Retribution of Soul: Book 3 of the In-Between

by Senese, Rebecca M.

  Of course she did. Was that the only reason she was helping him? Out of some loyalty to her dead brother?

  Then her hand slipped around his upper arm. He felt the warmth of her palm against his skin. He closed his fingers over hers.

  Not the only reason.

  His other hand slipped around her waist, tugging to bring her closer. She slid forward in a smooth, gliding motion and her face was right there, her lips… They parted just a little as he leaned down to kiss her. Her hand gripped his arm.

  He let himself get lost in their kiss.

  Until the van door banged open.

  She startled back, breaking the kiss, the embrace. Her hand dropped from his arm.

  Gareth hunched in the doorway of the van. His dark hand gripped the cell phone so tight his fingers were blanching toward beige.

  “We got a problem,” he said. “Joan’s not answering her phone.”

  CHAPTER 15

  Sebastian grabbed hold of the bench beside him as Gareth took the corner fast. The tires skidded, almost screeching and Sebastian swore they were going over on two wheels. Then the van righted itself and leapt forward down the street. Buildings and trees whizzed by, blurring in the darkness.

  Joan, not Joan.

  His heart hammered in his chest. She’d always been supportive of him, sometimes in a teasing way, but he thought she had genuine affection for him. He sucked in a breath. Oh god, he’d thought of her like a mother. He hadn’t realized that until now. She’d mothered all of them, gathering them around her like a mother hen.

  No, he couldn’t lose her now.

  He couldn’t lose a second mother now.

  Gareth took a right turn. Sebastian dug his fingers into the bench but the van bucked hard and he found himself flying toward the other side. He ducked, managing to avoid smashing his head against a shotgun strapped to the wall.

  “Woo hoo, better than a roller coaster!” Charlie stood near the back of the van, feet parted, one in front of the other. He spread his hands as he bent his knees, looking like he was surfing.

  “Shut up,” said Sebastian.

  “What?” Jessica’s voice called from the front.

  “Nothing,” Sebastian said over the squeal of the tires. Gareth took another turn, another right, pressing Sebastian back against the wall.

  The blur of houses and shops outside the windows shifted into a line of grey concrete buildings as the van entered the industrial district. Gareth pulled the van to the side of the road and stopped. The engine ticked down as it cooled. The front doors sprang open as Gareth and Jessica jumped out. A moment later, the back door opened and Gareth appeared, his grim face looking blurry through Charlie’s somewhat translucent form.

  “Hey, watch it!” Charlie said as Gareth climbed into the back of the van, but of course Gareth couldn’t see or hear the ghost. His arm reached right through Charlie’s torso, grabbing for the shotgun in the gun rack opposite Sebastian.

  “If you’re waiting for an invitation to join us,” Gareth said, “consider it given.” He backed out the van, retreating through Charlie, who gave him an annoyed look.

  Get out of the way. Sebastian waved a hand at the ghost and reached for the second shotgun. He climbed out of the back of the van, where Jessica was stuffing ammo into her pockets and checking on her handgun.

  “Let’s go,” Gareth said. “Their last position was near the old Montgomery Furniture Factory.”

  Their footsteps shuffled over old pavement, cracked and crumbling. Sebastian could smell the river, feel the moisture in the air pressing against his skin. Several of the streetlights had been smashed, leaving few pockets of pale yellow light to light their way, but it didn’t matter. Even the dimmest of light was as bright as sunlight to the In-Between. Sebastian actually preferred it this way.

  The shadows gave form to the squat buildings around them, none of them more than three stories tall. He could almost smell a mix of sawdust and furniture polish in the air, as if an airborne residue of what these old factories had been years ago. In its heyday, Grand Rapids had been a major furniture market, building and shipping furniture across the country. That was before prefabricated pieces you stuck together yourself. Decades before, actually. Such smells should be long gone, even to him.

  But still he smelled it. But maybe it wasn’t a smell, maybe it was some kind of psychic residue that he was picking up. Would Joan have picked it up as well? She must have, she was more experienced with this than he was. Would it have led her forward to investigate? Had some presence disturbed the usual atmosphere here, brought out the past more?

