Comes the Night (33 page)

In a blur of speed, Alex’s cast raced from the river toward Harvell House.

In the attic, Alex heard him kneel behind her head. She rolled her eyes back but couldn’t tip her head far enough back to see him. She sobbed again and he laughed a laugh of pure delight.

“You can’t move, can you? Oh, what a treat! What a rare, delicious treat!”

He leaned over her to grasp her pajama top by the hem and hauled it up and over her head, dragging her arms from the sleeves and letting them flop back to her sides. Alex’s heart pounded in horror and humiliation as she felt his eyes on her bared torso. And oh God, she couldn’t catch her breath! The pajama top’s material was thin, but the feeling of suffocation was overwhelming. Alex heard him moving around to stand in front of her, then heard the sickening sound of his zipper sliding down. All she could do was lock her muscles and then he was on top of her.

“Damn, that’s good!” he whispered, his breath hot, sour and close, even through the material that covered her face. “I usually have to drug my girls to make them like this, but that can cause unconsciousness. I don’t like that part. I like it like this. You’re alive in there, aren’t you, girl? A living, trembling rag doll.” He bit hard into the flesh of her shoulder.

Fuck, no! Not again! Never again!

She could shriek her caster shriek. Even from outside, it would probably make him pause. But it might make him flee.

This one wouldn’t get away.

Alex reached the window.

“I want in!” It only took one rap and she was back inside, slamming into her adrenaline-fueled body with righteous, ferocious rage.

Knowing what was coming when cast and body reunited, Alex shot her hands out and grabbed onto her assailant. With the force of her cast shooting back in, they both plowed across the floor. Rolling, she managed to partially turn them. When they banged into the pedestal table, it was his shoulder that took the brunt, and he let out a surprised
umph
. The table rocked with such force, everything on it—the girls’ candles, Connie’s candleholder—toppled off, raining to the floor beside them.

Oh, God, she’d
lit
one of those candles before she cast out!

Alex pulled the pajama top away from her face in time to see her candle’s flame gutter out, leaving them with nothing but the moonlight from the window.

“My shoulder... ” he gasped.

He still lay partially on her, and Alex shoved him hard. He thumped down beside her on the floor. Instantly, she leapt up. Blood dripped from the wound on her shoulder, but she barely felt the sting. There was no room for anything but the adrenaline-charged fury roiling inside, screaming for release.

She drew back her foot to kick him, but not in the head. And not in his soft, unprotected stomach. Her bare foot caught him squarely in the groin. He retched—hard—and curled into a ball.

“Please,” he whimpered. “Oh don’t.”

She was struggling to shove her trembling arm back into her top when it struck her—that voice...
that familiar voice!

Clutching her arms around her now clothed self, Alex bent to peer at him in the shadows beneath the table. Even with her caster-wide pupils, it took her a moment to make out the face of her attacker. She reared back again.

“You!” Alex’s heart contracted in horror. “Oh God, it’s you...
again
! You raped me!” Alex half hissed, half cried. “I remember everything!”

It was him. The one who’d brutalized her in September had come back to hurt her again tonight! He was one and the same. This time she didn’t fight the memories, and as she grabbed at them, they smashed the walls all around her.

She’d run into him in the schoolyard. They’d exchanged a few words. She’d been surprised to see the small flask, more surprised when he’d offered her a drink. But she took a drink all the same. Several drinks.

He hadn’t taken a drink, she recalled, and now she knew why! He’d roofied her. Somehow brought her here to Harvell House and raped her in this attic. Violated her. Left her half-naked just so the humiliation would be complete.

She fell to her knees, fisting his collar in her hands and squeezing.

“Wait!” His voice was a scratch. He coughed, begged. “Don’t... don’t hurt me!”

“Don’t hurt
you
?” She could, she realized. She held him tightly, twisting his shirt closer and closer around his neck. She lowered herself, practically hissing in his face. “What? You don’t like being the one who’s helpless, huh? Don’t like being too damn weak to move, just like your—”

Her last word was lost as pain shot through her head. She heard a sickening crack and knew it was her skull. Alex slid to the floor.

Panting, the man rose, holding Connie’s candleholder in his right hand, his left grasping his pants. But the silver candleholder was dark, she saw. Why was it dark in some places?

