Cassie could see all of that, in an instant, quite clearly. And she could see, too, that Alice’s eyes were open. Panicked, she blurted an excuse, but Alice didn’t so much as twitch. Her stare was so blank that for a hideous instant Cassie thought she was dead; then she heard her breathing, shallow and almost inaudible.
‘Keiko?’ mumbled Alice. ‘That you?’
Swiftly, silently, Cassie closed the door.
‘Keiko, please don’t.’ The voice was slurred, but Cassie could hear the tears that Alice was too weak to shed. ‘Please, not again. ’S enough. Please?’
Cassie knew she shouldn’t talk to her, but the girl looked so pathetic, she couldn’t help herself. ‘Alice. Alice, it’s OK.’ She crouched beside the bed and took Alice’s limp hand.
‘Keiko?’
‘No. It’s me, Cassie Bell. Alice?’
The girl didn’t seem to have heard. ‘Please don’t …’
‘Alice,’ Cassie whispered urgently. ‘Alice, I’ve got to help you. I don’t know how. What do I do? Who do I call? Alice, please. Wake up. Listen.’
Wildly she glanced around the room. A mobile phone lay on the bedside table; Cassie flipped it open and scrolled down the directory. Abbie. Granny Colette. Jack. Keiko. Mum …
Mum? What would she say to Alice’s mum? Would Mum have a clue what Cassie was on about? Would she even consider taking her seriously? Nobody believed Cassandra. Nobody ever believed her. Helplessly, Cassie realised she didn’t know how mothers reacted in situations like this. Care home supervisors didn’t count. Not the ones she’d had, anyway.
She suddenly felt like crying. Was that self-pity? she wondered contemptuously. Or was it that Alice looked so pitiful, lying there? The way she could hardly speak but she was begging anyway … Cassie stared at the highlighted Mum, finger hovering over the keypad.
The door handle vibrated. A key rattled in a lock that was already open.
Cassie spun round. A voice spoke outside, exchanging impatient pleasantries with someone in the corridor. She couldn’t hear the words, but she’d know the voice anywhere.
Keiko.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
‘Now here’s the thing.’
Keiko sat down on the edge of the bed. Taking Alice’s limp fingers she absently massaged them, as if rubbing warmth back in. The Japanese girl herself looked … terrible. Almost as bad as Alice: pale, thin, exhausted. She seemed stooped, like an old woman. There was a faint odour from her that Cassie couldn’t place.
‘I’m developing. I’m hungry. It’s – what can I say, a growth spurt.’ Keiko gave a dry chuckle. ‘I need you, but it won’t last much longer, I promise. I’ve asked an Elder. It’ll be over soon, and you’ll be fine. You won’t even remember this. That’s why we ask you to drink.’
Cassie watched, horribly fascinated, from the darkness of the bathroom. The door was slightly ajar; she hadn’t dared shut it as Keiko came in, in case the girl heard the click of the latch. Now she was afraid her heart must be audible, because it thudded painfully in her chest, blood pounding in her ears. Standing in the bath, pressed against the wall tiles and protected only by the clear glass shower door, she was hardly well hidden. Don’t panic, she told herself. Stay still, and she’ll leave.
Please don’t let her need a pee …
Alice had stopped protesting. She still lay on her side, trying to curl in on herself, but Keiko took her shoulder and rolled her effortlessly on to her back. Alice stared past Keiko at the ceiling, shaking with terror.
‘Now, shh. It’ll be OK. I know you feel weak just now but Sir Alric told me you’re very strong. You’ll be fine.’
With that, Keiko crouched over Alice and kissed her.
Cassie’s eyebrows shot up. Who’d have thought it? Oh well, what did the Parisians say? Chacun à son gôut – each to his own … Though she’d kind of had the notion that Keiko fancied Perry Hutton.
Alice didn’t respond to the kiss at all. Her body was trembling violently now. Forgetting her embarrassment, Cassie frowned. Keiko’s kiss wasn’t a tender one. Her lips fastened on Alice’s, she was sucking on the girl like a demented Hoover.
Alice’s bare feet jerked. The veins on them were stark and purple, standing out like thin dark wires, as if trying to burst through her skin. Her hand, thrashing beside Keiko in a futile protest, was the same. As Keiko drew back for breath, Cassie saw Alice’s face clearly. That too was webbed with throbbing veins, pulsing towards her lips beneath skin that was paper-white. Tears had dried on her temples, as if she had no more left to cry.
