The poor kid had been through enough. No wonder her grandparents didn’t want to dump this in her lap too.
“Once the chain of succession was broken, I couldn’t have accepted the position anyway.” Her voice got softer. “Mom won’t come back. Ever. She hates this place, and she hates—hated—her parents. Without her, only my grandparents had the power to contain the demon.”
A line of succession, a magical one, threw more weight toward the Oliphants being, well, magical.
“They trained you enough to get to this point,” Linus said gently. “But they never meant for you to stand guard alone, did they?”
“No,” she said softly. “I thought maybe…just this one last time…I could do it. For them.” She coughed, and I pictured the mist filling her lungs. “We have to be out in two weeks, and then it’s over. The family curse will finally end after the house is destroyed and the basement is sealed forever.”
“Can we come down?” I held a finger to my lips before the protests about waiting until she was unconscious started. “Help you figure this out?”
“Yeah.” She coughed again, softer this time. “The gun isn’t loaded. I found it in the kitchenette.”
I didn’t see the Oliphants leaving a weapon, loaded or not, where guests or their children might stumble across it, so she must mean the subbasement kitchen. Maybe that’s why she had it close at hand when Linus paid her a visit.
“Sit tight.” I rubbed my forehead. “We’ll be right there.”
“Okay,” she whispered and then laughed until I worried she couldn’t stop. “I’ll be here.”
Linus ended the call and quirked one eyebrow in reprimand, but I made a helpless gesture.
“She’s a kid.” I lifted my hands. “She needs our help.” I let them fall. “We can’t afford to wait her out.”
“She pointed a gun at Linus,” Lethe growled, protective instincts kicking in, which I found adorable given she was defending my husband with the same ferocity as me. “We’ve only got her word it’s not loaded.”
“You heard her on the phone,” he countered. “The fog has reached her. She’ll be unconscious by the time we arrive.”
“Are you sure it’s working?” I eyed the phone. “She’s more coherent than I expected at this stage.”
Given how long he had mentored me, he knew I wasn’t calling his skill into question but her heritage.
“She’s fighting it. Usually, they don’t.” He rubbed his thumb across the screen. “There could be other factors in play. We just don’t know enough about the Oliphants, and we’re out of time to learn.”
“There’s one more teeny-tiny issue,” Lethe reminded us. “She heard banging.”
“Demons don’t exist.” I flicked a glance at Linus’s pensive expression. “Or, if they do, this will be the first verified sighting.”
Cletus appeared in a flash of tattered cloak and moaned at Lethe, pointing a damning finger at the hall.
“Hood,” she breathed and bolted down the stairs.
I was hot on her trail, my calves burning, but I was there when we spotted Hood collapsed in a heap on the floor in the dining room. I hit my knees beside him and checked his pulse. Aside from the nasty gash matting his hair in the back where he had been struck, he appeared to be in one piece.
“They called in reinforcements,” Lethe growled, touching her mate’s face. “That’s why they were making nice with the food. They were buying time for backup to arrive.”
“I got this.” Using my pocketknife, I cut open my palm and drew a healing sigil on Hood. “Time to rise and shine.” I pushed magic through the design, and the wound closed before our eyes. “Feeling better?”
“Ungh.”
“I’ll take that as a yes.” Lethe helped him into an upright position. “Any idea how many?”
“Four in addition to the two, so six total.” He rubbed his head. “I should have scented them.”
“I shouldn’t have left you alone.” Lethe kissed his boo-boo. “I got worried about Grier and…”
“I know.” He leaned against her. “I know.”
Based on the expression Linus wore, I wasn’t the only one who wished they knew what those two were talking about, but Lethe had made it plain she wasn’t coughing up any answers yet, and Hood let her get away with murder. Literally.
The wraith pointed toward the pantry. I got to my feet and confirmed the door to the basement had been busted open. Now that we knew Kylie was hiding out down there, we couldn’t very well lock it with a sigil as we had the first time. She would have no way out, but that meant the vampires had an easy way in.
