Dark Knight of the Skye (16 page)

“Please, Mom, just calm down. I’m fine really. There was a little bit of trouble, and I do have a few things to tell you, but I swear to you… I am fine, Mommy.” Then she waited for her mother’s response.

“I love you so much,” she cried.

“Don’t cry, please.”

“I can’t help it. I dreamed you died, baby. You were bleeding, and Danny was there. I don’t know, it was a messed up dream that just had me worried to death, then I couldn’t get through on your cell.”

“I don’t mean it in a bad way. I’m going on vacation and won’t be back for a few weeks. But I do want to see you, so we can talk about a few things.”

D`nae dropped the receiver and slid to the floor, leaning her back on the staircase wall. She put her face in her hands and started crying. The life she had was now gone and she just truly realized it. Never again able to picnic with her family, gathering at their favorite lake, or going to a Sunday evening movie, then out for ice cream. All the little things she did during the day were gone. The dream her mother had was in fact the truth. She had died to the world of the day, and would forever live in the grips of darkness that surrounded the living, and it was tearing her heart apart. She felt a firm hand on her shoulder and knew by his scent that it was the one who would spend that time with her. She looked up into his eyes, and shook her head.

“How am I going to do this, Danny? I love them so much.”

“Whaur ye hert be, they be, luv. If’in they’ll be a way, we’ll find it.”

“You mean it? I know she’ll understand, she loves me too much to push me away. I know that,” she cried wrapping her arms around his waist.

“Aw mither’s luv they lassie‘s, luv. Ah ken she’ll shoogle wi’ excitement tae see ye,” he laughed.

“Shoogle,” she giggled sniffling. “I may not understand half of what ya say, but thank you, babe.”

Danny got up off of his knees and pulled D`nae to hers. “Me thin’s ye best be fur gaeing tae yer room. Tabby’s workin awful hard wi’ yer claes.” D`nae wiped her face and took off up the stairs, with Danny on her heels. They walked in to find Tabitha trying to put a pair of panties on with one leg in the waist hole, the other in a leg hole and the whole thing pulled up around her waist. She had the shirt on correctly, just inside out. She smiled and picked up the pants from the pile of clothes that D`nae had given her and started to pull them on.

As D`nae was helping Tabitha get dressed, they heard two motors come to life out in front of the house and before they could get back down the stairs, the cars were driving off. The house was completely quiet, and almost all of the equipment of the A.A.D.F. was gone.

“I told them to go,” Grady said from the dark living room of the deceased landlady. “They’re too jumpy, and you’re right, they don’t trust any of you.”

“Or we can just follow the bodies. The last call that I got said they found two more fifteen miles down the road on an small farm. Elderly couple.”

“Then what the hell are we waiting for?” D`nae asked stepping around Danny.

“Pack what you’re going to need, and a few extra for her,” he said looking back at Tabitha. “She may need them.”

D`nae looked back and smiled, knowing that Grady was saying it flirtatiously, just the way he had started out with her. After all the bags were by the front door, and Grady had the four by four in front of the house, he and Danny started loading it. It was Tabitha who noticed the grimace on Grady’s face when he reached down and picked up one of the heavy metal cases of equipment with the same arm that she had scratched. He saw her watching and quickly walked away, and loaded the case. While everyone was still in the house he grabbed his arm, tightening his lips together, the pain traveling from the tip of his shoulder down to the center of his spine.

“The signs are not good for you. I never meant for this to happen, I merely wanted to protect her, same as you,” Tabitha said, standing a few feet behind him.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he replied and started to walk around her, but she grabbed his arm.

“You can deny that we made contact that night, but you feel the pain of transformation, just as we all do.” Then she turned and walked into the house, leaving him standing alone.

It was close to two a.m. when they drove up to a one story home on the edge of town. As they approached, the lights of the vehicle bounced off of a white piece of paper that was pinned to the door. It was a note that was left by Grady’s men before they left the scene. The local police hadn’t yet been called, and wouldn’t until they had a chance to look at the bodies. Tabitha knew that Alasdair had one place that he kept secret; a place that he had only taken her to one time, and that was when she was first brought over from his home in Canada. She had heard him speak about it to his followers that had attacked Danny and D`nae, and remembered him saying that he would place his enemy on high on the peak, so that his ashes would be the first thing he saw when he woke. She explained this to everyone in the truck, looking over at D`nae.

