In the Dark (7 page)

“I don’t
know anything!” the girl shrieked. “Let me go, please
don’t hurt me, I swear I don’t know!”

He drew his
sword and pointed it to her throat. She froze, wide eyes watching the
tip of the sword. “Tell me what you know about Kent,” he
repeated.

“I don’t
know anything,” the girl whimpered. She tried to back up and
bumped into the wall behind her. With a ridiculously startled
expression on her face, she began to weep.

Sebastian had
had quite enough of weeping. He sheathed his sword and crossed his
arms. Ian must not have seen clearly. He needed her to examine this
girl more closely. But as long as he had her here . . . he had not
fed the night before as he had planned.

“Come
here,” he told her. She left the wall, hesitantly, watching him
as she might watch a rabid dog. Stiffly, against her will, she came
forward.

“Don’t
hurt me,” she pleaded.

“I don’t
intend to hurt you. Give me your arm.”

She did. He took
her hand in his, turned it over, and sank his teeth into the inside
of her elbow. Her skin resisted, then broke with a soft snap. Blood
gushed into his open mouth, warm, salty, mildly sweet. The vaguely
acidic flavor of alcohol spiced it, along with the faint coppery tang
of adrenaline. He swallowed until it filled him, then released her
arm. The teeth marks were small enough to clot and heal on their own.
She held her arm against her chest and whimpered.

“Sit,”
he said. She did so, like a marionette with its strings cut. “Wait
here. I will return.”

With his will
tying her in place she would not move. Sebastian left her there and
went back to find Ian.

I
stayed curled in the booth. Against my will, I imagined Sebastian
outside with that girl. He’d grabbed her like he planned on
beating the shit out of her and dragged her out. She’d yelled.
I heard it over the music. Did she do that to throw him off? Get the
mortals to join against him? It hadn’t worked, whatever she’d
wanted to happen. I shuddered. What would it feel like to have a
sword stabbed through you? I tried to recall the feel of metal
slicing through skin, the way you feel it a second too late on the
edge of a kitchen knife. The sword probably felt like that . . . only
bigger.

My stomach
turned over. I didn’t want to sit there and watch Sebastian
come back in, bloody sword in hand, cold and business-like. Not that
he’d walk into the Half-Moon like that – but I’d
still know. When he walked in and looked at me. Told me, “It’s
done.”

My fault.

That hurt. But
it was true. I had the opportunity to refuse his help. I didn’t.

Except if I had,
I would be all alone. Maybe even dead myself. He was all the choice I
had.

The situation
refused to divide into “right” and “wrong.” I
needed help, Sebastian offered it. It didn’t make me like the
kind of help he’d offered. It also didn’t make me want to
be there when he came back.

Did I have to
be?

It was done,
right? We found her. I did my part. I could let Sebastian handle her
from here.

One eye on the
front door, I got up and started to cut across the dance floor. I
didn’t want to chance him coming back while I made my way
around. Didn’t want to see him at all, or have to make up
excuses for where I was going. That didn’t leave me much time
to make my escape – I assumed. How long did it take to cut
someone’s head off?

How long does
it take to cut someone’s heart out?

My steps
stuttered. No one noticed.

I reached the
doors before Sebastian made an appearance. I hit the crash bar at a
run. My vision had started turning red. No one looked at me but the
bouncer, and he didn’t seem to notice. Sight washed red with
tears, I ran. I aimed for home without thinking about where I wanted
to go. Walking would take forever, but I had no money for a cab, no
keys to the car still parked in the lot, and I just wanted to go
home.

Without Kent.

The idea of
staying the rest of the night and the day there bothered me. Kent’s
empty room would be right across from mine, silent. He wouldn’t
wander around the house, sitting in his studio with his headphones
on, playing with Gypsy, laughing about some damn thing. None of it.

But I had
nowhere else to go, so my feet kept moving towards home.

According to my
watch the walk took me two hours. I cried most of the way. When I
finally turned onto my own street, I couldn’t remember ever
feeling so happy to see our little house. I dragged my feet up the
front steps to the door – and realized I still didn’t
have my keys. We’d locked up before we left. I swore and kicked
the door, ready to cry again. I couldn’t even go home. I leaned
my head against the door for a minute, trying to be calm. How else
could I get in?

