Wolfie himself had gone above to run about the heath at such an eye-blurring pace that no human would ever be able to mark it.
So their thoughts were safe ... unless the Queenshill girls decided to tell on Della.
She braced her arms over her stomach. Hungry. She couldn’t think of how to protect herself when she was so hungry.
Yet her answer was safe enough. I can’t explain how I came to know about Mrs. Jones, she told the older vampire, who seemed to be in charge of all these gathered ex-students.
Noreen made eye contact with the lead Queenshill girl, and Della could hear what she was saying because of her and Noreen’s opened classmate mind-link.
I told you, Stacy—dreams. Della had vivid dreams that make all too much sense in the context of what we’ve experienced.
All the girls looked at one another, all the different schoolmates who’d survived Mrs. Jones, making eye contact and silently spreading the word. Their communication created a flurry of sound because of the class mind-links.
Dreams, they said.
Visions ...
Amidst the buzz, Noreen kept glancing at the older vampire named Stacy while also thinking to Della, After I spoke up about the note, we started talking, the lot of us, new students and old. Comparing. And it seems that, each year, one classmate would leave school about every six months from every class.
Stacy added to that, her tone bitter. Their absences never seemed terribly connected and, once Underground, the pain faded for the older ones. Wolfie was here, and that was all we wanted. We didn’t think about Mrs. Jones anymore. She never came round much, so it was easy to forget how she would look at me as if ...
As if she wanted to devour you? Della finished.
Nodding, Stacy glanced at her own classmates for their reactions. They, in turn, peered about the room and shared with the other girl vampires who hadn’t been in their exclusive class. Soon, they all seemed just as haunted as Della, and she was more certain than ever that she had done well in having pursued her suspicions, because even if some of the girls had forgotten during the passage of years, there was a part of them that still hurt for their missing friends—girls who they believed had abandoned the class.
Yet then Stacy lanced Della with a look. You’ve got us interested, and we’re all too willing to believe this about Mrs. Jones. But, then, what of Wolfie?
Della was quick to come to his defense, perhaps because it covered her own misgivings. No! He couldn’t have known about what Mrs. Jones was doing.
Even if he’d been with his mistress for centuries.
Soon, the other girls were shaking their heads, as if, in a chain reaction, they were all refusing to believe Wolfie was just as guilty.
Mrs. Jones was the only one responsible, Della told herself. Just the cat. Wolfie loved them too much, whereas Mrs. Jones had always seemed to resent them, even while pretending to care.
However, that trickle of uncertainty remained. That thin line of trembling “what if?”
Della could only take strength in the obvious need of the Queenshill alumnae to believe in him. The willingness to place the blame far away from the benevolent master who had always treated them with such affection.
All the girls had come closer, as if creating a hive that would enclose them in this new knowledge and keep them safe until they knew how to emerge.
She could hear the droning of connected thoughts from all the girls as she looked into Stacy’s light eyes.
There was always a sense of jealousy from Mrs. Jones, they were thinking. When she and Wolfie first began turning us into vampires—even long before she became a housematron—she took part in the exchange with the very old girls almost reluctantly.... She was always slinking around in her cat shape whenever Wolfie came near us in the sub-Underground.... It was as if she wished to disappear, yet she couldn’t bring herself to leave him alone with us....
At this last thought, Della recalled how she herself had seen the cat’s eyes glowing through the darkness of doorways and in hiding spaces when Wolfie was close. How Mrs. Jones had watched while he frolicked with her and her classmates, three of whom had disappeared.
Wolfie, one of the girls thought. If he only knew, hed—
Stacy raised a hand to silence the notion. We leave Wolfie out of this.
They all glanced round as one of the boys in his cage laughed madly to himself, breaking the quiet.
Della disconnected from Stacy’s eyes and, with no small amount of paranoia, opened her senses full force while trying to feel Mrs. Jones’s returned presence anywhere in the Underground. But she could not.
She connected back to Stacy, to the network, just as another schoolgirl thought, Why would she do it?
It sounded like Polly, even though she still loitered in the background, hunched over, her straight hair hiding her face.
Stacy tilted her head as she waited for Della to respond. They thought she had an answer.
Youth? Della finally thought, remembering the dream of the vampiress in the tub. Blood baths make Mrs. Jones seem younger, even if she’s a vampire born centuries ago. Drinking through the skin—
Gives her a glow. Stacy ran her fingers over her own arm.
A fraction of the other girls shifted, touching their own skin, frowning.
Since Stacy was so close, Della took in the other vampire’s face. There was something different about this older Queenshill girl, as well as a few of the others. Nothing obvious, but perhaps less of a flush to the cheeks, less of a sparkle in their gazes...
Yes, the start of something that wasn’t the same as what Della saw in her eyes in the mirror, no matter how young the other vampires seemed everywhere else.
Had they—the older ones—begun to long for youth treatments? The other girls who had been Underground even before Mrs. Jones became a housematron had even more of a maturity, now that Della truly thought about it.
Would they all be just like Mrs. Jones, their cocreator, as the years passed?
What are we? Della asked. What did they make us?
