Crane (13 page)

Ichabod
took a brazen step forward. His rush to intervene coming to an abrupt halt when the blade of a sword winged through the air. Blood sprayed from Baltus’s neck, hitting the floor in thick splatted successions, like a rock skipping over the water. A crimson slash broke through the skin of his neck. Slowly, it grew. Opening. Gaping. Dribbling gore, as his head rolled off the stump of his neck.

Ichabod didn’t wait for it to thum
p to ground. Spinning on the ball of his foot, he dove into Katrina’s room and latched the door behind him. He crossed the room with determined strides, gathering her in his arms before sinking to the floor to hide them both between the wall and her bed.

Katrina roused with a groan,
which Ichabod stifled by clamping a firm hand over her mouth. As she squirmed and fought against him, he urgently hissed against her ear, “Katrina, I can assure you there has never been a better time to panic. Yet, you
must
be still. The killer is in the house.”

Katrina twisted her head
. Frightened eyes, bright with unshed tears, sought confirmation on Ichabod’s face. He nodded, pleading with his eyes for her to be still. A thud in the hall snapped both of their stares toward the sliver of light shining in from under Katrina’s door. Heavy footfalls echoed down the hall, drawing near with an ominous
thump, sss, thump, sss.

I
chabod squeezed his eyes shut, uttering a silent prayer. Not one of fear, but one of mercy. If one of them were to meet their end, and that likelihood was increasing with each nearing boot clomp, Ichabod prayed it be him. If the trembling woman in his arms—who smelled of a sweet blend jasmine oil and honey—could be spared, he would gladly sacrifice his life.

The footfalls halted
… right outside of Katrina’s door.

Katrina whimpered behind Ichabod’s hand
, burying her head against his chest, as the shadow of two large boots blocked the sliver of light. Once more, that menacing hiss sounded. Bile stung the back of Ichabod’s throat. He weaved his hand into Katrina’s hair to hold her still and spare her the horrific sight of her father’s unseeing eye staring beneath the door crack—his head impaled on the end of a long blade.

Ichabod
’s ferociously beating heart threatened to tear from his chest as the doorknob jiggled beneath the stranger’s grip. With frantic need, his gaze scoured the room in search of a weapon, an exit,
anything
that could help them. Tragically, he came up empty handed. Tightening his grip around Katrina, he dotted a kiss into her hair and tried to reassure himself it wouldn’t be the last.

Suddenly, in the most a
stounding of miracles, the boot shadows pivoted away in a hurried rush that caused their heels to click together. The figure strode back down the hall at a near run. Katrina’s head rose to peer at Ichabod, unspoken questions swirling in her beautiful eyes. Were they safe? Was he gone? All Ichabod could manage was a slight shake of his head. It was too early to tell, and far too big a risk to climb from their hiding place and check. Instead, Ichabod rolled to his back, letting his head fall to the floor, as Katrina’s muffled sobs soaked the front of his shirt.

13

Ireland

The plush terry cloth robe slipped from Ireland’s shoulders with a whispering caress before pooling in a heap around her ankles. Marble tiles chilled her bare feet as she stepped into the walk-in shower. The tips of her fingers slid across stainless steel. With a flick of her wrist, the trio of showerheads flowed to life. Welcoming heat came at her from all angles, pulsating over her curves with a rhythmic seduction. Ireland turned, a groan escaping her as the streams massaged all the right places. Steam rose, fogging the handle and creating a cloud of humidity that hugged her frame. Tipping her head back, she let the droplets rain down on her face and across her closed lids. Her lips parted, welcoming the rush of warmth that flooded between them. Until it assaulted her tongue with a rush of coppery warmth that clamped her throat shut with a wretched heave. Her hands cupped to catch the droplets, her eyes widening as thick crimson pooled in her palms, seeping between her ivory fingers. Formerly white tiles were now smattered and smeared with blackish-red gore that sprayed from the nozzles. Ireland threw herself from the shower, her feet slipping beneath her. She reached out to steady herself, but found nothing to hold on to. Nothing there to pull her back from the brink, except her own need for self-preservation … and a shadowed silhouette in the corner. Instinctively, she covered herself with her arms. Squinting, she craned her neck to see the figure that was slowly turning to face her.

“Mason?” Her voice echoed around her before she could even speak it.

He stared straight ahead with fixed, unseeing eyes. Blood trailed down his face from various points of origin, soaking the front of his shirt. “Cloak of night, brings Horseman’s plight. His pricy toll, will be a soul.”

“Mason? Are you okay?”

A hard blink and his eyes found focus on her. A desperate panic flared his nostrils, forcing his breath to come fast and ragged. “Help me, you have to help me,” he pleaded, his teeth pink with the blood that streamed past his lips.

Her trembling hand reached for him, then recoiled at her own inept state of confusion. “H-how? What do I do?”

