Wild Hearts

by Bridget Essex

  “I don't...I don't know this woman. I don't know what to expect. I don't want to do this alone,” I tell her, all in a rush. I clear my throat, try to calm my racing heartbeat. I don't quite manage.

  “Just...please stay with me?” I ask her then.

  A question...and a hope.

  And this, too, surprises us, both of us.

  Silver breathes in for a long moment, filling her lungs. And when she sighs out, it's an epic sigh.

  Sighs speak more than words sometimes.

  This one conveys...a lot.

  “Your grandmother can be...hard headed,” she says slowly, carefully.

  I'm assuming that this is a very nice way of saying some pretty un-nice things.

  I raise my brows and I realize that there's a genuine smile tugging at the corners of my mouth. I resist it, nod in what I hope is an understanding manner.

  “She's not going to like me being there. But I'll stay with you,” says Silver gruffly then, flicking her gaze to mine.

  Her lips curl up at the corners, almost imperceptibly.

  But I can see the smile in her eyes.

  There's such warmth there...

  My stomach tightens, just a little...but it's a pleasurable tightening.

  And warmth blossoms there, too.

  It's...nice.

  She's...nice.

  I shake my head a little, try to concentrate on the moment at hand, shoving my feelings, my growing feelings, under the rug of my subconscious...just for a little while.

  I step forward and I grasp the doorknob of the great antique door.

  I pause. I take a deep breath.

  Okay.

  I think I'm ready to do this.

  And then Silver, who was simply standing beside me...she reaches up, so quickly her arm is a blur.

  Her fingers close around my wrist.

  “Wait,” she hisses, eyes narrowed, nostrils flaring.

  And that's when I hear it.

  Wind chimes.

  They're very pretty. Bright and high-pitched, a jolly kind of tinkling.

  But...we're in a house.

  Should we really be hearing wind chimes?

  Silver's brow furrows deeply—I'm beginning to see that there are lines there. She must frown often. She tugs on my wrist, not ungently, and pulls me back from the door with a sudden insistence.

  “Something's wrong. I wasn't paying attention...” she breathes, then casts her gaze to me.

  Her eyes are wide.

  But they're wide for only a heartbeat.

  And then they narrow.

  Her lips curl up over her teeth, and she snarls soundlessly.

  “Something's wrong,” she repeats, breathing it into the stillness as she looks back to the door, snarl remaining on her face. This might normally make someone look...well. Scary? Is that the right word? Unapproachable? Stay-away-from?

  But there is a tenacity to the strength that shows in every line and curve of her just now.

  This, like all other things about Silver, pulls me in, too.

  Even as fear begins to rise in me.

  Even as I step closer to Silver.

  “What's wrong?” I whisper to her, and she shakes her head once, sharply.

  She hesitates for another heartbeat.

  And then she seems to make up her mind.

  “Everything,” she breathes to me, and then she takes a step back, pulling me toward her. “We've got to go.”

  I turn, glancing down the hallway, back the way we came toward the big front door of the house.

  The door is open.

  Snow blows through the gap to the outside where a drift is startling to pile up against the door jamb. The night is dark beyond the door.

  Wait.

  Did we leave the door open?

  I didn't think we did.

  I thought we...

  The thought cuts off halfway through. One minute I'm standing there, perplexed, staring out into the dark at the roaring storm, and then I'm yanked backwards, off my feet, by a strong arm around my middle.

  The air leaves my lungs in a great whoosh, so there's nothing left to make a sound with. But the second the air leaves, I'm inhaling again, ready to scream, when I realize that it's Silver. Silver who put her around me and ducked into a side corridor, pulling me behind her.

  She presses me against the wall, a finger to her lips, her brow furrowed deeply, and her eyes steady as they gaze down at me.

  Sh, she mouths.

  What's happening? I mouth back, but Silver doesn't answer. Instead, she gives one short, sharp shake of her head, then flicks her gaze back toward the hallway.

  I watch her eyes rove over the outer corridor, can almost see the wheels turning in her head, and—faster than a heartbeat—she comes up with a plan.

  She shakes her head again, presses a long finger to her own full lips. My eyes linger there, the blood pounding through me. I know we're in trouble. We have to be.

  But she's here. She's here with me.

  And...it's shocking, what I'm about to say, yes:

  But I'm not afraid.

  Silver turns and moves quietly down this smaller hallway. She's still gripping my wrist, and tightly. But she eases up for a minute and lets her grip slide down until her hand is in mine, tight, squeezing tight, and tugging me right along behind her. Almost beside her.

  We walk along quickly. I'm trotting to keep up with Silver's long legs, but we're not in a run. Not yet. There's a turn to the little corridor, and then another. There are a lot of doors that open up onto different rooms, parlors and sitting rooms and one room that has a pool table with balls racked in the center.

  But we don't run.

  Not yet...

  That is until we hear it.

  A man's voice.

  Behind us.

  He's close enough that the sound makes me jump, close enough that I can hear his exhale when he breathes in to shout it:

  “I found them!”

  My heart rattles against my bones, my skin pricks with dread...

  We run.

