Destined For a Vampire (25 page)

Closing it, I made my way to door number two, which proved to be another repeat, a large room full of plastic-covered furniture and a ton of dust. It was behind door number three that I noticed a change.

The hinges creaked as I opened the third door. I poked my head in and saw the familiar lumps of covered furniture. The departure from the scenes in the other two rooms occurred on the floor. The thick layer of dust that covered the hardwoods had been disturbed in this room. By the looks of the clean prints, I guessed that the tracks had been laid fairly recently.

The footprints appeared to be in the shape of a man’s dress shoe, and the foot was not at all small. For a second, I wondered if maybe Sebastian had been in the room recently. That would account for the disturbance in the dust as well as the type of print it looked to be.

That thought made me feel a bit better for all of about ten seconds, as long as it took my eyes to track the footprints to where they disappeared against the wall on the other side of the room. It wasn’t until then that I noticed that there were no returning foot steps; only those going toward the wall, away from the door.

My heart rate picked up as I mulled over the wisdom of crossing the room to follow the prints. Part of my brain remained calm, reminding me that there was likely a rational explanation for what I was seeing. But then there was the other half of my brain, the portion that had
seen
horrible things,
witnessed
horrible things,
knew of too many
horrible things—it suggested that I turn tail and run. Fast.

Steeling myself against the fear and unease that was quickly surfacing inside me, I opened the door wider and stepped inside. I stopped and listened. Still, there was silence. I wondered for a second if I could’ve imagined hearing something. But deep down, I knew. I knew I’d heard something.

I tiptoed across the room, careful to step exactly where the person before me had stepped. I had to stretch to get from print to print, which further supported my theory that the tracks belonged to a man, probably Sebastian’s. The stride was long, a lot longer than mine.

When I’d reached the other side of the room, I could see a faint scrape mark where something had brushed the dust away in an arch, similar to that of a door opening. And yet there was no door, only a blank wall.

The footprints clearly disappeared into that wall, so I began feeling around, rubbing my hands across the floral wallpaper, hoping to find…something.

Considering the age and type of house this was, a hidden passageway wouldn’t really surprise me.

I jumped when I heard another noise. My heart filled with dread when I realized that it had, in fact, come from the other side of the wall, the one I was standing in front of. I also noticed that the noise had caused a puff of dust to leak out around a crack in the wallpaper.

I ran my fingertip along the seam. At about waist level, my finger slipped into a dip. I bent down to look at it and realized that the paper was peeled away right in the center of a flower, making the dark crescent underneath nearly invisible.

Hooking my finger into the indentation, I pulled.

And a door popped open.

It only opened a tiny crack, but my pulse started fluttering wildly in my chest.

I listened for any sounds of movement, like someone might have heard me and turned to come after me. But there was absolute, eerie stillness. All I could hear was the shallow pant of my breathing against the backdrop of my pulse pounding away in my ears.

Carefully, I pulled the door until it was open wide enough for me to slide inside. I left it ajar in case I had to make a hasty escape, which gave me cold chills just to think about.

The first thing I noticed was that I smelled roses. For some reason, that gave me pause, but I couldn’t figure out why. The only smell I associated with roses was Lucius’s luxurious basement.

When my eyes had adjusted to the dim light, I saw the orangey glow of candle light sparkling like a thousand tiny diamonds in the spider web that hung thickly in the little hallway. It was evident that a path had been cut recently, as if someone had walked right through the middle of them.

Silently, I tiptoed toward the light, toward the mouth of the short corridor where a room opened up at the end. When I got to the point where if I continued on, I would no longer be in the shadows, I stopped walking and leaned slowly around the corner to peer into the room.

What I saw both confused and concerned me. It was Lilly. She was lying atop a cot that sat in the center of a circle of dozens of white pillar candles. She was still fast asleep, lying on her side with her pink lips parted ever so slightly. My heart squeezed at the sight of her. I didn’t know what it was, but something about Lilly touched me—deeply.

But why was she up here? In a hidden room, surrounded by candles?

