“You choose, my pet,” he said into her hair. She pointed, smiling broadly, as though selecting a new puppy. And then their pace picked up. They floated toward a twentysomething woman modestly dressed in jeans, a tank top, and fitted blazer, walking with a handful of friends. She seemed the type that had been dragged along on a girls’ night out, succumbing to the pressures of the wilder ringleader of the group: a disheveled reveler, who pranced down the street singing along to one of the songs drifting out of the loudest bar on the block. I couldn’t imagine how this seemingly sensible sober young woman would be captured.
But Wylie and his partner walked past this target and quickly exchanged glances and that’s when I saw it. They pinpointed every Krewe member within a twenty-foot radius and all those eyes transfixed their prey in her place, rooting and trapping her there. She appeared at ease as her friends wandered off a few steps ahead, and then Wylie and his partner looped back around, coming up behind the young woman, and took their places on either side of her. He threw his arm around the target’s shoulder and I lunged, pushing past the bodies in front of me, to toss a handful of the dust, just as Wylie sunk something into her bicep. It looked like a long black spike, laced with poison, I could only imagine. He stabbed sharp and quick then yanked it out, tucking the evidence back into his pocket. For the briefest moment she lost her footing, like any other tipsy bar-hopper might have. But the two of them anchored her, leading her away.
I had failed again, and the night had only begun. I stopped moving for a moment, jostled on all sides by people out to have a good time amid others out to destroy them. How could we keep going on like this? I felt Lance at my side, pulling me. It was so loud everywhere, the music and the people and so many conversations happening at the same time when he spoke. “Brody looks hungry,” he said. I scanned all around and found him, this new version of him, stepping out of a bar. He stood tall, inhabiting his new physique like a coat of arms. I was certain he could outrace anyone. The transformed Jimmy was at his side.
They didn’t say a word; they just began following a petite blonde, who looked about my age. She waved goodbye as she stepped out of a restaurant, wearing what appeared to be a work uniform of a white shirt and black pants, her hair in a ponytail. It wasn’t Bourbon Street, but it was still plenty crowded—enough that she wouldn’t have noticed the pace of footsteps picking up behind her, or the two members of the Krewe among the others lazily gazing in darkened store windows as they wandered along the opposite side of the street. She pulled out a cell phone, launching into an easy, spirited chat. I took off, running ahead, not caring if my footsteps or panting were heard. I wouldn’t miss my shot this time. She passed under a streetlamp as I neared her, and I darted out, as fast as I could, throwing a handful of dust at her side just as Jimmy and Brody tripped over me and lunged at her.
The girl spun around, a beast unleashed, as she looked right at the two of them, running backwards now. “Stay away from me!” The words tore out of her in the most terrifying, bone-chilling scream. “Stay away!” She sped off, her feet hitting the pavement so hard her steps sounded like gunshots. Someone across the street could be heard speaking to a 9-1-1 operator: “I’m not sure, but it sounded like an attack or something . . .”
“It’s okay. You’re a first-timer. Next time, next time,” came Jimmy’s voice as he and Brody scrambled to their feet. I followed them a few blocks but by the time the sirens pierced the air, they had transformed back to their other selves and disappeared into the night. The police would never find them now.
Somehow Lance had managed to remain close. “That was all you, wasn’t it?” he whispered.
“Do you think?”
“Well, I didn’t get there in time, and I don’t think she would have noticed them on her own,” he reasoned. “I also don’t think she would have been that fast.” It was true: the girl had gotten away with such speed and force, she could have been one of them. I made a mental note for Dante and Max that their red dust seemed to work.
As the night wore on, the Krewe split into groups, making it impossible to follow everyone, or to thwart all the attacks. They were never that far away from one another, and they all seemed so telepathically attuned. We would manage to disrupt one near kill, only to find those same Krewe members joining up with another band in the process of pillaging another victim a few blocks down. With each kill and soul capture, the members of the Krewe grew more euphoric, as though these acts fueled them, making them stronger and wildly joyous. Even Lance and I could feel their collective frenzy, the freeness of it. The feeling emanated from each of them, traces of it getting under your skin, even if you fought it off as actively as we did. They had physical advantages too, these creatures: They were impossibly fast and agile. At the first sound of sirens they would scatter, scaling buildings like bugs, slithering into dark spaces. The most skilled ones could transform in less than the blink of an eye. You might see someone walking toward you, and never take your eyes off them, then suddenly lose them so instantaneously you could only assume you had looked away or that someone else had stepped in front of them, obscuring your view.
Most chilling was all they could accomplish without saying a word. They could be yards away from one another and one would choose a target and the others would sense it and focus their gaze on that person too, and then it was as though the victim was caught in their web. It felt like invisible laser tag—the combined effort of that focus could root a person in place or send him veering off in a direction he might never have gone on his own. I remembered that feeling of being separated from the group on Max’s birthday and not seeming to mind, and I understood it now.