“Don’t worry, sweetie. I’ve heard the story, so I know I am supposed to be hanging from some tree close by.”

“Fit in aw’s the Saints be ye talkin aboot?”

D`nae told him the story of Alasdair’s past, while Grady got out of the truck and retrieved the note. She talked while they watched him step back off the porch and walk around the side of the extremely nice brick home. By the time Grady came back around, she had finished the story of what his ancestors had done to create the problem at hand, and Danny was speechless. Before he could respond to the things he had just heard, Grady opened the passenger side door.

“He is in control, you see. He knows you will follow if he continues to kill. It is a way to imply that Danny is at fault for those we will find.”

“I’ve already checked the back door, so we’ll have to figure out how they got in before we make our entrance,” Grady explained as they got out.

Grady went to the left, while the other three went to the right. He was almost to the side of the house before he turned to see them disappearing around the other side of the house. He hurried and caught up with them, asking why they went that way instead of following him. Tabitha said one word, ‘blood,’ and with that, he chose to stay quiet and hang back behind those who could see and smell things that he couldn’t.

“There’s blad on this windae,” Danny said stopping by what looked like a bedroom window. Tabitha stepped up and sniffed the area around the window, then nodded her head once. Grady moved up, pulling out his blade, and used it to lift up the bottom of the screen, then he reached into his pocket.

“Put these on,” he said, handing each of them a pair of thin rubber gloves. “We don’t want to be spreading around any unnecessary fingerprints.”

Everyone put them on and the first two through the window were Danny and D`nae. Grady looked back to see if Tabitha needed help up, and almost laughed out loud. She had one glove partway on and was struggling with the other. He walked over and took her hands in his, causing her breath to catch in her throat.

“I used to have hell with these myself,” he smiled, looking down at her. He slid the plastic gloves on fairly easy, then held her hand and walked her to the window. She put her hands on the windowsill, and as she jumped up, he took her around the waist and lifted. Her muscles rippled under the pressure of his hands, and a fine tremble quaked up her back. Once she was in, he lifted himself into the window and was soon thereafter yanked to his feet. She smiled and released his shirt, lowering her eyes, then immediately looked right back up at him.

The stench of rotting decay filled the house and the deeper they made their way in, the worse it became. It was D`nae that found the first body when she stepped into the kitchen. There was a woman lying on her stomach in a puddle of her own bodily fluids. It was apparent that they had killed her right out, because her body was whole. Only her head was twisted around, and it was her own spine that had torn through her flesh, ripping open her artery that had bled her out onto the floor. There was a man hanging upside down from a beam in the ceiling in the middle of the family room. He was like many of Alasdair’s other victims; his abdomen split from pelvis to sternum, and his head sat near the sliding back door. The majority of the stench was coming from this room, because his intestines were spread across the linoleum.

“I have to get out of here,” D`nae said, standing in the entrance of the hallway.

She turned to hurry away from the horrible sight and tripped, falling to the floor. She pulled her knees up as she looked back to see what tripped her and screamed out. Danny yelled her name and ran to her side, jumping over the small corpse that she had fallen over. He grabbed D`nae and wrapped his arms tightly around her, rocking her gently as he covered her eyes with his hand. It must have been the couple’s child, two, maybe three years old. His small body had fang marks all over it, but remained otherwise intact. Grady slammed his fist into the wall three times before Tabitha got control of his arm. She pressed him into the wall and held him there until his breathing was more under control, then she ran her hands up his arms and walked him out of the hall.

“What’s he gonna do? Is he gonna…” she stopped, letting the rest of her thought be silent, not needing an answer to know he had to do something close to what she was thinking.

Tabitha looked back once as she followed them out the same window they had come in. She knew what had to be done, yet she had felt no remorse for what he was about to have to do. The world she had come from was nothing like the one she had entered, and she could not comprehend the loss of composure that D`nae was displaying. Death was as much a part of her life as breathing had been, and what she had just seen was insignificant compared to what she had witnessed in the past, not to mention the demise that she had left in her own wake. Grady waited until he couldn’t hear them any longer, then did what no human should ever have to do. He removed the head of the small child, and just for good measure, removed the woman’s as well. Grady turned the knobs on the stove, after blowing out the pilots, then put a can of oven cleaner in the microwave, setting the timer for ten minutes.