The questions had no sooner entered my mind when I heard a woman’s voice break the silence.

“Mmm, that smell. I can almost taste your sweet blood, warm and sticky, flowing over my tongue like silk.”

I stilled instantly. I wasn’t even breathing. I thought at first the woman was talking to someone else, but then, with a lightening bolt of panic that shot straight to my toes, I realized that I recognized the voice. And she was talking to me.

Just as I was turning to run, I felt a breeze stir my hair. And when I looked up, I was face to face with a beautiful red head that I’d seen before. My head swam dizzily, my mind rebelling against what I concluded.

No! It can’t be! It just can’t be,
I was thinking, but all the while, that other part of me, the rational calm part, was telling me that it was very much true.

“Heather,” I whispered, stunned beyond description.

“Bravo,” she said, moving around to my back.

I was in shock. Savannah’s mother was standing right behind me. I recognized her from the photos in Savannah’s room. And her name was Heather; Mr. Grant had mentioned it. She was the same Heather that Bo had been searching for, the one and only. Though I had no proof, I was certain of it. I knew it, knew it without a doubt, knew it in my bones. It was her. And she’d found me. Again.

It jarred me when I finally placed that vaguely familiar floral scent. I’d smelled it, the scent of roses, in my bedroom when I’d been attacked and bitten, as well as at Denise’s house when I’d gone to visit her and caught someone there. It had been this woman—Heather.

Savannah had been right. Her mother
had
visited her. What Savannah didn’t know was that her mother is alive. Sort of. She’s a vampire. Somehow, though she was unable to see anything else, Savannah could see vampires.

And then I remembered yet another alarming thought. She could see Devon, too.

My racing mind stopped its erratic flitting when I felt the hair at my neck move. Soft, warm fingers brushed it away and my focus was once again sharply concentrated on the person at my back.

I knew I needed to flee, to get out of there, away from her, but I couldn’t just leave. I wasn’t the only one at risk. As terrified as I was for myself, for what she might do to me, I had to consider Lilly. If possible, I was even more horrified at what the woman might do to her. She was just a child.

Before I could follow my fears to any kind of conclusion or come up with some sort of plan to get us out of there alive, I heard the quiet words that I’d heard once before. And I knew what was coming.

“Shh,” she breathed. Then, in the husky voice I’d heard at Denise’s, she promised, “It will only hurt for a moment.”

And then I felt the stab of sharp teeth penetrating the skin of my throat. With a panic that vibrated through my body, ringing in every cell and fiber of my being, I knew I had to fight, but I was paralyzed. I couldn’t even lift a hand to wipe away the single tear that had slipped from the corner of my eye to slide down my cheek.

The one comfort I had was that Sebastian would eventually have to come back home. If I could just make it until then…

My hopes were dashed, however, when I heard another voice, a velvety tone that rose above the buzzing in my ears.

“There will be time for that later, Heather. Bring her here.”

It was Sebastian.

“Sebastian?” I squeaked.

Behind me, Heather withdrew her teeth and laughed, a mirthless sound. Her warm breath tickled my ear and made me shudder.

“That’s what you call him, yes.”

Taking my arm in a vise grip, Heather guided me none-too-gently on into the candlelit room. Standing on the other side of the long, narrow space was Sebastian.

He was leaning up against the wall beside a spiral staircase that disappeared into the darkness behind him. In one hand, he held a large book. I recognized it from the display in his office. It was the book about vampires, the one that he’d partially translated.

“Sebastian, what’s going on?” I asked.

“Sweet Ridley,” he said, shaking his head. “Poor sweet, clueless Ridley.”

Despite the precariousness of my situation, my hackles rose at his patronizing tone. I bristled silently, waiting for him to continue, cautioning myself to keep my mouth shut.

“I could’ve spared you some of this if you’d only sipped from your drink, like you did that first night. Only you didn’t and now, here we are.”

“What is going on Sebastian?” I repeated.

Sebastian paused. “How shall I explain this?” he asked rhetorically, his question more to himself than to anyone else in the room. “Let’s just say that you are a vital part of my experiment.”