Blood, she realized dimly. Her blood.

Her blood all over again... “Look what you made me do!” he hissed down at her. “This is all your fault! You reap what you sow. Reap what you deserve! Whores always do. Every single one of you will. I’ll make damn sure of that!”

The edges of her world were turning to blackness. And the last sight Alex saw was his head turning suddenly as if he’d heard something. Someone coming, maybe? The man pocketed the candleholder and dashed from her fading vision.

Way to go, Robbins. Get yourself killed. Who’ll look after Connie now?

Who’ll look after her baby?

That was her final thought before darkness came down completely.

Brooke

“
B
ROOKE
! D
ID YOU
hear that?”

She’d heard it, all right. She’d been pretending to sleep, fake-snoring in the hopes of getting Maryanne to chill and go back to sleep. But she’d heard a definite thump/crash, from directly above them in the attic. Could still hear it echoing in her mind.

Maryanne was already standing in the center of the room. “Come on! Let’s go.”

Brooke threw off the covers and sat up. “Before the rest of the household gets there, you mean?”

“Oh, crap! Yes! If anyone’s still awake, they probably heard it too. Let’s go.”

“Give me some light, will ya?”

Maryanne obliged by hitting the switch on her lamp. Brooke located a pair of sweats and pulled them on to cover her bare legs. Then both of the girls raced from the room.

If anyone else had heard the commotion, they hadn’t come to investigate. At least not yet. The hall was empty. They found the door to the attic unlocked. No surprise there. Alex would have done that on her way up. They pulled the door shut behind them and started creeping up the stairs.

“Alex?” Maryanne called softly. “Alex, are you okay up there?”

“She probably just had a hard landing,” Brooke said.

“Probably,” Maryanne allowed. “But why is it dark up there?”

Good question
. Brooke shrugged before she realized the gesture was lost in the darkness. “How should I know? Maybe her candle burned out.”

“Wait—” Maryanne’s arm shot out and grabbed Brooke. “Was that a noise?”

Brooke froze. She’d heard something too, but she wasn’t entirely sure it came from the attic. “Yeah, I heard it,” she said, “but it almost sounded more like it was on our level, maybe lower.”

“Man, I hope no one comes. We don’t need to be caught up here.”

Maryanne was the first to top the stairs and enter the attic. She went straight to the window, presumably to see if Alex’s body lay there.

Pulling a Bic lighter from the pocket of her sweats, Brooke flicked it on and went straight to the table to light the candles. Except there were no candles on the tabletop. Could they have fallen off? Was that the thump/crash they’d heard from their bedroom?

“Nothing over here,” Maryanne said in a loud stage whisper from the window. “If she went out, she’s come back again.”

“And I can’t find the candles over here,” Brooke said. She lowered her arm to scan the floor for them. She yelped and swore.

Maryanne raced over. “What? What is it?”

Brooke lowered her lighter and pointed, unable to speak with the way her heart was pounding. Shit! She was hyperventilating!

Maryanne rounded the table to see Alex’s still body lying half beneath it.

“Alex!” she cried, dropping to her knees. “Alex, are you all right? Can you hear me?” When Alex made no reply, Maryanne seized her wrist and felt for a pulse.

Brooke’s wet lips gone suddenly dry as the Sahara. “Is she... is she alive?”

“She has a pulse, but I don’t know... it seems kind of... slow. Crap, I think it’s too slow. We’d better get help.”

Brooke’s heart rate had started to level out a little, and her thinking process cleared. “Wait. First let’s make sure she didn’t just faint. She must have cast back in and hit the table. Pain can make you faint. And maybe when you faint, your pulse slows down.”

“We’ll need better light, then,” Maryanne said. “There’s a penlight in my headboard bookcase.”

Brooke glanced around, spying one of the three candles which had rolled several feet away. “How about a candle instead?”

“That’ll do.”

Brooke dove for the candle. It took two tries with her shaking hands to light it. Maryanne took it from her with equally shaky hands and bent over Alex. Brooke’s heart sank at Maryanne’s sob.

“Her head! Brooke, I think she cracked her skull on that table leg!”

