by Abigail Roux
A little Ghost Tour never hurt anyone.
394 The
Archer
Abigail Roux
XI.
“WHERE’D you disappear off to?” Brandt asked as Nikolaus came scurrying up to
the back of the tour group.
“Had to take care of business,” Nikolaus said defensively.
“So where are y’all from?” the brunette asked them as Nikolaus and Brandt
looked at one another warily. “Australia? Germany?”
“Yeah,” Brandt answered without taking his eyes off Nikolaus. Carl shook
his head in irritation and poked at Nikolaus to make him move forward faster. They were losing the tour.
“And he’s from New Zealand,” Brandt provided with a jerk of his thumb at
Carl. “He likes sheep.”
Carl smothered a snort and whapped Brandt in the arm, and Nikolaus’s voice
wavered as he said, “In town for a company conference.”
That explanation seemed to satisfy the three women, and they carried on
with the tour in relative silence, listening to the stories the guide told them. Nikolaus had expected more simpering and batting of eyelashes from them, but the three
women were surprisingly uninterested in the three of them. Perhaps it was obvious the men had spent the last four or so months shagging one another senseless, Nikolaus reasoned. Good to know.
Carl seemed to be a little too alert for Nikolaus’s liking, and Nikolaus was
worried about the other man. He had lifted off into Assassin Mode, but he’d somehow burned out before re-entry. He was now orbiting somewhere out there between their old, sweet teddy bear Carl and this new ‘kill it if it moves’ evil-teddy version. It was frightening and beyond disturbing. Nikolaus was having serious second thoughts
about their sleeping arrangements. He didn’t want to be in bed with the evil-teddy version of Carl.
XII.
AS they walked, they heard several different ghost stories, saw several people fall down because they were all drinking copiously, and got into one minor fight when
Brandt poked Carl in the eye for calling him a wanker earlier.
Delayed reactions were worth the effort sometimes, just to see people’s
reactions to them.
The three women set off Brandt’s rusty alarm bells, but so far they’d had no
problems from them, aside from a little bit of ass-grabbing Brandt was fairly certain hadn’t been one of the girls after all.
“Okay, which of you grabbed my ass?” Brandt asked jokingly as they came
up on what looked to be a church. The three girls looked at him in horror, blushed,
The Archer 395
Abigail Roux
and all proceeded to shrug and babble and point at each other accusingly. Brandt
looked at Carl and Nikolaus suspiciously. Nikolaus just rolled his eyes, but Carl grinned maliciously at him.
“If I wanted to grab your ass, I’d just do it, mate,” Carl said as he took a step closer and grabbed Brandt’s ass and squeezed. He hummed appraisingly and looked
Brandt up and down like one would a used car. “Good stock. Could use a good
shearing, though.”
“Baaa,” Brandt responded with a cheeky grin.
The girls giggled and tried their best not to look, and Nikolaus snickered to
himself as they came to a halt and waited for the tour guide to go into his next story.
Brandt observed the area closely, thinking that this looked like a place Remy
would like. It was old and beautiful, with a decidedly sinister Church-nunnery air about it. Old, dry wood. It would go up in flames in seconds.
He zoned back in just as the guide said the words ‘vampiric attacks.’
“Whathuh?” Brandt whispered in Carl’s ear. Carl leant over and pointed at
the top floor of the part-church part-nunnery part-tinderbox.
“He says they keep coffins up there. Windows and doors to the top floor are
nailed shut and sealed. People get eaten.”
“Ah,” Brandt said as if that had caught him up.
“The students were found on the steps of this very church the next morning,”
the guide was saying as he gestured grandly with his cane. “Their throats ripped open and their bodies completely drained of blood,” he added with a certain malicious glee.
At least he enjoyed his job. “Now, are there any doctors or nurses in the crowd? Does anyone know what it takes to completely drain a body of blood?”
“Filet knife,” Carl muttered under his breath as he stood with his arms
crossed and his head lowered. Brandt snorted and Nikolaus looked at them both
askance.
“Even if you hang someone upside down and slit their throat,” the tour guide
continued. “All the blood wouldn’t drain from the body. The blood pools inside your limbs, you see. And there was no blood around the bodies of the two students. Not a drop was ever found. Where did that blood go, I ask you?” the man finished with
another grand sweep of his hand toward the mysterious top floor.
There were murmurs and excited chattering from the crowd and Brandt
would have sworn Carl was grinning.
“Now those windows up there are nailed closed. Every year more nails are
added, blessed by Holy Water. Now that’s over one-hundred and fifty years worth of nails. Would any of you like to try to explain why, once or twice a year, those
windows are found open in the morning?”
396 The
Archer
Abigail Roux
The crowd murmured nervously.
“Now my advice to you, my friends, is to not walk by this building at night
without the safety of numbers. And if ever you do happen upon it and see those
windows open… run for your lives,” the man finished gravely.
