Kitty's House of Horrors

Chapter 11

Part of the railing around the porch had broken. It looked like the nails or the joints had come loose from the posts and the whole thing toppled to the ground. And it looked like Dorian had been leaning on it when it happened. Stepping out on the porch, I looked over the edge and saw him, lying still and crumpled on the ground. Dark blood pooled by his head. I could smell his body cooling, and his heart was silent.

Of all the stupid, ugly accidents. “He came out here sometimes,” I said weakly. “To watch the sunrise.”

I went down the steps, approached Dorian, looked back at the porch, trying to figure out what had happened. He’d been leaning on the railing. Maybe it had just given way. He fell wrong, hit his head, maybe even hurt his neck. A stupid accident.

“Kitty?” Grant said. He came down the steps to join me, making the same quick examination I did.

“It doesn’t make sense,” I said. “I leaned on that railing. We all did. That thing was stable. What the hell happened?”

“He’s heavier. Maybe he just hit a bad spot.”

“A fall like that shouldn’t have killed him. It was only a few feet.” I started crying. I turned away to hide the silent tears running down my cheeks. I’d just gotten to know him. Just gotten to like him. It wasn’t fair.

Grant said, “Provost might have footage from the remote cameras that might explain this.”

But were the cameras still running without power? “Except Provost is gone, along with the phones. We can’t call for help.”

Grant looked around as if he expected some kind of attack, as if searching the treetops for a hidden enemy. “There’s a radio in the airplane.” He marched out, heading toward the path that led from the lodge to the airstrip.

I hurried after him, taking a last look at Dorian. I hated leaving him alone—but I hated leaving Grant alone, too.

Within sight of the airplane parked at the edge of the meadow, I stopped. A breath of air touched my face, and with it came the smell of carrion.

“What is it?” Grant asked. He studied me; I turned my nose to the air to track the scent. It was making me queasy, making me want to howl.

“Bodies,” I whispered. This didn’t smell like meat, like the deer Jerome had dropped in front of the house the other day. This smelled like bodies. “It’s coming from the plane.”

I ran forward, Grant on my heels. The smell grew stronger. I reached the cabin door and rattled the handle, struggling with it a moment before finally wrenching it open.

The three production assistants lay on the floor of the cabin, dead. Side by side, curled up and crammed in, Gordon first, then Skip, then Amy. Purple bruises ringed their necks, as if they’d been garroted. I gripped the door, my heart racing, my breaths stumbling. I wanted to run, and my wolfish instincts howled.

Provost, Valenti, and Cabe were still missing.

“What’s it mean?” I said, catching my breath, struggling to stay calm.

Grant moved to the cockpit and opened the door. “Look at this. It’s the radio,” he said, gesturing to a box that had been gutted, wires hanging out. So much for making contact with the outside world that way.

“What’s going on? Who did this?” And where were they now? I turned, looking out over the meadow and surrounding woods. I walked around the airplane, searching, smelling, trying to find a trail. I smelled people, moving back and forth. The whole path smelled like people, and the airstrip smelled like fuel and tire skids overlaying the natural smell of the valley. Nothing stood out, nothing gave me a clue about who had done this or where they’d gone.

Grant was sitting in the pilot seat, flipping switches—that he’d know anything about flying a plane didn’t surprise me. The engine coughed, sputtered, and died. “Out of fuel,” he said. “Someone’s drained the fuel tank.”

Leaving us good and stuck. I tried to be shocked but felt resigned.

Grant hopped out of the cockpit and closed the door. I returned to staring at the bodies in the cabin. They didn’t deserve this. This had been just another job, and now—

Grant closed the cabin door, blocking my view. I shook myself clear of the image.

“What should we do with them?” I said.

“Leave them for now. We need to wake the others.”

As it turned out, we didn’t have to wake up the others. We heard a loud, shocked scream as we approached the lodge. This one was different than when Tina discovered Jerome’s deer carcass. This one was all about volume and fear. Not another murder came my first thought, and I ran. I’d find the murderer, catch him and tear him apart—

Ariel had discovered Dorian’s body. She was standing on the front porch, hands over her mouth, looking down. Tina, Jerome, and Jeffrey were with her.

How were we going to tell them that this wasn’t the worst of it? Slowly, I climbed the steps. The group on the porch followed me with shocked, questioning gazes, expecting me to say something. I didn’t know where to start.

“The power’s out,” I said. “The phone’s gone, and the radio in the airplane is busted. We can’t find Provost anywhere.”

“What are you saying?” Jerome demanded, angry. Like being fierce could solve this, could make everything right again. “What the hell’s going on?”

Grant stepped up beside me, his lip curled into a thin smile. “I think we’ve been had.”