  His shoulders hunched up toward his ears. His stomach clenched. He balanced on the balls of his feet as he moved forward.

  His body knew and it just took a moment for his mind to realize it.

  Something had disturbed this area. Someone with a strong presence, a strong psychic presence.

  Someone like a vampire.

  Alexa?

  Had to be.

  He glanced to his right and saw Charlie gliding along beside him. The ghost had a grim expression. He nodded to Sebastian.

  “I think she’s here,” Sebastian said.

  Jessica who had been walking ahead and to the left, turned to glance back at him. “What?”

  “I think she’s here.”

  In the dimness, he saw a muscle jump along the side of her jaw as she clenched her teeth. She gave a sharp nod and pulled her gun out. She held it in both hands in front of her as she moved. Ahead to the right, Gareth raised his shotgun to the ready position.

  Both were listening to him without any argument. A nice change from having to deal with someone like Nigel. Then he remembered how Nigel had died, how he should have been there to help them.

  His fingers tightened on his own shotgun. He couldn’t bring those people back but he could stop more slaughters.

  He could save Callum.

  He would.

  Gravel crunched under his feet. A light breeze rose up, carrying the scent of the water and an even stronger scent of sawdust and furniture polish. He turned his head, following the trace. There, that building. Three stories, yellowish brick coated with layers of dirt and grime that dulled the yellow and darkened it to an almost brownish tinge. Boarded up windows still held a few slivers of glass. The wood door stood shut but he could see a chain lying in front of it.

  Snapped in half.

  “There.” He pointed.

  They moved forward as a unit. Gareth and Jessica split to the sides, taking up point, leaving him to approach the door head on. In the darkness, he saw Jessica’s nod, her body tense and ready. He felt Gareth on the other side. Poised.

  Sebastian gripped the door knob, felt the slick surface with a layer of grime slide in his palm. His fingers tightened. He nodded to them. One, two...

  Three!

  He yanked the door open and barreled inside, darting to the left.

  Blackness. He heard Jessica and Gareth storm in after, both spreading out to present multiple targets. But nothing came at them from the blackness. It was deeper here than outside. Even the pale light from the open door did little to illuminate the inside. Sebastian blinked a couple of times and his eyes adjusted.

  Empty concrete floor stretched away from them, coated with dust. But he could see the disturbance in the dust line where someone had walked recently. He heard Gareth click with his tongue and wag two fingers forward.

  They crept along, following the trail. Gareth took the lead with Sebastian following. He sensed Jessica behind, her gun tracking back and forth, making sure nothing caught them unaware.

  As they moved, Sebastian caught the suggestion of pillars along the way. Then to the right, a wall jutted out with a darker shape in the center. A door.

  He clicked his tongue to his teeth. Ahead, Gareth gave a nod and motioned them toward it. Jessica took up point on the right and this time Gareth moved to the center, leaving Sebastian to the left.

  As they drew up to it, Sebastian saw tha
t the door was ajar a few inches, pushed inward. Stale air seemed to waft out. He tasted dust and ash, could almost feel it coating the insides of his nostrils and tickling the back of his throat. He resisted the urge to cough, but couldn’t resist the urge to swallow. The sour taste almost made him gag.

  Sour.

  He could feel both Gareth and Jessica tense. So they felt it too.

  Vampire.

  Joan and Brian would have sensed it too. Why hadn’t they retreated and called in?

  Maybe they hadn’t had the chance.

  Before Gareth or Jessica could move, Sebastian stepped forward, pushing at the door. He heard a sharp intake of breath from Gareth, almost a hiss from Jessica. He ignored them and stepped through the door.

  A stairwell headed down into a deeper inkier blackness. Another eye blink and he could make out the vague outline of the steel rail leading down.

  His feet blurred as he hurried down the steps. The sour stench grew stronger as if leading him on.

