She shook her head. She was spitting now, her back heaving up and down as she clambered for a decent breath.
She said, “Hit the light.”
Grant did.
The inside of the toilet bowl and everything in the vicinity was dotted with specks of deep burgundy, and over the pungent reek of bile, Grant caught another smell.
Copper.
Blood.
“I’m calling nine-one-one,” he said.
“No.” Her face was still in the bowl. “They’ll try to take me to the hospital. I can’t leave the house.”
“You just vomited blood.”
“Help me get cleaned up.”
“Paige—”
“It’s either me or someone else. Do you get that yet?”
“We can’t go down that road.”
“We’re there.”
Paige sat up and fell back into the wall. She said, “It’s that white knight complex that killed your friend. Listen to me for once. Please. You and I are not in control here. I call a client, they come over, I get better. If you bring people to this house, they’re going to die. Let me handle this.”
Grant looked down at the gore in the toilet. Hard to believe that his sister, small as she was, had that much inside her. Sprawled on the bathroom floor, sheet-white and still dripping with rain and sweat, she looked like a full-on heroin addict.
“All right,” he said. “Until I figure out what we’re dealing with.”
“Give me your phone.”
“Why?”
“So I’ll know you’re one hundred percent with me. So I don’t have any more surprise guests showing up at my door.”
“You don’t trust me?”
“After that stunt you pulled with Don?”
“I’m not giving you my phone.”
“Why? Planning on making some calls?”
“It’ll make you feel better?”
“Yes.”
He tugged his phone out of his pocket, dropped it in Paige’s lap.
“Thank you,” she said.
She tried to stand, but her arms didn’t have the strength to push her onto her feet.
Grant reached down and pulled her up by her hands.
“You know, there’s an upside to this approach,” she said.
“What’s that?”
“Now that you’re here, you can see what happens to my clients after I black out.”
Paige left the bathroom, and Grant stood at the sink, holding his hands under steaming hot water while he scrubbed every last speck of blood off his hands with a furious focus.
He finally shut off the tap and looked up into the mirror.
He flinched.
Don stared back at him—his face frozen in that moment of grimacing purpose just before he’d opened his throat. His lips didn’t move, but Grant heard his voice as clearly as if his friend had been standing beside him, whispering into his ear.
You don’t know anything.
You don’t know anything.
Chapter 11
Grant changed into dry clothes—loose-fitting jeans and a T-shirt belonging to one of his sister’s clients. He helped Paige clean the wet floors, the bloody upstairs hallway and downstairs bathroom, and generally return the brownstone to the jazz-brimming, candlelit brothel that had greeted him ninety minutes prior.
When the doorbell rang, Grant slipped into an empty closet beside the wet bar, pulling the door closed as Paige moved into the foyer.
She’d skimped down into something so lacy and see-through he could barely bring himself to look at her. But she’d somehow managed to work magic with makeup and foundation, upgrading her appearance from heroin addict to the sexy emaciation of a Paris runway model.
Muffled sounds reached him through the closet door.
Hinges creaked in the foyer.
An exchange of voices, barely discernible, but low and seductive.
Approaching footsteps moved into range, followed by laughter.
Grant heard the clink of ice dropping into empty glasses.
A cork sliding out of a whiskey bottle.
Liquid pouring over cracking ice.
Paige and her client stood at the wet bar, three feet away.
“You look tired, baby,” she said, her voice pure saccharine.
“Here’s to hoping you can fix that.”
Grant’s stomach twisted.
“Cheers,” the man said.
“Save any lives today?”
“No, actually. Car accident. Couldn’t find the hemorrhage in time.”
“Sounds like a bad day at the office.”
Grant had been fully prepared to despise whoever entered this brownstone with the intention of fucking his sister, but as he eavesdropped from the closet, he couldn’t find the rage. He’d stood in this man’s shoes countless times. Paid for sex with women who were undoubtedly sisters of other men. Whatever brotherly anger he felt was doomed to be laced with hypocrisy.
“I don’t know how you do it, Jude. Life and death every day.”
“The good days make it worth it. Also, they pay me a fortune which helps my fragile ego. How you doing, Gloria?”
“Aces.”
“Yeah? ‘Cause you’re looking a little peaked, as my grandmother used to say.”
“I’m fine. It’s just—”
“Eleven o’clock at night.”
“Exactly.”
They moved away from the wet bar and Grant heard the squeak of leather as they sat down on the sofa cushions.
In the darkness, he reached down, palmed the doorknob.
Waited for their voices to start up again, then turned it slowly.
When the latch had cleared the housing, he nudged the door open half an inch.
He couldn’t see them directly with the door blocking his view, but he could watch their reflection in the big mirror that hung over the fireplace—his sister cuddled into the embrace of a handsome man twenty years her senior. Even sitting, Grant could see that he was tall and endowed with the kind of longish, wavy-gray locks that were made to be windblown behind the wheel of a topless 911.
