She was lifted, twisted in the air, and slammed down on her back.
Starbursts bloomed in her vision, the pain unbelievable. Concussion, she thought weakly. The burning monster loomed closer, its blackened face again looming toward her stomach. She had been wrong about the passage, the furnace of desire, all of it.
Its teeth slowly punctured her flesh. Blood dribbled down the curve of her belly and soaked her waistband. She felt an object poking the small of her back. She reached down, touched it, and remembered the drip-sack.
The words whispered one last time: …when the old life is consumed in the furnace of desire.
Oh, Jesus, she thought.
With what strength she still possessed, she shoved away from the creature, its mouth detaching from her stomach, seized the plastic drip-sack and thrust it into the pool of flame on the concrete.
The reaction was immediate.
The creature descended into a wild frenzy of flailing limbs and bizarre wails. Crawling away, Ellie could see its twisted body thrashing in agony. In the guttering firelight she saw why.
Blood was seeping from its pores.
And not just seeping, but gushing in some places: the mouth, the eyes, the genitals. The creature flopped over, freshets of blood splattering the concrete. The misshapen body jerked spasmodically. It retched and vomited a steaming tide of what looked like mangled intestines. Ellie cried out in revulsion as a syrupy maroon liquid sprayed over her hands. The last chunk of purple guts drooled from its mouth with a plop, then the creature pitched forward into the pile like a newborn calf writhing in its own afterbirth.
Ellie could bear it no longer. She turned her head and threw up.
When she wiped a shuddering wrist over her mouth, she was appalled to see the creature’s blood smearing her skin.
The gag reflex seized her again, but this time there was nothing left to void. Instinctively, Ellie held her pregnant stomach until the gagging stopped.
Taking care not to touch what was left of the creature’s body—she could not avoid sloshing through its blood; the entire room was painted in it—she crawled toward the hole in the wall. She kept expecting the creature to leap up, to fasten its obscene mouth on her belly again because that’s what happened in horror movies. But so far, the figure remained motionless, save the occasional death spasm.
She kept her eyes on the bloody ruin as she stretched first one leg through the hole, then the other. The flames produced by the exploding lantern still burned, but weakly now. In another minute, the basement would again be steeped in darkness.
She stood and backed away from the dimly glowing hole in the wall, still expecting the Destragis creature to appear in the hole and lunge at her, snarling and laughing.
But it didn’t.
She turned and saw, less than a foot away, Lillith’s pale face.
Ellie screamed.
Lillith’s blood-smeared mouth curled into a grin.
Ellie tried to push away, but a taloned hand seized her by the throat. The face floated closer, only inches away.
“You thought you’d escape, Eleanor,” Lillith said and traced an index finger across Ellie’s forehead. The flesh unzipped and rills of blood spilled over her eyebrows. She struggled to pry the steely fingers from her throat, but Lillith squeezed harder, and Ellie’s breath thinned to almost nothing.
Lillith drew her closer, and for a moment, Ellie feared the woman would kiss her.
But she rasped: “I shall enjoy feasting on your child.”
Ellie smashed a knee into Lillith’s naked body. The touch of the woman’s pubic hair sent Ellie’s stomach roiling again, but Lillith didn’t even flinch. The breath whispering out of the ancient lips was rank, the stink of a flyblown slaughterhouse, and despite the blood gumming Ellie’s eyelashes and blurring her vision, she beheld the depthless evil lurking in the woman’s green eyes. It wouldn’t be enough to slay Ellie; that wouldn’t satisfy this monster. Lillith planned to inflict unspeakable horrors, to make Ellie watch as her child was torn from her still-living womb. Then Ellie would bleed to death as she watched her screaming baby devoured by this monster. As if hearing her thought, Lillith lifted her off the floor, Ellie’s belly rising closer and closer to the leering, fanged mouth. Ellie rose toward the ceiling, and though she concentrated her whole will, she was unable to breathe.
Just as her consciousness began to dissolve, the fingers around her throat loosened, the woman’s eyes flicking to something behind Ellie.
Lillith’s voice was low, but it was stitched with the first signs of panic: “What have you done to Gerald?”
