The Bonding Ritual (Girls Wearing Black: Book Four)

by Spencer Baum

  “We cut her head off. You probably couldn’t find her body because we left it in the mansion when it burned.”

  Daciana let go of Jill and stood up.

  “To your feet,” she commanded

  Even as Jill resisted the command with her mind, her body obeyed. She stood up and turned to face Daciana, seeing for the first time what a mess she was.

  Daciana’s clothes were bloodstained and torn. Her skin was covered in dried blood and dirt. Her hair had fallen down and was caked in mud and gunk.

  What happened to you? Jill wanted to ask, but couldn’t.

  “Who killed Sergio?” Daciana said.

  The question brought Jill tremendous relief, even if her body wasn’t capable of expressing it.

  Sergio was dead? Had they done it? Had Winnie and her team really done it? It was exhilarating even to consider the idea. If Sergio was dead, then it all was worth it. No matter what Daciana did to Jill now, even if she forced her to put back all the money she stole, even if she made Jill tell her every detail of the operation from the very beginning, even if she murdered Jill before the night was over, it was worth it.

  The mission was a success. Coronation was over.

  “We had a team of vampire hunters waiting for Sergio at Mary Torrance’s house,” Jill said.

  “But Sergio didn’t die at Mary’s house.”

  “He didn’t?”

  “You don’t know? How curious. Perhaps all didn’t go according to your plan. I need to speak with the others in your group. Who is helping you?”

  This was a question she really didn’t want to answer. Not that it mattered much—everyone was on the road, already beyond Daciana’s reach.

  But she still hated to be a rat.

  “Nicky Bloom,” she said. “Ryan Jenson. Phillip and Helena Fischer. Alvin Green, Eve-”

  A gunshot from the other end of the hall interrupted Jill’s confession.

  “Get down, Jill!” someone shouted. “Down, now!”

  Jill dropped to the floor right as the fireworks began. Explosions and yelling and gunfire, lots of gunfire. Within seconds, the room was full of smoke. Jill heard screams and bodies crashing into walls and bullet casings clattering to the ground.

  Jill crawled on her stomach away from the noise, covering the length of the hall on elbows and knees while chaos reigned behind her. When she reached the end of the hall she pushed herself to her feet and ran into the great room.

  The battle followed her in there.

  Daciana came first, leaping into the room from the hallway and soaring all the way to the opposite wall, which she used as a springboard for her next jump.

  “Stay down, Jill!” came a voice. It was Helena. Helena was here. Who else? How did they know to come?

  Jill ducked towards the near wall as Daciana’s pursuers entered the room. Helena and Winnie were in the lead, with machine guns in their arms. Eve was right behind them, holding a barrel-shaped tube emitting an ultraviolet laser. Behind Eve was Frankie, who had a sword in his hands, and a calm, inquisitive look on his face.

  Daciana bounced around the room like a pinball, always one jump ahead of the gunfire, which pulverized the walls and filled the air with dust.

  “Run, Jill!” Helena screamed.

  Jill rushed out of the great room and into the foyer. She made a mad dash across the open floor, headed for the hallway that led to the kitchen. She was almost there when Daciana came flying in, landing right in front of her.

  “Don’t go away just yet, Jill,” Daciana said. “We need to finish our conversation about my bank accounts.”

  With the back of her hand, Daciana slapped her across the face. The force of the blow lifted Jill off the ground and sent her crashing into a nearby cabinet. Jill was still conscious when she landed, but barely. She opened her eyes and could hardly see. She tried to stand and immediately fell down again.

  “Stay on the ground!” Helena yelled.

  Jill felt so dizzy she hardly knew where she was. The room was spinning, end over end—she felt like she was inside a clothes dryer looking out. Breathing deeply, she tried to control herself, but she couldn’t pull it together. The sounds around her were a jumble. Gunfire and shouting blended together into a muddled mess of noise.

  That faded.

  The fight was leaving the great room. Her vision still spinning, Jill couldn’t see them leave, but she could hear them. Daciana led the others into the hallway, towards the kitchen, and into the rest of the house.

