Kitty's House of Horrors

Chapter 19

We rested three more times. Conrad had fallen unconscious by the time we reached the clearing in front of the lodge. There, we stopped again. The house and everything around it looked quiet. I wanted to know what was going on before we moved any closer.

The shadows had changed, growing more washed-out, more surreal. The sky had paled—close to sunrise. Dawn had sneaked up on me. When was the last time I’d slept? After I’d shifted yesterday? I couldn’t remember how long ago that had been. The gray predawn sky didn’t improve the hazy fuzz I seemed to be moving through.

“I’m going to go to the house to find Grant,” I said, leaving Tina and Conrad sitting at the edge of the clearing in front of the lodge. Not much cover here. I moved along the edge, slow and watchful, taking deep breaths. Nothing smelled out of the ordinary. I didn’t dare call out to Grant, in case an enemy was close by and listening.

I felt like I had a target painted on my forehead. I scratched it, then felt like an idiot for doing so.

I’d reached the porch railing when Grant cracked the door and stepped outside. He’d been keeping watch.

“Kitty.”

I didn’t know where to start. “We’ve got Conrad. He’s hurt, badly.”

“I heard what sounded like an explosion—did you find the blind?”

I swallowed, a gulp of air, of courage. “We did. It was booby-trapped. We lost Lee.”

He nodded and followed me out to where Tina waited with Conrad. The three of us brought him inside and lay him on one of the sofas. Tina and I collapsed. Grant handed us bottles of water, then looked at Conrad’s wounds.

The big picture window in the living room was growing light enough to see by. I sat up.

“Where are Anastasia and Gemma? It’s almost daylight.”

“They’re not back yet,” Grant said.

Shit. “Should we go look for them? Have you gotten any word back from them?”

Now Tina was sitting up, frowning, worried. “Jeffrey—”

I scrambled up, no longer bone tired. An adrenaline-fueled second wind pushed me. “We have to go look for them.”

Nodding at Conrad, Grant said, “Tina, can you look after him?”

“I want to go, I want to help find him—”

“Someone has to stay here,” Grant said. “If we lose the lodge to the hunters, we’ve lost everything.”

She nodded and sat, clasping her hands. Her hair was limp, in need of a wash, pushed behind her ears. Her shirt and jeans were streaked with dirt and blood—Conrad’s blood was all over both of us. Dark circles shadowed her eyes. I wondered if I looked that wrung out.

“We’ll find him,” I said, trying to sound hopeful. Had to stay hopeful.

Grant and I went outside. At the edge of the porch, I tipped my nose up and tested the air. I smelled the forest, the outdoors, like I always did, but I wanted to smell people. Vampires. Their cold, undead blood should have stood out among all this life.

“Find anything?” Grant asked me.

“Not yet.” I stepped forward, all my senses firing.

I heard running. Not caring about stealth, someone crashed through the trees toward us.

“Someone’s coming. Jeffrey,” I said as he broke out of the trees and joined us in the clearing.

“Thank God,” he said, gasping to catch his breath. He was sweat soaked. No telling how long he’d been running. “They’ve trapped Gemma, we need you.”

Jeffrey led us back the way he’d come, about a mile through the woods around the lodge, to the edge of the meadow. He explained on the way, as well as he could around the hard breathing. We were all running on adrenaline by this point.

“We found the blind, a camouflaged tent full of equipment and weapons. We broke up as much of it as we could, scattered the ammunition, hid the weapons in the underbrush. There were silver bullets, silver arrows, stakes, crosses, bottles of what we think were holy water. And a cage. No sign of Cabe or Provost.

“We were on our way back to the lodge when something—it was like an explosion. Too loud for a gunshot. It—it was a harpoon. I can’t think of how else to describe it. It was automated. Anastasia said there wasn’t anybody around, she would have sensed them if they were. But it got Gemma. It was a harpoon on a line and it dragged her into this… this cage.” He was half jogging, half limping now, holding his side. His face twisted in pain. He’d better not have a heart attack on us.

He said, “They could have just staked her, but they didn’t. They waited, and they triggered this… this thing. This trap.”

We arrived and saw what he meant. Gemma was trapped in a cage, just tall enough to stand up in, just wide enough to grip both sides with her hands. Sheltered out of sight by a tree, it was portable, maybe set here only in the last day or so the way the grass under it was recently crushed. Steel and heavy, it would hold lions. A winch welded to the back had reeled in Gemma, who struggled against a harpoon sticking out of her right shoulder. The whole thing could have been automated, set on a trigger, operated by remote—we’d seen that the hunters had cameras and monitors set up. They could have moved their base since Grant interrogated Valenti. But as Jeffrey had said, they could have staked her just as easily as trapping her with harmless—to her—steel. This trap had a different purpose.

The cage was at the edge of the open meadow, and sunrise had begun. A band of full sunlight crept toward us across the grass.

Anastasia was talking Gemma down. Gemma herself gritted her teeth and threw herself against the barbed spike in her shoulder.

“Gemma, darling, stay calm. Don’t struggle. Don’t thrash.”

The younger vampire closed her eyes and settled, nodding in agreement.

Anastasia reached through the cage and held the spike, where it protruded from her back. “We’ll work it out of you. Carefully, now.”

Gemma eased herself forward, leaning against the spike, rolling her shoulder a little, struggling against the barb. Anastasia braced it still. I heard the wet, meaty sound of ripping flesh.