Window. Kent had
bricked in all the basement windows, but we usually kept the ground
floor windows open. Kent hated being shut in with no fresh air. I
thought I’d left my studio window open, actually.

A ribbon of
lightning ripped across the sky, followed by a clap of thunder.

Fabulous. Even
nature hated me.

I walked around
the house and found my studio window. I
had
left it open.
There was no way to take the screen off from the outside. I dug my
fingernails into the edges, wishing for a screwdriver, or a knife, or
anything sharp. It didn’t give. Finally I just used a sharp
rock to rip through the screen. One leg hiked up to slip through the
window, I pushed myself through the tear and into my studio. I shut
the window behind me as the rain started, right on the tail of
another thunder clap.

Home at last.
Out of habit, I grabbed a pencil off my drawing table and used it to
wind my hair into a bun. The odd woman watched me from the canvas.
Her and her screwy head.

“
Painting’s
not your strongest suit. Why don’t you work from the sketch I
saw you make?”

I left my
studio.

“Gypsy!
Kitty, kitty!”

Rain spotted all
the windows, pattering the ground outside. Gypsy growled from Kent’s
studio.

“Gypsy,
it’s Mommy,” I called, using my sweetest “I’m
going to feed you” voice. Gypsy mewed, then growled again. She
must have been pissed when I didn’t come home yesterday, and my
clothes smelled like Sebastian. She didn’t like strangers. Food
should fix her attitude. I wandered to the kitchen and got out her
bag, shaking it. “Gypsy kitty! Supper!” I flipped on a
light so I could fill her bowl.

Lightning
flashed, thunder boomed, echoing through the empty house. I sighed,
too wiped out to cry. Instead I went to Kent’s studio to get
Gypsy. She hissed again from inside, and I paused. How could she
smell Sebastian on me from so far away? Cats’ noses were good,
but that was pushing it. So why all the hissing? Did she see
something?

Someone?

I flattened
against the wall, suddenly sick. My dead heart couldn’t pound,
but my hands trembled. “Kitty,” I said again, as if
nothing was wrong. My voice quavered.

Okay, think
sense. Are you sure Gypsy sees another vampire? Another person?
Anyone, really?

No, she probably
saw another cat. Gypsy hated other cats. She made that exact noise
when she could see one out the window. Sebastian had found the woman,
she couldn’t possibly have followed me.

Could it be
Sebastian outside? Checking up on me?

Not if he’s
dead. Not if she waited until they got outside and killed him first.

I clenched my
eyes shut, wishing that had occurred to me in the club. I started
breathing. That was a stress reflex. I didn’t need air anymore,
except to talk. Or to panic. I bit my lip to keep it under control.
Decided I’d better look out the window. It was just another
cat. I did not live in a horror movie. It had to be another cat.

Gypsy growled
again.

I pushed myself
away from the wall and made my shaking legs walk into the room, past
Kent’s music equipment. Lightning flashed – I froze, sure
someone would see me.

The cat?
I asked myself, and forced a laugh. Quietly.

Gypsy growled a
little more, then jumped down from the window. She padded over to me
and rubbed against my legs with a soft mew. I didn’t pet her.
Instead, I took a deep breath and inched toward the window. My legs
trembled as I peered out into the black-on-black of the back yard.

Nothing moved. I
couldn’t see anything.

Lightning blazed
again, flood-lighting the back yard. On the fence sat the neighbor’s
fat orange cat, staring defiantly back at me. He’d moved out of
Gypsy’s territory, so of course she’d stopped growling. I
laughed out loud, so relieved my knees shook harder.

Glass crashed in
another room.

My mouth snapped
shut. While I froze against the wall, Gypsy bristled and snuck off to
investigate. I waved my hand desperately at her, trying to get her to
come back. She ignored me.

Footsteps.
Someone was in the house. In
my
house.

What do I do?

