by Mac Flynn
Adam pursed his lips and shook his head. "We have not inspected the scene of the death. Before you admit defeat, at least let us investigate all the evidence."
Cain blinked at him. "Then you. . .you believe I'm innocent?"
Adam furrowed his brow. "I believe something is amiss. You told us the security system activates after dark and only Abel could deactivate it." Cain nodded. "How far is its reach? Does it include windows and doors, as Hawthorne mentioned?"
"Yes, but what does this matter?" Cain asked him.
"You told us you tried to escape through a window in your room, but while on the lawn you smelled the deputies coming. Did you have to open it?" Adam questioned our friend.
"I did, but-" Cain's eyes widened. He smashed a fist into the palm of his other hand. "That's what bothers me! I should not have had such an easy escape! The alarms should have sounded!"
I raised my hand. "So I'm just guessing here, but that means somebody shut off the alarm, right?"
"Yes," Adam agreed.
"And that somebody had to be Abel?" I continued.
Cain nodded. "Yes, he was the only one to know the code."
"So maybe he shut it off some time before he was killed?" I suggested.
Cain shook his head. "It takes a steady hand and a clear mind to do that. The code is fourteen characters long and the pad is very small. If he was as drunk as Lilith told us then he couldn't have done the task."
"So then what happened?" I asked them.
"That is what we must find out," Adam replied. He turned his attention to Cain. "How can we enter the billiard room? Is there a vent like the one behind us?"
Cain shook his head. "More like a hidden panel, but I'm not sure we'll find anything. The room has probably been cleaned."
"We will see if any clues are left," Adam insisted.
His old mentor smiled. "Always the stubborn one. I'm glad you're on my side. Chris, lead on to the billiard room and we will follow."
Chapter 11
I reluctantly led the way forward face-first down the narrow stairs to the bottom floor of the cramped space. I happened to glance to my right at the entrance hall and paused when something caught my eye.
"Adam, Cain," I whispered to the pair, and nodded at the slits beside us. "You might want to see this."
The men looked through the opening. They saw what I saw, a troop of six people in similar garb to the judge. The group stood in a line in front of their leader. "Search the premises, including every tree limb and hallway. If Miranda's assumption for their destination is true then they may be here already. Now spread out and find them." The deputies saluted and bounded off to all corners of the house and through the front doors to the property.
Adam pulled away and frowned. "This is not good. It is only a matter of time before our scent is discovered in the upper hall," he commented.
"Then we'd better get hurrying to clear my name," Cain agreed. He turned his attention to our left and felt the wall. His hands pressed against a solid-looking part of the vent passage that gave way beneath his prying fingers. Out popped the secret exit to the secret vent.
"Abel really liked his secrets, didn't he?" I mused.
"Very much," Cain agreed as he pushed the panel. It swung down, but didn't crash to the floor because of a piece of thin wire to which it was attached.
Cain crawled out, and we backed up and followed. The slide out was to a floor eight feet beneath the bottom of the vent, and Adam caught me as I slid head-first out of the secret passage. "Remind me when we get home to never complain about the woods being crowded again."
Adam smiled. "You are being very optimistic about our chances."
I rolled my eyes and pushed past him to get a good look at the billiard room. There was the table in the center, the pool stick holder on the wall to our left, and a buffet table opposite us. A few chairs sat against the wall behind us near the door. The wooden floor boards were waxed to a reflective shine, and beneath the table was a carpet to steady the players during their turns at the bat. Or ball. Or whatever they called it.
The rest of the room, specifically its walls, was covered in oddities that rivaled Adam's collection. There was the head of every big and little game animal along with skulls, posters of old movies, new movies, foreign movies, and theater shows. Between those collections were hanging candy dishes, the crescent-moon shaped kind. I was disappointed to find they were all empty.
Cain turned to us and pressed his finger against his lips. "We must be very quiet. The doors are not as secure as the vent," he whispered to us.