The others went inside to wake up Lee and Conrad and gather everyone in the living room. Grant and I examined the area where Dorian had been standing and where he’d fallen. Looking for footprints, odd smells, hints of foul play. Like some kind of detective novel. Didn’t Agatha Christie do this one already?

I smelled Provost. Didn’t mean anything, because he’d been in and out of here all week, on the porch, sitting, standing, walking. I found footprints, but again, Provost and his crew had been going back and forth the whole time we’d been here. I didn’t know enough about forensics to know if the wound on Dorian’s head was caused by the fall or by someone sneaking up on him and hitting him.

Grant found something, a scorch mark at the joint that had held the railing to the post. “A small explosive might have weakened the joint at an opportune time. It wouldn’t even have to be loud enough to hear.”

“So it’s sabotage. Not an accident,” I said.

“Seems reasonable.”

None of us had touched Dorian up to that point. For a second I entertained the thought that maybe he was just unconscious, and if I put my hand to his neck there’d be a pulse and he’d survive. But the Wolf senses knew otherwise, couldn’t be fooled. He smelled dead.

Grant, Jeffrey, and I took a spare blanket, wrapped Dorian in it, and brought him inside to one of the empty bedrooms upstairs. We closed the door softly, out of respect. It seemed almost laughable; we weren’t going to wake anyone up. But the whole situation seemed to call for moving softly, carefully.

Then we gathered in the living room to discuss—to confront—the situation.

“So we’re stranded,” Jeffrey said. “We don’t have any power, and there’s no way to contact anyone.”

“Has anyone checked the generator?” Lee said.

“We were on our way to do that when we found Dorian,” I said. “But do you really think this is just a matter of turning the power back on? We’re on our own here.” I wanted to pace, but I stayed in my chair, my feet tapping nervously. Jerome did pace, back and forth along the picture window, looking out.

“I don’t get this. What does this mean? What are you all saying?” Conrad said, shaking his head. “Because if this is some kind of haunted-house gag for the show, it’s in really poor taste.”

“There are bodies, Conrad,” I muttered. “This isn’t TV anymore.”

Grant said, “Until we contact the authorities, I suggest no one go anywhere alone. We should stay in this central area until we come up with a plan to contact the authorities and find out where Provost is.”

“We’re what, sixty miles from the nearest town? If I shifted I could run that in a day,” Jerome said. “Kitty and I both could.”

“There’s another resort lodge even closer than that,” Lee said. “Thirty miles, maybe. I can check the map.”

“That may be our best option,” Grant said.

I couldn’t explain what had happened—what was happening—but we were coming up with plans, and that was good. That made me feel better. This was a good, sensible, talented group of people to be stuck with.

But there was still something making me nervous. I looked at Grant. “We should go around and look for those remote cameras and shut them down. Put electrical tape or duct tape over the lenses if we can’t turn them off. I don’t want anyone salvaging footage for any shows out of this.”

“Or spying on us?” Grant said.

“I didn’t want to say it,” I said.

Conrad was pale, breathing too quickly, on the edge of panic. “But if the power’s out—”

“Batteries,” Jerome said. “They could still be filming.”

“We’ll do that,” Tina said, taking Ariel’s hand and urging her to her feet. “I’ll bet there’s duct tape in the kitchen or toolshed.”

Jerome and Grant paired off to check the generator, Tina and Ariel searched the kitchen for tape, and I kept wracking my brains, wondering what we were missing.

Jeffrey said, softly, “Someone should tell Anastasia and Gemma what happened to Dorian. They should know.”

Well. That was one of the things I’d forgotten. Or didn’t want to think about. I didn’t understand the bond the three of them shared, but I knew it was strong. I knew they’d be hurt. Devastated. I couldn’t guess how they’d react.

“Isn’t it a bad idea, disturbing vampires while they’re sleeping?” Ariel said.

“And how disturbed do you think they’ll be when they realize we’ve gone all day without telling them what happened?” I said.

“I don’t want to do it,” Tina said softly. A couple of the others—Lee, Conrad—looked away, in silent agreement.

“I’ll do it,” I said and went toward the stairs.

I didn’t want to. I didn’t like the idea of walking into the vampires’ secret lair with this news more than anyone else did. But if it had been me, I’d want someone to tell me right away. Not that I knew how I was going to do it.

I opened the door. The stairwell was pitch-dark. My eyes adjusted quickly; enough light bled from the upstairs to let me see, a little. I should have brought a flashlight. Keeping my hand on the wall, I inched my way down, until I felt the stairwell give way to open room.

The room looked like all the other bedrooms, a typical hotel setup with a king-sized bed, a bureau, a desk, a couple of armchairs, and a bathroom. A couple of suitcases stood by the closet. Fully dressed, Anastasia sat at the edge of the bed, facing me. She was ghostly pale, her skin grayish, lips thin, eyes half-lidded. She looked like a wax figure. Like a corpse.

