In the Dark (20 page)

He unsheathed
his sword. With a twist of his hand, he turned it behind him and
stalked to the door. He stood for a long second. Listening, probably.
In one snake-quick move, his hand shot out and threw the door open. I
cringed. The sounds of traffic from below drifted in. Wind tossed
Sebastian’s long hair and coat.

He stepped out
onto the balcony, one carefully placed step at a time, impossibly
silent. My shoulders tightened. With him out there alone it wouldn’t
be hard for Not-Emily to jump out and get between us. To wrestle him
over the edge of the balcony. Or even just snag me from behind.

First Sebastian
stepped, then he looked left, right, and up. Nothing happened. No one
leaped out at him. His hair fluttered in the wind. Slowly, he made
his way out to the railing. If anyone wanted to get him, now would be
the time. He looked down. The set-up was perfect. I tensed, waiting
for Not-Emily to leap out from some out-of-sight corner and shove him
over.

It didn’t
happen. Sebastian stared down over the edge of the balcony for a few
seconds, then turned back to face us.

“She
jumped.” His voice was muted in the open air.

I frowned.

Suicide . . .
?
Did Sebastian scare her that much?

No. Duh. An
escape route. That drop wouldn’t kill her.

“She
jumped?” Josephine murmured. She moved closer, one hand on
mine, bringing me with her. She wanted to see. After a few steps, so
did I.

The wind slammed
into me. I pushed my hair out of my face, tailing Josephine to the
edge. I grabbed the stone railing with my free hand and held onto it
while I stared down – down, down, down. My stomach flipped.

“There.”
Sebastian pointed. I saw landscaping and blacktop and tiny little
people moving around, but it strained my one good eye to focus any
harder than that. I didn’t see anything odd at all.

“She did,”
Josephine said.

I slapped the
railing with one hand. They both looked at me. I wanted to yell,
“What? What do you see?” Instead I shrugged hard, the
same gesture I would have used with the words.

“You might
not be able to see detail that far yet,” Josephine said. “It
takes some time to develop. You’re still young.”

“Lessons
later,” Sebastian said. “She jumped. There is a smear of
blood the size of a body, and no body. She must have jumped and
crawled away.”

I looked back
over the railing at darkness vaguely broken up by street lights. How
could they tell?

“She won’t
get far until she heals. I will go look for her. Stay here,”
Sebastian told us. He turned on his heel and left. We watched him go,
still holding hands, squeezed tight enough that it should have hurt.
It didn’t.

“Let’s
go back inside,” Josephine said, her voice flat. I couldn’t
speak, so I just followed her in when she started walking. She shut
and locked the door behind us, as if that made us any safer, and
stood still, watching the door handle. She was a little shocky. So
was I, but I got the idea she’d stand and stare until the sun
came up. I wanted to collapse.

I pulled
Josephine further in, back to the couch, where we could both sit. She
didn’t resist. I dropped onto the red velvet, off my shaking
legs. Josephine fell onto the couch beside me, eyes wide and glazed,
the whites pink. After a few moments of stunned silence, her
shoulders began to shake and she whimpered in a soft little voice. I
held her, and she held me, and we cried.

S
ebastian
left the women to mourn their lost. He had no place with them. His
dead had been gone from him for too long, the sharpness of his grief
dulled over time.

He felt safe
enough leaving them inside. Whatever trick the lookalike had planned,
she was still injured. He doubted any trick would get her back
inside. Sebastian took the elevator down, left the building, and
circled it until he came to the side his balcony looked out on. He
found the splatter of blood quickly.

It was large,
within the fenced area that made up a garden for the building.
Sebastian approached it carefully, eyes and ears open. She could
still be close, waiting for him.

Several feet
away, he sniffed. The blood was upwind of him, easily found. Too
heavy to be human. Vampire. Hers, then. One slow, easy step at a
time, setting his weight on the balls of his feet, he moved up to it.

Something was
wrong.

He saw blood,
certainly a great deal of it. But no impact mark. The grass should
have been flattened, the earth pushed in. He saw no such indications.
It looked as though someone had simply poured a quantity of blood
over the ground.