"So what are we supposed to be looking for?" I asked them.
"Anything that might look suspicious or unusual," Adam told me.
My eyes swept over the snarling, and very ugly, face of a possum. "You might have to be more specific than that."
"Anything that might not fit in with the collections you see," he rephrased.
I shrugged and wandered around the billiard table. "All right, but I don't know how we're going to find something that the deputy werewolf and sheriff guys didn't find," I pointed out.
"Judge," he corrected me.
"Hangman if he finds us," I quipped.
"A little more silence, if you would," Cain advised.
We started our perusal of the room. There was nothing unusual about anything. The table was in good condition, the sticks were all there, and there was a nice bloody stain on the rug. I froze and did a double-take at the spot. Adam was inspecting the top of the table, and I slid up to him and yanked on his sleeve. He turned to me with a raised eyebrow and I pointed at the floor beside his feet. Adam leaned back and looked under the table. A frown slipped onto his face and he knelt down to inspect the spot. I knelt with him.
"Blood?" I whispered.
Cain noticed our inspection and came to kneel on the other side of Adam. "That is where Abel lay," he explained.
"What else can you remember from that morning?" Adam asked him.
Cain shrugged. "Nothing except the weapon in my hand and my friend lying dead there."
"What happened to the weapon?"
"I left it in my room. I imagine that is Exhibit 1 for Hawthorne," Cain surmised.
While they discussed murder I stood and wandered to the far side of the room. The buffet table was an intricate piece of wooden furniture fashioned from pieces of oak and dark cherry. It was as shiny as the floor and as heavy as a bomb shelter. The thick legs kept it five inches off the floor, or just enough for a tight squeeze for a dainty and delicate woman such as I. Maybe the werewolf men hadn't had much of a chance to squeeze their hefty bodies beneath the furniture.
I lay on the ground and slid myself beneath the furniture. The bottom of the buffet was as smooth as the rest. No sign of anything strange there. The legs were solid, and when I knocked on the bottom the sound was the same.
"Not so loud," Cain scolded me.
"I've got to test it somehow," I hissed back.
With my findings complete, I slipped from beneath the buffet. However, the right shoulder of my shirt caught on something. I turned my head and glimpsed a smudge of white in the floor where there should have been bright, shining wood. "Guys, there's-"
"Someone coming!" Adam whispered to us. He hurried over and grabbed my legs. I was swept from my spot and packed under his arm like a sleeping bag.
Cain raced to the pair of doors that made up the entrance. He pushed his shoulder against both doors and held the handles with his hands. "I can hold them off for only so long!" he warned us.
Adam rushed me to the vent. He lifted me up and shoved me into the hole. "You can't stay here!" he argued
"And I don't stuff that way!" I yelled at Adam. My legs flailed in back of me and my face was squished against the far side of the vent.
"Someone's in there!" a voice yelled on the other side. The door handles jiggled, but they couldn't get far with Cain holding them. "Open up!" cried the voice.
"Those aren't the magic words," Cain shot back.
"Open up in the name of Judge Hawthorne!" the voice argued.
"These definitely aren't the magic words," Cain quipped. He cringed when someone put their shoulder into the door. The doors shook, but his shoulder held them in place. "Hurry! Run!" he yelled at us.
I felt Adam pull away from my legs and hurry to the door. He, too, put his shoulder against the door beside Cain. "Not without you!" Adam argued.
The door decided that it didn't care who was going where with whom. Another battering from the other side and the hinges broke from the walls. The doors fell to the sides and Adam and Cain found themselves in a tussle with half a dozen half-transformed werewolves. I crawled into the vent and scrambled along its route until I lay over the entrance to the billiard room. Cain and Adam held their own in the doorway only because the doorway wasn't wide enough for all the wolves to get inside at once. The door frame was the dividing line between trouble and salvation.