“So much for strategy.” I sighed. “Guess we default to our usual try not to die and hope for the best.”
Before we went down, I drew sigils for light on each of our palms, and the glow was blinding.
“I’ve got an idea, but it might not work as well or at all on vampires’ heightened senses.” I drew a sigil at the base of Lethe’s throat. “This will muffle our footsteps and voices.” I did the same for Hood and Linus. “It won’t conceal our scents, though. And it won’t make us invisible. We need to stay out of their line of sight and whatever the equivalent of downwind is indoors if we want to stay off their radar.”
“Will we have room to shift?” Lethe swept her light beam back and forth. “Or are we stuck on two legs?”
“There’s room,” Hood confirmed. “It will be tight, but that’s as much in our favor as against it.”
No prey in their right mind wanted to be stuck in a tunnel with two gwyllgi on the hunt.
Lethe refused to let me go first. She was an alpha, had been raised by one and groomed for the position all her life. She had trouble sitting back and letting others shield her. Even if it was only the difference of one spot in line, she was still driven to be at the head.
Hood offered an apologetic smile but climbed in after her.
Make that two spots.
Ugh.
Linus and I exchanged a glance, and I read my worry on his face. “They’re acting weirder than usual.”
“I’ve been promised all secrets will be revealed when this is over.”
“Me too.” I chewed on my bottom lip. “I’m glad it ends tonight. They’re starting to creep me out.”
Determined not to go last, I wiggled through the opening after Hood. Cletus waited for me on the other side, and he did not look happy. Linus’s shoes touched down seconds later, and his expression hinted he agreed with the wraith.
Before we started down, he set the thurible spewing mist across the floorboards into the basement and shut the door. Kylie wasn’t reacting to it fast enough, and leaving it going would only hinder our vision.
“Get us eyes on Kylie,” I told Cletus. “Report back on the vampires’ progress.”
With an unhappy moan, he did as he was told. Eventually. After a forceful mental shove from me.
Sheesh.
What was with everyone? They were all sticking to me like glue. Even more so than usual.
I hadn’t been kidnapped, taken hostage, or even slightly murdered in a good six months. I was on a roll.
Hood beat Lethe into Kylie’s sleeping area after he won the quick argument that she would recognize him but not her. The rest of us huddled around the opening, but it was obvious what he would say.
“She’s not here.” He pried open the next trapdoor and took a deep breath. “This one is empty too.”
“The vampires?” I saw nothing to indicate they had come this way, but their senses were as keen as the gwyllgi. They wouldn’t waste time tossing the place if they scented Kylie wasn’t there. “You tracking them?”
“They came this way, but they didn’t linger.” Hood sniffed out another door, this one set into the wall behind the toppled mini-fridge. “They must have some sense of where they’re going.”
“Or they’re following Kylie’s scent,” Linus added grimly. “They must have spooked her, and she ran. Her senses are muddled. She’s easy prey.
”
The guilt thickening his voice made my gut clench. This whole situation had spun out of control the instant we stepped foot inside the library, but this was one ride we couldn’t afford to get off. Not with Kylie trapped below us with vampires in pursuit.
“Do you hear them?” I listened, but only faint scuffling reached me. “Can you tell how far we have to go?”
“They’re deep.” Lethe cocked her head. “Two more levels? Something like that.”
“Kylie never said how deep she goes. She was using the first two floors, but she might move freely between more than that.” I stepped toward the opening. “We need to catch them before they find her, or whatever’s bumping in the night down here.”
Grim determination fueled our exploration. We ranged deeper and deeper underground, and the rotten-egg scent grew thick enough to coat the back of my throat with every swallow. We got turned around on stairs that led nowhere, tried doors that opened onto nothing, and almost plummeted through a disintegrating section of flooring. The stink was so pervasive the gwyllgi lost the trail. We were searching blindly, and it wasn’t going well.
