The Harvesting (26 page)

Everyone looked up when I
entered.

Frenchie collapsed into tears. I went
to her side and put my hand on her shoulder.

“
She took them outside for
some air. Kira dropped her bear in one of the fountains. Frenchie
reached down to get it and when she got back up, the girls were
gone,” Jamie told me.

“
I came back hoping they
were here,” Frenchie sobbed. “Layla, I looked everywhere.”
Frenchie’s voice was hoarse from screaming.

“
How long ago?” I
asked.

“
Maybe twenty minutes,”
she whimpered.

“
Dusty went back to the
fountains to check again,” Buddie told me.

“
Boots on the ground. In
pairs. We need everyone. Now,” I said.

Tom and Summer nodded and headed out
of the room. I could hear them knocking on doors in the hallway
followed by the sound of Hamletville voices. Soon there was a
flurry of movement.

“
Can you track them?” I
asked Buddie.

“
Let’s see,” he replied,
and the four of us headed back to the garden where Frenchie had
last seen her daughters. It was a beautiful place, full of fresh
spring tulips, the air perfumed with hyacinth. The fountains
shimmered in the sunlight.

Jamie and I stood aside as Frenchie
talked and Buddie scanned the ground.

“
Where have you been?”
Jamie asked.

There was too much to tell. “Later,” I
whispered.

Jamie looked inquisitively, but just
then Dusty came up to us. “No sign,” he whispered.

Buddie went over the ground looking
again and again. He shook his head. “I see tracks in, nothing
out.”

Frenchie sobbed.

I took her hand. “We’ll find
them.”

I scanned the horizon. Two girls could
not vanish into thin air. We set off in groups and began searching
the island. By late afternoon, no one had seen anything. Getting
together as many of the Hamletville people as we could, we
regrouped in Frenchie’s room. No one had seen any sign of the
girls.

“
Maybe we should tell the
hotel staff,” Ethel suggested.

“
No, no way,” Dusty said.
“They took those girls.”

Ethel looked shocked. “Are you
sure?”

Everyone was looking at one another.
By now they had all heard someone had tried to kill me and about
Pastor Frank’s accident. This, coupled with the news of Kira’s and
Susan’s disappearance, had everyone on edge. Not only that, they
also had heard reports from the other hotel guests. Others related
tales of accidents and odd disappearances.

“
Layla?” Tom
said.

The entire room looked at me. I could
tell from the pained expressions on their faces, they knew I had
been right.

“
We need to find Kira and
Susan, and then we need to get out of here,” I said.

Several people nodded.

“
What is happening here?
What are these people?” Ethel asked.

I looked at Jamie and gave
him a
should we tell them
expression.

He looked as uncertain as I did.
“They’re vampires,” he said at last.

Several people in the group looked
stunned.

Jeff laughed out loud. “That is the
stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. Vampires don’t exist.”

“
Just like that zombie
that tried to chew your foot off last week doesn’t exist, right?”
Kiki said stingingly.

“
Have you seen Ian? He
looks so much better. They
are
helping us,” Mrs. Finch said.

I looked at Jamie. We hadn’t talked
yet, so I said nothing.

“
Yeah, just like they
helped Pastor Frank off the cliff,” Buddie replied.

“
Or helped Layla out the
fourth floor window,” Jamie added.

“
Or helped us come here by
tracking us on the radio,” Kiki said.

Several people in the group still
looked unsure.

“
Look,” Tom said, “you all
know I wanted to come here more than anyone, but Layla was right.
You can feel it, right? It’s that same bad feeling you get when you
walk home alone in the dark, or when you are in a room and can
sense someone else is there. I used to get that feeling all the
time when I fought fires, like something was squeezing my throat.
Don’t you all feel it too?” he asked them. “We can’t see what it
is, but she can,” he said, looking at me. “We have to trust
Layla.”

“
We’re a few days too
late,” Ethel said.

“
We’re still alive,” I
replied.

“
It’s all there. You just
have to look. They cast no shadow. They don’t walk in the daylight.
They don’t eat food. They
look
wrong,” Buddie said.

I could see by the overwhelming fear
and despair on their faces, they had been convinced.

“
We have to find those
girls,” Summer whispered.

It occurred to me that wherever they
had Kira and Susan, it was some place we had not yet seen, some
place where the hosts were sleeping during the day.

“
We will find them, and we
will get out of here. We need to keep looking, but we also need to
get ready. Is the bar well stocked?” I asked, turning to
Jeff.

He looked confused but nodded. “It’s
huge.”

“
We need bottles. Hard
liquor. As much as you can get. Can you do that?”

He nodded.

“
I’ll help,” Will
offered.

“
You all need to play it
cool. Keep to yourselves. Tomorrow morning, dawn, after they go to
sleep, we’ll torch this place and go. We just need to make it
through the night,” I said.

“
What if we don’t find
them by then?” Frenchie asked.

“
We’ll find
them.”

We made a plan to round up supplies
and people. Everyone would meet at the front porch on the eastern
end of the hotel at dawn. Several of us broke into groups to go
looking for the girls, but it was late afternoon, and there was
less than an hour of daylight left.

Jamie made me promise to check on Ian
again while he and Tom went out once more to look for the girls. It
was not a trip I was looking forward to making.

