by Annie Bellet
“There’s one in the trunk,” Junebug said as she wrapped her arms around him. “Be safe.”
We took one of Levi’s cars and let him drive, with Harper in front with the map Noah had given me to navigate since our GPS wasn’t finding the address. I was more tired than I thought, because I barely remembered most of the drive out to the house. I came awake with a crick in my neck as we pulled onto a long gravel driveway. The land here was quite barren, only scrub trees and lots of rock breaking up the monotony. The house perched up a big, rocky hill, like an Edward Gorey rendition of a manor.
Noah’s information about it was pretty sparse. The house was two stories, with six bedrooms and four bathrooms and done in a Victorian style. Or what some crazy architect imagined was Victorian. There was a round tower portion up front, overlooking the steepest part of the hill, with leaded-glass windows that glimmered in the morning sun and turned blinding as we approached.
“Looks haunted,” Harper said.
“Looks like someone’s idea of haunted, anyway,” Levi said.
“Stop here,” I said. I didn’t want to park too close. We could walk the last couple hundred feet up the hill.
Levi pulled over, putting the car next to a boulder. We climbed out, stretching limbs and taking a minute to sip out of water bottles and work out the travel kinks. I’d opted for jeans, a plain white teeshirt, and my leather hiking boots that the store clerk had sworn up and down could resist almost anything. I had yet to put that to the test.
I checked my phone. No calls, but no signal out here either. Figured. I decided to leave it in the car. If something bad happened, at least that would be one less thing I could destroy.
Harper, Levi, and Ezee all found they had no signal either and opted to lock their phones into the glove box with mine.
“This is how horror movies happen,” Harper pointed out.
“It’s just an empty house,” I said, peering up the hill. I found myself rubbing my talisman, the gem under my thumb hard and cold, and I made myself stop that. “Remember the rules.”
“Stay behind Jade,” Ezee said, looking at Harper and Levi with his best “I’m a serious professor and you should listen to me” expression.
“Touch nothing. We know. I’m taking this” Harper took the tire iron out of the truck as Levi retrieved his machete.
“Sure you don’t want something?” he asked his twin.
“I’m good,” Ezee said, though he seemed less certain now than when he’d said he didn’t want a weapon earlier. “That’s going to get heavy when you realize you are trying to challenge a house full of antiques to battle.”
“Hush, bro. Sorceresses first,” Levi said with a mocking bow as he pointed his machete up the hill.
I led the way, letting my magic run through my blood. My skin tingled as we approached and I held up a hand. Concentrating, I felt a weak spell ahead of us. Well, at least Noah hadn’t sent us into nothing. A magic user had definitely been here.
I walked forward and looked at the ground in front of the house. The house had a huge wrap-around porch. Just in front of the wide steps leading up to an iron-banded front door, I saw traces of white on the ground.
“Salt,” Ezee said, coming up beside me. “That’s what it smells like.”
“Stay here,” I said. I walked parallel to the salt line around the side of the house, picking my way over gravel and occasional larger stones, aware of how loud my footsteps sounded. I heard nothing from inside and felt no more magic. The spell was weak, the circle, if that’s what it had been meant to be, ended just around the corner.
“Old circle, I think,” I said as I walked back to my friends. That was in keeping with Noah saying the house was empty also. “Not recent magic. I don’t think it’ll harm us, but let me go first.”
“Don’t forget to check every square for traps,” Harper joked.
I made a face at her, but was secretly relieved my friends were enjoying themselves. I hoped this excursion would be boring, but at least we could have a little fun with it anyway.
I detected no scent or feel of magic on the front door and the key that Noah had included in his folder of stuff fit the lock. It was a disappointingly modern key, like something you could find at any hardware shop.
“Looks good to me, guys,” I said, echoing the swan song of every rogue in every game ever. I opened the door.