He had thought
broken legs would keep her still. Not many received the vigorous
training he had – he knew of few others who would push
themselves to such limits. She had to be one such, for she was not
here. Indeed, she had not jumped.

Sebastian turned
and ran back to the apartment building. Inside, he boarded the
penthouse elevator, shoved his key into the lock and waited. The
elevator didn’t move. Dead. He removed the key, inserted it
again. When still nothing happened, he knew.

She was in the
elevator shaft.

I
held Josephine, letting her hold me, wishing I could say something.
Even just comforting noises. But my voice stuck on the hole in my
throat.

She didn’t
say anything to me. Just cried. I laid my face against her perfumed
hair and let myself hurt. Too easy. I shut my eyes.

Darkness all
around, legs stiff and sore. They were alone. Time to move.

I jerked awake,
still crying, arms around Josephine. I must have passed out for just
a second. Or gone into some sort of hallucination. It made sense,
with the kind of night I’d been having –

Something in the
elevator shaft rattled. A metallic noise, very quiet. I hadn’t
heard it make that sound before. I sat up straighter, listening.

Another rattle.
Louder.

I shook
Josephine. She looked at me with blood-shot eyes, cheeks smeared red.
I pushed her, gently.
Get up.
Puzzled, she stood without
pausing to ask why. I stood with her and pointed to the elevator,
tugging her arm. It was paranoid and idiotic; who would be in there?
I’d felt the same way right before my house got broken into.
“Just a cat” my ass. I had a new philosophy: run like
hell and find out it was a cat later. I prodded Josephine toward the
hallway. She nodded. We ran.

Behind us I
heard another rattle, then a scratchy, grating sound. It stopped,
then happened again, a little louder this time. The elevator doors
being forced open.

I ducked into
the first room down the hallway, wishing we had enough time to run to
the practice room. But maybe, just maybe, Sebastian had some kind of
weapon in here – a sword, a knife, anything. Not that I knew
what to do with one. I’d probably slice my own arm off. My hope
was Josephine would turn out to be an amazing swordswoman.

I took a
desperate look around. Saw a large room, floor to ceiling
bookshelves, a cushy chair in the middle of it all. Nothing sharp.

Josephine closed
the double doors behind us, achingly gentle, to keep the click they
made quiet. If nothing else, we were now behind one door of several.
Not that anything would stop her from looking behind all the doors.

The sound of
footsteps echoed through the door. Out in the living room.

Step. Step.
Step.

My gut froze.
Josephine stood to one side of the door, to hide behind it when it
opened. I took her lead on the other side. Back pressed against the
wall as if I could hide inside it, I shut my eyes and begged for
Sebastian to come back and save us, for an earthquake, a bolt of
lightning, anything.

Step. Step.
Getting closer.

I opened my eyes
to glance back at Josephine and pointed to my legs, eyebrows raised.
How could she walk? Josephine shook her head with a shrug.

“I know
you’re here, ladies,” a man’s voice called.

A man? Was that
even possible?

“
Surprise!
Just little old me.”

It was a man.
Just one man.

Thinking that
scared me even more. He could have been anyone. Kissing Emily came
back to me. Kissing him. My stomach rose up in my throat.

“Cain’s
outside,” the strange man called. “He can’t get
back in. I’m going to find you.”

The more I tried
to keep from breathing, the more my body wanted to. All at once, my
lungs seized control, gasping for air. My broken throat wheezed, a
roar in the silence. My knees turned rubbery – he would hear
that for sure –

Ka-thunk!

A door on the
other side of the hall crashed open, covering the sound of my throat.
I shoved the side of my hand inside my mouth and bit. The wheezing
sound stopped.

Josephine waved
at me. I looked, biting my hand.

“We have
to jump him,” she hissed. “When he comes in here, just
jump on him. Tangle him up. Bite him if you can. I’ll do the
same.”

My eyebrows shot
up.

I could hear him
searching around in the room he’d broken into – barely. A
rustling sound, footsteps. Heard him come back out into the hall. My
teeth clamped down harder on my hand.

We didn’t
have much choice. I nodded.

Step. Step.