  She was alone.

  She tried to stand again but only got as far as her hands and knees before the wooziness took over.

  Focus on something, she thought. Focus on something and get yourself together.

  She was looking at the floor, which was a blur of images. Trash, papers, bullets, a knife…

  A knife?

  A shiny silver blade attached to a golden hilt. She stared at the knife for a second, willing her scattered vision to come into focus.

  She had seen this knife before. Spring carnival. The presentation of gifts. This was Kim Renwick’s gift to Daciana.

  She reached out for the knife, missing it on the first try, but grabbing it on the second. With the knife in-hand, she willed herself to her feet. She stood in place, testing her balance. It was coming back. The room was still spinning, but more slowly now. She just needed to give it a second.

  “Jill!”

  She turned her head towards the sound, finding its source at the entryway. It was Alvin.

  “Come on!” he said. “The front door is this way. Let’s get out of here!”

  Yes. The front door. She was in the foyer. She could just walk through the front door!

  She took a step. Her balance held. She took another. And another.

  And then the room went dark.

  “What’s happened?” Jill said. Her head still foggy, she wondered if something had gone wrong with her vision.

  “The power’s out,” Alvin said. “It’s just the lights going off. Come on, Jill. This way!”

  More machine gun fire sounded from elsewhere in the house. Listening to it, Jill imagined where the others might be now. She saw the blueprints from the TPM database in her mind. The kitchen, the dining hall, the path she took all the way to the back of the mansion, through the moon room…

  Into the crypt.

  “She’s spreading them out.”

  “Forget about that. Come on, Jill!”

  “That’s what she’s doing, Alvin. She’s leading them through the mansion and splitting them apart. And now she’s turned off the lights. She’s split them up to make it easier to kill them.”

  “I don’t know what you’re thinking but you’ve got to come with me right now. We’re computer hackers, Jill, not vampire hunters.”

  The problem was too much space. With a huge mansion for her to roam, Daciana always had somewhere to run and leap to get away from their bullets.

  “She won’t kill me,” Jill said “She needs me alive so I can get her money back for her.”

  “Jill, I’m leaving. Are you coming with me or not?”

  “No. You get out of here, Alvin. Go to Richmond. Sergio is dead. The mission is over.”

  “Sergio is dead?”

  Jill had already turned around and was walking back into the mansion.

  “Good luck, Alvin,” she said, as she headed into the darkness.

  She put her hand on the wall and followed the perimeter of the room until it led her to the hallway. It was pitch black, but Jill knew where she needed to go. She could see the blueprints in her mind. She imagined herself as a tiny set of feet scurrying across the diagram of Daciana’s house. A diagram she had completely memorized.

  With a knife in her right hand, and her left hand dragging on the wall, she moved slowly towards the kitchen, following the same path she had taken when she snuck away from Daciana’s party.

  Kitchen, dining hall, parlor, south corridor…

  She came to the kitchen and pushed ope
n the swinging door. She was two steps in when she accidentally kicked something on the floor, causing a noisy collision of pots and pans.

  “Dammit,” she whispered.

  She took a deep breath and kept on going.

  In the dining hall, a big bay window on one end allowed in some moonlight, and she could actually see where she was going. She moved quietly, staying close to the wall, and was nearly to the end when someone whispered her name.

  She turned to see Helena, huddled in the corner. Her leg was at an awkward angle.

  “Helena, oh my God!”

  Jill rushed over to her, and in the moonlight, she could see that Helena was badly injured. Her leg was broken. She was bleeding from her side.

  “You need to get out of here, Jill,” she said.

  “I’ll get you to the foyer,” said Jill. “We’ll get you-”

  “No! She’s coming back any minute now. My leg—it’s no good. She’s toying with us, Jill. She could have killed me but she left me here. You need to get out of here. We’re outmatched.”

  “Where are the others?”