  Heavy bootfalls thud loudly behind us. Silver mutters a little expletive under her breath, and then she's tugging me through an open doorway.

  There's a set of stairs.

  There's some weird subconscious part of me (or maybe slightly conscious) that realizes this must be the stairs the servants used, way back in the day. These stairs are simple, plain wood, and the walls are white, without any decorations. The stairs are also steep.

  We begin to climb.

  On the first landing, my lungs begin to struggle.

  By the second landing, I can hardly take in a breath.

  Remember, I'm not the working out sort, and I can't remember the last time I ran for anything. School? Yeah, it was probably for school.

  Which is just a way of saying that I'm the weakest link.

  And whoever is after us is definitely going to catch us.

  Or, rather...

  Me.

  One step after the other. Just keep trying to take in air, keep lifting your legs. You can do this, Ella. You have to do this.

  But I can't do it. One step from the third landing—the house is four stories, judging by the last set of steps we have to ascend—I trip. My knees smack against the wood of the staircase, and I groan, letting one of my hands take my weight as I try to brace for the impact.

  Silver doesn't falter.

  She turns, tells me quietly “hang on,” and she picks me up. Just...picks me up, just like that, one arm beneath my knees, her other wrapped around my back and shoulders. She lifts me up like she's about to carry me across the threshold of a house, and—without any sign that my weight is something she even notices—she continues bounding up the steps, sprinting.

  For God's sake, she's not even out of breath.

  At this point, I should be thanking somebody for small favors. For one thing, she's not carrying me like a sack of potatoes like that other time.

  And it doesn't seem like I'm
slowing her down.

  I don't have the time or resources to compute how attractive and noble this is, insert lots of other nice, positive, warmth-inducing adjectives...

  Because I happen to glance over her shoulder at that moment.

  I look down below at who is following us.

  And...yeah.

  That's...not something you see every day.

  That's pretty much only something you see in your nightmares.

  There's a guy climbing the stairs beneath us. He's taking the steps two at a time, his long legs devouring the distance like he's eating it up.

  My first thought: he reminds me of a spider. Long limbs, gangly.

  Unsettling.

  But then he actually looks up at us.

  He's pale, overly so, skin translucent like mother of pearl. But the only reason I notice his skin's paleness is because of the contrast to his mouth.

  It's red, like rubies and roses.

  Like blood.

  And his teeth are red, too, red is dripping out of his mouth, over his translucent skin...

  It's not red like blood.

  It is blood.

  He's not close to us, not exactly. He's about two flights behind us. But even with that distance, I can see the redness in the dim light of this stairwell, and clearly.

  I can see the blood.

  And I can see that his teeth are longer than any teeth should be.

  My brain proceeds to short circuit. I'm seeing something vastly strange. Something I've never seen before. I try to explain it away, try to come up with some rational reasoning, but—of course—there is none.

  And then my brain supplies a single word.

  It's the word I didn't want to think, but it appears in my head anyway.

  Because there's no other word for this.

  It's a fantasy word.

  An impossible word.

  But here it is anyway, climbing the stairs after us, blood dripping down his face.

  Vampire.

  Chapter 12: Trapped

  I want to scream, but my throat constricts.

  I can't get out any sound.

  But Silver feels me stiffen in her arms. She doesn't falter, doesn't miss a step, but she grinds her teeth, nods shortly.

  “It's okay,” she growls to me. “I'm going to get you out of this.”

  She tightens her grip on me, holding me closer, as she ascends the stairs.

  I can feel the hardness of the muscles in her arms, can feel the surge of her heartbeat as she climbs. The scent of her, of fresh air and towering pines, is all around me, the solidity of her is absolute. She is here and she is holding me up, and she is carrying me away from something so abjectly frightening that it's a nightmare.

  Yes, fear roars in my heart.

  Yes, my heart feels like it's going to beat out of my chest.

  I can't take a deep enough breath, can't get enough air. I know I'm panicking. There are spots along the edges of my eyes, terror rolling through me in deep, dark waves, striving to pull me under.

  I've never faced anything like this.

  Yes.

  But I'm not facing it alone.

  She's here.

  Silver.

  She's here.

  She's carrying me away from the terror.

  She's holding me up.

  She's keeping me safe.

  We reach the landing of the fourth floor. Ahead of us is a single door.

  End of the line.

  Silver sets me down gently, and when the soles of my shoes hit the floorboards, I feel exactly how unsteady I am. My entire body contains no balance, can't hold itself up. But I reach out, place a palm against the wall, try to remember to breathe, fail, feel that breath hitching in my throat, my lungs constricting.

  Pure panic racks my body.

  I turn, glance over the railing.

  He's one floor beneath us.

  Rising.

  “Oh, my God,” I whisper, pressing my back against the wall. I turn, look at what Silver's doing. We've got to go. We've got to get out of here.

  We've got to go.

  Silver is standing at the door, and her hand is on the knob.

  It's not turning.

  “Oh, my God,” I repeat, breathing out the words.

  “It's locked,” she mutters, taking a step back. Her eyes rove over the knob and the hinges. It's a solid door, one that's withstood the passage of time with hardly a scratch.

  Impenetrable.

