Crane (24 page)

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Ireland

While c
ars lined both sides of the Van Brunt’s long, circle drive, no movement could be detected from within the lavish estate. No soft murmurs of respectably somber voices cracked the smothering stillness of the night. Ireland kicked her leg over Regen’s head, dismounting as he slowed to a walk. While a post-funeral gathering was—by no means—a hootenanny, this marked silence dripped with ominous intent.

Ireland eased herself up the two steps onto the red
-brick lined porch. Black rocking chairs—that perfectly matched the paint of the door—creaked in the night breeze from either side of the entryway. Glass crunched under her boot. Ireland glanced up. The bulb from the Colonial-style fixture overhead had been smashed. Her sweat dampened palm closed around the doorknob. Finding it unlocked, she slipped inside and closed it softly behind her. The only light came from a dimmed crystal chandelier that hung from the foyer’s cathedral ceiling. Cringing at the squeak of her boots over polished marble tiles, she paused. Her head snapped one way then the other, searching for movement within the darkness. The beat of her heart drummed an anxious chorus against her ribs.

Smacking
the back of her hand over her mouth, she stifled a gasp.

A winding staircase, the kind you’d expect to see Rita Hayworth sashay down, sat at the opposite side of the opulent foyer. The most influential of Tarry
town residents lined both sides of the staircase, positioned shoulder to shoulder. They each stared straight ahead, still as the dead. The color was drained from their eyes, leaving them chalky white. Ireland’s gaze followed the path of people up to a door at the top of the stairs. It slid open as if cued, the soft light within gently beckoning.

Ireland shook her head, expelling an exasperated breath through puffed cheeks. That couldn’t have been more of a blatant trap if a neon sign dropped from the ceiling to announce it.
Leaning back, she cast her gaze out the visible length of the house in either direction; her hope being to find another way upstairs that might give her even the slightest edge.

“Where’s a grappling hook when you really need one?”
she grumbled in a dry, cadaverous rasp that sounded frighteningly foreign to her own ears.

Seeing no other option, she edged her way up the stairs.
It only took two steps before she came to the conclusion that the blank stares were far too Madame Tussauds-ish for her comfort. She opted, instead, to fix her gaze straight ahead. Her hand closed over the hilt of her sword, poised and ready.

Sinking into the lush,
thick weaved carpet, Ireland stepped into a professionally decorated sitting room the size of her entire house. More of the statue-still minions lined the walls, their very presence making the hair on the back of her neck rise. Gulping back her mounting trepidation, she crept further into the room. Her weight balanced on the balls of her feet.

“How will the world remember Ichabod Crane?”
Ireland immediately recognized the voice as Ana’s, however the sharp edge in it was new. “As a noble man that rushed headlong into danger to save the woman he was never meant to be with? Or, perhaps as the coward that ran to save himself? We shall soon see.”

Deep within her, Ireland felt Ichabod
tense at the words. A red haze of hate tinted the edges of her vision, seeping in like a low lying fog.

Let’s
attempt a rational course of action
, Ireland mentally soothed him.
One of us still has the option to make it out of here alive.

“If I were to place a wager on it,”
Ana continued from her concealed vantage point. “I would guess history will not remember you at all. You will be nothing more than a snagged flaw in the intricate tapestry of life—easily overlooked due to the threads surrounding you that are far more important and impressive with their painstakingly perfect weavings.”

The room opened up ahead, jutting out to the left in a separate space. Judging by the
fully stocked bar, crackling fireplace, and poker table, Ireland took a wry guess it
wasn’t
a knitting room. There, in one of the high-backed leather chairs, Noah sat slumped over. His hands and feet were tied, his head hung slack. Between the disheveled locks of hair that fell across his forehead, a bloody gash was visible.                       

Ireland lurched forward
to free him. The motion was immediately halted by two formerly immobile white-eyed guests that stumbled toward her in a state of third-party manipulation. Their arms swung, in a haphazard homage to Frankenstein’s monster, hungry fingers curling for a hold. Ireland’s sword hissed from its sheathe. She barely had time to flip it, the blade balanced between her palms, before her body launched into an attack she didn’t know herself capable of. The blunt end of the handle connected dead center with one man’s forehead. The woman was taken out with a potent knee to the gut, elbow to the head, combo.

“You could still make it out of this alive.
I suggest you not force my hand,” Ana purred, her shape emerging from the darkened corner behind the bar. While she still wore the demure black dress from the funeral, the look that curled across her face was anything but weak. Her smile could only be described as predatory.

Somewhere in the blackest recesses of her mind, Ichabod s
hrieked one word that resounded with a maddening echo.

“Elizabeth?” Ireland tried out the
taste of the name on her lips, gauging the reaction it prompted.

“You recognized me
?” she stated, her lips pressed together in a thin line as her head bobbed in an impressed nod. “There are some I have crossed paths with every day since I was a child that would fail in that same regard. After all, of what consequence am I?”

Concealed b
eneath her cloak, Ireland hitched one brow. “That’s funny coming from you. If you weren’t possessed, you’d probably appreciate the irony.”

Ana’s head suddenly jerked
, this way and that, like an old VHS tape fast-forwarding while stuck on play. “You
are
a fast learner, Schoolmaster.” She finally settled into a deadly smirk with the passing of the unnerving episode.

