The Harvesting (21 page)

“
Salt?” Jamie
asked.

“
Grandma Petrovich always
said it keeps evil spirits away, that they can’t pass salt. We can
at least try,” I replied.

“
Thank you, Layla,”
Frenchie said. “I don’t know what we’d do without you.”

“
Get some sleep. I’ll be
back in the morning,” I told her. Then, almost as an after-thought,
I pulled a vial of holy water from my vest. “Here,” I said, handing
it to her. “Just keep this on you. It’s holy water.”

“
Holy water?”

I nodded.

Frenchie looked at me in amazement.
“What have we done?”

I hugged her again and then Jamie and
I headed to our room.

Back in the honeymoon suite, I blocked
the door then sat on the side of the bed and uunholstered my
weapons. I pulled off my boots and clothes, leaving on a t-shirt
and panties, and slid under the covers. I was exhausted.

Jamie slid into the bed beside me, and
I curled up into his arms. He lay there for a long time stroking my
arms, but I could tell his mind was preoccupied.

“
What is it?” I finally
asked him.

He stroked my upper arm where I had
been tattooed. The tattoo of the shashka was intermixed with a
variety of other symbols and images, things that once were
important to me.

“
Ian never told us what
the tattoo meant. I didn’t know it was so personal to the two of
you,” he whispered.

“
Jamie--”

“
I feel like I have stolen
my brother’s life from him just as he is dying,” Jamie said,
despair filling his voice.

I rolled over and looked at him. How
handsome but pained he looked in the candle-light. “I love my
shashka ink, but otherwise the tattoos are just romantic nonsense.
I want you to remember something. Ian abandoned me. Ian chose
another life over a life with me. I moved on and changed. I can’t
help Ian never did, that he clung to the past. It was his doing
that the dream ended. It was his choice. I’m not the same girl he
loved.”

“
No,” he said, stroking my
hair away from my face, “you’re better than that girl, Ms.
Katana.”

I laughed wryly. “I almost thought she
was going to call me apocalypse girl.”

Jamie smiled but then turned serious.
“What did she say to that doctor? You understood her?”

I nodded. “She told him to fix
Ian.”

“
That’s a good thing,
right?”

“
I’m not sure. She said,
‘I want this one.’ That doesn’t sound like a good
thing.”

Jamie looked at me. “There was
something else?”

“
Maybe. I don’t know. In
the ballroom she said something. I’m not sure what I
heard.”

“
So far all we know for
sure is she hates your guns but likes Ian,” Jamie said.

“
They don’t cast a
reflection. Buddie noticed it in the ballroom. They have no
reflection—there is only a shadow,” I replied.

Jamie wrapped his arms around me.
“Even if they are not what they seem that doesn’t necessarily mean
they want to do us harm.”

“
We’ll see,” I replied.
“We’ll see.”

Chapter 27

To say it had been a long day would be
an understatement. Jamie fell asleep right away, but I could not
rest. I gazed down on Jamie. He was beautiful. My eyes roved over
every inch and curve of his body. Desire swelled in me. I also
noticed how little he resembled Ian in either personality or looks.
Jamie’s sweetness lived on the surface. Ian’s sweet side was buried
deep under layers of darker elements I used to find so dangerously
attractive.

As the night wore on, I lay staring at
the ceiling. Heavy spring rain had begun to fall. It pounded
against the windows. I felt like we were sleeping in a bear’s den.
I was just waiting for the bear to wake up. The moon had traveled
most of the night’s sky when I started to hear strange noises
coming from the floor above ours. I could hear heavy footsteps,
thudding sounds, and a sound like windows opening and
closing.

I rose quietly so not to wake Jamie.
Snubbing the candle, I looked out the window. I saw someone walking
on the roof of the porch that ran along the front of the hotel. It
was a man; his movements and appearance told me it was one of them.
He seemed to be looking at the upper floors. Then, crouching low at
first, he jumped. He landed on one of the third floor
balconies.

I felt like my heart stopped. I
unbolted the window and looked out. The rain came splashing in.
Apparently he heard the noise. Catching sight of me, he smiled as
he leapt from one balcony to another, peeking in the windows. I
knew at once who he was looking for. He grinned at me.

“
Dammit,” I
whispered.

I cast one look back at Jamie and was
about to go back in to grab my gear when someone grabbed me by the
arm and pulled me out the window. It happened so fast that I did
not have a chance to call out. I landed with a thud on the balcony
outside the room a floor below. Intense pain shot across my back,
but every instinct inside me told me to get up.

I rose to my feet to find myself
standing face to face with one of them. It was a woman; I had seen
her earlier in Rumor’s entourage. She was undoubtedly beautiful
with long hair and large eyes. She was drenched with rain water.
She grinned then lunged. She was incredibly fast. I ducked and she
missed. She swung at me again; I blocked. We exchanged blows, me
ducking and weaving. For a flicker of a moment I was thankful my
co-worker Josephine had asked me to take ju-jitsu classes with her.
My opponent, however, was much better at unarmed combat. With a
strong side kick, she knocked me off balance. I fell backward over
the balcony railing and onto the porch roof. Pain shot from one
side of my head to the other. I looked up to see the man peering
into what I guessed was Frenchie’s room.

I had no time to react; she was on me
again. I was still barefoot and the roof was rough under my feet.
She swung again; I blocked and struck her with a hard upper-cut.
She fell backward across the roof and then rolled to the ground
below. With a jump, I followed her, my bare feet landing in the
soft grass, mud oozing up between my toes.

Lightning shot across the sky, and a
moment later there was a loud clap of thunder. Buried in the
thunder-clap was the strange cat-like howl of the man who tried to
creep into Frenchie’s room. He had jumped backward, away from the
door and onto the balcony railing, and was cradling his hand. It
looked like it was smoking. With a yelp, he bounded across the
balconies and disappeared back into the night.