When I got to the infirmary, Ian was
sitting on the side of his bed staring at his hands. The I.V. was
gone. He had redressed in clothes I did not recognize. When he
turned to look at me, I froze. His blue eyes had totally lost their
pigment and had changed to an icy color. It was not just the color
of his eyes that startled me but what I saw lying behind them. It
was not Ian who looked out at me but his shadow aspect—his dark,
angry self. I had seen glimpses of that side of him before and
feared it. Once, long ago, he’d drunk too much at a party and
thought I was paying too much attention to another man. On the way
back to the car, he’d hit me. He was sorry later, but now he had
the same look in his eyes. I knew then the transformation he had
made was not just a physical one. His id had now slipped its
chain.

“
Layla,” he said, “I was
just thinking about you.”

“
You’re looking much
better, Ian,” I replied carefully.

He smiled at me. “It’s strange, isn’t
it,” he said, and then looked again at his hands, turning them over
and back. “I feel perfectly fine. In fact, I feel really good. Come
sit by me,” he said and patted the bed beside him.

I felt my spine stiffen, but I went
all the same.

He turned and looked at me, brushing
the hair away from my face. “You look worried,” he said.

“
Kira and Susan are
missing.”

He frowned. “Maybe they will be at the
party tonight,” he said absently.

“
What party?” I
asked.

Ian then slid his hands up my arms. He
pushed my shirt sleeve up to reveal the tattoo on my arm and
shoulder. “Once upon a time, we were one,” he said, looking at the
tattoo. His hands tightened on my arms. “Now you’re fucking my
brother.”

“
Ian,” I began, but with
exceptional speed and strength, he pushed me onto the bed and laid
on top of me, stuffing his hand down the front of my pants while he
squeezed the tattoo on my arm. He shoved his hand hard into my
panties and then into the soft folds of my flesh, pressing his
fingers into my body.

“
Ahh,” he groaned as he
thrust his fingers deeper inside me, rubbing his crotch against my
body. “Come on, Layla. You’re letting Jamie fuck you all night
long. At least you can blow me one more time,” he said as he leaned
in, whispering in my ear.

With my free hand, I pulled my gun
from its holster and leveled the barrel on Ian’s
forehead.

Startled, he opened his
eyes.

I pulled the lever back. “How about I
blow your brains across the ceiling?”

He leapt away from me. Seconds later
he was standing in the middle of the room. I centered the gun on
him.

He grunted. “Fuck you. Let Jamie have
you then,” he said and walked out of the room.

I rose and looked out the door. Ian
had already passed the hallway. The door leading outside swung
closed. He was gone.

Chapter 31

I found Jamie alone in our room. He
had been packing up our gear and reloading his weapons. He read the
look on my face.

“
What is it? The girls?”
he asked.

I shook my head and sat down on the
bed, pulling Jamie to sit beside me. I held his hands and looked
him in the eyes. “They have been giving Ian blood transfusions
since we arrived.”

Jamie looked confused. “Blood
transfusions?”

“
I spoke to Dr. Madala. He
said Dr. Rostov started Ian on the treatment. The blood . . .
James, it’s their blood.”

I could feel his fingers growing cold.
He looked down at the floor. His body, pressed against mine,
started shaking.

“
I just left him. He’s
different. I don’t know how to explain it. Dr. Madala said Ian is a
pet, but Rumor intends to turn him.”

“
Then we can still save
him.”

I didn’t know what else to say. While
I never had a sibling, I understood that it would be useless to try
to stop him. Jamie helped people. That was what he did.

“
Ian left the infirmary.
Wherever he is, I bet Kira and Susan are there. ”

“
Where do you think they
are?”

“
Fifth floor.”

“
We can hardly just waltz
up there.”

“
Not unless we’d like to
be dinner. But I do have an idea.”

Jamie squeezed my hand. “Now, that’s
my girl.”

“
I’m guessing you did rope
climbing in basic training?”

Jamie looked questioningly at
me.

“
The dumbwaiter Kiki and I
used. There is no way you and I would fit, but we can use the shaft
to climb up. From our floor, we can make it . . . I think. Or we
could just rappel up the side of the building, but I thought this
would provide a bit more subterfuge.”

“
Layla . . . this is
dangerous. They might kill us. Christ, they might eat us. I should
go alone. You just get everyone out of here.”

I shook my head. “It’s no worse than
what we have lived through already. I promised Frenchie a long time
ago I’d protect those girls. Besides, I don’t want to let you have
all the fun.”

Jamie laughed and started rooting
around in his bag. He handed me a pair of gloves and pulled on his
as well. “Let’s get it over with.”

The hallways of the hotel were
strangely quiet.

“
Where is everyone?” Jamie
whispered.

I shook my head.

To our luck, when I lifted the wall
hatch on the dumbwaiter, we found it was still lowered to the first
floor. Inside, we found the lift system made a ladder we could use
to brace ourselves as we climbed up. With a nod, I climbed in and
began the ascent. Jamie came after me, pulling the hatch closed
behind him. The fifth floor was about twenty feet above. In
silence, we climbed.

As we neared the fifth floor, I began
to hear voices. People were talking in the hallway outside the
dumbwaiter. My hands shook. Could they smell us? Sense us? I closed
my eyes and tried to think. When I did, I heard that strange
murmuring sound I’d been catching ever since I’d first encountered
them. It was like I was almost hearing voices. I’d once read that
vampires were telepathic. Was it their telepathy I was hearing?
Suddenly, I felt crazy.

Jamie tugged my boot and looked
questioningly at me.

I motioned for him to
listen.

He nodded.

We waited a moment longer for the
voices in the hallway to recede then pressed onward. It was a hard
climb. Once we got to the top, I tried to brace myself so I could
press the hatch open just a little. Jamie climbed up close to me,
and we waited. Everything on the fifth floor seemed very
quiet.