No one knew, because neither Wolfie nor Mrs. Jones had ever explained the particulars. They had given them long lives of affection and adoration—promises as bright and sweet as truffles—and as with all overwhelming gifts, none of them had ever thought to ask what the price would be as long as they were happy.
Yet that had not stopped Della from wondering, upon occasion, where her soul had gone and what might happen to it should she ever want it again.
Noreen had huddled near the entrance of the cage, and she aimed her next mind-question at Della.
So what do we do now?
Della looked into Stacy’s eyes, seeing that the older vampire had come to peer right back.
Why? Della was only one of them, no more special, no more ...
In her mind’s eye, a flock of white ribbons fluttered, and she realized she had somehow become more.
Della Bennett of the frizzy hair and classroom daydreams ...
She rose to her knees, grasping the bars of her cage. I want to know, she mind-said.
Stacy’s own missing classmates were at the front of her thoughts—Della could feel the bruising presence of them.
Want to know what? the other vampire thought.
I want to know what happened to them. Definitively. I want to see, and if what we suspect about Mrs. Jones is genuine, I want to show Blanche and Briana and Sharon that I haven’t forgotten them. That I never will.
Your injuries from their absences are too fresh, Stacy mind-said, acting as if she had grown out of the same phase. Yet Della could tell—they all could tell—from the pang in the older vampire’s tone that those injures had come back with the introduction of Della’s dreams.
Every youthful hurt, every twist of betrayal.
None of that ever really died, Della suspected, no matter how many years flew by.
I want, Della added, staring at Stacy, to see all of it and know that it’s true before I pay Mrs. Jones for what she di
d.
The schoolgirls stirred as Stacy thought, You want to look inside Mrs. Jones. Is that what you’re saying, Della?
Together we could, Della said, putting it all on the line, because she knew she would never have another chance. Strength in numbers. We’ve been raised as a future army, haven’t we? On the nightcrawls that Wolfie used to stoke our hunger and train us, we were schooled in how to work together. We’ve just never tried it outside of hunting humans.
It’s true, whispered one girl in the network of their minds. It was Noreen, whose anguish matched Della’s.
The older vampire narrowed her eyes, and in the other girl’s gaze, Della could see the ghosts of Stacy’s own missing friends resurrected by the possibility of a reckoning.
If we acted, Stacy thought, it would change everything, you know. If we were to be caught by Mrs. Jones while forcing ourselves into her mind, there’s no punishment she wouldn’t exercise.
Della leaned against the bars. Then again, Wolfie deserves better than Mrs. Jones, and we can make certain that he gets it. Do you recall his sadness after the disappearance of each student, and can you imagine how he might feel if he knew what Mrs. Jones was doing?
They remembered.
And she could also feel that their anger about their friends had shaped itself into a rage for Wolfie’s sake.
How dare Mrs. Jones do this behind his back? they thought. How dare she?
And, in that moment, she thought that there was absolutely no possible way Wolfie could know. He would never sacrifice them for Mrs. Jones’s vanity.
She kept repeating it, clinging to it as gazes disconnected, leaving each girl to her own musings. Then, little by little, they drifted into small groups most likely composed of the survivors from each class.
Except that Noreen was the only one of Della’s classmates to come near her. Polly stayed on the other side of the kitchens, near the basins.
A lock of red hair fell over Noreen’s eyes. What will you do if they don’t have enough courage to go through with this and they all turn on you?
Della pressed a hand to her chest, where it felt as if her heart were cracking, coming close to its own suicide—something the girls weren’t supposed to be able to accomplish, even though there were times when she had thought about doing it.
After what seemed like hours, Stacy glanced over at her.
The older vampire didn’t say a word out loud or in their minds, but in her expression—a savage, cold stare—Della knew that the other girl was remembering the confusion, the agony of thinking that a friend—an ally—had left them nearly alone to contend with all the unfairness life had to bring.
Then, as Stacy walked from group to group, as if monitoring them and hearing everyone’s decision, Della sensed a chill in the room—a hatred that was growing.
A mob mentality that made her grip the bars.
As the steel pressed into her palms, she thought of what might happen if she should attempt to pull the bars apart. She hadn’t tried for fear of reprisal, but if she were to pry them, she could get out—
Then a pall shrouded the room, causing shoulders to stiffen, backs to hunch, hair to rise on flesh.
Before Della even saw the gray cat slithering into the midst of them, she knew Mrs. Jones was here.
Had she heard what was going on in their minds?
Wouldn’t they have sensed her intruding on them, though?
Stacy’s gaze snagged Della’s again, and there was no doubt that the older vampire was wondering the same.
Did Mrs. Jones know?
Stacy smiled, and Della’s hackles rose.
For my friends, the older girl vampire mind-said before springing across the kitchens with a growl-hiss and landing just in front of Della’s cage. Then, just before she grabbed hold of the bars, she added, But especially for Wolfie.
She tore the bars away, and it was only in that moment that Della realized just how badly Stacy—and no doubt the others—needed to protect what they had in the Underground: how they needed to believe Wolfie had been betrayed by Mrs. Jones just as their friends had been victimized.
