Secrets in the Shadows

by Jenna Black

  “Get the door!” he commanded, and Hannah hurried to pull the barn door open. This being sleepy farm country, it wasn’t locked.

  Gabriel dragged a semi-conscious Jules through the doorway, into the dark of the barn. The place stank of horses, though its occupants were apparently away from home today. Gabriel deposited Jules in one of the stalls, then started covering him with handfuls of hay.

  “We’re close,” Jules murmured, at least half asleep.

  “Yes,” Gabriel confirmed. “I’d say they’re about a quarter mile away.”

  “Can sense them,” Jules agreed. Gabriel dumped a handful of hay on his face, and Jules pushed it away.

  “We need to cover your face,” Gabriel said, but Jules shook his head.

  “There’s a mortal …” Despite what looked like a massive effort, Jules’s eyes slid closed and his body went limp. When Gabe tossed hay over his face again, he didn’t protest.

  Hannah leaned against the side of the stall and watched as Gabe made Jules disappear in the hay. “He won’t suffocate, will he?” she asked.

  Gabe stood up and brushed the dust from his hands. “No. He’ll be fine. Why don’t you lie down and get some sleep. I’ll keep watch.”

  But Hannah shook her head. “What was Jules trying to say? There’s a mortal … ?”

  Gabriel gave her one of those assessing looks, then shrugged. “Ian’s fledglings are very nearby. Nine of them, and one mortal.”

  Ian’s fledglings, eh? He’d said that as if he knew none of the nine was Ian. “And what about Ian?” she asked, just to be sure.

  Gabriel pursed his already thin lips and shook his head. “He’s not there. They’re all young fledglings.”

  “And how do you know that?”

  She must have sounded too eager, for Gabriel gave her a suspicious look. “Why should I tell you? Surely for a mortal you know too much about vampires already.”

  Her curiosity was unabated, but she was too freakin’ tired to play word games with Gabriel. Let him go all prickly and mysterious on her if he wanted! She yawned hugely and sat on the pile of hay, careful to avoid Jules. Sleep would be pure heaven right now, but she wasn’t sure she could manage it with Gabriel looming over her like that.

  “Don’t you need some sleep?” she asked. “Or would answering that violate the Vampire’s Code?”

  The corner of his mouth lifted, and he came to sit on the hay a respectful distance away. “Yes, under normal circumstances, I need to sleep. Right now I’m too … wired, I guess you would say.” He picked up a piece of hay and studied it with great concentration. “I’m sure you already know that as we get older, we get more powerful. When we’re young, we sense each others’ psychic footprints in a vague, amorphous way. The older we get, the more concrete that footprint is. I can practically ‘see’ the fledglings. And the footprint looks … darker, for want of a better word, as vampires age. These footprints are very light. I’m looking for one about the same as Jules’s, and it’s definitely not in that house.”

  Hannah was more than a little surprised that he was being so forthcoming, but she wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth. “What about mortals? Can you see our, er, footprints too?”

  “How do you think I know there’s a mortal in that house?”

  “Yeah, yeah, I got that. I mean, do we look different?”

  “You look … muddy.” He grinned, then frowned. “Actually, the mortal in that house looks very muddy. I’d say he or she is badly injured.”

  Hannah’s heart lurched. She’d somehow assumed the mortal was a henchman, like the idiots who worked for Camille. But if the poor soul was an intended victim …

  “You said Ian’s fledglings were all very young, right?” she asked.

  He nodded cautiously.

  “Then if Jules is asleep, they’ll all be asleep too.”

  Gabriel smiled. “True. You’re considering taking a little trip over there during the daytime?”

  She hadn’t been able to save whatever hapless mortal Gabriel had killed last night, but maybe she could save this one before Ian and his cronies made a meal of him or her. Assuming Gabriel wasn’t going to stop her.

  “There’d be no danger, right? Ian’s no older than Jules, so it’s not like he’s going to show up and kill me.”

  “True. And what will you do with the fledglings?”