  “Do you have a key?” I manage. She shakes her head sharply, once, twice.

  No key.

  We're trapped.

  She turns, hands balled into fists, her shoulders curling forward.

  Her full lips rise up and over her teeth.

  Silver faces the staircase.

  She doesn't have to wait long.

  He climbs the last few steps with a perverse slowness. His head rises over the edge of the last step. I can take in his greasy, uncombed hair, mussed up—fashionable, I suppose, if you smoke clove cigarettes and listen to bands no one's ever heard of. But when his forehead rises into view, it is smooth, smooth as stone or marble...which is terrifying in and of itself.

  Because no human is perfectly smooth, because no human is perfect. We all bear lines and scars and curves and furrows. We hold our lives in our faces, our sorrows and our joys, our personality...hell, our very soul if those things exist.

  It's right there. Right in every line and wrinkle of us.

  And if a soul is reflected in a face, well...

  This means he doesn't have one.

  No soul. Nothing but smooth alabaster skin and dark eyes and a pointed nose, sharp.

  Along with a sharp smile.

  And sharper teeth.

  Now that he's close enough that a few simple feet are all that remain between us, I can see exactly how sharp his teeth are. He has fangs, a whole mouth full of them. His teeth are so sharp that he has to smile. He'd never be able to close his lips fully—he'd cut himself.

  So it's a rictus of a grin, impossibly wide.

  Impossible.

  But this must be real.

  Because he's right in front of me.

  He's not some figment of my imagination, not some unholy nightmare that a dinner of cheese fries and pizza conjured up in my starch-addled brain.

  He's real, and he's here, and he ascends the stairs completely now, and is on the landing with us.

  Blood drips from his mouth, running over his too-smooth chin in scarlet rivulets.

  It coagulates on his porcelain complexion.

  He is wholly repulsive. Seeing his smile, the unhinging of his jaws, the blood, the way he leers at both me and Silver...the fear becomes too much.

  I wonder if what I'm presently feeling is a heart attack. Is this is what a heart attack feels like?

  Am I going to die of fright before he even reaches me?

  But, if I'm afraid...

  That's not what Silver is feeling.

  A low tremor of sound begins to rise all around us. Are the floorboards shaking? Is this an earthquake? In Pennsylvania?

  But it's not that.

  I blink as I realize what it is, my heart stuttering in my throat.

  It's a sound.

  And it's coming from Silver.

  A growl.

  The rumble of it is low, almost hypnotic. There's a constant and steady rhythm to it, and it's all around us now as Silver lowers her chin, her lips rising even higher over her own teeth.

  She doesn't speak a word.

  She doesn't have to.

  The growl does the talking for her.

  The vampire stops at the top of the steps. He's on the landing with us now, but only just. There's a good six feet between us, and I'm aware—highly so—of that distance.

  Six feet, give or take an inch or two.

  Six feet.

  Which is much too close.

  The vampire pauses, and he stares at Silver.

  His smile doesn't waver.

&n
bsp; Up here, on the fourth landing, there's a single bare bulb in a light socket above our heads. It's not very bright, but it's bright enough for his blood-slick teeth to flash brightly in his mouth, the wetness reflecting the light.

  But as he turns to stare at Silver, the light...

  It flickers.

  I flick my gaze to the light bulb, and—surprisingly—so does the vampire. But the flicker of the light bulb is only that: one small stutter of light. And then the creature begins to walk across the space between us, one foot in front of the other, slow, hypnotic.

  He's turned his gaze from Silver, now.

  He's only staring at me.

  Staring...and smiling.

  My heart rises into my throat, my shoulder blades push harder into the wall behind me...

  So, no, the vampire is no longer looking at Silver.

  But...he really should have been.

  The light bulb flickers again. This time, the flicker is more pronounced. The light all around us...it shrinks away, the darkness creeping closer. There are no windows in this stairwell, and the light above us is the only light.

  So when the light bulb flickers, for a heartbeat, two, it casts us all into shadow.

  Even as the vampire takes another step, his head cocking to the side, his sinister smile somehow, impossibly, growing...

  Even as I take another step backward, my hips bumping into the wall behind me...

  There's no place to go.

  No place to run.

  No place to hide.

  Yup.

  This is it.

  This is the end.

  And what a stupid, horrible way for my life to spark out.

  The universe is giving me a big “screw you.” Vampires are real, and, oh—guess what? One's about to kill you.

  I'm suddenly angry. The anger is, by no means, a match for the terror that consumes me from the tips of my toes to the top of my head.

  But it's still there.

  As my body cages against the wall behind me, as I shrink back from the encroaching man, his smile seeming to grow with each step until he's some hideous monster that not even my nightmares could have conjured...

  The anger stirs in my belly.

  I'm panting, my chest rising and falling quickly as my lungs take in small snatches of air. The black spots along the edges of my vision are growing bigger. It'd be great if I pass out before the guy reaches me to kill me, but I have a feeling that I'm not going to get so lucky.

  So that anger rises, coiling at the base of my spine, inching up my vertebrae, taking each bone one at a time. I can tell that it's rising in me, because where the anger pools, the heat of terror is replaced by a calm, cool resolution.