Brandt felt chills go up and down his spine, and Nikolaus shivered beside
him. The three girls they protected scooted closer to them, and even Carl seemed
affected by the tale. Brandt was glad when they moved on.
An hour later, the tour was over, and Carl, Brandt, and Nikolaus walked the
three girls to their hotel to ensure their safety. They were thanked with fluttering eyelashes and kisses on their cheeks, and with that, their job was done. They set off for the house on Royal Street.
Walking back through the nearly deserted streets, Brandt shivered
uncontrollably. It was like they were being watched, but every time Brandt turned around, he could see nothing suspicious. Carl seemed on edge as well, and Nikolaus was practically pissing himself as he walked.
“Starting to wish we’d brought Thiago with us,” Nikolaus mumbled.
“You think Thiago’s scarier than we are?” Carl asked good-humouredly.
“No. You’re certainly the scariest with your….” Nikolaus flailed for a
moment and then waved his hand through the air dismissively. “But Thi’s definitely smarter than we are,” he grumbled as they walked through the middle of the street.
Carl snorted and Brandt grinned.
There was something exhilarating about what they were doing, walking
down the middle of the street in the middle of the night as a party raged on several streets away. Brandt didn’t know what it was exactly. It gave him the same little burst of pleasure that flicking his lighter did. He reached into his pocket to finger the precious piece of silver, but he stopped dead in his tracks when he saw where they were.
His lighter all but forgotten, he stared up at the tinderbox church thing in
horror.
“Hey, Wally? You all right, mate?” Carl asked in concern when he realized
Brandt was no longer beside him.
“Look at the windows, Trigger,” Brandt whispered.
Carl and
Nikolaus turned to look up at the building, and when they saw the
gaping black holes of the open windows, they both unconsciously began to back away from the structure.
“Uhh,” Carl said uncertainly as he looked around. The street was deserted,
though they could see activity further down. It was as if this block was being
purposefully avoided.
The Archer 397
Abigail Roux
“I’ll run if you run,” Brandt whispered to the other two. They all exchanged
wary glances. “No one tells a soul,” Brandt proposed.
Nikolaus nodded furiously and backed away. Carl blinked at Brandt, licked
his lips nervously, and then he turned and pushed Nikolaus along and skittered away from the building. Brandt ran after them, and not one of them looked back until they stood in front of the house on Royal Street, panting ever so slightly and shivering.
“I get to sleep with Carl tonight,” Nikolaus proclaimed as they let themselves
into the house.
“No. Mine,” Brandt growled.
“Safety in numbers,” Carl suggested nervously as they headed up the stairs
to the bedroom, where they could plainly hear Shawn and Thiago fucking.
Safety in numbers sounded just fine to Brandt.
XIII.
REMY and Gray stood on the street, looking up into the unlit windows of the
structure Remy referred to as Les Bon Temps Royale. It was well into the early
morning hours, and all activity within the house ceased some time ago.
“How do we get in?” Gray asked in a low voice. There were still people on
the street, not many, but enough to make Gray a little twitchy. Remy looked at him in surprise.
“I’m not going in there,” he said with a little gesture of the hand that was still in his coat pocket. “Did you see how keyed up they all were? Something spooked
them tonight. No way I’m trying to sneak up on any of them.”
Gray nodded and stared at Remy for several long seconds. Remy stared back
at him.
“Still a little high?” Gray asked finally.
“Little bit, yeah,” Remy answered immediately, and they both turned to stare
at the house some more.
“So how do we get in?” Gray asked after several more moments of staring.
He seemed to know that, despite Remy's declaration he wouldn't be going into the
house, they would be going anyway. Remy smiled grimly.
“Gallery would be the best bet,” he answered thoughtfully. “Though, the
Romeo Catchers are a problem. Not so much going up, but coming down, podna, they’ll tear you a new one. Several new ones.”
“The what? And what’s a gallery?” Gray asked in confusion.
Remy blinked at him, then turned and pointed up at the gallery under which
they were standing.
398 The
Archer
Abigail Roux
“This is a gallery. Balcony with two levels. And see those little spiky-barb
things on the poles? Those are Romeo Catchers. Back when all of these houses
belonged to wealthy landowners and society types, they had to protect the virtue of their daughters, see. So they put those barbs on the supports of the galleries to keep suitors from scaling them.”
“You sound like a tour guide,” Gray said dryly.
Remy shrugged. “I be cadien,” he said nonchalantly. “Anyway, you can get
up them okay, ’cause they don’t really keep them sharp no more, but making a swift retreat down might be painful, I think.”
“Lovely,” Gray murmured as he looked up at the night sky. “Dawn’ll be here
soon,” he added, and he looked up both ways of Royal Street. “Are we going in,
then?”
“Yeah,” Remy said grimly.
“How? You’re in no shape to be shimmying up polls and scaling walls there,
Romeo,” Gray said wryly.