  If she had the guts, she’d shoot them while they slept, but she’d already established that she couldn’t shoot helpless victims.

  Gabriel gave her another of his gentle smiles, the kind that made him look almost human. “It’s all right. It’s best that the fledglings stay alive anyway—the better to lure Ian into range.” He gestured her toward the barn door. “Let’s go.”

  She hesitated. “You’re coming with me?”

  “Why not? You make better company than Jules at the moment.”

  She narrowed her eyes at him. “I’m not going over there to get you a free meal.”

  One corner of his mouth rose in a lopsided grin. “Understood. I won’t harm the mortal unless it turns out to be an accomplice.”

  She wasn’t a hundred percent convinced, but it wasn’t like there was any way she could keep Gabriel from coming with her. Besides, despite being a sadistic serial murderer, he seemed to be honest. If he wanted to kill the mortal, he’d probably tell her so and gloat that there was nothing she could do about it.

  Hannah bit her lip and looked at the pile of straw that hid Jules. “Do you think he’ll be all right in there? I mean, what if the owners come back?”

  “He’ll be fine. And we won’t be gone long. Now let’s go.”

  Nerves tingling with foreboding, she followed him out into the early morning light.

  HANNAH PULLED UP IN front of the building that Gabriel indicated and turned off the car.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” she said, shaking her head. The place was a quarter mile from where they’d stopped for the day but couldn’t have been more different.

  She supposed that once upon a time, this had been another lovely, picturesque farmhouse, surrounded by clucking chickens and tended by a farm wife in a frilly apron. Once upon a time being maybe fifty years ago.

  She got out of the car and shaded her eyes against the glare of the sun, but the light just made the house look worse. She had no idea what color the wood had once been, but now it was a uniform shade of gray. Vines had pulled many of the boards apart. The front porch sagged in the middle, the railing that surrounded it warped in some places, broken in others. There wasn’t a hint of glass in any of the windows, but the fact that they were all boarded up with new wood suggested it might be a vampire nest after all, despite its condition.

  “What a charming home,” Gabriel muttered. “I can’t imagine why Ian chooses to spend the day elsewhere.”

  A breeze rustled through the vines that were still working at tearing the house to shreds. Hannah nearly gagged at the stink that wafted from the house on that breeze.

  “Jesus!” she said, pinching her nose. “What the hell is that smell?”

  Gabriel wrinkled his nose and stared up at the roof, which had cracked open in multiple places. “Bat guano.”

  “Bats?” She shivered. Like big, furry cockroaches. She suppressed a groan. “And I bet the place is just crawling with roaches, too.”

  “Wouldn’t surprise me,” Gabriel agreed, taking a step toward the front door. He pulled up so suddenly she almost bumped into him. His expression changed from mild disgust to … something else, though damned if she knew what it was.

  “What’s the matter?” she asked.

  Gabriel turned to regard the road. His eyes hardened and his lips pulled away from his teeth to reveal his fangs.

  “Gabe?” She wasn’t at all sure she wanted to know what was wrong.

  He shook his head. “Not here, not now,” he said, but he was talking to himself, not to her. He turned to her and held out his hand. “Give me the keys.”

  “Huh?” So
maybe it wasn’t the most intelligent-sounding response she could have made, but she had no idea what was going through his head.

  “The car keys. Give them to me. My mother is coming. I can assure you, you don’t want to be caught in the middle if she and I face each other.”

  She bit her lip. Boy, would she ever feel like a sitting duck if Gabriel hit the road and Camille decided to stop by and chat!

  Gabriel read her hesitation easily. “It’s me she’s after, not you. And now that she senses me near these fledglings, she’ll be even more sure I’ve betrayed her. Now give me the keys.”

  “Do you know how to drive?”

  He didn’t answer, but suddenly she blinked, and he was gone, the car pulling out of the driveway at top speed. She squeezed her eyes shut and took a deep breath that was supposed to calm her. Would have worked better if it weren’t for the bat stench. That had probably been the creepiest glamour she’d ever encountered! Usually, she at least had some sense that time had passed, some awareness that she’d been spaced out for a bit. This time, there’d been nothing.