Keiko snapped her head to the side, as if hearing something. She looked a lot better now. Soft, lovely skin. Glossy hair. Moist lips.
‘It’s fine,’ she soothed, brushing her roommate’s brow with her fingertips. ‘I’m skilled, Alice, I don’t make foolish mistakes. I’ve practised diligently. You won’t be harmed. Not permanently.’
Alice was completely unresisting as Keiko bent to her mouth once more.
Cassie was glad of the cold hard tiles at her back. If they hadn’t been there she thought she might have fallen, her legs felt so weak. She propped herself tighter into the corner, keeping her eyes on the two girls in the next room.
Keiko sucked on Alice’s lips again, but this time only for a few seconds. Then her body went still and tense, her head lifted, and she tossed her shining black hair out of her eyes.
She was staring at the bedside table. She was staring at the place where Alice’s phone had been, where Isabella’s golden hair grip now lay.
Oh, hell.
The bathroom door banged wide open, shuddering, and Keiko sprang towards Cassie like a hunting leopard. Something glinted in the girl’s fist. Long, curved, pale. A blade.
Cassie slammed the glass shower door hard into Keiko as she leaped. Knocked off balance, Keiko yelled with rage, stumbling and sliding on the floor tiles. Cassie slammed the shower screen again, hard against the Japanese girl’s head, then swung out as the glass did, leaping from the bath and scrambling for the bathroom door. A hand seized her ankle, incredibly strong, and panic choked her. Keiko had dropped her knife, but now she was clawing for it on the smooth tiles.
Flailing wildly, Cassie hammered Keiko’s knuckles with Alice’s phone, till the girl released her ankle with an animal scream. Cassie threw the phone at Keiko’s face and ran. Banging the bedroom door behind her, she heard it flung open again almost immediately.
Run, Cassie, run. Just run.
The corridor was deserted. Bloody typical. Cassie bolted towards the stairs. Night had fallen. The wall sconces shone. How long had she been hiding, watching Alice?
Too long. Agile footsteps raced behind her, gaining, gaining.
Cassie snatched a rearing stone horse from a marble shelf and turned to fling it at Keiko, gasping with the weight of it. The girl halted, raising a hand, but she knocked the sculpture away like a pebble. The grin on her face was vicious, but what Cassie registered most clearly was her eyes. They were no longer beautiful, dark irises in clear whites. They were blood-red from corner to corner.
Keiko snarled, shifting her knife from one hand to the other, slashing out. Dodging, Cassie ran, stumbling down the stairs. The footsteps came after her, racing now. Through her gasps she heard a low laugh of glee, almost at her ear. Cassie vaulted over the banister, dropped awkwardly to the next flight, and ran again.
Don’t let her catch you.
Cassie flung herself over the last banister rail and staggered to her feet in the entrance hall. Her lungs ached, terror froze her muscles. She couldn’t run fast enough. Grabbing a marble arm for support, she swung herself under a statue and into the deep shadows. Cassandra and Clytaemnestra. How appropriate. I smell blood now, all right.
Something dropped gracefully to the tiles of the hall.
Cassie’s breath shuddered in and out of her lungs. She had to stay still, so very still. But there was a high-pitched sound in her throat: her own terror. Keiko had stopped laughing. Thoughtful now, confident, she
passed the knife to her left hand, and back to her right. Its blade gleamed evilly, but it was the hilt that caught Cassie’s attention. The metal seemed to be in motion beneath Keiko’s fingers, as if it was wriggling, squirming, straining for blood. Even through her chilling terror, Cassie was fascinated.
Standing quite still, Keiko raised her head and sniffed delicately at the air. She smiled.
Strolling casually to the statue, Keiko stroked the same marble arm Cassie had grabbed. As she reached into the darkness, Cassie heard her eager breath, smelled her expensive perfume. The sickly, dead scent of her was gone.
Closing her eyes, Cassie waited for the grip of a powerful fist, the bite of a blade. Please don’t let it hurt. Much. She squeezed her eyes tighter against tears.
When Keiko screamed, she snapped them open again. It wasn’t a scream of triumph, but of rage and confusion. Keiko stumbled back, half-falling, dragged by a boy clutching her hair in his fist. It took Cassie a bewildered moment to make out the figure behind Keiko.