Ellie swallowed, her hands on Lillith’s forearm. She stared down at the woman’s face, which was no longer smiling, anxiety replacing hunger.
Lillith glanced up at her, teeth clenched. “What have you done to him?”
Before she could respond, Lillith released her and Ellie fell to the floor in an ungainly heap. She pushed to her feet, and as she did she caught a glimpse of Lillith’s nude form stepping tentatively toward the hole in the wall. Soon she would see the ruin that had once been her lover and know that all their preparations had been for naught.
Ellie didn’t wait around to witness it.
Moving as briskly as her injured ankle would allow, she limped around the corner and mounted the stairs.
Halfway up she heard Lillith scream.
After hearing Destragis’s ghastly death cries, Ellie thought nothing could be worse. But the sound thundering through the basement walls possessed such unmitigated sorrow and fury that Ellie was forced to clap her palms over her ears and move the rest of the way up to the kitchen in a clumsy lurch.
When she did reach the main floor another grisly surprise awaited her.
The kitchen windows were filled with pale, monstrous faces. There were dozens of them, lining the windows like wayfarers seeking shelter from a blizzard.
More, their glassy black eyes were stretched wide in concern. They’re worried about their goddess, she thought in sick fascination.
But when they spotted Ellie stumbling toward a kitchen drawer, their expressions grew enraged.
You did this to her, their monstrous doll’s eyes screamed. You did this to our Lillith.
The dark, bloodless lips stretched tighter, revealing sickle-shaped teeth that dripped with pink fluid.
Chris’s blood, she thought weakly.
As her hand closed on the silver lighter, one of the faces drew her gaze.
Norman Campbell, she thought without surprise.
The screams from below had dissolved into wracking sobs, and Ellie knew her time was short. Any moment now the vampires would crash through the windows, the walls, and avenge the murder of Gerald Destragis. She backpedaled through the kitchen, doing her best to ignore the long, black claws scratching at the windows, the elongated tongues smearing the panes.
She backed into the dining room and glimpsed more white faces snarling at her, lapping greedily at the glass. They would move on Lillith’s command. Whether that entailed a frenzied orgy of rending claws and ripping teeth or a slow, ritualistic torture, either way meant death. She made it through the foyer and had taken one step toward the stairs when the floor exploded in front of her.
Ellie landed on her back, and through the dust motes and hunks of floorboard clattering against the walls, a pale figure emerged. Lillith’s face was gone, the vampire’s true features replacing the lovely mask.
“Spread your legs, Eleanor,” the vampire growled. “I want that child.”
The vampire lunged at her.
Gasping, Ellie rolled over and shoved to her feet. A pale arm shot out, and scythe-like claws harrowed her left shoulder. Hissing from the pain, Ellie rushed up the stairs as Lillith pounced again. One taloned hand sheared through the heel of her shoe and opened her flesh, but Ellie kept climbing. As Lillith flew at her again Ellie reached the second floor and dove through the doorway into the guest bedroom. Scrambling, she lurched into the closet. She yanked the pull strin
g and light flooded the tight space. She grabbed the sliding wooden compartment door with palsied fingers.
Please let this work, she thought. Please let my baby live.
She heard Lillith coming fast across the hardwood floor. Ellie jerked shut the closet door, knowing how futile the measure was, and a second later, the door smashed into her, torn free of its hinges. Ellie was driven into the wall, her shoulder splintering the small wooden compartment, dozens of razor blades spilling out. Stunned, Ellie thrust her hand into her pocket, got hold of the lighter. The door flew away, Lillith tossing it behind her into the guest bedroom as easily as a slab of cardboard.
She towered over Ellie, her face a deathmask of rage. Heedless of the pain, Ellie seized a handful of old razor blades. Lillith sank piercing claws into Ellie’s ankles and dragged her out of the closet. Frantically, Ellie opened the lighter and flicked the wheel. It sparked but didn’t catch. She tried again. Just as Lillith’s powerful body landed on her, a pale yellow flame appeared. Ellie brought her hands together, the flame licking the blades and searing her palm. At the same moment, Lillith’s razor-sharp nails raked the flesh of her belly, burrowing toward her baby. Ellie swirled the flame under the blades she clutched, but nothing happened. Exquisite pain flared in her stomach and the lighter flame winked out. Lillith’s mouth was on her open wound, sucking.
