Anna Dressed in Blood

by Kendare Blake

  The only thing good about going into the house is that the need for quiet is keeping Thomas from poking me with questions. My heart is hammering away inside my ribs, silent but insistent. My muscles are tense and twitchy. It isn’t at all like stalking a ghost. I don’t feel certain or strong. I feel like a five-year-old in a hedge maze after dark.

  The interior of the place is nice. Hardwood floors and thick-carpeted rugs. The banister leading upstairs looks like it’s been treated with wood polish every day since it was carved. There is original art on the walls, and not the weird modern kind either—you know, the kind where some skinny bastard in New York declares some other skinny bastard a genius because he paints “really fierce red squares.” This art is classic, French-inspired shore-scapes and small, shadowed portraits of women in delicate lace dresses. My eyes would normally spend more time here. Gideon schooled me in art appreciation at the V&A in London.

  Instead, I whisper to Thomas, “Let’s just get my knife and get out.”

  I lead the way up the stairs and turn left at the top, toward the room with the drawn curtains. It occurs to me that I could be completely wrong. It might not be a bedroom at all. It might be storage, or a game room, or some other room that would conceivably have its curtains shut. But there’s no time for that now. I’m in front of the closed door.

  The handle turns easily when I try it and the door swings partially open. Inside is too dark to see well, but I can make out the shape of a bed and, I think, a dresser. The room is empty. Thomas and I slide in like old pros. So far, so good. I pick my way toward the center of the room. My eyes blink to activate better night vision.

  “Maybe we should try to turn on a lamp or something,” Thomas whispers.

  “Maybe,” I reply absently. I’m not really paying attention. I can see a little bit better now, and what I’m seeing, I don’t like.

  The drawers of the dresser are standing open. There are clothes spilling out of the tops, like they’ve been rifled through in a hurry. Even the placement of the bed looks strange. It’s sitting at an angle toward the wall. It’s been moved.

  Turning in a circle, I see that the closet door is thrown open, and a poster near it is half torn down.

  “Someone’s been here already,” Thomas says, dropping the whisper.

  I realize that I’m sweating and wipe at my forehead with the back of my glove. It doesn’t make sense. Who would have been here already? Maybe Will had other enemies. That’s a hell of a coincidence, but then, coincidences seem to be going around.

  In the dark, I sort of see something next to the poster, something on the wall. It looks like writing. I step closer to it and my foot strikes something on the floor with a familiar thump. I know what it is even before I tell Thomas to turn on the light. When the brightness floods the room, I’ve already started backing out, and we see what we’ve been standing in the middle of.

  They’re both dead. The thing that my foot struck was Chase’s thigh—or what’s left of it—and what I thought was writing on the wall is actually long, thick sprays of blood. Dark, arterial blood in looping arcs. Thomas has grabbed my shirt from behind and is making this panicky gasping sound. I pull gently free. My head feels disconnected and clinical. The instinct to investigate is stronger than the urge to run.

  Will’s body is behind the bed. He’s lying on his back and his eyes are open. One of the eyes is red, and I think at first that all the vessels have popped, but it’s only red from a blood splash. The room around them is demolished. The sheets and blankets are torn off and are lying in a heap by Will’s arm. He’s still wearing what I assume were his pajamas, just a pair of flannel pants and a t-shirt. Chase was dressed. I’m thinking these things like a CSI person might, ordering them and making note of them, to keep myself from thinking about what I noticed the moment the lights came on.

  The wounds. There are wounds on both of them: bright, red, and still seeping. Large, ragged crescents of missing muscle and bone. I would know these wounds anywhere, even though I’ve only seen them in my imagination. They’re bite marks.

  Something ate them.

  Just like it ate my father.

  “Cas!” Thomas shouts, and from the tone of his voice I know he’s said my name a few times already and gotten no response. “We’ve got to get out of here!”

  My legs are rooted. I can’t seem to do anything, but then he’s got me around the chest, holding my arms down and dragging me out. It isn’t until he flicks the light off and the scene in the room goes black that I shake him off and start to run.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  “What do we do?”

