Masque of the Vampire (Amaranthine Book 8)

by Joleene Naylor

  He gasped for breath. “What the fuck? Who?”

  Katelina hesitated. They might be in the wrong place. But if so, why was there a vampire? What were the odds that Lilith had a secret den nearby, loaded with vampires, meanwhile an abandoned lodge also had vampires? It was too much of a coincidence, so she tried the name Lilith had used at the party. “Kali.”

  His features hardened. Katelina saw the recognition. “She’s not here. If you’re smart, you’ll be gone before she arrives.”

  So they were in the right place, and Lilith was planning to return. “When will she be back?”

  He struggled. Katelina clamped down, increasing the pressure until he snarled, “I don’t know. Take your human and go.”

  Katelina tried to look menacing as she pressed her face closer. “Don’t give me that crap. You’re—what?—the caretaker? Left behind to keep an eye on things? You know where she is, and when she’s coming back.”

  “No, I don’t,” he snarled. “She’s already late.”

  “What is she planning? Where did she go?”

  “Some…party. I wasn’t invited. She took the albino twins.”

  Right. Andrei’s party, and the twins who were killed at the ball. “What about the rest of your coven?”

  “I don’t know! I’m the only one who came with them to Canada. Most of the others are old, and they don’t want to spend time together. Look, you might be strong, but you’re too weak to fight her, and too young to join her. This is your last chance. Take your pet and get out of here.”

  Footsteps crunched through the leaves. Katelina stiffened. He’d said he was alone, but apparently he wasn’t. She tensed, ready for another attacker, until she heard Sorino’s voice, “He really doesn’t know.”

  With a huff of impatience, Katelina pushed off the prone vampire. “Thanks for that, but just because you can’t read it in his mind doesn’t mean—”

  A kamikaze cry interrupted them. She spun back to see her foe rushing toward her, fangs bared and knife raised.

  Without thinking, she swung, connecting with his chest in a sickening crunch that splattered blood and gore past her elbow. She pulled back immediately, palm full of something slimy and warm. The vampire staggered, eyes wide. He opened his mouth, but fell face first into the mud before any sound came out.

  Katelina stared from the crumpled body to the glob of heart clutched in her palm. With a cry of disgust, she flung it away and tried to shake the gore from her sleeve. She’d killed him. She hadn’t meant to, hadn’t meant to punch him hard enough to break his ribs…

  Jorick appeared, Brandle on his heels. “What happened?”

  Sorino wiped his hands on a lace edged handkerchief, as if he’d gotten dirty by observing. “Our instincts were right. Lilith left someone to guard the place. Apparently he was out, no doubt getting dinner.” Sorino motioned to the dead deer that lay nearby. “Your pet made rather quick work of him.”

  She blinked. “I didn’t—”

  Sorino chuckled. “She doesn’t know her own strength yet, it seems. No matter. The minion was useless; he knew nothing of import. Termination was the best thing for him.”

  Jorick found the heart lying among the leaves and stomped it into pulp. Brandle knelt next to the body. “At least she was efficient,” he teased, then fished through the vampire’s pockets. He pulled an MP3 player free. “He had poor taste in music.”

  “And in masters.” Jorick lifted Katelina’s injured arm. “You’re wounded.”

  “Not really. It doesn’t hurt. But I need to change and clean this mess…” Mess. A tidy word to describe the blood and tissue that kept someone alive until a moment ago.

  She felt Jorick in her head; the tell-tale spark of a mind reader. “You’ve killed before.”

  “Yes, but not by accident. Maybe Sorino’s right. I don’t know my own strength. I might need more training.”

  Brandle stood, a collection of items held in his shirt, like a farm girl with eggs. “You seem well trained to me. Here’s what he had on him. Nothing useful as far as I can see.”

  Jorick fished through the items: a pocket knife, a dirty handkerchief, the MP3 player, headphones, a ring, and a wallet. Inside was some cash and a driver’s license that looked fake. Jorick squinted at the address printed on it. “This might be something, if it’s the address of a den and not a random location.”

  “It could be worth checking out if we don’t find anything here,” Brandle agreed.

  As Jorick pocketed the license and cash, Katelina told them, “He said he was the only one here, that the rest of the coven was old and didn’t want to spend time together.”

  “Define old.” Brandle took the rest of the items.

  She shrugged. “I didn’t get a chance to do a lot of interrogation.”

  “It’s all right. Hopefully there’ll be more details inside.” Jorick moved to the van and dug a shirt out from Katelina’s suitcase. “Come. There are facilities inside.”

  She followed him across the lawn and through the double doors. A large log cabin-style room had a cold fireplace and chunky rustic furniture. A deer head hung on the wall. Frames held old photos of hunting parties, and a faded portrait of an old man labeled “Wickleberry”.

  Katelina looked from a pair of antlers on a tabletop, to the rifle over the door. “This isn’t how I imagined Lilith’s den.”

  Jorick shrugged. “Maybe she didn’t have time to redecorate?” He ran his finger over the back of a dusty chair.

  “Or she lacked manpower.” If it had really been just the dead vampire and the twins, Katelina doubted any were suited for renovation work.

  Jorick motioned her into a bathroom, where she quickly peeled off the ruined shirt. The sink had separate hot and cold faucets that looked cute. After a few minutes trying to get the water right, she realized the fallacy of the “cuteness”.

  The mess was on her hand, on her arm, flecked on her face, and in her hair. She had to practically climb in the sink to get it all off. The water either froze or scalded her, depending on which faucet she got closest to. When Jorick finally said he was going to finish examining the upstairs, she wasn’t surprised. He had better things to do than wait for an hour.

  She finished up, then dried and pulled the clean shirt on. With the evidence removed, she felt better, as though it had never happened.