  “All over the house. She’s forcing us to separate. She’s going to take her time. You can still get out of here. Just, before you do, give me my gun, will you? It’s right over there.”

  Helena pointed at a machine gun that had slid under the table. Jill rushed to grab it and brought it to Helena.

  “I’m coming back for you,” Jill said. “I have a plan.”

  “There’s no plan that will work. She’s too strong. You need to get out of here.”

  Jill stood up and made for the exit.

  “Sit tight. We’ll get through this,” she whispered.

  She didn’t believe her own words. Her plan to somehow lure Daciana into the crypt seemed ill conceived now. Yes, Daciana would be confined down there, but it wouldn’t do Jill any good if the other hunters were scattered throughout the house, unable to fight.

  Or even see. The parlor didn’t have a big window like in the dining room, and once again Jill found herself in total darkness. This is what the crypt would be like if she got there. A room where the vampire could see but the humans couldn’t.

  Keeping her hand on the wall, Jill took small steps, mindful that the floor was cluttered with all manner of things that could make her trip. She spent a long time navigating the tiny parlor.

  It wasn’t until she reached the south corridor that she could see at all. A gleam of moonlight at the end of the hallway allowed her to see and step around the debris, and also to see the body lying dead on the floor.

  Jill knelt down in front of the body. It was Winnie. Her neck was torn open and she was covered in blood.

  I’m so sorry, Winnie.

  Jill didn’t know the full circumstances that brought these people here, but she suspected it had something to do with Ryan’s text. He had seen Daciana driving away from the school. He notified the others. They sent help.

  It was her fault.

  Winnie’s gun was on the floor next to her body. Jill picked it up, but quickly decided it was too cumbersome, and she didn’t know how to use it anyway. As she put the gun down again, she realized she had nothing even remotely resembling a plan.

  All she knew was that she couldn’t leave. She couldn’t run away when the others had risked their lives to save her. Kneeling in front of Winnie’s body, she heard the woman’s words echoing in her mind.

  There comes a time in the life of every agent in the Network when she must decide what she is willing to die for.

  Jill got up, stepped over Winnie, and kept going.

  The glow at the end of the hall came from the moon room, where the glass ceiling allowed the full light of the moon to shine down. As Jill stepped inside, she remembered her last visit to this room, when she hid in the foliage while a crowd of vampires gathered on the upper level.

  She made her way across the path on the lower level and towards the stairs. To get to the crypt, she needed to go to the upper deck and then underneath the waterfall.

  When she got to the waterfall, she found Frankie standing there. His back was pressed against the rocks, a sword in his hand. He looked right at Jill and put his finger over his lips.

  Then he stepped away from the wall and swung his sword in a massive arc. At first, Jill didn’t understand. She couldn’t see what he was swinging at.

  Then Daciana burst through the waterfall from the other side, and Frankie’s sword sliced across her midsection. When Daciana landed, blood was gushing from underneath her dress. Frankie doubled back on her, swinging at the ground where she lay, but she rolled aside just in time, and his sword crashed into the rock. Her blood pooling all around, Daciana still had enough strength to jump to her feet. Frankie came after her with the sword again but she was too fast, and he missed. As Frankie’s arms swung past his body, Daciana hit him in the face with an open palm and he went flying backwards, his sword coming loose from his hands and clattering on the floor.

  Daciana chased after him, roaring like a lion as she ran.

  Frankie was scrambling to his feet but he wasn’t fast enough. Daciana would be on him before he was up. Jill cringed, knowing there was nothing she could do.

  Five gunshots rang out in rapid succession. They hit Daciana dead on, stopping her in her tracks. She hunched over, and Jill saw Eve standing on the other end of the ledge, a smoking pistol in her hands.

  And now Frankie was up again, charging at Daciana with his right arm cocked. He threw a vicious punch that caught Daciana in the face and sent her reeling backwards.

  Right at Jill.

  Jill’s mind wasn’t in the moment when it happened. As Daciana tumbled towards her, Jill was no longer in the moon room. She was in the barn, thrusting her knife at a dummy made of straw.