  That’s what Thomas keeps asking. Carmel has called twice, but I keep ignoring it. What do we do? I have no idea. I’m just sitting quietly in the passenger seat while Thomas drives nowhere in particular. This must be what catatonia feels like. There are no panicked thoughts running through my head. I’m not making plans or evaluating. There is only a gentle, rhythmic repetition. It is here. It is here.

  One of my ears picks up Thomas’s voice. He’s on the phone to someone, explaining what we found. It must be Carmel. She must’ve given up on me and tried him, knowing she’d get an answer.

  “I don’t know,” he says. “I think he’s freaking out. I think he might have lost it.”

  My face twitches like it wants to react and rise to the challenge, but it’s sluggish, like coming off of Novocain at the dentist. Thoughts drip into my brain slowly. Will and Chase are dead. The thing that ate my father. Thomas is driving to nowhere.

  None of the thoughts run into each other. None of them make much sense. But at least I’m not scared. Then the faucet drips faster, and Thomas shouts my name and hits me in the arm, effectively turning the water back on.

  “Take me to Anna’s,” I say. He’s relieved. At least I’ve said something. At least I’ve made some kind of decision, some executive order.

  “We’re going to do it,” I hear him say into the phone. “Yeah. We’re going there now. Meet us there. Don’t go in if we’re not there first!”

  He’s misunderstood. How can I explain? He doesn’t know how my father died. He doesn’t know what this means—that it has finally caught up with me. It has managed to find me, now, when I’m practically defenseless. And I didn’t even know it was looking. I could almost smile. Fate is playing a practical joke.

  Miles go past in a blur. Thomas is chattering encouraging things. He peels into Anna’s driveway and gets out. My door opens a few seconds later and he hauls me out by the arm.

  “Come on, Cas,” he says. I look up at him gravely. “Are you ready?” he asks. “What are you going to do?”

  I don’t know what to say. The state of shock is losing its charm. I want my brain back. Can’t it just shake itself off like a dog already and get back to work?

  Our feet crunch up the cold gravel. My breath is visible in a bright little cloud. To my right, Thomas’s little clouds are showing up much faster, in nervous huffs.

  “Are you okay?” he asks. “Man, I’ve never seen anything like that before. I can’t believe that she— That was—” He stops and bends over. He’s remembering, and if he remembers too hard, or too well, he might throw up. I reach an arm out to steady him.

  “Maybe we should wait for Carmel,” he says. Then he pulls me back.

  Anna’s door has opened. She’s coming out onto the porch, softly, like a doe. I look at her spring dress. She makes no move to wrap herself up, though the wind must be moving across her like sharp sheets of ice. Her bare, dead shoulders can’t feel it.

  “Do you have it?” she asks. “Did you find it?”

  “Do you have what?” Thomas whispers. “What’s she talking about?”

  I shake my head as a reply to them both, and walk up the porch steps. I go right past her, into the house, and she follows.

  “Cas,” she says. “What’s wrong?” Her fingers brush my arm.

  “Back off, sister!” Thomas squeaks. He actually shoves her and gets in between u
s. He’s doing this ridiculous little sign-of-the-cross thing with his fingers, but I don’t fault him for it. He’s freaked. So am I.

  “Thomas,” I say. “It wasn’t her.”

  “What?”

  “She didn’t do it.”

  I look at him calmly so he can see that the grip of shock is loosening its hold; I’m coming back to myself.

  “And knock that off with your fingers,” I add. “She’s not a vampire, and even if she was, I don’t think your phalange-cross would do anything.”

  He drops his hands. Relief relaxes the muscles in his face.

  “They’re dead,” I say to Anna.

  “Who’s dead? And why aren’t you going to accuse me again?”

  Thomas clears his throat.

  “Well, he’s not, but I am. Where were you last night and this morning?”

  “I was here,” she replies. “I’m always here.”

  Outside, I hear the grumble of tires. Carmel has arrived.

  “That was all well and good while you were contained,” Thomas counters. “But maybe now that you’re loose you go all over the place. Why wouldn’t you? Why stay here, where you’ve been trapped for fifty years?” He looks around, nervous even though the house is quiet. There’s no indication of angry spirits. “I don’t even want to be here now.”