Jake Johnson.
As Cassie scrambled from the shadows, he flung Keiko aside and grabbed Cassie’s hand. ‘Come on!’
‘Wait!’ Cassie spun round. Keiko had leaped swiftly to her feet. ‘Jake!’
Gasping, he raised an arm to protect himself as Keiko sprang forwards. Ducking, Cassie rolled clear, then lashed out with a foot. Missed. She tried again, lunging for Keiko and grabbing her, but she was shaken off like a fly, falling hard to the floor. God, Keiko was strong.
As she staggered up, dazed, she saw Keiko and Jake locked together, Jake fighting to keep the blade away from the side of his neck. He was strong too, but Keiko was forcing the tip of the knife slowly towards his flesh, her lips peeled back in a horribly deliberate grin.
Once more Cassie leaped for Keiko’s back, tearing at her hair. Yowling like a cat, Keiko clawed at her, and Jake took his chance, slamming her arm with all his strength into the statue, knocking the knife from her grip.
It clattered and spun on the floor. All three of them sprang for it simultaneously, but Jake shouldered clumsily into Keiko, knocking her off balance, while Cassie landed on her stomach on the floor, her nose an inch from the blade.
Her fingers fumbled on the knife hilt, slippery with sweat, but when they closed on it at last, it fitted perfectly in the palm of her hand. For a moment she gazed at it in wonder, almost hypnotised: then she came back to herself with Jake’s yell. She rolled on to her back. Keiko was coming at her. Instinctively, thoughtlessly, she thrust the knife in front of her, just as Jake landed a flying kick between Keiko’s shoulder blades. Keiko was flung forward on top of Cassie, her head crashing into Cassie’s ribcage hard enough to knock the breath from her lungs.
Crazy with panic, Cassie forgot the knife, releasing it to shove and struggle frantically against the girl’s surprising weight. Pushing her off, gasping, she scrambled to her feet and turned to face Keiko’s next attack.
It didn’t come.
Trying to stand, one foot sliding, Keiko slipped and fell again, then recovered, dragging herself on to all fours. The silence was horrible. Jake hauled Cassie to her feet, but neither of them could run.
Keiko threw back her head at an impossible angle, and with a lurch of horror Cassie saw the jutting handle of the knife. The blade wasn’t visible. It was sunk to the hilt in Keiko’s throat.
The beauty and life Keiko had sucked out of Alice was fading fast, her lips peeling back further and further in a snarling rictus. Her shirt frayed and disintegrated, giving Cassie a glimpse of the label before that too crumbled to nothing. As the skin beneath dried and shrivelled, Keiko’s eyes glowed redder with mortal fury.
Then Cassie saw it: a mark on the girl’s shoulder blade. Elaborate twisting lines, a pattern two inches in diameter. It was no brand, no tattoo. The lines were blinding, white hot.
Keiko scrabbled at the knife, desperate to pull it out of her rapidly decomposing flesh. Her hands were gnarled and clawlike, her nails yellow and sharp. Jake gripped Cassie’s arm so tightly she thought her circulation would stop.
As Keiko slumped writhing to the floor, her hair shedding in dry hanks and shrivelling where it lay, she snatched weakly once more at the knife’s hilt. The blade shifted, but no blood leaked out, only a whisper of light that dissolved in the air. The white-hot mark on her shoulder went out like a blown candle. With a long-drawn-out hiss, Keiko crumpled, and died. When Cassie made herself look back at the girl’s eyes, they were gone.
It felt like an age before she could hear Jake breathing again. His body was trembling against her; she felt ice-cold herself. Keiko’s shrivelled eyeless face was still fixed on theirs.
Jake swore. ‘That can’t be – can’t be what killed …’ His whole body shook violently.
Reality kicked in hard. ‘We have to get out of here. Come on,’ said Cassie. Cold and calm all of a sudden, she pulled him away from Keiko’s remains.
‘Wait.’ Jake looked drained, but his trembling had stopped, and now he too was cool and determined. He hesitated briefly, then reached down to the thing on the tiles and withdrew the knife. The blade was dry and dusty.
Jake slipped it into his shirt. ‘Now let’s go.’
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
‘Hang on,’ whispered Jake. ‘Look.’
He pulled Cassie to a halt on the top landing overlooking the great hall. They both peered stealthily over the gilded banister.