Free, Della burst out of the cage, leaping over all the girl vampires in her injured anger and crashing in front of the cat, who flashed sharp teeth and hissed in furious surprise.
In wavelike reaction, the girls mutated into their vampire forms, hair receding to leave wrinkled, hideous skin, their eyes slanting, their faces growing snouts, their fangs protruding as they growl-hissed at the intruding creature and mobbed her.
The cat gave a wrathful cry and jumped up and away from them, warping into the naked, womanly form of Mrs. Jones for only a second before she, too, turned into her true vampire: a large, fanged cat creature with claws and fur and burning eyes.
She grasped on to a light fixture swinging above the kitchens, her back arched as she continuing hissing while clinging to it. Below, the girls prepared to go after her as the boys yelled, laughed, clapped in the cages.
“Kitty!” one screamed. “Here, kitty!”
Della’s stomach rumbled, so hungry, but not only for food.
It was for all that anyone had ever dared to take from her.
Stacy, in a cat-wolf form similar to the rest of theirs, stalked in a circle underneath Mrs. Jones and the light fixture as she kept eye contact with Della for communication.
We know all about you, Mrs. Jones, she mind-said. We know what you’ve been doing to us.
The cat vampire’s hiss choked off. Then she smiled, those needle teeth gleaming while her voice calmed, as if this was only a mistake that they would regret. “Oh, girls.”
All of them, Della included, laughed, sending the air to vibrating.
The hair spiked on Mrs. Jones’s body, and her voice grew in screechy volume. “If I find it within myself to excuse your temporary lack of judgment—”
Always watching, Stacy interrupted, still stalking and looking at Della, as if she were a touchstone. Always trying to see who Wolfie loves more, then planning who might provide your next blood bath.
Their housematron’s features froze, as if a light had been shone upon her and she didn’t know where to hide.
Della’s dreams had been spot-on.
The names of her friends ran through her head, her heart: Blanche. Briana. Sharon.
A roll call of dangling, bleeding girls above a bathtub.
Mrs. Jones could apparently see the same thoughts on every face below her, and she flashed her thin, sharp teeth. “Wolfie will not abide this. And I certainly will not. Stop being bad girls this instant.”
This time, Della wasn’t afraid to mind-speak back to Mrs. Jones. But you made us bad girls.
They all crept closer together, anticipating the moment they could see the truth in their housematron’s eyes.
Power in numbers.
A good little army who, by virtue of the nightcrawls, had been taught not to drink in dainty bites, but to devour.
It didn’t even occur to Della that they might be mismatched with Mrs. Jones’s age and experience trumping theirs.
They were many. And they’d been wronged.
Della’s mouth flooded with juices, her veins purring with appetite.
“Do you know what happens if I perish?” Mrs. Jones said, her voice hardly as imperious now. She could obviously smell blood in the air, and it was her own. “You girls are partly mine, so your abilities—even if you don’t have all of my own—would be halved. The dragon wouldn’t be so happy with such a change. Think of your ultimate master and what sort of punishment he would impose.”
I believe, Stacy mind-said, you ought to be considering what he might do to you first, Mrs. Jones.
Della came to Stacy’s side, where they rubbed against each other in unity, and the others joined in, the sound of panting even louder than the voices of the boys who were urging them on from their cages.
“Girls—” Mrs. Jones began.
But they had already flexed their muscles in preparation, and now they jump
ed toward her, en masse, clawing at the light fixture.
It crashed to the ground, and they all pounced on Mrs. Jones, weighing her down with multiple girls, including Noreen and Polly, on each limb as Della, Stacy, and a few others used their nails to spread the cat vampire’s eyes open.
Mrs. Jones attempted to use her voice, her strength, her charms to subdue them, but the girls had been bred from the blood of two vampires, and they were only one generation removed from both of them.
And they’d been wronged....
Sharon. Della’s mind-voice rose with each name she called. Briana! Blanche!!!
They peered into the cat vampire’s eyes as Mrs. Jones screamed in protest, but the sound faded in Della’s perception at what she saw in a wild, slanted thrust of images that cut into one another....
Each of her friends, charmed asleep in a room where blades hung from the ceiling, casting wretched shadows like the most crooked of nightmare branches—
The girls awakened, then given charmed blood to drink so that they would be lulled to a sleep that would still keep them alive—
Strapped above a tub and bled out while Mrs. Jones showered under them, her skin-mouths gaping, drinking—
Then, the blades ...
The blades slicing into Blanche/Briana/Sharon’s flesh to extract hearts and livers, and Della knew that the girls had been kept alive so the cat might enjoy those treats—
And, finally, finally, when Mrs. Jones finished with each girl, she decapitated them, erasing all evidence that they had ever been in the blade room at all.
Della tried to pull out, even as she saw Mrs. Jones strolling out of that bladed room and down the hall, into the sub-Underground lounge where the girls would normally chase and pounce with Wolfie.
The big question clogged in Della’s throat, but she mind-said it, anyway, even if it was just a tortured mental whisper.
The Path of Razors Page 22