I almost expected something to jump out and say boo, but nothing did. The door opened into a foyer area that had a built-in bench of dark wood and a coat cupboard. Beyond that it opened up into what looked like a parlor or formal living area to one side and a dining room to the other. Stairs split the hallway ahead, leading up. The sunlight from the uncurtained windows was bright enough to illuminate the house, but I tried a light switch just the same. The hall light came on, revealing a door further down, by the stairs.
The house smelled dusty, with that staleness that comes from being unlived in. Beneath that scent was something I couldn’t quite place, a sweet smell. Or maybe a rotting one. I looked back at my companions.
“Smells like a possum died under the porch and nobody noticed,” Levi said.
Ezee and Harper nodded, peering past me into the house.
I shrugged and walked inside. There were some paintings on the hallway walls, generic landscape stuff like you’d see in a hotel or restaurant. Whoever had owned this house hadn’t had much style. The dining room was empty, no table, just a parquet floor with streaks of dust or dirt across it, like something had been dragged through. With that comforting speculation, I looked into the parlor. Here there were two heavy wood couches upholstered in dark brocade, in keeping with the faux-Victorian exterior. They faced each other over an ornate table inlaid with a peacock. There was a fireplace with a heavy iron grate and two vases, also with birds on them, perched on the mantel.
I felt around with my magic. There was the trace of a spell here, too, but nothing new, and nothing specific to an item. Magic items are the easiest to detect for me. I’ve had a lot of practice and gotten the feel for them down to nearly a science. I felt no warm hum nor smelled any foreign magic on any of the things my hands lingered over as I moved around the parlor.
There was a set of French doors at the back of the parlor that led to a formal study.
“I like this guy’s taste in desks,” Ezee said, going to the huge carved wood desk with its marble top that dominated the space. Dark wood bookshelves completed the room, though no books were on them. Ezee didn’t touch the desk, but I could tell he wanted to.
No magic in here. No items in here, not even art left on the walls, though I could see tiny holes in the dark paneling where things had hung once upon a time.
“What are we looking for again?” Levi asked.
“Magical items?” Harper said, turning in a slow circle, taking in the empty shelves.
“Anatomy jars,” I said. The Archivist had tried to be casual about it, but it was clear what he was really after. Whatever was in that jar or jars, that was what mattered.
“Call me crazy, but this doesn’t look like the house of a mad scientist. It looks like someone already looted it or moved out.” Ezee turned away from the desk.
“Maybe the kitchen has stuff,” I said. I was inclined to agree with him. The salt circle outside was too old for me to tell what it was trying to do, but it bugged me a little. Was it some warlock’s crude attempt at a ward? Or was it there to try to keep something in? I kept those thoughts to myself. No point worrying my machete and tire iron toting friends if I didn’t have to.
We went back across the hall. Just as I was about to walk into the dining room to see if the kitchen was through the double doors there, Levi caught my arm with his free hand.
“Wait,” he said. He bent low and tipped his head to one side. “Those look like drag marks to anyone else?”
“Yeah, I see it now,” Harper said.
Well, so much for keeping that disturbing thought to myself. “Maybe from taking the table out?
” I said.
“They swipe toward the kitchen or whatever is beyond those doors.” Levi motioned with his machete.
“Maybe we should check out the upstairs first?” I said. Being here was playing hell on our nerves, I thought, that’s all it was.
The little door in the hallway by the stairs turned out to be one of the bathrooms. It also had nothing in it, though the toilet flushed when Levi leaned in and checked “in case we need it later, that was a long drive.” We went up the stairs where there should be, according to the scant information, six bedrooms and three of the four bathrooms.
The bedrooms were utterly bare except a couple more of those ugly paintings on the hallway walls. The dust up here was fairly thick, no suspicious drag marks, no signs of life for months at least.
“I’m starting to get annoyed at that vampire,” I muttered as we clomped our way back down the stairs and reconvened in the parlor.
This felt like a wild goose chase and I was worried what that might mean. Had Noah wanted me out of Wylde for some reason? I felt sick to my stomach now leaving Alek behind. The only consolation I had was that Brie, Ciaran, Junebug, Vickie, and Rachel were all watching over him. Even I would think twice about messing with that crew. Maybe Noah had just had bad information, or maybe that spell out front had spooked him for some reason, made him think this place was more than it was.
