The abandoned observatory's cracked dome filtered moonglow into prison bar shadows across Layne's face. He'd lined the spiral staircase with black dahlias that oozed sap smelling of burnt hair. Alyssa's silver hairpin grew hot against her scalp - third warning tonight.
"Your beauty outshines Artemis herself." Layne's voice slithered through crumbling star charts as he pressed a cold goblet into her hands. The wine tasted like pennies and pomegranates. "Shall I compare thee to a winter's night? Thou art more—"
"Cut the theatrics." She kicked aside a rat carcass fossilized in telescope grease. "Why here?" Her boot heel cracked a floor tile revealing mosaic fangs beneath - vampire temple patterns.
His laugh echoed off bronze astrolabes. "Romantic, isn't it?" He caught a falling cobweb like it was rose petals. "Listen properly, darling. This stanza's special."
Moonlight shifted. Thirteen cracks in the dome aligned as he recited:
"Thy silvered gaze doth bind my wayward soul Through bloodied vow and lunar-cycled toll Let flesh be chain and breath become the scroll When twin hearts beat as one, the pact made whole."
The words crawled under her skin. Alyssa's champagne flute sprouted hairline cracks as Moonflare stirred - raven wings beating behind her ribs. Layne's shadow on the wall grew antlers.
"Lovely metaphor about chains, no?" He traced a constellation map, fingertip lingering on Lyra's broken strings. His cufflink caught light - silver wolf head missing its left eye, just like the mosaic below.
Alyssa's hairpin burnt white-hot. She pretended to stumble, driving it into his palm. "Clumsy me."
Layne's smile froze. Blood oozed black before he pocketed the hand. "Careful, treasure. Ancient places hold... echoes." He kicked a lever. Rotating gears above aligned with the Blood Star's position from 1693.
The floor mosaics lit up - not constellations but sacrificial diagrams. Each tile depicted wolves collared with verses. Her pulse throbbed in time with the machinery's grind. Moonflare raven claws scraped her windpipe begging release.
"Your turn." He offered a quill dipped in mercury. "Recite line fourteen."
She spat wine onto the central mosaic. The liquid sizzled into vapor revealing hidden text beneath - "Bound through deceit, the poet's crown shall bleed." The gears shrieked to a halt.
Layne's pupils flared crimson. "Now that wasn't in the script." He crushed the quill, mercury pooling into a wolf-headed key shape. Somewhere below, iron gates moaned open.
Alyssa's Moonflare erupted as a screech owl - all beak and talons. Layne's cufflink shattered. The last thing she saw before smoke filled the chamber was the mosaic's true centerpiece - a wolf skull grinning beneath her own face.