The woman had stopped to watch the
scene, a confused and worried look on her face. I took that split
second to look around. In the manicured flowerbed in front of the
hotel I spotted a poured concrete garden gnome. I grabbed the
smiling little creature, turned, and with a heave, smashed it on
the woman’s head.

Clutching her head, she fell to the
ground with a screech. I pounced on top of her. The massive cut I
had leveled across her head and face had slowly begun to heal. I
had her pinned, but she was getting better by the second. She
grinned at me, her sharp teeth showing. I heaved the lawn ornament
once more; then, I felt it. There was a surge of strange energy in
the air and then she simply poofed, transforming into a shadow.
Where she had been lying beneath me there was now a black, ethereal
form, a shadow. It slipped easily out of my grasp and with a twirl,
it vanished into the night.

Tossing the gnome, I picked myself up
and ran. I vaulted the porch railing and hit the main hotel doors.
They were locked. As I yanked at the door handle, I noticed someone
was inside. It was Finn. He looked up at me and smiled and waved. I
turned then and ran toward the door at the end of the building near
the infirmary. To my luck, it was open.

I dashed down the hallway. I paused
for just a moment at Ian’s room. He slept soundly; no one was in
sight. I ran then to the main foyer, soaking wet and still in my
underwear, and up the grand stairway. Finn was no longer in the
lobby.

I went at once to Frenchie’s door and
knocked. “Frenchie!”

“
Layla?” Frenchie said
sleepily as she opened the door. Once she saw my appearance,
however, she was alert.

“
Someone tried your
window,” I said and rushed across the room to check the door. It
was open just an inch or two. The thunder outside boomed. When he’d
pried the door open, he must have passed the line in the salt,
burning his hand. I pulled the door closed and locked
it.

“
Who? Layla, you’re
soaking. And half-naked,” Frenchie said.

“
One of them.”

Frenchie took my hand. “You’re
bleeding,” she whispered, blotting blood off my forehead. “I’ll go
get Jamie.”

“
No.”

“
I’ll be fast. Stay with
the girls,” she said and then left.

A few moments after she had gone there
was a soft knock on the door.

Thinking it was Frenchie and Jamie, I
opened the door without hesitation. Corbin was standing on the
other side.

He smiled when he saw me. I saw him
take in the room; the girl’s sleeping in the bed, the salt in front
of the door, my half-naked self, and the nasty wound on my
forehead.

“
Ouch,” he said, looking
at the cut. “Looks like it hurts. I understand there was some
commotion? May I be of assistance?” he asked.

I laughed. “Seriously? Tell your boss
we want to go home. I don’t want trouble. If she agrees, we’ll
leave peacefully.”

Corbin smiled at me. His teeth were
small and pointed. “You are home,” he said.

“
Just deliver my message
like the flunky you are.”

A dark shadow crossed his face, and he
took a step closer toward me.

I stepped back into the room: “uh, uh,
uh,” I said, shaking my finger and casting a glance toward the
salt.

Corbin glared at me, his face a
thundercloud. He cast a glance toward the sliding glass door behind
me. The first hint of morning light had appeared on the
horizon.

At that same moment, Jamie and
Frenchie turned the corner. Jamie had his gun drawn. He raised it
at Corbin as he walked down the hall toward us.

Corbin took a long, hard look at Jamie
and then stalked down the hallway in the other
direction.

Jamie grabbed me as he rushed into the
room. “I woke up and you were gone; all your stuff was there and
the window was open. Oh my god, Layla. I thought the worst,” he
said, crushing me to him. “You’re soaked and freezing,” he
added.

Frenchie crossed the room to check on
the girls. They were still sleeping. She pushed the curtain aside
and looked outside. “It’s almost sun-up,” she observed.

“
What happened?” Jamie
whispered. He looked at the wound on my forehead. “You need
stitches.”

I looked back at Frenchie and the
girls.

“
We’re okay. Go get some
rest,” she said.

“
No, we should stay with
you,” I replied.

“
Layla, you’re hurt. Take
care of yourself and then come back,” Frenchie said. “In one
piece.”

Jamie left one of his guns with
Frenchie, and we headed back to our room. The soft rays of the sun
peeked over the horizon. When we got back, I sat down on the side
of the bed. Jamie brought me a towel to dry my hair and found me a
HarpWind Grand Hotel plush robe. The word “Bride” was embroidered
on the lapel.

“
This may hurt a little,”
he said, washing the wound with an alcohol swab. He then threaded a
needle and, as carefully as possible, made the stitches. “You’ll
have a small scar. Now, tell me what happened.”

I relayed the events of the night to
him as he worked. I stared at his face; his eyes were glued on my
forehead and the work at hand. His face told me, however, he was
listening intently. His forehead was furrowed. When he was done
stitching, he cleaned the wound and dressed it with light
gauze.

He looked at me, shaking his head in
disbelief. “They were trying to kill you.”

“
I’m alright, but what do
they want with Kira and Susan? Why are they so interested in those
girls?”

Jamie shook his head. “I don’t know.
It’s my fault you’re here. If you had stayed back--”

“
The undead might have
eaten me alive and no one would have known.”

“
Or you might be safe,
curled up on your couch in the cabin, reading a good
book.”

“
Queen of Hamletville, the
sole survivor in a wasteland. Doesn’t sound like much
fun.”

“
Was getting tossed out of
a fourth floor window fun?”

I frowned.

“
Get some rest. You can’t
go around fighting the undead, vampires, and communing with earth
spirits on no sleep. I’ll keep watch,” Jamie said.

“
The girls . .
.”

“
I’ll take care of it.
You’re not alone in this, Layla. Just rest.”