Grant listened to a conversation that could’ve unfolded in a confession box—Jude’s failing marriage, his suffocating mortgage, his ungrateful children—and all the while Paige gently prodded him along with a sincerity so genuine it made Grant simmer with jealousy. This man was closer to his sister than he was. Eric had been right. She was in a different league. Blue label all the way.
At last, Paige stood and took Jude’s hand.
“Come with me,” she said.
Jude smiled and rose. “Sure you’re up for this tonight? You really look tired,” he said.
Paige took a few sultry steps back and waved him on with a finger.
Chapter 12
Grant finally heard the floor upstairs strain under Paige’s and Jude’s footsteps.
He opened the closet door and headed to the foot of the stairs.
Climbed.
Paige had righted the table in the second-floor hallway and returned the lamp to its original place.
He stopped beside it.
Your friend is dead in a room right around the corner. You should at least put a blanket over him. Something.
Already, he could hear a collection of sounds coming from behind the closed door to Paige’s bedroom.
A wooden headboard slapping against the wall.
The low, breathless mumblings of Dr. Jude and his sister.
He involuntarily turned his head.
Despair.
Nausea.
Anguish.
How did you sink this far, baby sis?
He backed away, his eyes locking on the first door he saw, the floor groaning under his weight as he moved toward it.
Get out of sight.
The glass doorknob was freezing to the touch, and while it turned without a problem, the hinges screeched bloody murder. He stared into a linen closet—bare shelves coated with dust and just roomy enough, he hoped, f
or him to squeeze inside.
Grant stepped in and ducked down, his back flush against the shelves. He reached up and tugged the door shut, but his body blocked it from closing all the way.
The darkness seemed to magnify the labored breathing and muffled friction of the bed frame emanating from Paige’s room.
Paige was getting loud and so was Jude.
Grant had just brought his fingers up to plug his ears, when out in the hall, the desk lamp flickered three times.
For a microsecond, it burned as bright as a new star.
Bright enough to blind him and scald the walls with radiance.
It exploded.
The hall went dark.
The acrid stench of ozone and scorched glass filling the air.
Grant strained to listen.
Dead stillness.
His retinas slowly recovering from the overload of light.
He started to push the door open but stopped himself when the bedsprings in Paige’s room exhaled a slow groan.
No footsteps followed.
No voices.
The brownstone held its breath, and the longer Grant stood in the closet with the door pulled against his chest, the harder it became for him to move. Fear swept over him, its mass doubling with every pregnant second. He wanted desperately to call out to Paige. His legs began to tremble. A cramp shot through his quads. Sweat beaded on his forehead and slid down into his eyes with a salty sting.
The door to Paige’s room swung open.
A figure stood in the doorframe, backlit by candlelight—Jude.
Grant felt the change in his eyes, his chest, his ears—a subtle pulling from the doorway, like a vacuum seal had broken and the room itself was gasping for breath.
He squinted, searching for detail, but Jude was only a profile.
The doctor stepped out into the hall and began to walk, his pace as measured as a metronome, foot-strikes steady even as the glass from the shattered light bulb crunched beneath his feet.
In the darkest part of the corridor, Grant lost his silhouette.
His pulse rate kicked up a notch, eyes working every angle of the crack between the door and its frame for a better perspective.
Four feet from the closet door, Jude reemerged into the scraps of light that filtered up the staircase.
Grant could hear him breathing now and smell his cologne which also bore traces of Paige. Grant struggled to pull the door in with all the force he could rally but it wouldn’t close the final inch, leaving a gap that felt as big as the Grand Canyon.
Jude stood in perfect view, the doctor facing the closet door.
Motionless.
Gazing straight at the crack.
For a long time, Jude didn’t move.
When he finally stepped forward, his eyes came into the stairway light.
Grant’s first thought was that they looked dead, but that wasn’t quite right. They exuded a thousand-yard intensity he’d seen countless times during interrogations and interviews. Talking to murderers and victims’ next of kin. People who had fucked up or been fucked up and were trying to come to terms with the rest of their life.
Jude took another step toward the closet, so close now that his shadow filled the crack.
The tension coiled in Grant’s chest had maxed out its tensile strength.
His system spiked with adrenaline.
Somewhere in the distance, a man began to sing.
Jude stopped, turned his head.
The tinny, five-second refrain of “Ring of Fire” repeated itself from somewhere on the second floor.
Jude’s shadow disappeared from the crack, footsteps trailing away while Johnny crooned.
Grant pushed the closet door open.
The hallway was empty, light spilling around the far corner where it had been dark moments before.
Guest bedroom.
Grant bolted down the hall, past the stairwell, forcing himself to slow down as he rounded the corner.
The phone was still ringing, the song much louder.
Grant crept up to the open doorway.
The room stood empty, but there was movement in the bathroom.
Grant took two steps inside, said, “What are you doing?”
The phone went quiet.