  “Dammit,” she said, watching the car as Gabriel sped away. Perhaps he wasn’t used to driving, but he seemed to have no hesitation about breaking the speed limit. The car practically turned the next corner on two wheels, tires screaming in protest. In the distance, she spied another car approaching. Could be anyone, of course, but it wasn’t like this little country road saw a whole lot of traffic.

  She had the choice of standing out here like an idiot and watching Camille approach, or going into the condemned, rotting house like an idiot and trying to rescue the poor mortal who was trapped inside. Giving the house another once-over, she decided that Camille was probably the only creature scary enough to make her think the house was the lesser of two evils.

  The boards on the porch creaked and groaned ominously as she stepped on them, and she hoped she wasn’t about to fall through. Camille’s car was too close for comfort, so Hannah stiffened her spine and pushed the front door open.

  Inside, the stench of bat guano was enough to make her eyes water. The boards over the windows blocked out almost all light, but after she’d stood blinking in the dark for a few minutes, her eyes adjusted. A little bit of light seeped in through cracks in the walls. Enough to allow her to see deeper pools of blackness in the shadows.

  The house groaned and creaked around her, and she heard little scuttling sounds. Or maybe that was just her overactive imagination.

  “My kingdom for a flashlight,” she muttered. Or a crowbar, to pry the boards off the windows. She might not have been able to bring herself to shoot the sleeping fledglings in the head, but she figured she could handle letting the light in.

  “Hello?” she called, but nerves made her voice come out in little more than a whisper. She clenched her fist and hit herself in the thigh. There was nothing to be afraid of. The vamps were fast asleep. And as far as she knew, bats slept in the daytime too. She cleared her throat.

  “Hello?” she tried again, louder this time. No one answered. Was the mortal gagged? Unconscious?

  Dead?

  Shaking despite her reassurances to herself, she wedged the door open with a hunk of rotten wood that had once been a piece of baseboard.

  The light revealed an inside as decrepit as the outside. Mildewed wallpaper hung in strips from water-stained walls. A patchy, moth-eaten rug covered a patchy, moth-eaten floor that was coated with a half inch or so of dirt. Little pellets of what she assumed were rat or mouse droppings added to the all-around lovely aroma. Her stomach gurgled unhappily, but she hadn’t eaten any breakfast so she supposed she wasn’t likely to up-chuck.

  Doubting it would do her any good, she reached into her pocket and pulled out her gun. At least it made her feel a little less helpless.

  She ventured down the hallway and peered into the next room. Unfortunately, the light of the open door didn’t reach this far. Once again, she paused, waiting for her eyes to adjust, wondering if they would adjust enough.

  There looked to be an especially dark lump on the floor about a yard into the room, to her left. She stared at it hard, trying to force her eyes to penetrate the gloom, but she had no luck. Trembling in superstitious terror, her heart throbbing in her throat, she crept into the room, toward the patch of darkness. When she explored with the tip of her foot, she felt the yielding softness of flesh. She swallowed a cry of alarm, though she couldn’t stop her reflexive jump.

  Whoever it was she’d just poked with her toe made no move to attack her. In fact, it didn’t move at all. Forcing a couple of deep breaths, she squatted beside the body and felt for its throat. It was a man, she discovered as her fingers encountered a flat, muscular chest. His chest rose and fell with even, steady breaths, and he showed no sign of waking up even when she slapped his face. A vampire, then. Not the mortal she was here to save.

  Maybe she should wait, hope Gabe was able to lose his pursuit and come back to help. But what were the chances of that? Besides, the mortal might need immediate medical attention. Hannah didn’t want to know how she’d explain anything on the 911 call, but she’d worry about that later.

  She rose and squinted once more into the darkness. She thought she saw a tiny hint of light on the far wall. Perhaps that was a window. Maybe the wood around the frame was rotten enough that she’d be able to pull the boards off without the help of a crowbar. That would make for one less vamp in the world, at least.

