keep up.
"Did you find anything out, Black?"
"Idiot Frenchies. Yellow Sign. Chamber Mortal. What bloody ever. I've had enough of all this. We'll speak to this dago governor and sort it out proper."
"Chamber what?"
Dras jogged alongside her steaming friend, shooting glances back at Quinn and Ana, who were following more slowly. They both looked a little pale. Black took no notice of Dras' question, or indeed anything else, other than making further progress towards the mansion. Dras dropped back to her other friends.
"What's going on here? Black seems, uh, agitated."
Quinn grunted. Ana made no response at all. Dras frowned. They were nearing the governor's mansion, passing a row of carriages as they went up the drive towards the front steps. Some sort of music came drifting out from within, strange, disharmonic music that jarred at Dras' eardrums.
"What the hell is that noise?"
At last Dras saw her friends react. Everyone pulled up as the sound of the music, if indeed it was music, became more audible. As one, they all winced. Black shook his head.
"I don't know much about music, but I don't think I like that much."
Quinn growled.
"What are we doing? We need a plan of some kind."
All four looked at each other. The music shifted, strange voices rising up in uneasy cadence.
"What did you find out, Black?"
"These fools are killing themselves. They've got some Chamber where folks go to top themselves. It's all tied up in this Yellow Bloody Sign."
"What?"
Black exploded.
"They've got these people all turned around, don't you see? The poor fools are offing themselves for some heathen superstition, the Papists started it all, their cardinal or whatever is here at the party. They've most likely got the skull, and I've no doubt it's that cursed thing that's got everyone's brains turning to mush around here."
Dras thought quickly. It made sense, though she wasn't sure what had Black so upset. Before she could speak, he turned and stormed up the steps into the mansion. The other three scrambled after him, passing through the unwatched doors into the bright entrance hall.
The music was worse inside; strange rhythms and vibrations that set their teeth on edge.
They followed Black across the entry hall, brushing past a protesting doorman, and slammed into a wide ballroom surging with bright dresses and gleaming uniforms, that terrible music roaring out from the stage where an orchestra thrashed in savage fury.
"Black, what are we looking for?"
The Englishman seemed to have calmed down a little. He turned to his friends.
"Somebody who can tell us how to find this Chamber Mortal. Him."
Quinn and the others looked where he pointed, at a tall cadaverous man in a crimson cloak, talking with some Spanish officer.
"Well, it's a cinch he's not going to speak a couple of dark folks like Ana and I. It's you or Quinn, there."
Ana spoke up.
"Not Quinn. He doesn't have skills."
"I got skills."
"Alright then, lads. And Ana. Oh, and you, Dras. You lot spread out and see if you can find anything else out. But be ready to run for it. I don't like the looks of this."
"It's the sound of it that's really setting me off."
The four friends worked their way into the crowd, passing dancers and disdainful society matrons.
Ana, sensing how the crowd here reacted to her presence and the colour of her skin, made for the kitchen. The staff might be more helpful. She found a swinging door and passed through into a sweltering kitchen where rows of uniformed workers were laying out trays of fruit and vegetables.
Every single one of them stopped and looked up at her. Ana coughed.
"Oh, um, hello. I was, um wondering. Where. If you. I."
Sudden inspiration struck.
"Have any of you seen the, uh, the Yellow Sign? By any chance?"
Not a one of them moved. Ana swallowed. The music still wavered and howled back in the ballroom.
"Yes. Very good. Thanks."
Meanwhile, Dras had been making her way around the room in the opposite direction. She stopped as a heavy claw gripped her shoulder. A sneering face confronted her, and snarled in Spanish-accented French.
"Who told you your kind was welcome here, boy?"
Dras slipped free of his hand and stepped back. She let herself smile coldly, and replied as best she could in French.
"Who told you yours was... boy?"
"By god, no half-breed adolescent speaks to me like that!"
The group melted away on all sides as a curved sabre appeared in the man's hand. Dras' smile widened.
"Ah. My native tongue."
At the same moment, Quinn, who'd been keeping an eye on Anna, noticed a couple tucked behind a curtain, grasping at each other. At first embarrassed and inclined to turn away, his attention was drawn by a dark smear on the wall beside them. Blood. The desperate sucking sound hissed over the deafening cacophony of the music. Quinn fought a surge of nausea.
Black had just reached the man he'd identified as the local chaplain. Barging into the ongoing conversation, he poked at the tall man in crimson.
"You, sir. Father. Where's this Chamber of yours? What are you hiding out there?"
Rather than look offended, the man's lean face brightened in a friendly smile.
"Hiding? Not at all. The Chambre Mortil is open to all. Beyond the mansion there is a road, sir. Simply follow that for a mile or so and you will see it. We have nothing to hide."
"Oh. Well, then. We'll be on our way. Thank you, sir."
More than happy for any reason to leave, Black grabbed Dras and steered her towards the door, leaving her spluttering opponent without a backwards glance. The music suddenly shifted, rising in pitch and volume, as they reached Quinn and Ana and hustled through the crowd towards the door. Dras, indignant at missing her chance to fight, tugged her arm free and spun for a last look at her challenger.
And immediately wished she hadn't.
The crowd filling the room had begun to gesticulate and shudder, hands waving and voices frothing up with the music.
"Xibalba p'tah mi'totiani! Hastur ia tlamacazcoteuli!"
Arms flailed, bending grotesquely like tentacles, flesh rippling and boiling as nameless fluids spattered on the parquet. A revolting stench billowed down the hall and they choked as it rolled over them. Black grabbed Dras.
"Don't look back."
They ran, footsteps crunching on the gravel drive as they followed Black's lead, away from the house where the voices rose still higher, ululating in frenzied rhythm. The darkness down the road seemed comforting and safe after the weirdness they'd just witnessed.
Quinn was the first to get his voice back.
"What in God's name is going on here?"
Ana answered, her voice quiet and frightened.
"Xibalba. They are lifting the veil between the worlds."
"That sounds bad."
Black snorted.
"We won't let that happen. Their skull is hidden up here, at the Chamber Mortal."
"What are we going to do with all these skulls? Is there a plan?"
"We could hold a raffle."
"You're not helping, Quinn."