Something tapped
the window behind me. I screamed and whirled, saw a face in the
window –

No, not
a
face. Sebastian’s face. I slapped my hands over my mouth as he
put a finger over his lips with a frown.

The footsteps in
the house stopped. Sebastian waved a hand at me like I’d waved
at Gypsy.
Come out.

I nodded and set
my shaking hands on the window frame. It wouldn’t budge. The
footsteps started again. Coming towards me.

I leaned my
weight into the window, trying to force it, get it open,
let me
out!
It wouldn’t move. The footsteps kept coming,
relentlessly, counting off the seconds I had to force the window.

Checking the
lock occurred to me out of the blue – I looked up at it and
nearly fainted when I saw it latched. I undid the lock with fingers
that wouldn’t quite work right while Sebastian split the screen
with his sword. The window slid up easily once I got the latch pushed
back. The footsteps kept coming down the hall, towards Kent’s
studio. Towards me. Sebastian reached up to pull me out. The
footsteps sounded close, almost to the doorway . . .

My boots hit the
wet ground and Sebastian pulled me away. I couldn’t help
myself. Shaking, I looked behind me. A pair of flashing brown eyes
came into the doorway. Red lips curled in anger, and the house
blocked my view. Another woman.

“She’s
in there,” I said, unable to be quiet. “She’s in
there, she’s in there, oh, god, oh, god –”

Sebastian put a
hand over my mouth as we ran away from the house.

“Gypsy!”
I exclaimed. “Gypsy, Gypsy’s in there, she’s in
there, in my house with my cat, with my art, my house . . .”

“Shh,”
Sebastian hissed in my ear. His breath tickled.

“But I
thought you killed her,” I babbled. “You got her and . .
. took her out back.”

“You
pointed out a human woman. I wanted to be sure. I came to get you and
saw you leave. I followed you and saw someone else stalking your
home. Keep running.”

My feet felt
heavy and slow as he pulled me along, across yards, over fences.
Behind a neighbor’s house he stopped and pushed me down behind
an evergreen. The branches scraped my face and hands as I ducked.

“Wait
here,” he said. “I will return.”

I hunkered under
the tree and watched him slip off soundlessly back the way we’d
come. He ran like a cat: boneless, sneaky. In seconds, he vanished.

My hair trailed
into my eyes with the rain. Lightning flashed and I tried to stay in
the shadow of the evergreen, tried to listen to the dark around me.
All I heard was rain and thunder. Trembling all over, I leaned
against the house and waited.

S
ebastian
stayed in shadow as much as he could as he made his way back to Ian’s
home. The odd flash of lightning made keeping under cover more
difficult. Damn the storm. He stayed low, eyes open, ears tuned for
sounds that didn’t match the rhythm of the rain. Nothing.

At the house he
flattened himself against an outside wall and inched to the window
he’d opened. With as little of his face as possible, he looked
inside. Empty. Shadowy equipment, no movement. He pulled his face
back and checked the yard again. Nothing. He slid his back along the
house to the next window, checked inside again, then behind himself.
Empty again. Quiet outside the house.

At each window
he repeated the motion until he’d circled the house. Empty.
Outside the broken window he found one set of footprints. Heavy boots
that could have belonged to a male or female, indented at the ball.
Sebastian took a close look at the prints – whoever had made
them had walked backwards into them, setting identical boots into
identical prints. She had come in and left the same way, backward,
into her own steps. He traced them back to the sidewalk, then
followed the muddy prints as far as they went. In the rain the mud
washed off the cement quickly, but he knew her direction.

Watching for
tracks in the grass, he picked up his pace. Aha. Footprints, same
size, same weight, leaving the sidewalk. Heel indented this time.
Walking forward. He traced them, easy enough in the mud the rain
created. Over a fence. Through yards.

There!

A dark-haired
woman, small and sleek, wearing black, vanished around the corner of
a house. She turned and glanced at him as she did, only a moment.
Sebastian broke into a run after her.

He made the edge
of the house, sword in hand – no sign of her. He turned full
circle, searching, then checked the ground for hints. More footprints
tracked from the grass onto the pavement, across, to the street –
no prints on the other side of the street.