  She took a slow, deep breath—through her mouth—then started cautiously picking her way across the darkened room toward the window.

  Not cautiously enough.

  Her foot came into contact with what felt like another body. This time, her reflexive jump landed her on what felt like someone’s hand. She listed to the side and took several staggering steps to try to regain her balance.

  Her right foot landed on empty air. The gun dropped from her hand as she frantically windmilled her arms, but she was hopelessly off balance.

  With a choked scream, she fell.

  19

  HANNAH AWOKE TO PITCH darkness, an aching head, and a throbbing wrist. With a little groan, she pushed herself up into a sitting position, sending a stabbing pain down her left arm. She cradled her injured arm close to her body and shivered. She must have landed on it when she’d fallen.

  Moving slowly and carefully, she checked out the rest of her body, making sure all her parts were intact. It seemed that in spite of the aching head and banged-up arm, she hadn’t suffered much damage. She peered upward into the darkness, but could see nothing.

  Great. Just great. How was she supposed to get out of here if she couldn’t see her hand in front of her face? She wondered how long she’d been out.

  Telling herself she’d moan about the pain later, she rose to her feet and began exploring the space around her, arms stretched out in front of her as she groped through the darkness. When she found a wall, her sense of relief was completely out of proportion, considering her still-dire situation. But at least she had a point of reference. Even if that point of reference was slimy with what felt like wet moss. And probably crawling with six- and eight-legged beasties.

  She sucked in a quick breath. “Don’t even think about panicking!” she told herself sternly. She continued to feel her way around the wall, one agonizingly slow step after another, looking for a door or a stairway. But when she found the door, she discovered it was locked. She treated it to a few karate kicks, but it didn’t budge. A shiver crawled up her spine. Except for the fortified windows upstairs, most of this house looked like it would collapse if you breathed on it too hard. Which suggested this door had been reinforced. Not a good sign at all.

  Panic hammered at her self-control, but she held it at bay. When she remembered her cell phone, she practically wept with relief.

  Her hand shaking, she pulled the phone out of her pocket and flipped it open.

  The good news was it hadn’t been damaged in her fall. The bad news was she wasn’t getting a signa
l. She tried reaching up on tiptoe, moving the phone around to every conceivable angle, but to no avail.

  At least she had a little light, while the battery lasted. She held the phone out in front of her like a flashlight and examined the door. As she’d suspected, it was brand new, complete with a heavy deadbolt.

  Swallowing hard, Hannah turned to face the room. In the dim glow of her cell phone, she made out the shape of a body, lying on the floor not five feet from where she stood. Reluctantly, she went to kneel beside the body.

  It was a young girl, probably in her early twenties. Her short hair had been dyed jet black and arranged in spikes that resembled Gabriel’s ’do. A pair of metal balls pierced one eyebrow, and another pierced her nose. Blood crusted her throat, and Hannah discerned several punctures there. She touched her fingers to the girl’s throat and found a thready pulse.

  “Can you hear me?” she asked, giving the girl’s shoulder a little shake. There was no response.

  Hannah panned the cell phone’s light down the rest of the girl’s body, looking for other injuries. And she found them.

  The girl’s T-shirt had been ripped open, and her poor breasts were covered with bite marks. A pair of ratty jeans and torn white panties were gathered down around one ankle. There were more bite marks around her inner thighs, but there was more than just blood crusted between her legs. Hannah shuddered in sympathy. Along with the other injuries, the girl’s arms and legs were covered with bruises, which suggested she’d been conscious and fighting during her ordeal.

  Hannah glared upward at the hole in the ceiling. If she got out of here before the sun set, she suspected she’d now be able to get over her moral qualms about shooting sleeping vampires in the head!

  Wishing she could do more for the girl, Hannah did her best to get her dressed before she froze to death in the winter chill. The girl remained a dead weight, and Hannah wondered what her chances of survival were.