  The blade plunged into Daciana’s heart.

  Surprised at her own success, and not knowing what to do next, Jill let go of the knife. As Daciana fell to the floor, she reached for the blade still stuck in her chest. She had her hands on the hilt when Frankie arrived with his sword, and cut off her head.

  Chapter 49

  One dead, two wounded. That’s what Jill would write on the official report of this raid.

  One dead, two wounded, vampire terminated.

  Frankie carried out Winnie’s body, placing her in the back of an SUV and covering her with a blanket. Helena, who had torn up her shirt to make tourniquets for her own injuries, was able to hobble out of the mansion with Jill and Frankie’s help. Eve, who was strong enough to carry a pistol when it counted, wasn’t strong enough to carry the rest of her weaponry. At some point during the fight, a stray bullet caught her in the shoulder. By the time she crawled into the SUV, Eve’s face was pale and her clothes were drenched in blood.

  “Frankie’s going to take us to a safe house in Arlington,” Eve said in a weak, tired voice. “I know someone who can help with Winnie’s body, and get the rest of us fixed up.”

  “I’ll go with you,” said Jill.

  “No. You need to get out of town.”

  “I don’t want to leave without you guys.”

  “The others are at the rendezvous. You should be there too.”

  “They can wait,” said Jill. “I want to help.”

  Eve leaned to one side, tilting her head up at Jill. She had a distant look in her eyes. When she spoke, she did so quietly, biting back the pain.

  “We’re anonymous, Jill. You aren’t. Somehow, Daciana knew you were here. Others in the clan may know as well. Odds are good you’ll have people looking for you before the night is over. You have got to get out of town before it’s too late.”

  From the other end of the car, Helena chimed in as well.

  “Go to Richmond, Jill. That’s an order.”

  Jill sighed. “Okay,” she said. “I’ll go to Richmond. Hey, before I go…how did you guys know I was in trouble?”

  “It was Ryan,” said Eve. “He saw Daciana driving away from the school and knew she was coming here. He called
Phillip, who got word to us. When you see Ryan, give him a big hug. If it weren’t for him, you’d be dead, and Daciana would be alive.”

  “Yeah,” Jill said, thinking about Ryan’s text. “Were you guys still at Mary’s house when you heard?”

  Eve groaned, then said, “Jill, let’s sort this out later, okay?”

  “Please, just tell me.”

  “Yes, we were at Mary’s house. Sergio never showed. But according to Phillip…”

  Eve waved her hand and shook her head. “We’ll talk about this later. It’s time for all of us to go.”

  “Right,” Jill said.

  “See you in Richmond,” said Eve

  “Yes, I’ll see you there.”

  Jill helped Eve close the door to the SUV. As she walked to her own car, she held up her phone, and dialed Ryan’s number.

  She got his voicemail.

  “Hey, it’s me. I wanted to let you know I’m okay, and I’ll see you soon.”

  She ended the call, hopeful he would call her back soon. She had to talk to him and figure out what happened tonight. She had so many questions. About Sergio, and Nicky, and what happened at prom after she left.

  But most of all she wanted to ask Ryan about the timeline, which didn’t make any sense to her. She received his text as soon as her cell phone was out of the crypt and could get a signal. But more than fifteen minutes had passed since he sent it.

  The drive from school to Daciana’s house was ten minutes at most.

  How did Frankie and the others get to the house at the same time as Daciana? If Ryan saw Daciana driving away from school, and the others were all the way up in Huntington Heights…it just didn’t add up.

  Jill started her car. She considered following Frankie out the back way, but figured if she was going straight to Richmond, it would be better to leave through the front.

  A minute later she was on the highway headed south. The road ahead of her was clear sailing, which was lucky, because the traffic going the other way was backed up for miles.

  The flashing lights of police cars and an ambulance had the northbound highway fully blocked at the exit. It looked like there had been one heck of an accident. Not normally one to gawk at a wreck on the other side of the road, especially not tonight, Jill kept her eyes straight ahead.