Trash littered the lower levels. Cans with peeling labels, empty water jugs, even a filthy baby bottle.
“Blood.” Hood flung out his arm while he investigated a dark smudge I couldn’t see well from so far back. “The kid was here, and she’s hurt.”
How he parsed it from the sulfuric stench impressed me when my eyes were pouring water.
“Something else was down here.” Lethe flared her nostrils. “Someone else, maybe?”
“Oh goody.” I scanned the area. “You’re sure its trail starts here?”
“I can’t tell,” Lethe growled, clearly frustrated. “That smell is screwing with me big time.”
Boom. Boom. Boom.
“What’s that?” I checked with Linus. “Do you think it’s what Kylie heard?”
“Perhaps.” A neat frown bisected his brow. “Or the vampires might be trying their luck breaking whatever magic is holding their prize captive with physical force.”
A rattle shook us, and tremors spread through my legs. “My money is on the vampires.”
The rhythm was too steady, too constant, for one person to maintain. Several, however…
A shadow darted past, hitting me in the ankle and almost sending me into a face-plant. “Damn cats.”
The creature gazed up at me with a solemn plea in its luminous eyes, but the persistent ache in my calves reminded me I couldn’t trust them.
First Hood and then Lethe snarled, and my bestie curled her lip. “This is what hurt you?”
“Maybe not this exact one, but one like it.”
When it didn’t attack, I waved the gwyllgi back and addressed it. “Are you here to help or what?”
It bobbed its head and darted toward a concealed hatch it pawed at until Hood lifted the piece of wood.
“It could be leading us into a trap.” Lethe hit it with all the suspicion I expected her to show a cat.
“Look at the blood trail.” Hood shined his palm over a crimson handprint. “Kylie went this way.”
Another tremor shook the floor, and I flung out my hand to catch myself against the wall.
“Those idiots are going to bring the whole house down.” I regained my balance. “They’ll kill us all.”
“Not if we kill them first.” Lethe bared her teeth. “Let’s go solve your mystery, shall we?”
We sneaked down two more levels before my duller senses picked up the conversation ahead.
“She’s the last of the Oliphants,” Barb insisted. “Her blood will break the spell.”
“She’s not the last,” Benny countered. “Her mother is still alive.”
“Her mother is the next in line,” a third voice confirmed. “The girl might not be enough.”
“We’re out of time,” a fourth snarled. “This is our final chance to free him.”
“There’s still the child,” a fifth intoned. “What other purpose must it serve?”
“Yes, what of the child?” a sixth lent weight to their argument. “Perhaps both of them together are the key?”
An uncomfortable silence lapsed while the group seemed to consider that.
Me? I was racking my brain over who else they had in there. No missing persons had been reported who fit the profile, but this cycle was all over the place thanks to the impending demolition.
“No,” Barb protested. “I won’t harm a child.”
Call me crazy, but Kylie was a child in my book, and I didn’t hear any concern for her.
“We may not have a choice,” Benny soothed. “We’ve tried everything else.”
For vampires to be huddled in the dark with a human sacrifice or two on tap, they had to want their prize in a bad way, and I felt stupid for not putting it together sooner.
The thing they were after wasn’t a what but a who. That must mean the demon was actually…a vampire.
The house wasn’t that old, all things considered, but if a vampire was the minotaur in this maze, then it was reaching the upper age bracket for made vampires. The odds of a clan caring that much about a single individual, even a master who had gotten trapped, were slim. But one thing they did care about, very much, were Last Seeds.
Lucky for them, Last Seeds were basically immortal and indestructible. Unlucky for us, after all this time, it would be starved, insane with bloodlust, and, possibly, just plain ol’ insane.
I was spitballing here, but the pieces fit.
What didn’t work for me was the thirty-year sacrifice angle. Who was kidnapping and murdering people? Not the Last Seed if it had been walled up all this time. If it was a Last Seed. Its clan? I doubted it. That kind of thing drew human interest, and these vampires had most likely been the ones cleaning up after the killers.