  Footsteps slam up the porch and Carmel bursts in holding, of all things, a metal baseball bat.

  “Get the hell away from them!” she screams at the top of her lungs. She swings the thing in a wide arc and knocks Anna across the face. The effect is something like smacking the Terminator with a lead pipe. Anna just looks sort of surprised, and then sort of insulted. I think I see Carmel gulp.

  “It’s all right,” I say, and the bat goes down an inch. “She didn’t do it.”

  “How do you know?” Carmel asks. Her eyes are bright and the bat shakes in her hands. She’s running on adrenaline and fear.

  “How does he know what?” Anna interjects. “What are you talking about? What’s happened?”

  “Will and Chase are dead,” I say.

  Anna looks down. Then she asks, “Who’s Chase?”

  Could everyone stop asking so many damned questions? Or can someone else answer them, at least?

  “He’s one of the guys who helped Mike trick me, the night of…” I pause. “He was the other one by the window.”

  “Oh.”

  When I make no move to go on, Thomas tells Anna everything. Carmel cringes at the gory bits. Thomas looks at her apologetically but keeps talking. Anna listens and watches me.

  “Who would do it?” Carmel asks angrily. “Did you touch anything? Did anyone see you?” She’s looking from Thomas to me and back again.

  “No. We were wearing gloves, and I don’t think we moved anything while we were there,” Thomas answers. Both of their voices are even, if a little fast. They’re focusing on the practical aspects, which makes it easier. But I can’t let them do it. I don’t understand what’s going on here and we need to figure it out. They have to know everything, or as much as I can stand to tell.

  “There was so much blood,” Thomas says weakly. “Who would do that? Why would someone…?”

  “It isn’t a who exactly. More like a what,” I say. I’m tired suddenly. The back of the dust-sheeted sofa looks fantastic. I lean against it.

  “A ‘what’?” Carmel asks.

  “Yeah. A thing. It’s not a person. Not anymore. It’s the same thing that dismembered that guy in the park.” I swallow. “The bite marks were probably sequestered. Keeping evidence close to the vest. They didn’t broadcast it. That’s why I didn’t know sooner.”

  “Bite marks,” Thomas whispers, and his eyes widen. “Is that what those were? They couldn’t be. They were too big; there were huge chunks torn off.”

  “I’ve seen it before,” I say. “Wait. That’s not true. I’ve never actually seen it. And I don’t know what it’s doing here now, ten years later.”

  Carmel is idly clanking the top of her aluminum bat against the floor; the sound rings like an ill-tuned bell through the empty house. Without saying anything, Anna walks past her and scoops the bat up, then sets it on the padding of the sofa.

  “I’m sorry,” Anna whispers, and shrugs at Carmel, who crosses her arms and shrugs back.

  “It’s okay. I didn’t even realize I was doing it. And … sorry for, you know, whacking you earlier.”

  “It didn’t hurt.” Anna stands beside me. “Cassio. You know what this thing is.”

  “When I was seven, my father went after a ghost in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.” I look down at the floor, down at Anna’s feet. “He never came back. It got him.”

  Anna puts her hand on my arm. “He was a ghost hunter, like you,” she says.

  “Like all my ancestors,” I say. “He was like me and better than me.” The idea of my father’s killer, here, is making my head spin. It wasn’t supposed to happen this way. I was supposed to go after it. I was supposed to be ready, and have all the tools, and I was supposed to hunt it to the ground. “And it killed him anyway.”

  “How did it kill him?” Anna asks softly.

  “I don’t know,” I say. My hands are shaking. “I used to think it was because he was distracted. Or he was ambushed. I even had this idea that the knife stopped working, that after a certain time it just stops working for you, when your number is up. I thought maybe it was me who had done it. That I killed him just by growing older, and being ready to replace him.”

  “That’s not true,” Carmel says. “That’s ridiculous.”

