Embrace the Twilight (24 page)

When his footsteps faded, she opened her eyes again and saw his back vanishing down the halls. She paused a moment, thought of Rhiannon, felt her mind's vibrations and tuned into them.
Rhiannon, how is your search progressing?

I've found no one yet. I sense two below, one on this level, but hidden somewhere.

I've had two here with me. They mentioned men named Mercer and Caine. Those would be the two in the basement. Stiles is apparently locked away somewhere. That makes at least five of them.

That's one more than we thought were in the house,
Rhiannon's thoughts whispered across the vastness of the mansion.
Not that it matters. We can deal.

One of mine is on his way up to Amber's room. He intends to drug her and rape her.

Oh, does he now?

Rhiannon didn't need to say more. Sarafina was confident “Joe” was as good as dead. But she was worried. If there were two men in the basement, would Will be able to handle them?

Stop worrying,
Rhiannon thought fiercely.
I'll go to the basement the moment I take care of the gnat in Amber's room. You focus on Stiles—having dealt with him in the past, and far more recently than I, you may have better luck honing in on his energies.

Sarafina agreed. God, it ate at her to care as much as she did. And yet the rage rising up in her belly at the thought of one of these men harming Willem Stone told her that she did care. She would tear them apart if they hurt Will.

She turned her own attention back to Crewcut, who was bending over the notebook now, his back to the door.

She slid slowly inside and thought about closing the door behind her to prevent anyone happening along and seeing, but decided against it. If its hinges creaked, the man would have time to shout, and she couldn't have that.

She glanced once behind her and, seeing no one, glided silently up behind him and positioned her hands on either side of his neck, not quite touching. Just as he sensed her presence and started to turn, she closed her hands all at once, without expending much effort at all. His larynx was crushed in her grip as easily as a paper straw would have been. His bones cracked like tiny, brittle twigs. He died instantly.

“Animal, hmm?” she whispered. Looking around the room, she spotted a closet, lifted the man out of his chair and carried him toward it. She dropped him inside and closed the door. Then she turned and walked quietly back out of the room, taking the notebook with her. It might be of interest to Amber and her guardians to know what Stiles had written there—though if “Jughead's” theory were correct, this was less than the entire story.

“Four left,” she whispered. “Three, if Rhiannon and Joe have crossed paths yet.” She went to search the house for the lab where Stiles had locked himself away.

She and Frank Stiles went way back. She owed him.

 

Amber was pacing the room, glancing over and over out the barred window at the guards below, wondering just how they were all going to get out of this hellhole alive when there were so many of them out there. Footsteps in the hall brought her head around fast, and she jerked the drapes tight, just in case. She hoped to God it was the others, returning with good news. It had been hours since they'd left her alone. Though she doubted it could be true. She'd spoken to her mother mentally, told her what was happening, but up to now, no one in the basement had seen any sign of the rescuers.

Amber recognized the man who stood outside her door as one of those who had brought her here. She hadn't seen him since then. Her meals were always brought by the female, Kelsey, backed up by the big blond man called Nelson.

The look in this man's eyes as he slid a key into her lock told her Stiles might have had a good reason for that policy. This man was slick and slimy. And she knew what he wanted before he opened the barred door, stepped inside and said, “You do me nice and I'll let you out of here. Deal?”

“Oh, I'll do you all right,” she told him. She moved closer, wondering why no one had warned him that she was strong enough to tear off his arms and beat him to death with them.

He slid his hands around to cup her buttocks, and she lifted hers to his neck, to break it. But then she felt the sharp jab and realized the bastard had come prepared.

Her head swam, and her knees unhinged. She sank, but he caught her under the arms, hauled her to the bed and dropped her across it. Then he straddled her and fumbled with her jeans, unbuttoning and unzipping them.

He'd left the barred door open. The idiot.

Rhiannon appeared in the doorway. Her form was fuzzy, but Amber didn't need to see her to know she was there. And oh, God, was she pissed.

She strode into the room, gripped the man by the hair on the back of his head and hauled him off of Amber.

“Wha—? Who?”

She didn't give him time to get any louder. She put her hands on either side of his head and gave such a violent twist that when the body slid to the floor, the head remained in her hands. A length of skinny pinkish cord still connected the one to the other and blood flowed like a waterfall.

“Oh, gee, I think he lost his head.” Amber laughed at her own joke. “Shit, Aunt Rhi, look at that mess.” Her words slurred together.

“Button your jeans and hand me a blanket.”

Amber lowered her eyes in the direction of her jeans, but her hands really didn't want to move. She tried to move them, but they only rose and then dropped lazily onto the bed again, which she found freaking hilarious now that the threat was gone.

“Hell,” Rhiannon whispered, dropping the head next to the body on the floor and leaning over the bed. She rolled Amber to one side, then the other, peeling a blanket out from under her.

“He's got the funniest look on his face,” Amber said, pointing at the gaping, surprised head. “He's like, ‘Hey, where's my body?”'

Rhiannon rolled her eyes, turning with the blanket, intending to wrap the head and body to reduce the mess, but there was already a significant pool of blood on the floor. It would take too long to clean it up, she decided. She kicked the body and head underneath the bed, wiped her hands on the blanket, and then dropped the blanket to the floor to cover the bloodstains. Then she hauled Amber off the bed and dropped her into a nearby chair.

“I'm going to have to take you with me. You can't stay here like this. Any one of them could come for you, and you're defenseless in this condition.”

