The Harvesting (27 page)

With a nod, I pushed the hatch open
and peered outside. No one was moving and it was very dark. There
were a few candles lit in the hallway; they turned everything into
long shadows. I could see the end of the hall. The window there had
been occluded by a large black drape, blocking out even the
moonlight.

Despite my earlier boasting, I was
afraid. The unthinking undead were one thing, but a calculating
vampire who had our girls, who had turned Ian, was something
altogether different. Raw violence eats you alive in one big
swallow. Intelligent aggression was a slow, painful
death.

I pushed the hatch open, slid out, and
unsheathed my sword. Jamie exited behind me. I could feel the wild
energy around him; he was desperate to save his brother. He held
his hunting knife in one hand and a pistol in the other.

We made our way down the hall. Most of
the doors were closed. As carefully as possible, I tried a door. It
was locked. The hall was exceedingly dark. I could barely make my
way in the large expanses of black space between the candles. It
was like trying to walk around in a closet—or maybe, a coffin. As
we neared a hallway, I motioned to Jamie. There was an evacuation
map that indicated there were three large penthouses at one end of
the floor. With a nod, we headed in that direction.

When we turned the corner that housed
the penthouses, we saw light emitting from one of the rooms. From
inside, we heard voices.

“
I thought you said it
would be ready,” a woman said in a heavy accent. I recognized the
voice as belonging to Katya.

“
I’m almost done. It’s not
like pouring wine, you know,” I heard Dr. Rostov reply. I heard a
strange sound, almost like a grunt. Then there was the awful sound
of sliding metal. The doctor spoke again. “Give it maybe fifteen
minutes then toss it.”

“
You’re not
coming?”

“
Later.”

We heard a sound like clinking glass
headed in our direction.

I pulled Jamie into an alcove. We slid
in beside the soda machine. Neither of us dared to breathe. I
peered out. In the dim candlelight I saw Katya pass by carrying a
large wine decanter and some glasses. The glass decanter caught the
candlelight as she passed revealing the shape of a human heart
inside. I looked up at Jamie. I could tell by the expression on his
face he’d seen it too.

When we no longer heard the glass
clinking, we stepped out. From inside the room we heard the doctor
groan and heard a strange slurping sound. We went to the door and
looked inside. There we saw the doctor leaning over in a chair, his
back to us, a large bundle across his legs. Remembering their
ability to turn to shadow, I knew we had to be fast.

I nodded to Jamie and we rushed the
room, closing the door behind us. The doctor looked up. His face
was dripping with blood. He stood. The body of a young woman
dropped to the floor. She had been wearing a pale purple sundress.
Her skin now looked snow white. The dress strap had been cut. Her
chest had been sliced open, her heart removed from her chest. The
doctor looked shocked.

“
Where are the girls,” I
whispered harshly, lowering my blade to his throat. He might be
able to shift quickly, but not before I could decapitate
him.

He smiled at me, but I pressed the
blade in more deeply. “Not so fast,” I said. “Talk!”

He laughed.

“
Talk,” I said again in
Russian, “you piece of trash. Where are my girls?”

His eyes lit up in surprise. “Ahh, of
course,” he said with a smile. “They are with her. Go ask her for
them,” he said with a laugh, his eyes indicating they were in the
room at the end of the hall.

“
What did you do to my
brother?” Jamie cursed at the man through clenched
teeth.

“
I cured him.”

“
You condemned him,” I
corrected.

“
Really? Once he has made
the final transformation he’ll have immortal life in a world where
your kind are on a fast track to extinction.”

“
My kind? I imagine you
were once human too, weren’t you?” I said

The doctor looked thoughtful, almost
as if I reminded him of something he’d long forgotten. For a brief
second I saw him remember, and a kind of sadness crossed his face.
He then pulled himself together and looked at me with a scolding
glance. He looked down at the sword and back at me again. I could
see he was calculating.

I shook my head at him.

He smiled.

I swung.

Before he could transform, his head
hit the floor, that odd calculating expression on his face. His
head rolled across the floor, hitting the girl’s lifeless body.
Jamie reached down to examine her. Both of her wrists had been
slashed open.

“
They drained her, took
her heart,” he said, looking sympathetically at the
girl.

I had not seen her before, but she
looked to be only a teenager. I eyed the rest of the room. Clearly
this was the doctor’s blood-letting room. Strange instruments hung
from the walls and ceilings. Blood was smeared on the once pale
yellow fabric of the couches. I shook thinking of Kira and Susan in
such a place.

As quietly as possible we took a quick
canvas of the room and found it empty. As we were nearing the door
again, we heard voices in the hallway.

“
Where is Rostov?” I heard
Rumor ask.

My heart skipped a beat.

“
Door is closed. He must
have gone down already,” I heard Finn reply.

She sighed heavily. “Bring them,” she
instructed to someone.

In the hallway, I heard the muffled
cries of Kira and Susan. I reached for the door, but Jamie stopped
me.

“
Not yet,” he mouthed to
me.

From the hallway, I heard a door click
open and the sound of Rumor’s receding voice. The sound of
footsteps drifted upward and away.

“
Roof?” Jamie
questioned.

I nodded.

We waited a few more minutes and then
slowly opened the door. The hallway was still dark, but the door to
Rumor’s penthouse was now open. We were about to follow the stairs
to the roof when we heard noise coming from inside the penthouse.
Turning back, we moved slowly into the penthouse.