I bounced up and down on the vent. The flimsy metal with its white plaster squeaked and groaned as I strained the brackets that held the vent to the ceiling and wall. A few more bounces and the brackets that held my section of the vent gave way.
"Look out below!" I yelled as the vent broke in front of me. The wide metal boxes crashed downward. Cain and Adam heeded my warning and jumped back. The werewolves thought it was their chance to jump forward, but the vent fell on top of them. I slid forward through the new opening and onto their squirming bodies. "I warned you!" I scolded them as I scrambled off the pile.
Adam swept me into his arms and then shoved me into Cain's. "You know the grounds better than I. Get her out of here!" he ordered his mentor.
"I'm not leaving without you!" I insisted.
"You can't hold them!" Cain argued.
Adam looked into his eyes. "Leave now!"
Cain pursed his lips, but nodded and tugged me away. I clawed and pulled at him to escape his clutches. Behind Adam the deputies gathered themselves and rose to jump him. "No! Let me go! Let me-" Cain raised a hand and I felt a sharp pain in the back of my head. The world went black.
Chapter 12
The next I knew I was tucked under someone's arm and we were bouncing down a pitch-black passage. I raised my head and winced when the bruise on the back of my noggin complained. "Adam?" I groaned.
"No," came Cain's voice. It was he who held me
My memories flooded back. Adam was in trouble. He needed me. I was useless in battle, but I could give moral support. "Adam! Where's Adam?" I questioned him. I listened with my ears, but heard only Cain's shoes on hard dirt.
"Captured."
My heart skipped a beat. "And where are we?"
"In a tunnel that runs beneath the manor," he explained.
"The one we came in?"
"No, another one."
I frowned. "But you said that was the only way in!"
"I lied."
That really got my goat, and gave me incentive to squirm and thrash in his grip. "Let me go! Let me go right-" Cain stopped his running and opened his arm. I dropped to the dirt and rolled over to glare at him, or where I thought he stood. "What the hell's going on? What happened back there?"
"I took a secret hatch to the basement and it led us to the original tunnel through which we'd gained entry to the manor. This tunnel is hidden behind one of those walls and runs parallel to the first one through a secret adjoining tunnel," he explained.
I climbed to my feet and placed a palm against the invisible wall to steady myself. "Wait a second. You're telling me that you ran from helping Adam and now we're hiding in a tunnel you didn't tell us about?"
"Yes."
My fingers itched to slap some sense into him. "What the hell did you do that for? Where the hell does this one lead?" I growled at him.
"Into the walls on the opposite wing. It's a true passage," he told me.
"Well, we're going to use this way to get Adam free." I looked up and down the tunnel. Nothing could be seen in either direction. "Which way is the manor?"
"The opposite direction we are going," Cain replied.
I blinked at the darkness. "You're leading us away from the manor? Why? We need to save Adam!"
"He instructed me to protect you, and I will perform his last wish," Cain insisted.
There. His voice told me where he stood. I marched up to him and bonked my nose into his chest. "It'll be Adam's last wish if we don't rescue him!"
"There's nothing we can do once he's in their clutches. We can only hope they haven't found the car and that we can escape," Cain argued.
"I'm not going anywhere, and neither are you! We're going back there and-"
"And getting ourselves killed. We're no match for so many werewolves, particularly since you are a human," he pointed out.
"Then change me! Turn me into a werewolf so I can help!" I demanded.
"No." His firm voice made me pause, and his hand settled on my shoulder. "I won't do that. Not to the woman Adam loves."
I had to fight back the tears of frustration that rose in my eyes. "But we have to do something! We can't just let him die!"
"The only thing that would save him is my innocence, and we found nothing in the billiard room to prove that. If we cannot eliminate that dark spot of accusation against me than Adam will bear the burden of helping a murderer," he told me.
His words struck a chord in my memory. "Spot, spot. . .spot!" I looked in the direction of his face and jumped up and down. "There was a spot in the room!"
"The blood spot?" he guessed.