Brooke knelt close to Alex’s head. “Oh, man, that’s a lot of blood,” she said. “We definitely need to wake Betts and get some help up here. Although I don’t know how we’re going to explain how she hit her head on the leg of a frigging
pedestal
table. That’s pretty hard to do unless you’re sliding on the floor with some speed.”

Brooke started to get up, but Maryanne barked an order. “Wait!”

Brooke froze. “What?”

“Her shoulder... it looks like she might be hurt there too, from the blood on her nightshirt.”

Brooke bent close again, tugging the material away. Yes, there was a wound there. How in hell had she managed
that
? The table leg couldn’t have done it, nor would a falling candle. It looked more like a—

“Shit!” Brooke leapt up. “It’s a bite mark. It’s a human bite mark!”

“No way!” Maryanne took the candle from Brooke and bent down to examine Alex’s now exposed shoulder. “Oh, God, it
is
a bite mark. Which means her head injuries aren’t accidental.”

Brooke barely heard Maryanne’s words. She was too busy scanning the attic’s shadows. “He could still be up here,” Brooke croaked, her heart hammering painfully again. “Oh, God, the noise we heard! We have to get out of here!”

“What about Alex? We can’t leave her.”

“We can’t move her, either. She has a frickin’
head injury
. Maybe a bad one.”

“You go fetch Betts,” Maryanne said firmly, but the elevated pitch of her voice gave away her fear. “I’ll stay here with Alex.”

Brooke’s eyes searched the shadows again. He could be hiding here still. He could be in that damned wardrobe! “No way am I leaving you here.”

“C’mon, Brooke, one of us has to go. Alex needs help!”

“Oh, I’ll get help,” Brooke said. “I’m just not leaving you here.”

Brooke went to stand at the top of the stairs, where she started stomping on the floor and screaming for Mrs. Betts.

Maryanne

M
ARYANNE WATCHED THE
rain, falling to roll dejectedly against the window pane of Alex’s hospital room. Falling as though it were just going through the motions. Much like Maryanne herself as she sat slumped at her friend’s bedside. The snow outside didn’t stand a chance, even against such a listless rain. There’d been less than a centimeter of the white stuff on the ground this morning, and it wasn’t the kind that stayed.

Maryanne dragged her gaze from the window to the monitors, tubes and other equipment surrounding Alex’s bed. She’d seen a lot of medical dramas on TV, but never had she seen a person plugged into this much technology. Of course, most of the characters on those dramas weren’t comatose, head-injured patients.

At least Alex was breathing on her own. A mechanical ventilator would have been too hard to take—listening to it, watching Alex’s chest rise and fall with each artificial breath.

Maryanne dropped her gaze from the forest of equipment to look at Alex herself. She looked so tiny in that bed. Tiny and defenseless, with her head swaddled in white bandages. Her trademark razor-cut bangs peeped out from under the bandages, but Maryanne was pretty sure they’d shaved parts of her head to suture her wounds. Thankfully, she hadn’t required brain surgery—no depressed fractures, no pieces of skull to be dug out of her brain. But Maryanne was thankful not just for Alex but for herself. A neurological patient they could handle at this newly-constructed, state-of-the-art local hospital. But a neuro
surgical
case would have been shipped out to a larger centre where they were equipped for neurosurgery, and Maryanne wouldn’t have been able to visit.

Sighing, Maryanne rubbed her temples. She’d been here for a couple of hours, and would be here a while yet. She and Brooke took turns spelling Mrs. Robbins, who’d flown in from Halifax as soon as Mrs. Betts had contacted her. Poor woman. She left Alex’s bedside only when Maryanne or Brooke could fill in, and only to snatch a few hours’ sleep at her motel, shower and eat. And of course, to phone home to talk to Alex’s dad, who’d opted to stay home with Alex’s little sister, to keep life as normal as possible for her.

Maryanne turned back to the window to watch the rain again. The low humming of the monitors had made their way into white noise. Even the murmur of voices and steps in the corridor beyond the closed door faded into the background as Maryanne got more and more lost in the rain. Lost in the time. Oh so lost in her thoughts.

With eyes sore from crying, she turned her gaze back to Alex’s white face.

She and Brooke had talked to so many nurses over the last three days since Alex had been admitted. And they all advised the same thing. “Talk to her. About big things and little things. She might be able to hear you, even though she’s in a coma.”