  “Sebastian!” Jessica’s whispered call trailed after him, then he heard the shuffling of their footsteps as they followed.

  Sebastian didn’t wait. He’d waited long enough.

  The stairs led to a small landing then curved down. He counted two more landings, thick with dust that billowed up into the air as he passed, itching at his nose. Then he saw the bottom of the stairs.

  And a door hanging open.

  An old steel door with the top hinge twisted like taffy. The bottom hinge still hung on, straining to hold the door upright as it listed inside the room beyond. The sour smell overpowered even the heavy stench of dust but as he moved toward the door, he caught an undercurrent of iron. Thick. Wet.

  Blood.

  Someone had spilled a lot of it.

  He started when a hand grabbed his forearm. He felt the brush of soft hair across his cheek.

  “Wait for us,” Jessica said into his ear.

  He gave a nod. A moment later he heard the scrape of Gareth’s boot on the landing behind him.

  “Strict formation,” Gareth said, pitching his voice low. “Assume hostiles.”

  Jessica gave a nod and nudged Sebastian. He nodded too.

  Gareth tapped their shoulders. One, two, three!

  Sebastian darted through the door, aiming left. He felt Jessica peel away, aiming right. Gareth headed up the center.

  They all stopped, poised, guns ready, crouched to present the smallest targets.

  Nothing witnessed their impressive entrance.

  Nothing still living anyway.

  Sebastian spotted the bodies just ahead of Gareth. Brian lay on his face, hand still clutching a knife. When Gareth turned him over, Sebastian saw the man’s face coated with blood and the wide slice across his throat.

  Carotid artery. He would have bled out within a few minutes.

  Just beyond him…

  No, Sebastian couldn’t look. He saw Jessica put a hand up to her mouth. Gareth pointed his shotgun to the floor. The end of it scraped on the concrete.

  Sebastian didn’t want to look, wanted to walk out the door. But Callum... He couldn’t just leave.

  He turned his head.

  Joan lay just beyond Brian. Her arms and legs were outstretched, her face turned up to the ceiling. But her torso lay front down and her arms and legs were too outstretched. As Gareth took a step forward and Sebastian followed, as if unable to stop himself, he saw someone had pulled Joan’s limbs from her body, then arranged them in place around her.

  And they’d pulled off her head.

  A high pitched giggle came out of the darkness beyond Joan.

  Gareth’s shotgun flashed up. Jessica took aim from Sebastian’s right.

  The giggle sounded again. Then a patter of footsteps approached.

  From the darkest shadow, a thin form took shape. A waif-like girl stepped forward. Blood smeared across her mouth and down the front of her denim dress. She wore flat-soled shoes that skidded across the concrete. Her left hand pushed pale blond bangs from her eyes.

  “She asked me to wait for you,” she said.

  “Who asked?” Gareth said.

  The smile on her face dissolved into a sneer. “I’m not talking to you.” She glared at Gareth, her hands tightening into fists by her sides. Her entire body grew taut as if she was going to launch herself forward at him. Then she relaxed, her body loosened. Her head turned just a fraction, dismissing Gareth from her attention.

  She focused on Sebastian.

  “I’m talking to you,” she said. “She said you were kind of cute. We could have some fun.” Her fingers twisted in the skirt portion of her dress, lifting it past her knees, past her thighs. “Want to?”

  “Who said?” Sebastian said. “Who asked you to stay?”

  She smiled, ducking her head coyly. “You have to ask nicely.”

  His fingers tightened on the shotgun. He wanted to just shoot the vampire but he had to know what she was talking about and confirm his suspicions about where Alexa had gone. Even over the overpowering stench of blood and the sourness of the vampire that wafted toward them, he could tell Alexa was already long gone. She had been here, somehow he knew that, but now she was gone.

  And he had to follow.

  But first this one.

  And he couldn’t waste time chatting.

  He took a deep breath and let it out. His shoulders relaxed. His body loosened. His awareness of the room amplified. He felt the slight imperfections of the concrete floor beneath his feet. Heard the air hissing through the ventilation shafts over his head. Beneath the blood and the sourness, hung the thickness of stale air, trapped too long in the basement, now mixing with traces of fresh air that had followed them down the stairs like puppies.