“You have to save us,” Mason’s words became more garbled by the fresh rush of gore that bubbled up the back of his throat. His once handsome face contorted in rage. Leaning forward he balled his fists and screamed with a force that bulged the tendons of his neck, “
Save us!
”

Ireland
bolted upright, sputtering. Her pulse was pounding through her veins. The details hung with her—the bitter taste of copper exploding in her mouth, her feet slipping in the blood, Mason’s desperation—making her stomach roll in revulsion. Her shoulders curled in, lurching with a potent dry heave. Swinging her legs off the bed, she barely had time to sprint to the bathroom before the contents of her stomach wretched from her trembling form.

On shaky legs
, she eased herself to the counter to rinse her mouth under the faucet. Cupping her hands under the cold water made a particular part of the dream all
too
real. Ireland blinked hard, forcing the memory back down to the farthest reaches of her mind. Steadying herself with one hand clamped on the edge of the counter, she concentrated on her breathing. What started as choked, ragged breaths forced through constricted lungs, eased to a passable pattern of normalcy. Only then did her gaze wander up to the frantic looking woman staring back at her in the mirror. She searched her pallid face, made shiny by the nausea sweats, for answers. Unfortunately, she found nothing there except a haggard looking chick in need of a good solid REM cycle.

Back in her bedroom, her cell phone buzzed on the night stand.
Ireland ran a shaky hand over her face as she rushed to answer it, all the while trying to remember how one goes about sounding normal. “Hello?”

“Ireland,
it’s Principal Edwards.” An uncharacteristic tremble of emotion cracked in the principal’s greeting. “School has been canceled today, but we—we’re going to need you to come in as soon as you can. Mason Brunt was found early this morning,” her voice broke with a hiccupped sob, “
dead
. We need you to come in to offer grief counseling to any students that may need it.”

Ireland
’s mouth fell open. A garbled, barely audible response tumbled past her lips, as the phone slipped from her hand and clattered to the floor. Her hands curled around the sheets, grasping the cotton fabric in a white knuckled hold, the world whipping around her with a deafening roar.

14

Ireland

“Mas was a dick, but I’m an even bigger dick. I
totally
know that about me. How do I know I’m not next?”

“I have enough credits to graduate
and
a scholarship to NYU. Do you think I could apply for early graduation in case I, ya know, don’t make it out of this town alive?”

“I made out with Mason after cheerleading practice. That’s only a few hours before he died.
How do I get past that? No one is going to want to go to prom with me. I’m, like, the Black Widow!”

Ireland shook two aspirin into her waiting palm, the pills rattling
from the bottle. Despite her impending migraine from a slew of the inane, the teens she’d counseled had kept her distracted from the frightening questions playing at the back of her mind on a constant loop—mostly. It was only in the lull between students that those dark ponderings broke through, refusing to be ignored. A long shadow, cast by the tall frame in her doorway, fell over her cluttered desk just as she choked the pills down with a swig of water.

“
Today has been absolute shit.” Noah leaned against the doorjamb, his hands stuffed in the pockets of his faded, army green coat. Sandy blond hair fell across his forehead in a deliciously messy disarray. “A kid being killed so … brutally. This is a nice town, despite the legends. Things like this don’t happen here.”

Her chair squeaked
beneath her as Ireland leaned back, nodding in downhearted agreement while allowing him to purge the thoughts eating at him.

“
Beerfest is in town. They have a warming tent that serves brats and precarious amounts of alcohol. I won’t buy. You won’t slap on any lipstick. We’ll just go slam back a few, until we take the edge off or fall off our chairs. Whatever comes first.” He cocked his head, considering her from under his lowered brow. “What do you say?”

Ireland
snatched a pen off her desk just to give her fidgety hands something to occupy them. Mason had appeared to her, begging her to help him, right around the time someone was chasing him down outside his father’s stable. The details of which she’d learned after watching the televised police press statement in the teacher’s lounge. That
couldn’t
be a coincidence. All day she’d been counting the seconds until she could scurry home and spill the details of her nightmare to Rip, in hopes that he could make sense of it. Now, her day was winding down and her eagerness had replaced itself with absolute
terror
over what he might say.

Before better judgment could talk her out of it, she slapped her pen down against
the desk top. “I say, hell yeah.”

Noah’s eyebrows rose in shock. “
With no further persuasion needed? I had a whole speech prepared.”

Her chair rolled back as Ireland
pushed herself to her feet. She shouldered her briefcase and draped her coat over her arm. “Tell me over our second pitcher, and maybe add voices to make it fun.”

“No way!” Ireland laughed
so hard her cheeks ached, but couldn’t seem to stop. “You don’t get to swoop in here with your woes of dating some top-heavy, pharmaceutical rep and try to take the crown I
earned
for the worst break-up story! Did you miss the refrigerator thing? Do I need to tell it again or maybe pantomime it? Because I think that would really sell it.”

“Not only did
I hear the fridge story, but I’ve decided to play it in my mind every night so I can fall asleep with a smile.” His third beer had raised the decibel of Noah’s voice enough that there would be no secrets at their table this evening. “I will give you that it’s funny as all hell, but it still doesn’t win the prize. I’m telling you, I can top it.”

Ireland’s eyebrows raised in challenge. “You think so, huh?”