Remy shivered uncontrollably and tried to clear his mind of the lingering
buzz. Five hours on a plane, with a perpetually bleeding knife wound on your arm and a lot of alcohol and weed in your system, did not make for a clear head. His right arm was really not having a good year. He dug around in his pocket and produced a set of house keys, and he smiled as he dangled them in front of Gray.
“It my house, Boss,” he informed the man with a grin.
Gray rolled his eyes and looked back at the house. “On we go, then,” he
murmured.
They crossed the street silently and made their way to the private courtyard
through a back alley. Remy let them in and Gray looked around in silent awe as Remy eased the door shut once more. He went to the little alarm pad and punched in a code, then turned around to look at Gray blankly. Gray mouthed the word ‘nice.’
Remy nodded, then pointed up and gave Gray four fingers to let him know
how many bedrooms there were. They moved silently through the lower level,
clearing it of anything dangerous, awake, or both, and then they made their way to the staircase in the great room. The lower level was clear and Remy leaned against the banister and looked up into the open stairwell. All was dark and silent, but his heart was thumping in his chest so hard that he was beginning to get dizzy.
It could have been the loss of blood or the booze, but Remy thought maybe it
was adrenaline. Or all three. It wasn’t Shawn, though. Nope. Not Shawn at all.
Reasons for the dizzy be damned, he had to do this while he was still high
enough to go through with it. They moved slowly up the stairs, pausing at each creak of the old floorboards, and Gray kept one hand on the small of Remy’s back as they went. Remy wondered if he looked that unsteady, or if Gray was offering support for
The Archer 399
Abigail Roux
what he knew would be a difficult task. Either way, Remy appreciated the gesture.
When they got to the top of the stairs, Remy looked first left, then right. The
three smaller bedrooms were on the right, and Remy suspected that was where they
would find most of them. Shawn would probably be in the master bedroom. With
whomever he had chosen to lie to next, of course.
Remy held up his hand and pointed Gray to the right, and Remy crept
silently toward the master bedroom as Gray went in the opposite direction. It felt odd to be sneaking in such a manner and not have his gun drawn, but Remy was edgy
enough that he didn’t have it out. The last thing he wanted to do was shoot one of the others or Shawn. Not before he could get his answers, anyway.
Fucking lying bastard son of a bitch. Remy would show him shot in the ass.
He crept to the closed door of the master bedroom and steeled himself for
what he might see. Would Shawn be with one of the others? Had he been fucking any of them? Did Remy even care? He hadn’t exactly been celibate for the past month.
But yes, he did care. No matter which way he cut it, he still loved Shawn. Still felt drawn to him. He still needed him. And that was why he had to be rid of him. He
couldn’t live the rest of his life being emotionally dependant on a person he couldn’t trust.
Remy pushed the door open and peered around the corner of the doorway
cautiously. This was the last time Remy would see Shawn, but Remy didn’t want
Shawn to see him first. He couldn’t handle any more blood loss at this stage. He
needed to catch the older man off guard and subdue him properly.
Remy blinked at the empty room and turned around to peer down the hall.
Gray walked silently toward him with a quizzical look on his face and he held up five fingers to indicate that he’d found all five marks. Remy motioned with his head for Gray to follow him into the room.
“Something spooked them,” Gray told him in a soft voice as they both
looked around the room warily. It looked untouched. No one had been here, and that worried Remy a little. Why wouldn’t Shawn have come in here? Why wouldn’t he
sleep in here?
“How do you mean?” Remy asked distractedly as he walked to the window
and looked out, careful to stay out of the light.
“I mean, the big crazy one and the little tech guy are both in there, curled
around that mean bastard that almost broke my nose like he’s gonna save them from the Apocalypse or something.”
“They have names, Boss,” Remy said in the same distracted tone as he
watched a shadow move on the street below.
“Yeah. We’re like the fucking Seven Dwarfs, the lot of us,” Gray responded
wryly as he looked out the other window.
400 The
Archer
Abigail Roux
Remy backed away from the window and looked at Gray curiously. Gray
returned the look with a blank expression. “What do you think spooked them?” Remy asked as he went to the other window to look from a different angle.
“I don’t know, Snow White?” Gray answered sarcastically as he returned his
gun to its holster.
“Heigh ho,” Remy murmured as the shadow settled into a sunken doorway
and remained there.
Remy moved back and looked at Gray. “Who’s who?”
“I dunno,” Gray shrugged. Remy nodded and looked at Gray blankly for
several seconds. “We going after him or what?” Gray finally asked in a tired voice.
Remy glanced at the window and pursed his lips thoughtfully. “Mais non,”
he decided after a while. “We tail him. See what we can get from him. Find out who he is and what he’s doing. Hell, he may even be working for us,” he added bitterly.
Gray nodded and went to sit on the king-sized four-poster bed. He huffed
and looked at Remy in irritation.
Remy cocked an eyebrow at him and removed the leather jacket he was