Josephine waved
at me to go low, mimed pulling her hand from her teeth. I let go of
my hand. Red droplets spattered the floor. I went into a crouch on
one shaking leg and one leg I couldn’t feel.

He was right
outside. I could hear him.

Step. Step.
Pause.

S
ebastian
got off the elevator and glared at it, thinking. How to get it
moving, fast? He couldn’t from here. The motor was in a
maintenance room above his own penthouse. He could only get to it
from the service access, a lengthy climb from here, and then he
wouldn’t know what to –

“Is there
a problem Mr. Cain?” the lobby attendant asked from behind him.

“The
elevator is out of order.” He stalked to the fire escape door.

“I’ll
get the repairman down here right away,” the attendant
promised. “I’ll tell him it’s an emergency.”

“Good.”

Sebastian cocked
his head at the fire door. It opened towards him. He couldn’t
force the hinges with a well-placed kick. The entire door would have
to come out.

“The fire
door’s locked from this side,” the boy warned him.

“I know.”

He reached up
and dug his fingers into the space between the door and the jamb,
forcing them in until the skin tore. After a soft tug to be sure of
his grip, he pulled. The door held solid. Sebastian relaxed for one
second, then pulled with as much force as he could muster in one,
shoulder-wrenching yank. The door held, then creaked, loosening. He
relaxed, then pulled again. Something in his left shoulder popped and
ripped at the same time the hinges gave with a metallic shriek.

The fire alarm
went off. Sebastian dropped the metal door to one side, rolling his
shoulder to assess the damage. Dislocated, muscle torn. Not bad. He
forced the joint back into place between his body and the wall.

The boy behind
him gasped. “Mr. Cain –”

Sebastian turned
to meet his eyes.

“Forget.”

He dashed up the
stairs, adding time in his head. If Ian and Josephine had hidden
themselves, he might have enough.

“How the
hell did this happen?” the boy muttered behind him.

Sebastian ran.

H
e
paused, his weight making the floor creak. Before I’d really
decided to move, I found myself backing away from the door. Josephine
glanced up at me, waved a hand at me, frowning. I shook my head –
I couldn’t do it. Less than an hour ago he had almost killed
me. I couldn’t. I shrank away from the door until my back hit
the wall.

Ka-Thunk!

The door flew
open, missing my face by an inch. I jerked back, banged my head into
the wall. He was in the room, standing between the double-doors. I
watched him from between the door and the doorjamb, frozen still,
wishing he wouldn’t see me. I’d almost expected someone
petite, like Emily, small enough that he could have fooled me into
thinking he was a delicate woman. But this man had no resemblance to
Emily at all. Even his clothes were different. He seemed huge,
muscular and tall. Dangerous.

“Behind
the doors, huh?” He didn’t move from the doorway. “One
on each side. You weren’t hoping to jump me, were you?”

A sensation like
swallowing an ice cube went down my body.

He jumped, split
kicking with both legs.
Ka-Crack!

The doors flew
open again, this time cracking off their hinges, one flying into my
face. My world turned yellow-red. Fire shot from my nose through my
face. Something hit my butt – no, my butt hit the floor.
Josephine screamed.

Heavy footsteps
pelted across the floor. Josephine yelped again, this time a sound
that choked off sharply. Why would she choke? The only reason I made
that sound was because he’d ripped . . . out . . .

I trembled.

My tailbone
burned. My face burned. But I stayed still. Didn’t move an
inch. Not to touch my nose. Not to sit up. Nothing. I was a stone. A
still, hidden, safe stone.

“Why don’t
you go yell for help while I finish Josephine off, huh, Ian?”
he growled. “Or is your throat bothering you?”

He laughed. I
heard him bite, a wet snap sound followed by another muffled cry from
Josephine.

He couldn’t
see me. His face had moved back and forth while he spoke, but it
hadn’t stopped. He couldn’t see me around the door. But I
could see him. He had Josephine in a tight grip from behind, forcing
her arms up behind her back. He’d buried his fangs in the side
of her neck. A small trickle of blood escaped where his lips touched
her skin. Her face was frozen, her eyes wide.