Clearly, this was Rumor’s room. The
penthouse was the most lavishly furnished of all the places I’d
seen in the hotel. On top of that, it looked like Rumor had brought
along artifacts from her former life with her. Portraits of Rumor
hinted that she was much older than her contemporary name
suggested. There were images of her in a white wig which dated to
the late 1700s and other paintings that indicated some sort of
French connection. Smaller paintings showed her in medieval dress.
Figurines, matryoshka dolls, and paintings with a phoenix, bears,
and Baba Yaga images revealed her Slavic roots. Again, however, we
heard the strange sound; it sounded like thrashing and heavy
breathing. We followed the noise to a side bedroom where we saw
movement on the bed.

Jamie pulled his LED flashlight from
his vest and motioned to me; I got ready. He clicked the light on
to reveal a single body lying in the bed covered with a sheet. It
stirred. My heart raced. I positioned the sword and moved toward
the bed. Grabbing the end of the sheet, I pulled it off. There,
strapped to the bed, lay one of the undead. It turned, jerking,
toward the light, straining at its restraints.

“
What the hell is she
doing with that?” Jamie whispered.

I looked at it. It had once been
human, a male with long, dark hair. His skin was only slightly
wilted. He had tattoos on both arms. He hissed and bit at
us.

Set me
free
, a voice said in my head.

“
Did you hear that?” I
asked Jamie.

“
Hear what?”

Set me free or kill
me.

I stared at the undead man. His
moon-white eyes looked right at me. He’d gone still. It was like he
was waiting. My god! Had I really heard him?

I lifted my sword and stabbed the
creature between the eyes. The spark behind those white, undead
eyes flickered out.

Then we heard movement in the outer
foyer. Jamie clicked off the light. We were trapped. There was
nowhere to hide. A second later, Ian’s familiar shape appeared in
the candle-lit outer room.

Jamie moved forward. I tried to pull
him back, but he moved before I could grab him.

“
Ian?” Jamie called
quietly.

What had once been Ian looked at his
brother. From behind, I could see Jamie’s body stiffen as he took
it in. Ian stood staring at Jamie.

“
I can smell you, Layla,”
Ian said after a moment.

I came out of the shadow and stood
behind Jamie. My sword was lowered but my hold on the grip was
tight.

Ian stared at the two of us. Then, he
turned to go.

“
What will you do, just
stand aside and let them drain Kira and Susan?” Jamie called,
taking a few steps after his brother.

Ian stopped in the doorway. He looked
back over his shoulder at Jamie. Ian gazed at his brother for a
moment and then walked back into the dark hallway. Jamie and I
stood in the darkness.

“
That was not my brother,”
Jamie whispered.

“
I--” I started, but I
didn’t know what to say. I’m sorry didn’t feel like enough. I was
sorry, but it was too late for Ian. Jamie knew that now. “Kira and
Susan are still alive.”

Jamie seemed to come back to himself.
He looked down at me and took a deep breath. After a moment, he
nodded, and we went forward. We found the door that led to the
roof. Opening it as quietly as possible, we entered the stairwell.
Carefully, we climbed, expecting to be greeted by a host of
vampires partying on the roof. Instead, we emerged in the moonlight
to find no one. It was completely empty.

Jamie and I stood on the roof and
gazed at the grounds of the HarpWind. The night was nearly
cloudless. Silver stars, uncorrupted by city lights, filled the
sky. The Milky Way illuminated the skyline, the crescent moon
hanging like an ornament. It must have been sometime after
midnight. I went to the edge of the roof and looked
over.

Below, we saw hotel staff coming out
of the back of the hotel and heading toward the western end of the
island. They were laughing and joking, their voices rising up
toward us. Several minutes later Corbin, Finn, Matilda, and Katya
appeared. They too made their way west across the lawns. Following
behind them was Rumor. She had on a gauzy red dress. It blew all
around her in the wind. Holding her hand was Susan who held fast to
Kira. Anger nearly boiled over in me. They walked across the lawn
and into a thicket of trees, disappearing into the shadow of the
night.

“
How did they get down?”
Jamie wondered.

“
As shadows or maybe
jumped. They seem to have enhanced physical skill and
strength.”

We turned and headed back inside. We’d
have to take the stairs if we wanted to follow them. When we pushed
open the door to the fifth floor hallway, we saw that the door to
Rostov’s room was open. We were found out. A moment later, a woman
appeared in the doorframe. I recognized her at once. It was the
same vampire who’d tried to assassinate me.

“
This time, you’re mine,”
she said and lunged at me. She grabbed me by the throat and slammed
me against the wall, suspending me several feet up. Her strong
hands squeezed my neck. I rasped. Jamie plunged his knife into the
back of her neck. She turned her head for a moment and gave him an
annoyed expression. When she did so, I took my chance. I reached
into the pocket of my vest and pulled out the holy water. Flicking
out the cork, I opened it. She turned at me and grinned. I splashed
the water onto her face.

She dropped me at once and let out a
howl, her hands covering her face. Her skin smoked with a strange
sulfur-like burning smell. She moved her hands for just a moment. I
saw a horrid sight. It looked as if her skin was melting from her
bones. She fell over, her body burnt to a pile of ash.

Jamie grabbed my hand. “Come on!
Someone could have heard her.”

We ran down the hall and took the
stairs to the fourth floor.

“
We can’t wait for dawn.
We need to get everyone out of here now. I’ll go for the girls. Get
everyone gathered at the east end of the hotel. Once I have the
girls I’ll meet you there.”

“
No. We can go
together.”

“
There is no
time.”

“
But what if something
happens to you?”

His question was multi-layered. “Go to
the eastern end of Enita Island to the shoreline. There is another,
smaller island just off shore. There’s a boat there. Take everyone
to the other island. It is a place of safety. At the center of the
island is a stone labyrinth. Follow it to completion. It will take
you off the island.”

Jamie looked amazed. “How do you know
that?”

“
A fox told
me.”