“Why is that?” Grimshaw said, spraying gravel as he turned into the access road for The Jumble.
“Because Victoria must have followed the directions she was given and gotten lost.”
CHAPTER 89
Vicki
Moonsday, Novembros 5
Crap. Crappity crap crap.
Well, I did find a clearing, but I think I also found the septic tank for the main house and the lake cabins.
If I headed north from here, I should be heading for the Mill Creek Cabins and should reach the clearing where Kira said she and Aggie would be waiting.
Okeydokey.
Which way was north?
* * *
* * *
Finally!
I saw Aggie on the ground and ran to her.
“What happened?” I asked as Kira rushed toward me and grabbed my wrist, burrowing under sweater and coat sleeves to touch bare skin.
“I did like you, but you kept getting in the way,” Kira said.
Natasha told me Sanguinati were often in their smoke form when they extracted blood from prey. Biting someone was more personal, more intimate. She also said the advantage of feeding in their smoke form was that the prey didn’t notice the loss of blood.
She was soooo wrong.
Or maybe Kira was still too young to have sufficient skill, because I sure noticed the sudden drop in blood pressure as she fed off me.
I staggered. She released my wrist and grabbed my hair as she tried to pour the contents of a small bottle into my mouth.
Being Sanguinati, she was strong. But I had sand. I surely did.
I also had a healthy fear that if I was injured and survived, I would be given another transfusion of Grimshaw blood. Who knew what traits I would acquire from another dose of Grimshaw?
I knocked the bottle out of Kira’s hand. Some of the liquid went down my throat as I choked and coughed and shoved her away from me. I fell on my hands and knees, too dizzy to stand. I was in trouble. So was Aggie, who looked terribly hurt, with her neck all bloody. But I started to feel good and just didn’t care what was going to happen next, except to think it would be pretty interesting.
I didn’t think blood loss would make you feel good, so my vote was drugs. Yep, probably drugs, since I swallowed some of the stuff in that small bottle.
“Adequate, Kira, but not stellar work,” a male voice said.
I looked up and saw the muddy green coat first. Crappity crap crap. Then I looked at the face.
“Richard Cardosa,” he said pleasantly. “Not that you’ll remember.”
Why not? Oh. I was going to be the next dead donkey. Phooey.
Just a point of information? A drug that is supposed to make you feel good cannot compete with terror. Terror will sober you right up. Or leave you gibbering. It’s pretty much fifty-fifty.
For me, there was a moment of clarity as I stared at this man with the cruel smile and the eager look in his eyes—as I stared at Viktor, who stepped up beside him and looked just as cruel, just as eager. I had no chance of getting away from them, let alone getting Aggie somewhere safe. But I could give these killers and deceivers a moment of uneasiness. Maybe even a lifetime of looking over their shoulders.
I got to my feet and was proud that I didn’t just fall over and land on Aggie. Then I said in my best “I got sand” voice, “Crowbones is gonna gitcha.”
That’s when things got weird.
CHAPTER 90
Moonsday, Novembros 5
She followed the scent of contamination or the whispers of other hunters or whatever it was that only she could sense—and he followed her until she touched his arm.
<You go. Protect,> she said, pointing in one direction. Then she pointed in a slightly different direction. <Contamination. I hunt.>
She simply disappeared into the woods, became a dreaded silence.
As he moved in the direction she’d pointed out, he heard voices, caught a glimpse of someone who was also moving toward a particular spot. Another Sanguinati?
His brain . . . blinked . . . and he forgot about the battle in the town of Bennett, the battle that had cost him so much. Forgot that he wasn’t whole in so many ways.
He was a hunter again. A fighter again.
Protect is what she’d said. Protect the Reader is what she meant.
The Reader was just up ahead. In danger.
Then he saw them. All of them. And he heard the Reader say, “Crowbones is gonna gitcha.”
He heard the words—and he knew.
Gonna gitcha.
Enemy. Found.
CHAPTER 91
Them
Moonsday, Novembros 5
Richard Cardosa wanted to sneer at this last bit of bravado from a creature whose spirit had already been broken by an expert in gaslighting and mental abuse. He used those same techniques often enough, so he recognized the signs in someone who had been exposed to that kind of psychological alteration. Did she really think she was healing, that she was ever going to be able to cope with the world when it took so little to push her to the edge of panic and being unable to function? He couldn’t figure out why this fat bit of nothing was so intriguing to the Others. She was prey, a broken thing he hadn’t considered interesting enough to even toy with. And yet, because of her, he’d been trapped in this place with that idiot Roash—and with Ellen, who had decided to end their sibling rivalry by trying to kill off her rival.
Time to go. With the chaos his two bloodsucking helpers were about to create, it would be easy for him to slip away. He’d have to walk out in order to get past the barricades, but he was fit. He could do it. All the attention would be on his twisted, fanged darlings, who had been willing to be led and had been ripe for everything he could teach them. For a moment, he regretted their loss, but their enthusiasm had made them a liability a couple of years ago, and they were a liability now. He couldn’t afford to let the cops or the bloodsuckers make a connection between him and Kira and Viktor.
But that fat bit of nothing said, “Crowbones is gonna gitcha,” as she swayed from blood loss and the effects of the feel-good drug, and he, Richard Cardosa, felt cold sweat pool in his armpits, felt . . .
Rattle, rattle, rattle.
“Monkey man,” a voice sang from somewhere nearby.
“Moooonkey man,” another voice sang.
Rattle, rattle, rattle.
A snarl, and a sense of something moving toward him too fast.
Then thick fog covered the small clearing and he couldn’t see anything.