  In the main room, she found Brandle at a table decorated with deer skulls and empty bottles, flipping through a book.

  “What’s that?”

  He offered a crooked grin. “A guest book, it seems. As the station attendant intimated, this was a hotel of sorts.”

  “More like a hunting lodge.” She nodded to a collection of taxidermy animals.

  “An odd choice for a woman, but then Kali—pardon, Lilith—is an interesting woman.”

  “That’s one word for her.” Katelina realized that Brandle had been attending parties with her for years. “How well do you know her?”

  “Not well.” He closed the book and replaced it. “We didn’t socialize outside of the parties, which were only held every fifty years. Even then, I can’t say I ever spent time alone with her, or even lost in conversation. I’d heard she was Egyptian, though she never quite looked it. I know she doesn’t like cinnamon.”

  “That’s not very helpful.” Disappointed, Katelina pushed through the nearest doorway to a dining room that had several tables. Cobwebbed chandeliers were made of deer antlers. Lightbulbs only worked in one and threw weird shadows, like grasping fingers. Three overturned chairs and a splatter of blood on the wall made the scene even eerier.

  “The blood isn’t very old,” Brandle said, following her gaze. “I’d say our lone caretaker had company in the last two weeks.”

  Katelina shivered at the murder scene, then moved on to a disused kitchen. Copper pots were dull with dust. A row of cereal boxes had been chewed by mice, leaving trails of the treats across the shelves. A sink was heaped with moldy dishes, and a dead cell phone sat on a shelf, aband
oned. From the dust, Katelina guessed it belonged to the previous owners, not the vampire.

  Katelina nodded past it all, to a heavy door with a padlock. “What’s this?”

  “I don’t know. Sorino had the downstairs. The rest of us were on the second floor when Jorick rushed out to save you.” Brandle’s eyes twinkled with amusement.

  “So there might be someone inside?” Though the dead vampire said he was alone, she wasn’t sure she believed him. She sniffed, as she’d seen others do. The cacophony of smells told her nothing. She tried to reach out with her mind, but there was no sense of life. Of course, some vampires could hide their presence.

  Katelina rattled the door. She wished Jorick was there so he could—she stopped. What was she thinking? Thanks to the gifts she’d inherited from Micah, she’d ripped out a vampire’s heart without trying. She should be able to tear the door off the hinges. She didn’t need to wait anymore. She could take care of it herself.

  “It’s a habit, little one, just like your daily showers...”

  Right.

  With a cry, she kicked the center of the door. The wood gave way. She stumbled. There was a nanosecond sensation of tumbling forward, before Brandle grabbed her.

  “Whoa there! That was effective, I’ll grant you, but perhaps not the best way to go about it.”

  The last bits of wood clattered to a stop below as she wiped splinters from her shirt. “No, I guess not. I didn’t realize there were stairs on the other side.”

  “One never knows what to expect when exploring. Perhaps next time we should pull the padlock off? It’s not as spectacular, but it gets the job done.”

  Her cheeks flushed. Before she could agree, Kai appeared, looking curious. He figured out the situation quickly. “A cellar.”

  Katelina had been in plenty of vampire cellars, and she wasn’t in a hurry for another one. Except it was the likeliest place for clues. Vampires would burn in the sunlight, so a dark place was a safe place, and a safe place was where one would keep their most important—and hopefully most incriminating—things.

  Katelina plunged ahead, kicking bits of door off the steps as she went. She’d only gone a few steps when a light clicked on. She looked back to see Brandle give a thumbs up, Kai behind him with a flashlight.

  Right. Because Kai can’t see. She understood why vampires had left her in the dark so often; if they could see, they didn’t realize everyone else couldn’t.

  Another habit.

  Katelina pushed on down the stairs. She expected an unfinished basement of dirt, something that matched the rest of the decor. Instead it was built from painted cinderblocks with a linoleum floor. An arrangement of furniture on one side suggested a game room. A low doorway in the back wall led to more subterranean chambers.

  She glanced at a bookcase, then moved to the next room. Jumbled with old chairs and boxes, it was apparently for storage, though it looked like things had been dumped there in a hurry.

  She moved toward the boxes when she caught a scent that made her stomach tighten: blood. She inhaled deeply, and closed her eyes, concentrating. It wasn’t fresh blood, but old blood, older than the dining room. Spilled weeks ago, and left. Though it was sour, there was no smell of rotten flesh to go with it, which meant there probably wasn’t a body.

  “My thoughts exactly.” Brandle moved around the heap of junk. “I think we found it.”

  Katelina followed to see yet another padlocked door. The closer she got, the stronger the scent of blood, and the smell of something else; old bodily functions. As if humans had been stored inside, left with no facilities, kept like animals for food.

  “It’s not an unusual practice,” Brandle offered as he tugged on a heavy padlock. “Care to try it?”

  Katelina gripped the padlock tightly and yanked. The lock stayed intact, but the hasp ripped free.

  Brandle nodded his appreciation, and pushed the door open. He stepped inside, made a small noise in his throat, then turned to stop her from following.

  It was too late.

  Inside, the smell was overwhelming. Dry human excrement was scattered in one corner and a rusty bucket was tipped on its side, probably the source of water for the prisoners. Blood was smeared on the walls and floor. Though she couldn’t really hear the ghosts, she imagined them in her mind, men and women sniveling in the corner, crying, waiting to die. Wondering what they’d done to deserve this.

  She turned back for the exit. The doorframe was gouged in long scratches, a prisoner’s attempt to flee. Blood was splattered up the door and smeared. At the edge of the mess was a perfect handprint. Not adult sized, but small.

  A child’s handprint.

  She picked out another. And another. She realized then who Lilith’s prisoners were. Not adults, captured for food, but children.

  Children kidnapped and locked in the dark, waiting to die.