“That was interesting.” Ireland
opted to sheath her sword and take out the next two incoming mindless drones by grabbing them by the scruff of their shirts and knocking their heads together. “I’m guessing that’s what happens when the loop of events goes off script.”

Her query was overshadowed by the
low moan that escaped Noah’s parted lips. His head lolled to the side, heavy lids fighting to open.

“Oh good, you
are awake,” Ana said with a little clap, bouncing on her toes like an excited child. “Now the real fun can begin.”

“
What the hell, Ana
?” Noah fought against his restraints. Growing irritation wiping away the haze from his injury. “Why am I tied to a chair, and more importantly, why did you hit me with a
three-hundred dollar bottle of Scotch
?”

Ana folded her arms
over her chest, drumming her fingers against her arms. “Be thankful you are beautiful, because it seems you were not blessed generously with cognitive reasoning.”

“
Not so much in the way of an answer, but hey, I’m a flexible guy.” Noah’s brow knit in tight, beads of sweat dotting his forehead. “I know you’re under a lot of stress, so how about if you untie these ropes and this will be a fun ‘remember when’ story between friends?”

Once more, Ana seized in a series of violent twitches. Ireland took a brazen
step in Noah’s direction, planning to take advantage of the distraction and free him, when a harsh hammer of reality nailed her foot to the floor. The monster within her was—quite literally—on display. All her deep, dark secrets were scrawled across her bony face in an elaborate calligraphy that would show her for
exactly
what she was—
a killer
. The sanctuary of anonymity held too tempting a pull. The floor betrayed her by announcing her tentative step back with a shrill squeak. Noah’s head snapped in her direction.

Dammit.

“Hey! Could you give me a hand here? The lady and I seem to be having a dispute as to what constitutes appropriate conduct in the face of deep mourning. If you could just—”
Ireland felt the heat of Noah’s gaze as it traveled the length of her; the unconscious bodies riddled across the floor, the weapons hung at her hips, and—the jewel in the crown of his unease—the onyx cape that concealed her face and head in shadow.

She
wanted to reassure him, unfortunately there was no time. Every second that ticked by led them closer to conclusion of this tale in which Noah would die—just as Katrina had.

The best she could offer was raising her index
finger in front of the shadow of her hood. “
Shhhhhhh.
”

Only after watching his skin blanch did she consider how creepy that gesture
probably looked.

So many nu
ances to consider …

“Is this a joke?” Strands of sandy blond tangled in
Noah’s lashes as his nervous gaze flicked from Ireland to Ana and back again. “Because after everything that’s happened lately, the Horseman thing is all kinds of unfunny.”

Again
, Elizabeth’s spirit forced Ana into a herky-jerky fit. She settled back into real-time directly in front of Noah, with his chin clasped tight in her strained grasp. “You think that man such a hero?” Ana’s image waved, like steam off of hot asphalt. For a moment the shade of her hair darkened, her features sharpening. She solidified back to herself, a dagger materializing in her hand. “Every success he ever had in this town was owed to his manipulations of the Hessian. Perhaps it is time you learned the
truth
about your precious father, princess.”

Ireland
moved with cautious side-steps, her fingers itching for the reassurance of her axe. Her attention was so intently focused on Ana’s gleaming blade, drawing dangerously close to Noah’s face, that she missed the scuffs and shuffles idling up behind her. Hands closed around her upper arms in unyielding vise grips. She fought against the hold of the white-eyed brigade, panic rising in her throat with the harsh scorch of bile. Despite her attempts, and the plethora of power that lay dormant at her novice feet, she was incapable to do anything but watch as Ana pressed the point of the dagger into Noah’s cheek hard enough to dimple the skin.

“You were born with the luxury of a pedigree,” Ana raved, giving the handle of the dagger the slightest of t
urns. “The golden child of Baltus and his lovely wife, Mariella Van Tassel.”

“
You know what?” Noah muttered through forced fish lips. “Put down the knife and I’ll even let that princess comment go.”

Noah’s interruption sped Ana forward in time. She sliced his cheek in a blurred burst of speed before he could even yelp at the
coursing crimson trail.

A
volcano of hate erupted in the spirit of the Horseman. Seething. Bubbling. Foaming with spite that flipped the axe into her waiting grasp. It moved as an extension of herself driven by sheer force of will. Maybe later she would mull over how that happened. Now, there wasn’t time. A flick of her wrist sent the axe boomeranging around the outer rim of the room. Air whistled past it as it soared. She controlled it the same as she would her own limbs, adjusting each strike to make it purposely non-fatal. One after the next, bodies collapsed to the ground. The axe taking out each of the white-eyed wall-flowers with its flat edge before they could be called into action.

Ireland didn’t wait for the last of the
outer cuff to go down before turning on her captors. Metal whispered from leather at the same moment she threw herself forward. The heel of her sword winged back in a potent strike, slamming between the eyes of the man on her left—that she recognized as the bank manager of the Tarrytown Credit Union. His grip loosened a moment before he toppled straight back, the floor quaking beneath the thud of his weight.

The sword
flipped itself in midair, settling comfortably into her free hand. Pressing the flat of the blade to her shoulder, she lined up her shot like a wicked game of nine ball. “Sorry, Mr. Van Brunt,” she murmured, placing his face from the cemetery. “For a great many things.”