Ellie flicked the lighter again. One blade, she now saw, was darker than the rest, its paper-thin surface crusted with dried blood. She guided the blade over the flame and felt Lillith’s mouth leap away from her belly. Shocked, Ellie’s thumb slipped off the lighter wheel. She dropped every blade save one, which she now pinched between thumb and forefinger.
For a moment Ellie’s eyes met Lillith’s white ones, the hateful reptilian gaze suddenly confused. Ellie flicked the wheel again, the flame licking the coated blade.
Lillith howled in pain.
Ellie pushed to her knees and stared at the woman’s blood-smeared face. The eyes had flown wide in shock, and now they shifted to the object in Ellie’s left hand, the razor blade with which Lillith had once probably shaved her legs. Disbelief was slowly replaced with a bold cunning that filled Ellie with dread. But it worked, Ellie thought desperately. Just like Destragis, Lillith would be destroyed if she set the crusted blood aflame.
So why was the woman smiling?
Ellie brought the lighter closer to the blade.
“Before you do that,” Lillith said, her voice now a throaty growl, “you might take a look at them.”
Ellie followed Lillith’s gaze to the dark hallway and saw the white, vulpine faces, their expressions twisted with rage and terror.
Holding both the lighter and the razor blade before her, Ellie regarded Lillith. “If I burn this, they’ll die too.”
“They’ll disembowel you.”
Ellie’s eyes darted toward the vampires. “Then why are they afraid?”
“They’re afraid for me, dear. Not themselves.”
Ellie took a breath and passed the lighter under the blade again, this time keeping her eyes on the creatures in the hall. In her peripheral vision she saw Lillith’s body clench in sudden agony, but the only reaction on the part of her servants was an appalled rage.
Lillith’s voice was husky with pain. “The moment you kill me, they’ll destroy you and your child.”
“They’ll die too,” Ellie insisted, but her hope was flagging.
“Do you feel anything?”
“Why would I—” Ellie began, but Lillith’s spreading grin stopped her.
“Because you’re one of us now,” Lillith said.
The lighter wheel was sizzling her thumb, though Ellie hardly felt it. She shook her head slowly.
“You’ve been bitten, dear. By me and Gerald.”
Ellie passed a hand over her tummy, the once-smooth skin now ragged with rips and bite marks.
“Your child,” Lillith said, “is infected.”
Ellie’s bottom lip quivered. No!
She let the flame die, got slowly to her feet. Lillith rose too. Ellie glanced again at the vulpine faces, their terror now becoming anticipation.
Lillith took a step forward, but Ellie flicked the lighter, brought it within inches of the blade.
“Let us go,” Ellie said. “Let us go and I’ll let you live.”
Lillith’s grin never wavered. “You can’t kill me, Eleanor.”
Ellie held the flame under the razor blade. Lillith collapsed, wailing. Downstairs, Ellie heard glass shatter. A few feet to her left, another pane exploded, a ghostly white hand punching through the second-story window.
On her knees, Lillith shot her a venomous glare. “You fucking cunt.”
“Let us go!” Ellie commanded.
The vampire in the window dropped inside the room. Smoke rose from the blade. Lillith’s upper lip curled in a feral snarl. Blood began to seep from her pores. A window down the hall burst and more glass tinkled on the floor.
Ellie let the flame wink out. “Order them back or I’ll burn you alive.”
The vampire who’d punched through the window came at her in a blur. Ellie flicked the lighter, held it under the blade.
“Wait!” Lillith shouted.
The reaching talons stopped just shy of Ellie’s throat.
“Back,” Lillith said.
Growling, the vampire backpedaled, but only a couple steps.
Lillith’s slitted white eyes returned to Ellie.
“What do you want?”
Ellie swallowed, a painful clicking in her throat. “Only to leave.”
Lillith chuckled, but there was pain in it. “I can’t allow that.”
