I followed the vines of energy, trying to find their core—their center. There were spirits here, I could feel them, but they were almost like finger puppets. They had once belonged to themselves, but now they were mere illusions—masks this entity wore. Even the corpse candle—it too was just one mask of whatever was at the center of this building.
I caught my breath as one of the vines froze, then turned toward me. “Oh no, you don’t,” I whispered. “Mind your own business, creature.” I quickly dropped out of trance and shook my head, jumping away from the creature before it latched hold of me.
“Cripes, this is bad.” I was breathing hard, trying to maintain my composure. “The spirits here? They’ve been absorbed by whatever this creature is. The entire building is part of its persona now. In fact, the building gives form to it.”
Caitlin shook her head. “I don’t think I want to stay inside. What if it swallowed them? People just vanish into thin air every year. What if…” Her voice dropped. “We need to wait outside,” she said in a strangled voice, staring over my shoulder. “There’s something coming toward us down the hall and it’s not the guys.”
I slowly began to turn, easing around as gently as I could. I didn’t want to spur it into running at us full tilt. Sure enough, there was some sort of creature coming toward us—it was tall and gangly, with rubbery legs and arms, and it had a triangular-shaped head. The creature was gray—eraser gray—and had large black eyes that looked dead.
Get out of here. Now. The voice echoed in my head, a warning so strong that I grabbed Caitlin’s hand and began dragging her down the hall.
“Outside, now!”
The creature began to run toward us, loping faster than I would have imagined possible.
We managed to stumble out the door and I slammed it behind us. We backed away from the building, watching closely to see if the creature was going to follow us. But the door stayed closed. I was shaking so bad that I could barely breathe.
“What the fuck are we going to do now?” I asked. “I’m not going back in there without help.”
“I have no clue what—wait…what’s that noise?” Caitlin said, whirling to look behind us. “There’s someone coming!”
I glanced at my phone. Almost three. “Maybe it’s Killian,” I said, hoping to hell that I was right. We waited, huddling near the van, and then in the strengthening snowstorm, I saw Killian’s SUV emerge from the driveway, into the open. I was never so glad to see anybody in my life.
Chapter Twelve
“Thank the gods,” I said, running toward the SUV as he eased in beside the van. He jumped out, racing over to my side.
“Are you all right?”
“No,” I said. “Tad and Hank are missing. We think they may be trapped inside the building, but it’s too dangerous to go back in there.” I ran through my repertoire of spells, trying to think of what I might be able to do in order to find them, but could think of nothing that I could cast on the spur of the moment.
“Where did you last see them?” he asked, nodding to Caitlin. “Hello, I’m Killian O’Connell.”
“Caitlin Tireal,” she said, returning the nod.
“We saw them in the building—Caitlin and I came out so I could make a phone call. We were out here ten to fifteen minutes at the most. When we returned, Hank and Tad were nowhere in sight. We didn’t see them exit the building, and even though there are other exits, they would have returned to the van first. And while we were in there, trying to find them, some butt-ugly creature came after us.”
Killian frowned. “What kind of creature?”
“We have no clue,” Caitlin said. “It looked almost demonic, or alien.”
“Whatever the case, it wasn’t working on its own.” I explained to Killian that the building was giving form to the creature. “I think there were spirits here in the beginning, but the elemental absorbed all of them. Now it’s generating manifestations from its central core.”
“You said this land is cursed?”
I nodded. “In talking to a historian at the Garrison Library, I found out that the cursed area of land extends a mile out in all directions from the center of the building. In fact, he thinks that’s why George Leeland built the complex where it is—it’s right over the center of the cursed land.”
“Lovely. All right, stay here. I’ll take a look around the rest of the building. I won’t go inside—but I’ll travel in my wolf form. That will be faster and safer. It’s harder for things to attack me when I’m in my alt-form. If you’d close the back door of my SUV when I leave?” He returned to his SUV and slipped inside the back, where he started to strip off his jacket and shirt. Not wanting to feel like a peeping tom, I turned.
Caitlin turned with me. “That your boyfriend? He’s cute.”
For some reason, I didn’t want to tell her no, so I just said, “I don’t know. We’re dating.” That was true, as far as it went. We were going to go out on a date—two of them, if things went right. “Are you married?”
She laughed. “Married? Not currently. I am engaged, though, but I’d rather not be.”
I frowned. “Why…” I stopped, not wanting to sound rude, but she answered anyway.
“Why am I engaged if I don’t want to be? It’s an arranged marriage. My Pride is more conservative than most, and I’ve already rocked the boat several times. My parents made the arrangements when I was young, and they expect me to carry through. I’m in the process of deciding whether my personal happiness is more important than my family’s honor. It’s not like I dislike my fiancé—we’ve known each other most of our lives. It’s just…he’s a good guy, but…”
“No spark?”
She shook her head. “No spark. But will I find that spark with anybody else? And does it even matter? A lot of arranged marriages actually work out. We get along, he’s a hard worker, I trust that he’ll do right by me and any children we have. And maybe the chemistry will build over the years. It’s a lot to think about.”
I wanted to beg her to break it off. Marriage to someone you loved was hard enough. Marrying someone you liked but had no chemistry with signaled a recipe for disaster. But I stopped myself. Caitlin had been brought up in a different lifestyle. Shifter cultures were insular and had their own rules.
“Just make certain you’ve made a decision either way, rather than just letting it happen. When’s the wedding set for?” I asked.
She shrugged. “A year from next summer. I still have time. And I promise you—if I go through with it, it will be because I decided to.”
I turned as Killian let out a shout for us to turn around. A shimmer filled the back of his SUV and the next moment, the large gray wolf that had been in my backyard leaped out of the car. He turned to me, trotted over, and rubbed against my side. I patted his head, suddenly feeling protective, and then he began to lope toward the building.
“Do you think he can find them?” Caitlin asked, her voice trembling.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I hope so, because what the hell are we going to do if he doesn’t?”