“Yeah, but I gotta tell you, Rhiannon, my headache is long gone. So is his, I'll bet.”

“Quiet!”

Amber put her finger to her lips, making an exaggerated
shushing
sound.

Rhiannon quickly arranged the blankets on the bed to look as if someone were lying asleep beneath them, a trick that might fool an army of kindergartners—but only very stupid ones.

Then she fastened Amber's jeans, gathered the girl into her arms and carried her out of the room, closing and locking the door behind them.

“Where are you taking me?” Amber asked.

“To the basement, I suppose. But only if you're very quiet.”

Amber nodded and bit her lip to keep from laughing.

 

Will found the basement entrance right away. It had been his goal all along to get to the prisoners being held down there. It might have been easier to locate the men he suspected were lurking on the mansion's ground floor, but he had every confidence in Sarafina and Rhiannon. They could handle themselves. Maybe not against a tranquilizer-armed militia that knew they were coming, but this was a handful of men who were not expecting them.

They would be fine. And they would see to it that Amber was, as well.

He couldn't be so certain about the trio held in the subterranean levels of the place. Being held in the bowels of the earth was far too familiar to him not to twist his guts into knots. And from what Rhiannon had said about the DPI and the men who had served it, it was as likely as not the prisoners had undergone deprivation of heat, food and light, and possibly more active forms of torture.

He felt sick at the thought but couldn't quite shove it to the back of his mind. He'd lived it. It was too real, too recent, and too much a part of his soul.

He opened several doors as he made his way through the house, until one opened onto a set of stairs, descending into darkness.

He figured there was probably a guard down there…somewhere. Stepping onto the topmost stair, he pulled the door closed behind him, making the darkness complete. His bad foot was aching. He should have brought his damned meds with him, but he hadn't planned on taking an extended trip. It took effort and concentration to step down on the foot, evenly, slowly and soundlessly, despite the pain that shot through it more with every ounce of weight.

A stair creaked, just slightly.

Willem went still, motionless, waiting.

When no sound emerged, he took another step. There was no way to tell where the stairs ended and the floor began, other than to just put his foot out there and feel for it. There were more stairs than he would have expected. The cellar was deep.

His eyes began to adjust to the darkness. He could make out shapes by the time he finally reached the basement floor. Turning right, he moved slowly, arms out in front of him. Somewhere in this direction there was supposed to be an entrance to a secret section of the basement—once a wine rack.

He felt only a wall of crumbling stone.

Inching along it, feeling his way, he wondered if he shouldn't just find a light switch and snap it on.

A flare of light came on the heels of that thought, startling him—and then he realized it was the flame of a match or lighter, only a few yards farther along the wall. He watched the flame move in, saw the end of a cigarette glow and the flame go out. If he'd kept going, he would have walked right into the smoker. Thank God for nicotine addiction.

He shook off the fright and again began moving slowly, steadily, forward. His foot hit something; a pebble or bit of stone skittered across the floor. The glowing tip turned in his direction.

“You there, guards.” The voice came from the other side of the wall, though Will realized it must not be a wall where the guard stood. That must be the barred door. But the man had shouted “guards” not “guard.”

Hell, there was more than one.

The smoker turned toward the voice, which wasn't a voice Will recognized.

“What the hell do you want, bloodsucker?”

“What I want is to rip your heart out and suck it dry. But that wasn't why I summoned you just now.”

Will smiled just a little. The vamp knew he was here. He'd heard the pebble as clearly as the guard had. Maybe he'd heard more than that. Sarafina said their senses were magnified. He guessed the owner of the voice must be Rhiannon's husband—Roland, she'd called him.

“It's Angelica,” the vampire went on. “I think she may be near death.”

“Right.”

“Look for yourself, man!”

“You think I'm an idiot? I come any closer to the bars, you'll have me. I'm not leech food.”

Will squinted in the darkness, wishing to God he could see the action.

“I'll stand back from the bars. See?”

The man didn't, apparently, because he flicked his lighter again, holding it in front of his face. Will could see him now, see his face illuminated by the single tongue of flame. As was the dim outline of the man who stood beside him. Will saw only two. He prayed there were not more.

“Mercer, go up and get the boss. See what he wants to do about this.”

The second man flicked on a flashlight, and Will ducked behind a support post and watched its beam move quickly across the basement. He heard the man pound up the stairs and close the door behind him after he got up there.

The first one leaned a little closer to the bars, peering in, holding the lighter a bit farther in front of him. He was extremely careful not to put himself within reach of the prisoners.

His back was to Will now, as no doubt, the vampire had intended. Will moved in, swift and silent, right up behind the guard. He cupped the man's mouth and chin with one hand and braced the other at his nape.

“Don't kill him,” a woman's voice snapped.

Frowning into the darkness, Will couldn't see, and he didn't ask questions. He changed his grip to a choke hold and squeezed the guard into unconsciousness. When the man went limp, Will dropped him, and his body fell forward. Will bent over to search him. But before he could even begin, the body was jerked roughly forward, smashing against the bars.

Will had no idea what was going on—at least, not until he heard the sucking sounds. He tried his best to ignore the smacking and slurping, along with the guard's position, which soon became apparent—both arms had been yanked through the bars—and finished searching the guy's pockets. He located a set of keys, removed them, then got to his feet, stepping over the guard and running his hands along the barred door, bumping the arms along the way, until he found the lock panel with its keyhole. Then he began trying one key after another, until, finally, one of them fit.