Vampires felt pain. I’d seen them get hurt. But they didn’t bleed much, and they didn’t need to breathe unless they were speaking. Gemma slid herself off that hook and didn’t make a sound. When she was free, she fell forward, and Anastasia dropped the spike, where it dangled off the winch.

Anastasia glared at Grant. “Every magician is also an escape artist, yes? You can pick the lock?” She pointed to the door of the cage.

Grant was already kneeling before the lock, working on it with a couple of thin metal tools, his lock picks.

Gemma leaned forward, pressing herself against the bars of the cage, leaning toward Anastasia, reaching. Anastasia held the younger woman’s face.

“Ani, I don’t want to die,” she said, gasping now in instinctive panic. She was still more human than not, had spent more years as a human than as a vampire.

“Hush,” Anastasia said. “Stay calm. When he opens the door, we must fly to safety, do you understand?” Gemma nodded quickly. Her face puckered and she started crying.

I had never seen the sun rise so quickly.

“Anastasia, go back to the lodge,” Grant said, never turning his concentration from the lock.

“No, not without Gemma, I’m not leaving.”

“You’re in danger,” he said. “Go back.”

“No!”

“I’ll save her. I’ll get her out. But I can’t worry about you both.”

“Gemma—”

The girl was sobbing.

I said to Anastasia, “Some of the stories say you guys can turn to mist. You can vanish, reappear at will—”

“We can’t just walk through walls and iron bars!” the elder vampire said. “She’s just a child!”

“Anastasia, please,” Jeffrey said, putting his arm around her shoulder, urging her away.

“Jeffrey,” I said. “Go back to the lodge, the hunters’ blind, whatever’s closer. Get a tarp or a blanket or something we can put over the cage to shade it,” I said. I’d started crying, too. I’d have thought I’d be out of tears by now. “Both of you, go!”

Anastasia turned and ran, Jeffrey following, struggling to keep up. I moved around the cage, putting myself between Gemma and the sun, as if my small body could shelter her.

Grant worked on the locks. He clenched his jaw and seemed to be struggling.

“Grant?”

“This type of lock would be easy, but there’s a film of silicone sealant on the mechanism. It’s glued shut.”

Gemma pressed her back against the bars, as far away from the oncoming sunlight as she could get. Watching, I could almost see it move toward her, a reaching hand. Grant continued jamming his pick in the lock, working it in an arcane fashion that might as well have been magic.

With a pop and a click, the lock sprang and the door swung open. Grant took hold of Gemma’s arms and pulled.

And the sunlight reached her.

“No!” Grant screamed in fierce defiance and clung to Gemma all the more.

But the light touched her legs and she caught fire, and the flames raced up her as if she were made of dry cotton. Her clothing didn’t burn so fast but stayed for a moment as a shell around an inferno. Her eyes held terror, her gaze locked with Grant’s, her mouth open in a silent wail.

Then the fire was gone and all was ash, specks drifting above on heated air. Grant knelt before streaks of soot and ash on the ground, his hands rigid in front of him, his skin burned to blisters.

The smell in the air was… I breathed through my mouth and tried to shut it out.

I moved to Grant, put my hand on his shoulder. The expression on his face was lost, the eyes sad. He looked old.

“I had her,” he murmured. “I’d opened the lock. I’d won.”

I wasn’t sure he’d even noticed his hands. He hadn’t moved them. They still curled as if they held Gemma’s arm.

“You’re hurt,” I said. “Let’s get inside.”

He slumped against me, and I almost panicked, thinking I’d have to drag him back, thinking he’d die, too, and then what would I do?

“I’m so tired,” he said, leaning on my shoulder. Just resting a moment.

“I know,” I whispered.

Turning at the sound of running, I saw Jeffrey, standing with a wool blanket that might have come from the hunters’ blind. When he saw us, he dropped it. His shoulders slumped, and grief pulled at his face.

A pair of gold filigree rings had survived the blaze. Gemma’s rings. I picked them up, squeezed them in my hand, and nudged Grant. “Come on, we have to go.”

Propping him up, I pulled him to his feet, and whatever moment of despair had gripped him vanished. He straightened, the look of cold stone settling over him. He folded his hands protectively to his chest and walked.

I picked up the blanket Jeffrey had dropped, held it up, showing the light that played through the fibers. Not a tight weave. “It probably wouldn’t have been enough,” I said, like that was any comfort.

“It might have been,” he said. “If I’d been faster.”

I hooked my arm through his and urged him on. Side by side, Jeffrey and I followed Grant back to the lodge.

Anastasia was waiting in the living room, toward the back, in shadows and away from the sunlight now pouring in through the windows. She had to know it was too late, but when we came in through the door she demanded, “Where is she?”

Grant, streaked with sweat and soot, could only look at her, his burned hands clawed in front of him.

Tina covered her mouth, her eyes narrowing with tears. Anastasia didn’t say a word. Not to reprimand him, not to weep. She nodded once, then went to the basement door and descended into her cave.

I followed.

“Anastasia?”

At the bottom of the stairs, I found her sitting on the bed, a noble statue, gazing into the corner.

“Anastasia, I’m sorry. He tried. He almost had her.”

“She died in his arms,” she said. “I could see that. Right now, I have nothing to say. I need to rest. I hope to see you come nightfall.”

Hesitating, I approached, opening my hand to her. Gemma’s rings lay on my palm. Anastasia stared at them a moment, then retrieved them with cold fingers, closing them in her own fist.

I left her, climbing back up the stairs with feet made of lead.