“Then we’ll both die,” Ellie said.
“You wouldn’t do that to your—”
“If we’re going to die anyway, I’m taking you with me…” Ellie brought the lighter closer. “…you ugly bitch.”
Lillith’s eyes widened in rage.
Ellie brought the flame right up to the blade.
Lillith shouted, “All right!”
Then, rising to her feet, Lillith stood aside.
Ellie’s hands trembled as she sidled past the woman’s accursed figure. She was sure at any moment the long fingers would shoot out and pluck the lighter from her grip, but thus far Lillith was only standing beside the other vampire, watching her. Ellie backed toward the doorway, and though she didn’t want to take her eyes off the monster for a second, she chanced a look behind her and saw, pale and hulking just outside the door, the scowling creature that had once been Norman Campbell.
The floor creaked as Campbell took a step forward.
“Make him stop!” Ellie shouted, her voice rising in terror.
Lillith raised her head and growled something in a tongue Ellie didn’t understand. The meaning though, was clear enough. Not only did the vampires in the hall back away, but Ellie saw the one beside Lillith backpedal until it bumped the wall.
Ellie let the lighter flick out—she had no idea how much fuel might be left—and backed hurriedly out the doorway. Taking care to spot any creature preparing to leap at her, she backpedaled down the stairs, through the foyer and out of the house.
Hopefully for the last time, she thought.
On the lawn she beheld a multitude of pale figures. Ellie moved down the steps and into the yard. The vampires parted like curtains drawn open, and Ellie edged between them, trying to see in all directions at once. Most of all, though, she kept glancing at Lillith, who had stepped onto the porch to watch her.
When Ellie had hobbled halfway across the yard, she turned and saw with a gush of hope that the lane had reappeared, and though it wasn’t as wide as it had been when she and Chris had first arrived, it looked broad enough to drive a car through. Just as encouragingly, the mass of vampires ended at the forest.
Unless more were lurking in the brush.
Ellie shook off the thought and turned to see that Lillith had, impossibly, halved the distance despite the fact that Ellie had only taken her e
yes off her for a couple seconds. Ellie brought the unlit lighter closer to the razor blade.
She said, “I don’t want the pain to come back.”
Lillith matched her step for step. “As long as you leave that here,” she said, nodding at the blade in Ellie’s hand.
“When I’m safe,” Ellie answered, “I’ll drop it and—”
“You’ll never be safe,” Lillith said.
Ellie shook her head, struggling against the icy fear coursing through her.
“Drop it now,” Lillith said, her eyes blazing.
“No,” Ellie said, her thumb touching the lighter wheel. She experienced a moment’s satisfaction at the fearful way Lillith’s eyes flitted there. Not the only one who can inflict pain, are you? Then she cleared her head. She still had a long way to go. It wouldn’t be wise to get too confident now.
In a tight voice, she said, “Tell them not to follow me.”
“Why should I? You’re not giving me any assurances.”
“You don’t deserve any.”
For a moment, Lillith seemed to consider.
Then, she said, “If you harm that blade, they’ll find you. They’ll tear out your baby and feast on its screams.”
Ellie took in the vicious black eyes, the quivering, infuriated mouths.
She nodded.
“Then get off my land,” Lillith said, “before I decide to drink you myself.”
The next fifteen minutes were the longest of Ellie’s life. Every fiber of her being cried out to run, goddammit, to sprint as hard and long as you can and don’t stop until this place is far behind you.
But that was the fear talking. Moving gingerly, casting glances all around her, she kept the lighter poised beneath the razor blade, her thumb resting on the wheel. Her broken wrist ached terribly. Her arms alternated between an enervated numbness and a howling chorus of agony, but she refused to let down her guard. Whenever the urge to rest did strike her, the forest seemed to tremble, the trees sensing an opening. Several times she turned to see a pale face withdrawing into the woods.
She thought of Kat as she made her way down the shadowy lane, the droning cicadas and the chirping crickets masking the more furtive sounds of animate vegetation and the bloodthirsty vampires tracking her movements.
The Darkest Lullaby Page 29