I gulped.

“What experiment?”

“My experiment to see if you’re the one, of course.”

“The one what?”

“The one for Bo.”

Airflow in and out of my lungs stopped. “Bo? What’s Bo got to do with this?”

“Bo has everything to do with this,” Sebastian said, pushing himself away from the wall. “Haven’t you figured it all out yet? Don’t you know who I am?”

Sebastian strode slowly to the center of the room and stopped, facing me. A smug grin tipped one side of his mouth.

A loud sound, like a single flap, popped in the otherwise quiet room and a puff of air feathered my face. Though Sebastian’s form didn’t change, on the wall behind him, a shadow appeared. It was the shadow of two large wings arising from his silhouette, the span reaching from one end of the long room to the other.

“Wh-who are you?” I whispered.

“My true name is Constantine, but you may still call me Sebastian.”

A thousand inconsequential things flooded my mind, as if my body’s only mechanism of defense was to drown out the reality of what I was seeing, of what I knew to be true, with minutia.

“Constantine,” I repeated dazedly. “But you’re dead.”

He laughed, a malicious snarl that made his beautiful face suddenly ugly.

“That’s what they say,” he muttered nonchalantly. “That’s what I
wanted
them to say.”

“But- but…” I couldn’t even formulate an intelligent question. I was desperately trying to recall everything I’d heard about Constantine, to glue all the bits and pieces together into some kind of discernible picture.

Sebastian cocked his head to one side and flexed his shoulders, the shadow of wings behind him disappearing. He rolled his eyes back to me.

“Well, I was going to explain it all to you, but why not just wait for our next guest to join us?”

As if on cue, I felt the familiar tug of Bo’s nearness, and while part of me was thrilled to feel his presence, the rest of me was terrified for his safety. I had to warn him.

Before I could lose my nerve or tip them off as to my intent, I lunged toward the door, surprising Heather, who lost her grip on me.

“Bo, get out of here!” I shouted at the top of my lungs.

That was all I managed to get out before a hand clamped painfully over my mouth. But it was enough. I knew Bo had heard that. His hearing was too sensitive not to have picked up on it.

“Bring her here,” Sebastian commanded. “He’ll come. Nothing she can say will keep him away. In fact, her shrill warning will only make him hurry, make him sloppy. I couldn’t have planned it any better.”

With one hand over my mouth and the other across my waist, Heather pulled me back against her, picked me up and carried me across the room to Sebastian. He tipped his head, gesturing to a place against the wall. Heather continued past him to the spot where Sebastian had been, near the stairs. She stopped, but didn’t release me.

Sebastian turned back to the door, reaching behind him and pulling a long thin blade from a sheath I hadn’t seen strapped to his back. He held the blade out in front of him, twisting it slightly in his grasp, the razor sharp edge catching the light and reflecting it.

I was strangely captivated by the play of the candles’ flames in the gleaming silver. It was the flicker of those lights that shook me from my fascination.

A gust of wind threatened the flames and pushed the hair back from my face.

I looked up and Sebastian was gone.

Next, I saw blurry streaks darting across the room, like cyclones stirring the air. I heard grunts and sounds of struggle, grappling, but still I couldn’t make out any distinct shapes.

The ache in my chest and the tethers tugging at my soul assured me that Bo was in the room. It didn’t matter that I couldn’t see him. I felt him like I felt the hand across my face. My heart raced in fear for him, in fear for us all.

But then, with a thump that rattled the rafters and shook dust from every crack in the room, Bo appeared. He was affixed to one of the exposed wooden beams that supported the ceiling. The silver hilt of the knife was protruding from his chest—right over his heart.

Sebastian appeared next, only a fraction of a second later, standing right in front of Bo. With one quick movement, he tore Bo’s shirt front open and turned to walk casually back to the center of the room, dusting his hands off as he went.

I couldn’t stop the scream. It bubbled in my throat, burned in my chest, trembled on my tongue, but ultimately, it was smothered by Heather’s hand.