Grant saw a shadow stretch across the floor, and then Jude emerged from the bathroom, his white sneakers tracking perfect bloody footprints across the floor. The man stopped and stared at Grant with an expression as lifeless and blank as a mannequin. His hands were darkened with blood, and he held something small and black in his right hand.
Don’s cell began to ring again.
Jude raised his arm above his head, and with alarming speed, pitched the phone at the floor.
It shattered against the hardwood in a debris field of glass and plastic and circuitry.
Then Jude started toward him.
Grant instinctively backed away—something in the man’s stride putting him on notice.
“I just want to talk to you,” Grant said. “I’m Paige’s—Gloria’s—brother.”
Jude didn’t stop.
Grant steadied himself, ready to intercept the man if need be, but Jude just stepped to the side and slid past him, their shoulders brushing.
Grant turned and followed him out the door.
“Hey!”
Jude was already halfway down the hall.
Grant doubled his pace.
“I didn’t say you could leave.”
Jude’s gait didn’t change, and by the time he reached the top of the stairs, Grant was on his heels.
Jude started down the staircase.
Grant put a hand on his shoulder from behind.
“I’m a cop. That means when I tell you to stop, you listen.”
Jude came to an abrupt halt two steps down.
“I want to know what happened in there. In her room.”
Jude brought his hand up to his shoulder and wrapped his fingers around Grant’s wrist.
Grant tried to jerk his arm away, but the man’s grip was a cold vise.
Jude turned and faced him, and the moment he saw Jude’s eyes, Grant’s words died in his throat.
The man’s pupils had been swallowed almost entirely by the roily gray of his irises. Only two infinitesimal pinpricks of black remained, like shrunken keyholes.
Jude folded Grant’s wrist back with ease and a lightning bolt of pain exploded up Grant’s arm, crumbling him to his knees.
Time protracted, seconds becoming eons of escalating misery as his radiocarpal joint approached its limit. A power surge illuminated the staircase for one burning second, and then everything was enveloped in darkness.
Jude released him.
Grant collapsed onto his side, cradling his hand against his chest as Jude’s footsteps continued down the stairs.
“Get back here,” he said, but neither his voice nor his heart was in it.
The front door opened and slammed shut, Dr. Jude vanishing into the rainy night.
Chapter 13
“Paige!”
Grant pounded on her door.
“Can you hear me?”
He grabbed the doorknob and tried to turn it, straining with his good wrist until it popped, but nothing happened.
“Paige!”
His voice raced through the second-floor halls that wrapped around the stairwell.
Grant turned and felt his way through the darkness to the hallway table. There was nothing of use on the surface, but a brief exploration along its side revealed a drawer handle.
He yanked it open, blindly rummaging.
Mostly unidentifiable junk.
Couldn’t believe his luck when he found a small flashlight.
Please.
He twisted the end and a narrow circle of light shone on the floor beneath him.
Grant returned to the door and dropped to his knees.
Put the side of his head on the hardwood and shined the weak light underneath the crack.
Nothing.<
br />
He stood, took several steps back, and accelerated at the door, his shoulder lowered, bracing for impact.
There was as much give as if he’d run straight into a brick wall, a bright shudder of agony exploding in his shoulder and screaming down through his arm to the tips of his fingers.
But a fear that tore his guts out overrode the pain.
Something had happened to Paige and he couldn’t get to her.
He sprinted down the hall, around the corner, and shot down the stairs as fast as he could safely travel in the dark.
Need an ax, a sledgehammer, a bowling ball—something with heft.
Failing that, find a toolbox. Physically remove the doorknob.
Grant stopped at the hearth and made a cursory examination of the fireplace toolset. The heaviest thing on the rack was the cast-iron poker, but it wouldn’t stand a chance of breaking through Paige’s door.
He threw it down and ran into the kitchen.
Pulled open the door to the pantry.
The half-bundle of plastic-wrapped firewood still sat on the floor. He frantically searched the shelves, hoping for a toolbox, a hatchet, something, but the heaviest object he spotted was a thirty-two-ounce can of whole cherry tomatoes.
Think. Think. Think.
As he’d first approached the brownstone after opening the wrought-iron gate, he’d walked up a set of stairs to reach the first level.
Which means—
—there’s probably a basement.
Grant shut the pantry door and spun around.
The shock of seeing Paige standing two feet away buckled his knees as if someone had cut his ligaments.
Grant stumbled back against the door.
His sister stared at him—reeking of sex, lingerie badly wrinkled, and looking as bleary and confused as if she’d just woken out of REM sleep.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
She blinked several times without answering, as if the connections between thought and speech were rebooting.
Said finally, “Did you see Jude?”
Grant nodded.
“He left my room?”
“He did a lot more than that.”
“Tell me everything.”
Chapter 14
The temperature inside the brownstone was diving.
Grant built up the fire with the remaining logs, and with Paige’s help, dragged over the leather sofa and the mattress she’d been sleeping on.
Ultimate Supernatural Horror Box Set Page 85