"No, a white spot! On the floor beneath the buffet table! My shoulder caught on the floor and it tore away some sort of secret cover! There was something white beneath it like the stuff in the vent!" I explained.
I felt Cain stiffen rather than see him do it. "A white spot? Then that could mean something is hidden there."
"Maybe something that could help clear your name," I suggested.
"Perhaps, but it isn't likely," Cain mused.
"But that means that it's somewhat likely, and that's a good enough chance for me if it means saving Adam," I persisted.
Cain sighed. "You have a great deal of faith in chance."
"And Adam has a great deal of faith that I'm going to disobey him and get him out of that mess like all the others before him." I patted the wall with my hand and stumbled forward. "Now turn me in the right direction and I'll go it alone if I have to."
I heard Cain chuckle. "You won't need to, but I think I have a better idea than yours."
I paused and snorted. "I don't have any idea what I'm doing. I just know I need to get back to that billiard room before Adam's game is up."
"Neither of us will return there," Cain argued.
I frowned. "Like hell we aren't." He put his hand on my shoulder and I tried to shrug it off, but his hold was much stronger. "You're not stopping me from-"
"-anything. I have an idea where we can investigate the spot without us investigating it," he told me.
"Uh, come again?"
"We will enlist the help of my mate, Lilith. She will check the spot for us."
"Ooh, right. Her. But how do we get to her from here?"
"As I said before, this passage leads to the opposite wing. It also winds itself through the walls to those between the bedrooms, one of which is Lilith's," he explained.
"Well then, what are we waiting for? Let's get-" I got moving straight to the ground when my foot tripped over the uneven ground. Cain's hand kept me from falling to the hard-packed dirt. I sheepishly looked up into the darkness. "Maybe you should lead."
"I'm in the opposite direction."
"I knew that."
"Before we go you may need this to ensure your dumb luck continues." Cain pushed something soft and squishy into my hands. My small bag my mom gave me.
I hugged the bag to me and smelled the sugary scent of my mom. "Thanks. Really."
"My pleasure. Now let me lead you back to the house so we can save Adam." He turned me around, grabb
ed my hand and guided me in the opposite direction I'd been going. In a few minutes Cain slowed to a crawl. "We've come to the stairs," he explained.
Cain helped me up a short flight of ten stairs, and at the top there was light through the wallpaper and white plaster walls. The passage was illuminated enough for me to see we stood in a true secret passage that stretched to the first-floor ceiling, and was three feet wide. Another flight of stairs stood at the end and led to the second floor. I peered through the wall and saw we stood in the far left corner of a study. Through its open doors I could see the entrance hall and the billiard room opposite where we stood.
In the center of the room was a chair, and in that chair, bound in chains, sat Adam. His clothes were torn, and there was dried blood and bruises all over his body. Before him, towering over his seated self, stood Hawthorne. The judge's hands were behind his back and he glared down at Adam.
"I will not ask this again. Where are Cain and the woman?" the judge demanded to know.
Adam shook his head. "I don't know."
"You entered this house with them. You must know where they are hiding now," Hawthorne persisted.
"I don't know where they are," Adam insisted.
On a chair close at hand sat Miranda. She frowned and looked to her mate. "What if he's telling the truth?" she asked him. "Cain is a cunning sort. Perhaps he's hidden himself elsewhere." Beside me I saw Cain flinch.
"Possible, but I still suspect he knows something. We found their bags in the tunnel, but no tracks leading away from the shed at the end. That means there must be an entrance in the tunnel that Cain used. He must have been told about another secret tunnel in case the first should be compromised," the judge surmised.
"Cain told me that was the only secret tunnel to the house," Adam spoke up.
I jumped when Cain set a hand on my shoulder. He nodded at the stairs that led up. I shook my head and nodded at Adam. "We can't leave him," I whispered.
"We can't help them until we help ourselves," he scolded. He gently pulled me from the wall, and I reluctantly followed him up the old stairs.