  Would she taste that fresh air, know that it was dark outside? She would be longing to go out, to head off on a hunt? Although they’d killed Brian and Joan no vampire would have been able to feed on them. In-Between were poisonous to vampires. So she must be hungry. She must be just dying to get out and hunt.

  All she had to do was talk to him, tell him what he wanted to know. Where had Alexa gone? Had she taken the boy with her? A human boy, with black hair and a wiry frame.

  Sebastian tried to picture Callum and realized he couldn’t be sure of exactly what his brother looked like now. He must have grown but by how much?

  Two years could have changed him so much. Sebastian felt his heart almost shrivel in his chest. In front of him, the vampire laughed.

  No, stop, he was losing focus. She was pulling away…

  His mind lunged forward. He felt her wail and struggle against him but he wouldn’t let her go. Not without knowing where Alexa had gone, without knowing what happened to Callum.

  Where was Callum?

  Where was he?

  He felt her scream soundlessly, an echo that howled in his mind. He pushed it aside and pummeled her.

  Where was Callum? Where was he?

  WHERE IS MY BROTHER?

  She buckled beneath the onslaught. He almost hear her knees scrape the concrete floor as she crumbled. Her hands slapped the ground. Her body convulsed.

  He felt her mind trying to hide from him, darting into corners. Racing, racing. He pursued relentlessly, asking over and over. Where? Where?

  Where?

  Finally he felt her mind crack and the memories tumbled outward, spilling in a flood that flowed through him. First day of school wearing white bobby socks and a brown skirt with yellow top, laughing at the television with a group of girls as they watched some nameless sitcom. Making snow forts. Riding a bike, first a small one with training wheels, and then it morphed into a ten-speed mountain bike while around him the world changed from a suburban street to a hilly dirt path.

  Memories, all her memories.

  He would drown in them if he didn’t stop paying attention.

  Focus.

  Callum. Look for Callum.

  But it was hard to turn away from the memories of her life. She’d been human i
n them and they’d been locked away once she’d been turned. Now they flooded outward and he could feel the vampire part of her shrieking to stop it.

  Strange, why would the vampire want to stop this flood of memory? Didn’t it have access to it anyway? Vampires knew what the human they’d been had known.

  But maybe only on the surface. Maybe there was something about this flood of memory that vampires didn’t like.

  He wanted to know more but there wasn’t time.

  Callum.

  He pushed the word at her, felt her mind yield. The human memories fell away.

  Cold, dark. Concrete rough under her legs as she crouched on the floor. Keep her head bowed. Obedient. That way, avoid any further beating from the presence that stood before her. She glanced up and in the dimness could still make out the slim form of a woman in front of her.

  “Repeat it,” the woman said.

  That voice. Familiar. But the tone sounded harsher than he ever remembered. Always before the voice had spoken of books and classes.

  Now she spoke of death.

  “Repeat it.”

  The crouching vampire shuddered. She bowed her head. “Come alone. He knows the place. Where it started for him and ended for Charlie.”

  “Good. Make sure he understands he comes alone. Kill any others.”

  “Yes, Alexa.”

  Yes. Alexa.

  He stepped back, even felt his body move, left foot shifting back, carrying his weight away from the vampire. She sagged, almost stumbled.

  “Your message,” he said.

  She lifted her head and leered at him. “You heard it.”

  “Say it out loud for them.”

  “You go alone. To the place where it started and where Charlie ended. Make sure you’re alone.”

  His hand tightened on the gun.

  “And the others?” He nodded at Jessica and Gareth.

  The vampire opened her mouth.

  She darted away, racing back into the darkness. Gareth started after her.

  “Don’t!” Sebastian said.

  “She killed Joan and Brian,” Jessica said.

  “Not alone she didn’t,” he said. “And she’s supposed to kill you. It could be a trap.”

  “All the more reason...” she started.