Keiko was still discernible, a shattered smear of dust on the gleaming marble tiles. Now a figure stood thoughtfully over her corpse. It was hard to tell in the darkness, and the person was foreshortened by the angle, but Cassie was sure it was Marat. The porter had a mobile phone pressed to his ear, and something very pale draped over his arm. Talking inaudibly into his phone, he looked around the hall, then raised his ugly head to scan the shadows of the grand staircase. Cassie drew sharply back, pulling Jake with her.
Lights clicked on, doors opened, questioning voices were raised.
As they risked one more glance over the banister, there was a flash of white in the gloom below. Cassie and Jake exchanged a look. Marat had swiftly flung a linen sheet over what was left of Keiko.
Cassie shivered. ‘Come on.’
*
‘Where have you been?’ Isabella leaped up as Cassie pulled Jake into their room and shut the door firmly. ‘What is happening? I was so worried. What is going on, Cassie? Jake?’
Cassie rubbed her forehead. Fiercely she blinked back tears. Now was not the time to go soft. ‘Isabella! Your interview. What happened?’
‘It was fine. Fine,’ said Isabella. ‘We had drinks, they were friendly. We talked. For heaven’s sake, Cassie, what—’
‘How long were you there?’ interrupted Cassie. ‘How long was the interview?’
Isabella looked bemused. ‘An hour, two hours? I didn’t know the time had gone so fast. But then there was trouble, some kind of a disturbance just now, and I was sent away.’ She paused. ‘So I returned here, Cassie, to find you gone. Now will you tell me what is going on?’
‘Keiko’s dead,’ blurted Jake.
That silenced even Isabella, though only for a moment.
‘Dead? What do you mean, dead?’
‘What do you think it means?’ snapped Jake. He was pale.
Cassie put a warning hand on his arm. ‘An – accident. It’s hard to explain …’
Isabella had her hand over her mouth, but she moved it down to her throat. She swallowed. ‘Try me.’
‘We didn’t mean— I didn’t … Listen, she was trying to kill Cassie!’ Jake put his head in his hands for a moment. ‘Cassie, what happened before I showed up?’
She opened her mouth, but hesitated. It seemed like an insane nightmare, and she might not believe this story herself as soon as she tried to tell it out loud. But Jake was ashen and stunned, Isabella angry and curious.
Cassie took a deep breath. ‘I went to Keiko’s room. Picked the lock.’
‘You did what?’ exploded Jak
e.
‘I wanted to find stuff about the Few. I just wanted to see if there was anything written down, any papers. And I was worried about Alice.’ Cassie curled her lip, defiant. ‘I reckon you’d have done the same. Mister Sleepwalker.’
‘Oh, I would, if I’d had the nerve. I’ve tried to get into the common room before, but never one of their own rooms. You know how dangerous that was?’
‘Oh yeah. Now I do. Keiko was eating Alice.’
‘What?’ Isabella yelped. ‘Cassie!’
‘I’m not kidding. I swear it. Keiko came in, and I had to hide, and I watched. She was … it was like she was feeding off Alice, something like that.’
‘Like a vampire?’ Isabella made a revolted face. ‘That’s weird. Some of the kids, they see this stuff on the internet and they—’
‘No,’ said Cassie impatiently. ‘I mean, feeding off her energy. Sucking it out of her. I saw them both and I swear they weren’t playing, it wasn’t a game. Keiko was practically sucking the life out of Alice. No blood, not like that. Just … her life. And then she saw me. And then—’ Cassie swallowed hard, ‘that was when she came after me. With that knife.’
Isabella stared. ‘What knife?’
Jake reached into his shirt. ‘This kni—’
A fist thundered on the door.
The three of them looked at each other, frozen.
‘Jake,’ whispered Isabella. ‘Jake has to hide. Now.’
‘Cassie Bell! I know you are in there. Open this door, do you hear me?’
Cassie mouthed a curse.
Katerina.
‘Bathroom,’ whispered Isabella, and grabbed Jake’s arm.
There was no time for Cassie to argue, no time for her to say what a lousy hiding place a bathroom made. As Jake slipped in and flushed the loo, Cassie closed the door loudly and nodded at Isabella. Taking a deep breath, Isabella swung open the bedroom door, now shuddering under the blows of that determined fist.
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