“Something’s happened,” Anastasia said.

I swallowed. My eyes teared up again. “It’s Dorian.”

She bowed her head and nodded. “I could tell. Something woke me—I could just tell.”

“He fell when the porch railing gave way. It looks like… Odysseus thinks it was rigged. Anastasia, I’m so sorry.”

She sat very still. After a long pause, she said, “Stupid, fragile mortals.” A trembling hand wiped her cheek, though nothing was there. She took a deep breath, which was odd, because vampires didn’t need to breathe. They only drew air to speak. But she seemed to need to gather herself. The breath seemed to help her straighten and regain control.

She looked over her shoulder to Gemma, who was asleep, a still, waxen figure under the covers.

“Are you going to wake her up?” I asked.

“No,” Anastasia said. “Let her have a few more hours of peace. She’ll find out soon enough. The railing—you said it was rigged?”

“The power’s gone out, Provost has vanished, and—and part of the crew’s been murdered. The airplane’s sabotaged. We’re isolated here. Worst-case scenario—”

“Conspiracy,” she said. “Someone wishing to get at me would do very well to strike at Dorian. I always kept him close because of that. Do you understand?”

We could all probably agree that some conspiracy was afoot. But it was amazing how different such a conspiracy could look depending on your perspective.

“You think this is all about you?” I said.

“I think someone may be taking advantage of an opportunity, yes. Your magician friend, for instance. He’s taking charge, isn’t he? He’s guiding the actions of the group now.”

I shook my head. “I know him. He doesn’t work like that.”

“Do you know him, really?”

And I couldn’t say that I did.

She turned to look at Gemma again and said, “If you could please leave us alone. We’ll be up at nightfall, as usual. There’s nothing I can do until then.” I turned to leave, when she called. “Kitty. Come nightfall, we’ll have to face the issue of sustenance.”

“Thanks for the warning.”

“It doesn’t have to be difficult.”

I couldn’t think about it. We’d have to cross that bridge tonight. “Yeah. I’ll see you in a few hours.”

She was still sitting at the edge of the bed, unmoving, when I went back upstairs.

I got back to the living room the same time Grant and Jerome did.

“We checked on the generator and batteries,” Jerome said. “The fuel’s been drained and the wiring cut.”

“Someone should go for help. Didn’t someone say that?” Jeffrey said.

The sooner the better, in my opinion. I said, “Jerome and I can travel fast. We won’t have to stop.”

Jerome said, “If we shifted—”

I shook my head. “We need to be conscious and able to speak when we get there. This may be slower, but it’ll be fast enough. If we leave now, we can be there by dusk.”

“But it’s thirty miles!” Conrad said. “That’s impossible.”

“They’re werewolves,” Lee said. “It’s not impossible. I wish we were on the coast. I feel useless here.”

“Just keep your eyes open,” I said. “Use your nose. You can be lookout.”

“We should get going,” Jerome said, already at the door. I went to join him. Hesitating a moment, I took off my shoes and socks. Jerome was already barefoot.

Grant studied me. “Are you sure you’ll be all right?”

I smiled thinly. “This is simple. We run to the next lodge and call for help. With any luck we’ll be back here by morning.”

“It’s a plan, then,” he said. “Be careful.”

“Likewise.”

We went outside. I could feel the others gathering by the window, watching us. The wreckage of the porch railing still lay scattered on the ground, along with the stain where Dorian’s blood had soaked into the ground. It smelled ripe and rotten in the morning sun, and a few flies buzzed over it. Apart from that, the area was still, quiet.

Jerome wasn’t close to shifting, but something wolfish looked out of his eyes. His breaths came slow and deep, and his attention turned outward, far outward, searching the farthest range of sight and hearing for danger. I knew how he felt—I wanted to get away from here, to run off some of this anxiety.

“You ready to do this?” I said.

“Yeah. You think you can keep up with me?”

“Probably not. But I don’t think anyone should be alone right now.”

His expression turned wry. “You might convince me to start liking this pack thing.”

“I told you, it’s all about having someone watch your back.”

He pulled off his T-shirt and tossed it to the porch. His body was sleek, molded with well-defined, powerful muscles under smooth, dark skin. The guy worked out, but more than that, his body rippled with power. His muscles were natural, hard-earned, and he knew how to use them. He rolled his shoulders, flexed for a moment, then set off, from stop to run.

I bounced, testing my feet against the gravel, feeling earth under me and air around me. Then I set off after him. We took the hiking trail that led from the lodge and to wilderness—thirty miles to the next bit of civilization.