The shadow cat rubbed against my ankle, thoroughly giving me the willies, and blinked its eerie eyes at me. Assured of my attention, it trotted off ahead, leading the way.
I didn’t like this.
Any of it.
Not a bit.
We followed the cat, which had bad idea written all over it, and it led us to the door separating us from Kylie and the vampires. This one was set into a wall, and it had been ripped off its hinges, its padlock and chain thrown across the floor. This one made of stone. We really had hit rock bottom.
An electric lantern, probably Kylie’s, painted the room in shadows. There was still light enough to see an ancient pentagram inlayed into the stone. It glinted, a metal of some kind. Silver, maybe? Hard to tell. Kylie sat in the middle with her hands tied behind her back and her ankles bound in front of her.
The pungent reek of magic stained the air and made breathing difficult. This was a dark place, and I don’t mean because of the lack of electricity. A heavy weight pressed on my chest, crushing my lungs, a power unlike anything I had encountered up until now.
All that was bad enough, but a second form wriggled in the farthest corner. That’s where the shadow cats congregated. Their presence coaxed a tiny sob from the bundle of fabric, and its contents hit me like a ton of freaking bricks.
“A baby,” I mouthed to Linus. “A baby.”
The infant settled as the cats rocked it with their paws, but their harsh yellow eyes pleaded with me, with us.
The facts Kylie had shared about the shadow cats protecting the Oliphants were fast becoming fiction. The cats didn’t give her a second glance. In fact, they made a point of avoiding her. They skirted her as far as they dared to reach the infant, and they ran interference as best they could between her and the baby, not that she could move all that much thanks to her restraints.
Lethe elbowed me and pointed to Kylie’s pantlegs.
They were covered in blood.
Just like mine had been.
Just like Linus’s back had been.
The shadow cats had attacked her. Savaged her. Her current predicament raised all kinds of uncomfortable questions. Like where had the baby come f
rom? Where were its parents? Had the vampires brought it as a snack or as a sacrifice…or had Kylie?
Vampires are animated by necromantic magic, but they can’t perform it. Even if someone coached them through what to do and how to do it, even if they’d had time to inset the fancy circle themselves, they had no power to activate it.
That meant it had already been put here, by people who could use it.
Swallowing the sour taste in the back of my throat, I squinted through the darkness to study the faint glitter on the back wall. I really wished I hadn’t. Really, really wished.
A shelf had been mounted in clear view of anyone in the circle, and it gleamed like old bone.
In a precise row across its length sat eleven human skulls, some no larger than my palm.
Goddess be merciful.
Oblivious to our presence, the frustrated vampires banged their fists until blood ran between their knuckles, but the door before them didn’t budge an inch. It was magicked shut, and if blood from Kylie wasn’t doing the trick, I could guess their next move.
“Perhaps we need more blood,” the third voice said right on cue.
“Perhaps we need all her blood,” a fifth purred. “A life for a life.”
The vampires murmured in faint agreement.
“Let.” Boom. “Me.” Boom. “Out.”
The gathering sucked in a collective breath and exhaled a single word.
“Master.”
“Screw this.”
For a second, I thought I was the one with the runaway mouth, but it had been Lethe.
Magic splashed around her ankles, licked up her thighs, and pulled her under its current. She was on all fours, foam building at her mouth, in the time it took me to get the heck out of her way.
Seconds behind her transformation, Hood shook out his fur and glowered at the room full of vampires.
Snatching Linus’s hand, I pricked my palm and drew an impervious sigil on him and then on me. The gwyllgi had shifted too fast for me to protect them. I had to keep my fingers crossed they could hold their own against so many vampires in such a tight space.
The sigil I used to muffle our voices and movements had sloughed off after the gwyllgi transformed. The vampires, shocked to find themselves corralled, whirled on us with hisses and snarls.
How to Survive an Undead Honeymoon (The Beginner's Guide to Necromancy Book 8) Page 11