“To the kitchen?” I asked.
“Let’s go,” Harper said, hefting her tire iron.
We crossed the dining room without incident and I was just about to push open the swinging doors when Ezee called out softly, “wait.”
I turned, my magic so ready for action that my skin felt like it had lightning running under it, and watched as he went to the other side of the room where something was stuck in between the baseboard and the wall. Ezee tugged it out.
“What do you make of this?” he asked, bringing it to us.
It was a strip of khaki cloth, like a coat or pants might be made from, with a dark stain on it.
“Definitely blood,” Levi said, sniffing the cloth. “Old but not that old. A few weeks, at most.”
“Stand back,” I said. I turned to the doors and kicked them open, one hand going to the dagger at my waist, the other up and ready to blast anything on the other side.
The doors flew backward and hit stoppers to either side, swinging back in toward me. I caught a good look at the kitchen, which was as bare as the rest of the rooms. It was galley-style with dark wood cabinets, pale marble counters, and nothing of interest that I could see in the glance I got. No demons or shifters or even a rabid squirrel.
“Clear,” I said, moving forward. I shoved the door back open and walked into the room. The drag marks continued right up to the wall, where they stopped. There was blood, obvious even to my less acute senses, spattered against the wood panel there.
“That’s not ominous at all,” Harper said, coming in behind me.
No hum of magic here, either. Just a wide drag mark through the thick dust across the deep grey tiles, a little spatter of blood, and nothing.
“That’s weird, but,” I trailed off with a shrug. “That’s the whole house according to the documents Noah gave me. I guess we’re done?” I kept staring at the wall panel.
“There’s a draft here,” Harper said, moving past me and up to where the blood spatter was. “Almost as if…” she pushed on the panel and we all heard a click. With a tiny squeak, the panel yawned open.
“Oh good, Harper found the secret door,” Levi said.
We crowded forward to look into the opening. It was dim inside, the light from the kitchen windows failing to penetrate very far, but I saw stone steps leading downward, into darkness. The air coming up from those depths was cold and smelled heavily of decay.
“Hey guys,” Harper said as we backed away from that smell and looked at each other. “You remember that game Jade ran about three years ago? The one where we had to go into that haunted keep and found that dungeon underneath it? Remember how the middle corridor had this huge metal door and from behind that door we could hear ominous chanting?”
For a moment I was confused. Then I had to swallow a laugh as I remembered what had happened and realized why she was bringing it up.
“I remember,” Ezee said. “We chose the other paths. Then we went back by that door and the chanting was getting louder.”
“And you fuckers looked at all your loot, and went right home,” I said, grinning.
“Yeah, good times,” Levi said. “Why ever do you mention it?”
“Oh, no reason,” Harper said, looking pointedly at the gaping stairway which smelled like refrigerated roadkill.
“We don’t have any loot yet,” I said with a sigh. I wanted nothing more than to get in the car and go home, but a promise was a promise, even to a vampire.
Besides, who were we even kidding? We all knew we were totally going down those stairs. I channeled my magic into my talisman, making it glow bright blue to illuminate our way. I wanted to draw the Alpha and Omega, but then had a vision of slipping on the stairs and impaling myself, so I resisted that urge.
“Bet you wish you had a weapon now,” Levi muttered behind me.
“Shut up, Levi,” Ezee said. His tone said his twin had scored a point there.
“Stay a couple steps behind each other,” I said. Hoping it was just an unfinished basement, but doubting it, I started down the stairs.
Alek woke slowly. First he smelled bacon, not strongly, just a lingering trace in the air and mixed heavily with coffee. Then he smelled wolf, his muscles tensing until he identified the scents mingling with the wolf as antiseptic, iodine, neoprene, and lemony soap.
Vickie, he thought, not yet opening his eyes. His body felt heavy, like he’d been asleep a long time and wasn’t quite ready to awaken yet. His throat hurt, but not like it had in his last memory.