The bodies. There had been a level of gore I had never wished to see. And there were so many. The few souls I’d seen taken inspired a different brand of fear. Those people were now drafted into this army. I shivered at the notion that I would encounter them again and they would be out for my blood. By the end of the night, Lance and I had racked up a mental flipbook of the double identities of many Krewe members, useful knowledge to be sure, but we had also accumulated so many new, horrific images. They were burned into our brains and I knew there could be no cure for the lifetime of nightmares they would provide. The guilt, too, was inescapable. I had not saved them all. There were people who wouldn’t go home tonight, who would be assumed missing because I had neglected to save them; others would turn up tomorrow and need to be identified by family members. These thoughts made my heart ache. All I could hope was that having seen this evil up close, and learned how they operated, might help us know how to fight them next time.
But I knew our time was expiring, too. The streets had begun to clear, the predawn hours setting in. Lance found my arm, guiding me toward the house. We were now just a block from the alley where we had witnessed the night’s first tragedy. And then I heard it, the scrape and scratch and slice of another body being picked apart. There was no mistaking it. I set off.
“No,” Lance whispered.
“Yes,” I hissed back.
Together we followed it, until we reached the gated courtyard of a restaurant that had been closed for several hours. Four of them were there, two guys, two girls, all familiar to us now, taking their hideous trophies to be used in the next ritual no doubt. They all stepped back at once, blood on their hands and clothes. Then they transformed. They were suddenly clean again in these new forms but still clutching their dark souvenirs. They tucked them in purses and backpacks—scraps of clothes, a watch, a digit here, an ear there, a small vial of blood. Then, with smiles on their lips, they leapt over the gate and walked on so easily, leaving the ravaged body amid the flowers.
I couldn’t take this anymore, this killing spree that I hadn’t stopped. The rage boiled inside me, insulating me from my fear. I followed them. I needed to know where they went. What happened after this rampage? I could feel Lance burning about this choice, even as his shadow walked silently beside mine. But I also knew he wouldn’t let me go on my own. And so we
trailed behind the group of them as they wound their way back toward the park where the evening had begun.
But they peeled off before reaching Congo Square. Instead, they scaled another set of gates we knew well: those guarding Saint Louis Number One. Back, back, back they ran, weaving through the alleyways, leapfrogging over the low-lying tombs, and hopping atop the higher ones until they reached their destination: Lance’s crypt. The pristine white tomb glowed, a beacon. They pushed in the marble slab and disappeared inside a two-foot-tall doorway. We managed to slink in behind them, so close that I bumped into one of the girls. “Hands to yourself, Marcus. There’ll be time for that soon enough,” she cooed to him.
“Whatever you say.” The one with the crooked smile grunted in pleasant confusion.
Inside, the space was tight—about seven feet high and nine feet long, the walls and floor all smooth marble and oven warm.
“Do we just leave this all here? I want credit. I got some good stuff,” the other girl said, her tone spacy, clueless, as she emptied a tote bag with all manner of human parts. The other man’s backpack landed on my right foot. I felt the warm weight of its soft, freshly harvested contents and wished I could move my foot but I feared any motion would reveal us. My skin crawled; my mind struggled to focus on anything else.
“Yeah, leave it in your bag for now. He’ll get it all. He’s good,” Marcus explained. “He used to be a big deal but he had a falling-out with the Prince or something.”
“Don’t let that happen,” the other man snapped, his voice gruff, cold.
“Now what?” asked the girl.
“We celebrate, of course,” said Marcus. He set off running into the darkness at the back of the crypt. I had assumed that there was a wall there, but he kept going, his footsteps growing more faint. The other three whooped and cheered as they rushed to join him. Part of me wanted to let them get far enough away to be free to talk to Lance—he had built this place. Had he known what lurked here? Where did this lead?
I heard his footsteps now. “Should we?” he asked, tension pinching his words.
“Yes,” I answered, without thinking.
That corridor of suffocating darkness sloped down so steeply I thought we very well might slide to the bottom. I held my hands against the damp, bumpy stones of the wall. The path forked and the direction we took quickly spilled out into a landing lit with a red hue from below. The stone beneath our feet had been replaced with a long strip of glass, a window onto a scene somewhere far below us. It looked idyllic at first glance: a tree-studded lake, its banks lined with lounging figures. But the color settings needed adjustment: the trees were all black and gray, the grass dead and decaying. The lake itself was red. I looked at Lance, as though for confirmation, but my thoughts were interrupted by something worse. I gasped and he looked up from the sight below. He saw our bodies reflected in the window, and then he understood: we were no longer shadows here; we could be seen.
We ran on the glass, deeper into this tunnel until the windows below were again replaced with a stone walkway. The path ahead forked again to another corridor with cutouts on the wall, bathed in a crimson glow. These, too, were windows, and in one we saw another view of that lake. Now the four Krewe members we had followed here appeared, stripping off their clothes as they ran to the lake and leapt in, splashing. Someone emerged from it, red-tinged and resplendent: Clio.
“Let’s get outta here,” Lance said. I didn’t need convincing. I only now realized I had barely been breathing for the past several minutes.
“This is a stupid question—” I started as we jogged back the way we had come.
“No, none of this was here. I built a very boring crypt of four walls, no basement, no windows into the underworld,” he whispered back, a tremor in his voice.