“I know so.”

With a wave of her hand, she prompted him to continue. “Then by all means, convince me.”

“My ex …”

“Brittany? Bambi? Candy?”

“Tandy.”

“That was it! I knew it
was a stripper name. Go on.”

Noah paused
to shoot her an exasperated eyeroll before continuing on, “After we moved in together she insisted on bringing her stupid pet snake into our apartment. I hated that damned thing. Went out of my way to pretend it wasn’t there. The day I broke up with her, she left all of her possessions behind, said she’d have a friend come get them. But she
did
take one thing with her … the snake’s terrarium. Dumped her little friend in the middle of the living room floor and walked out with the tank. Hand to God, that thing slithered into my couch to hide!
Who does that
?”

“Holy
monkey-balls! What kind of snake was it?”

“
Does it matter?
A slithering, legless bastard moved into my couch! I had to call animal control to come get it out. Even then I couldn’t sit down to watch a game without feeling like it was crawling on me. So, I moved. Grabbed my toothbrush and let the ghost of that little creepy-crawly have the place to himself. See? Reptile infestation. I totally win the bad break-up story.” He punctuated his sentence with a tip of his red Solo cup.

Ireland shook her head a
nd matched his swig, the humor vanishing from her face. “Brantley wasn’t my type,
at all
. He was total upper crust. Champagne wishes and caviar dreams. Not that any of that appealed to me. I liked him more for his … hell, I don’t even know anymore. Maybe he offered a stability I hadn’t had since my parents went all whack-job, children of the moon. Whatever it was, I fell
hard
. We met senior year of college, about a month before I was supposed to leave for a pretty friggin’ prestigious internship for Child Psychology at Mercy Hospital. Brantley talked me into staying—the first of many bad decisions he would talk me into. He enjoyed living off of Daddy’s money—who was some big wig on Wall Street and basically owns a few blocks of Manhattan. Anyway, he convinced me we didn’t need to study or basically be productive members of society at all when we had ‘love’,” she air-quoted the word, acknowledging it as the lie that it was, “and a limitless bank account. I let him persuade me to put all my goals and ambitions on hold to spend my days jet setting with him in between tennis lessons and fashion week. I’m not going to say it wasn’t fun at first, because that’s a bold face lie, but by the end I was miserable. I lost myself and everything I believed in. Then, one day I put my key in the door and walked in to see my fiancé’s bare-ass pumping away with a twenty year old that could make a rock look intellectual. To this day, I believe he purposely did it to get caught because he was too much of a coward to admit he was just as unhappy as I was.” Ireland took another, longer, swig then wiped the foam from her lips on the back of her hand. “I would’ve happily taken a snake on the loose over that.”

Noah jabbed his cup in her direction. A bit of the foamy brew sloshed over the cup rim. “
Technically speaking, there was a snake on the loose in your scenario, too.”

Ireland
gulped down a laugh induced spit-take.

“You know what you need?”
Noah leaned in, his flannel clad elbow brushing hers. “A good vice.”

Ireland traced her finger over the rim of the cup
. “I don’t really think—”

“
Hear me out,” he playfully argued. “Instead of shutting out men altogether, just supplement a crutch to lean on. Not booze, smokes, or anything that could hurt you long term. But maybe a boy toy you can vent those physical aggressions on. FYI, I would happily offer my services to you in that regard.” He didn’t leer, because that would’ve made it skeevy, but raised his eyebrows in the innocent expression of someone genuinely trying to help.  

She knew he was kidding, yet
still had to wet her lips and take a minute at the hot flush that filled her cheeks and burned its way across her earlobes. Maybe it was the beer goggles, or her libido clearing its throat in a less than subtle reminder that “the pulsate setting on the shower nozzle” doesn’t count as a relationship status. Whatever the cause, Ireland found herself fighting the impulse to close the gap between them and find out for herself if the soft curve of his lips tasted as good as they looked.

In a fluttering mess of confusion
, and a slight case of the alcohol spins, Ireland bolted from her wooden folding chair. The abrupt move caused it to wobble on two legs, threatening to tumble over backwards. “I’m sorry. I—I have to go.”

“Whoa, wait.” Noah
’s hand encircled her wrist with a gentle touch that set her skin on fire. “That was a joke. You got that, right?”

It took every ounce of willpower she had to
shrug away from his touch and side-step to position a chair between them. “Yeah, absolutely. I just
really
… need to get home.”

“You sure?” Noah
nodded toward the four-piece band doing sound checks in the corner. “The band is getting set up. They do great covers of some kick-ass classic rock.”

Ireland
let her gaze wander the length of his arms. He’d never held her, yet somehow she could feel the sensation of his hands on her, like they’d been there a thousand times before. Knowing all the right places to—

“Yep, I’m sure,” she managed to squeak.
“Another night, maybe? Wanna walk me home?”

Please say no. Please say no. Please say no
, her voice of better judgment mentally chanted.

“Absolutely
.” He grinned, his gaze brightening with a mischievous gleam.

Oh,
crap
. Better judgment grabbed its coat and retired for the night.