  “Yeah, well, maybe it is and maybe it isn’t. When you’re a seven-year-old kid and your dad dies and his body looks like it’s been taken to a buffet for goddamn Siberian tigers, you think up a lot of ridiculous shit.”

  “He was eaten?” Thomas asks.

  “Yeah. He was eaten. I heard the cops describing it. Big chunks taken out of him, just like what was taken out of Will and Chase.”

  “That doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s the same thing,” Carmel reasons. “It’s kind of a large coincidence, isn’t it? After ten years?”

  I don’t say anything. I can’t disagree with that.

  “So maybe this is something different,” Thomas suggests.

  “No. This is it. It’s the same thing; I know it is.”

  “Cas,” he says. “How do you know?”

  I look at him from under my brow. “Hey. I might not be a witch, but this gig does come with a few perks. I just know, okay? And in my experience, there aren’t exactly a boatload of ghosts who eat flesh.”

  “Anna,” Thomas says gently. “You’ve never eaten anything?”

  She shakes her head. “Nothing.”

  “Besides,” I add, “I was going to go back for it. I always intended to. But this time I was going back for real.” I glance at Anna. “I mean, I thought I might. As soon as I was finished here. Maybe it knew.”

  “It’s coming after you,” Anna says absently.

  I rub my eyes, thinking. I’m exhausted. Seriously dragging ass. Which doesn’t make any sense, because I slept like a rock last night, for probably the first time in a week.

  And then it clicks.

  “The nightmares,” I say. “They’ve been worse since I got here.”

  “What nightmares?” Thomas asks.

  “I thought they were just dreams. Somebody leaning over me. But this whole time, it must’ve been like a portent.”

  “Like a what?” Carmel asks.

  “Like a psychopomp or something. Prophecy dreams. Foretelling dreams. A warning.” That gravelly voice, echoed out of the dirt and put through a buzz saw. That accent, almost Cajun, almost Caribbean. “There was this smell,” I say, my nose crinkling. “Some kind of sweet smoke.”

  “Cas,” Anna says. She sounds alarmed. “I smelled smoke when I was cut with your athame. You told me then it was probably just a memory of Elias’s pipe tobacco. But what if it wasn’t?”

  “No,” I say. But ev
en as I say it, I remember one of my nightmares. You lost the athame, is what the thing said. You lost it, in that voice like rotting plants and razor blades.

  Fear creeps up my back in cold fingers. My brain is trying to make a connection, poking carefully, dendrite seeking out dendrite. The thing that killed my father was voodoo. That much I’ve always known. And what is voodoo, in essence?

  There’s something there, some knowledge just out of the reach of light. It has to do with something Morfran said.

  Carmel raises her hand like she’s in class.

  “Voice of reason,” she says. “Whatever the thing is, and whatever the link may or may not be to the knife, or to Cas, or to Cas’s father, it’s killed at least two people, and eaten most of them. So what are we going to do?”

  The room falls silent. I’m no use without my knife. For all I know, the thing might have taken the knife from Will, and now I’ve gotten Thomas and Carmel into a ginormous mess.

  “I don’t have my knife,” I mumble.

  “Don’t start that,” Anna says. She walks away from me sharply. “Arthur without Excalibur was still Arthur.”

  “Yeah,” Carmel intones. “We might not have that athame, but if I’m not mistaken, we’ve got her”—she nods toward Anna—“and that’s something. Will and Chase are dead. We know what did it. We might be next. So let’s freaking circle the wagons and do something!”

  * * *

  Fifteen minutes later, we’re all inside the Tempo. All four of us—Thomas and me up front, Carmel and Anna in the back. Why we didn’t take Carmel’s much roomier, more reliable, and less conspicuous Audi is beyond me, but that’s what happens when you hatch a plan in fifteen minutes. Except that there isn’t that much of a plan, because we don’t really know what’s happened. I mean, we’ve got hunches—I’ve got more than a hunch—but how could we make a plan when we don’t know what the thing is, or what it wants?

  So instead of worrying about what we don’t know, we’re going after what we do. We’re going to find my athame. We’re going to track it magically, which Thomas assures me can be done, with Morfran’s help.