What he didn’t smell was Jade. Her faint scent was there, of course, for he’d realized he was in their apartment already, but he knew she wasn’t in the room. The only breathing he heard was the little vet’s light breaths close beside him. Eyes still closed, Alek buried the seed of panic growing in his belly and tried to remember exactly what had happened.
Jade had dropped to her knees and he’d started moving forward when he heard the gunshot. He couldn’t remember if she was bleeding, there was no time before the white hot pain slammed into his throat, more pressure at first than anything. The feel of his blood spurting through his fingers. He didn’t remember falling, but the picture of Jade’s face above him swam into his mind. She was telling him something.
Telling him to shift. His last memory was her hands on his and him reaching into the Veil, calling for his Tiger through the pain.
A gun couldn’t kill Jade. She’d been conscious enough to help him. Alek relaxed. Jade was fine, just not in the room.
He heard footsteps and caught the smell of cinnamon oil. Junebug.
“Sheriff is on her way over to check on things,” Junebug said, presumably to Vickie.
Alek opened his eyes and raised his head slowly, blinking against the bright morning light streaming in.
“Oh my god, you’re awake!” Vickie got up from the chair beside him.
“Alek, hey,” Junebug said, smiling at him as she walked into the living room.
Alek swallowed. His throat felt like his fur was growing on the inside, but he could breathe fine. He didn’t shift yet, unsure what state his weaker human form might be in.
“Get him some water,” Vickie said. “Can you drink? I can put another IV in if you want.”
That explained the odd feeling in his left foreleg. Alek twisted his head around and saw the thick needle taped there. He went to pull it out with his teeth but Vickie bent down and pushed at his head.
“Stop that,” she said. “I’ll take it out, here.”
Junebug brought over a mixing bowl of water and Alek found himself incredibly thirsty. He lapped up water until he was licking the empty
bowl. He raised his head and looked around, trying to communicate who he was looking for. Where the hell was Jade? How long had he been unconscious? He tried to get to his feet but his legs were stiff, the muscles weak and half-asleep from being in the same position for who knew how long.
“Easy,” Vickie said, a furrow forming between her brows. “You took a bullet to the neck, do you remember?”
Alek sank back down, flexing muscles to stretch out more slowly. He looked at Vickie and nodded his head. His tail started to flick back and forth on its own and Alek stilled it with effort. It wasn’t Vickie’s fault he was weak and didn’t feel safe shifting to human just yet.
“You almost died. I’m surprised you woke up this quickly. It’s been about twenty hours.”
Alek looked around in what he hoped was an obvious manner. Then he bumped the couch beside him with his head and stared at its emptiness pointedly before looking back at Vickie and Junebug.
They looked at each other and then the light seemed to go in Junebug’s eyes.
“Jade isn’t here,” she said, stating what Alek already knew. “She had to go do a thing.” Another glance at Vickie.
The vampire’s request. Jade had left him possibly dying on her floor to go rob a house for a vampire? The growl rumbled in his sore throat before he could suppress it. She’d left him, gone off alone. There was no way Jade would have done that without some kind of pressure from the vampire. He stared intently at Vickie and Junebug.
“She didn’t go alone,” Junebug said. “She took the twins and Harper with her. She didn’t have a choice, Alek. The Archivist didn’t leave her a choice from what I could tell.”
No, he wouldn’t, Alek thought. And Jade had done the intelligent thing for once and chosen not to make yet another powerful enemy by ignoring the vampire’s request. His mate was growing up.
The sound of the Sheriff’s SUV in the parking lot caught all their attention and Junebug went to open the door as Vickie quickly explained that she, Brie, Ciaran, Junebug, and the Sheriff were all on duty to keep him safe while he healed and until Jade got back that night. Alek smiled inwardly at that. Jade had left him well protected. His initial worries were soothed. She was alive and well enough to go on the vampire’s mission, and he had plenty of back-up here in case whoever had shot him decided to try again.