“Just checking.”
We turned a corner. I could have sworn it was the direction we had come from, but we found ourselves instead in another loop, reaching another fork. A new window appeared. In this one, two men submerged another in the same viscous red liquid to the point of drowning. He flailed his arms and legs and was pulled up just in time, only to be sunk down again. Over and over. In the distance, bleachers were full of a cheering crowd. The air had grown so hot now, the sweat trickled down my back. Panic set in.
“This was not the way we came,” I whispered.
“It was the only way, though,” Lance answered.
And then we froze: footsteps approached. We slunk back away from the window.
“Don’t say another word,” the voice ordered us, sharp, not to be contested. I knew it well. Lucian stepped into the light. He carried an empty black sack. “It’s not you. It is a maze here full of optical tricks to trap trespassers. Come,” he signaled. His eyes were dead, two dull stones. Fear lined his voice. He didn’t have to say it—if we were found, none of us would ever leave. We jogged after him, past more windows onto horrific acts and others that were meant to contain joyful, hedonistic times but looked equally heart-stopping, as that frolic in the bloody lake had been.
He led us, darting down dark pathways we never would have found on our own, and finally we reached that steep ramp. We had begun running up toward the entrance to the crypt when a woman’s voice rang out, stopping us in our tracks.
“Luuuuucian!” she called. “What’s taking so long? We’re waiting to award the night’s winner!” I felt Lance’s strong hand at the small of my back, protective. I could sense him wanting to pounce.
Pain flashed in Lucian’s eyes. “Coming, Clio. Forgive me, your grace. I was just about to collect the offerings.” It hurt me to see him answer to this creature. He grabbed my arm and pulled me, Lance following.
He whispered urgently, “Run as far as you can down here, turn right, and look for a cutout in the wall, showing a staircase. Climb through. Go.”
I opened my mouth to thank him and he put his finger up to his lips, signaling me not to. He ran, disappearing up the ramp, that black sack in hand to collect what had been deposited at the mouth of the crypt.
Lance and I took off, speeding down that endless track, following his directions until we found it: a dim, hazy cutout we could’ve just as easily missed, looking out onto a familiar staircase. It wasn’t enough that we would try to escape ourselves. I wished we could take Lucian with us. He did not belong here among these killers. But we climbed through, falling, falling so much farther than we expected. Finally, we landed with a thud and twisted, entwined limbs on the second floor of the LaLaurie mansion.
31. She Really Wasn’t Trying
It wasn’t easy reporting back to Connor. Lance and I raced out of the mansion just as the early-morning sun was beginning its ascent. We only stopped running when we reached the confines of our courtyard and then we collapsed on the cold ground before the fountain, unable to even make it to the chaise. Lance stretched out his arms, and I nestled my head in against his chest, closing my eyes for a moment and trying to push the night away.
We found everyone together in the common room, all still in their clothes from the day before, waiting for us. When we caught our breath enough to speak, we didn’t quite have the words. Slowly, Connor drew it out of us in bits and pieces as the others leaned in listening close.
“The cops came right away, but it was still too late, always too late.”
“They shape-shift so fast, even when you’re watching them, you still can miss it.”
“The sirens were constant. I think they had the whole police force out.”
We recounted everything at our speed, numbed by the trauma as we were. When we were finally through, Connor dismissed the group, ordering us to get a few hours’ sleep, but stopped Lance and me before we made it too far.
“Have either of you heard from Sabine? I would’ve thought she oughtta be back by now.”
I looked at Lance, bracing for his answer. He glanced in my direction and spoke quietly to his feet. “I left a message or two right when she left.” Then a shade louder, as though defending hi
mself: “But that was it and I never got her.”
“I texted her,” I said, with a shrug.
“You did?” Lance asked.
I nodded. “She just said everything was fine.” The truth of the matter was, it would have been impossible for me to get a solid reading on Sabine even under the best of circumstances. I was too skeptical of her every move to begin with, and I stopped fully trusting her after her first date with Wylie. “Have you tried calling her?” I asked Connor.
“Thanks, Haven, revolutionary idea,” he said flatly. “Yes, and I got her and she told me exactly what I wanted to hear, which is why I don’t believe a word. I don’t want to sound the alarm yet, so I thought it would make the most sense for you to call her parents, Haven.”
“And say what?” I scowled.
“Whatever. Just find out where the hell she is,” he barked. He jotted something down on a slip of paper and handed it to me. “Here’s their number.”
Dude, I’m gonna need a full report on what worked later, okay?” Dante said when Lance and I got to their room. “Max is even more of a perfectionist than I am and I promised him I’d call Mariette’s today to fill him in.”
“Some definite successes.” I nodded, waving goodbye. “I’ll be by in a few.” I didn’t care to be alone right now, after the night we had had, but I was anxious to change my clothes.
As soon as I let myself into my room, I heard the beeping. Who knew how long it had been going on. I climbed up to my bed, grabbing my phone, which had never buzzed at me before, from the night table. When I clicked the bottom button, the noise stopped and a message overtook the screen.
Infatuate Page 30
