One Grave at a Time
Page 29
Spade didn't open his car door-he pushed it aside so violently that it sailed away from the vehicle with a metallic ripping sound. Then he was nothing more than a blur headed toward the house. The rest of us got out, but not as fast, Ian shoving the car into park to keep it from rolling. Dread made me feel like the blood in my veins had just been replaced with ice water. I ran toward the house, a string of denials resounding in my mind. Not Denise. Please, no. She was my best friend. It would be horrible enough if something happened to Lisa, Sarah, and Francine, but I couldn't stand it if Denise was . . . was . . .
Spade ripped the front door off as well, disappearing into the house. The three of us were close behind him. Sharp barks coming from upstairs made it impossible to detect any heartbeats, and the sound made Bones pause before entering, dragging me to a halt with him. Maybe Dexter was barking because of the crash the door made when Spade tore it from its hinges.
Or maybe it was because Kramer was still in the house. Had he managed to manifest flesh a day early? Bloody shoe prints showed that someone had come down the staircase and gone out the door, and I didn't smell any sage burning. Denise was immune to most kinds of death, but Spade always kept some demon bone on hand in case any hellish buddies of the one who had branded her showed up looking for vengeance. Had the bone knife that was made of the only substance that could kill Denise been used against her? Oh God, what had Kramer done to them?
Ian didn't wait, but went into the house with a brusque, "Get some sage lit before you follow." Upstairs, Spade cried out, a harsh sound of grief that made my knees almost give out. Tears making my gaze blurry, I grabbed a handful of the waterlogged sage I'd kept in my pants and lit it, hurrying inside and then up the staircase carrying my smoking bundle. From the sounds and smell, Bones was relighting and refilling the jars in the house, trying to form a protective barrier though it might be too late.
I didn't need to follow the bloody shoe prints that led to the first room on the right. Spade's choked voice was a heartbreaking beacon. I burst into the room, anguish ripping through me when the first sight that greeted me was a mass of blood, bone, and things I didn't even want to name splattered on the wall of the open closet. Ian stood to the side of it, Spade at the bottom of that grisly montage, cradling a blood-soaked form that didn't move. Dexter was off in the corner, growling and barking while tracking crimson paw prints on the carpet.
"I'm okay," I heard a feminine voice say beneath the barking and Spade's ragged repetitions of Denise's name.
I stuffed back the sob of relief that rocketed up my throat. Ian was more practical, pulling on Spade's shoulders.
"Let her go, Charles. You're probably holding her too tightly for her to breathe."
Spade leaned back, revealing the upper half of my friend that I hadn't seen before, and I staggered where I stood. Denise had three mangled holes in her sweater that looked like exit wounds from bullets. She'd been shot in the back enough times to kill any normal person from their tight placement near her chest, but not enough to put her down. She must have turned around and gone after her shooter. That was why the assailant aimed for her face next. From the wall, her still-misshapen features, and the cherry pie look under the back of her head, he'd emptied his gun into her.
The accomplice had somehow found this place and attacked when the rest of us were away trying to hammer the final nails into Kramer's coffin. How had he gotten in? I wondered, still shocked from the sight of Denise. She knew not to let any unfamiliar men in, and she wasn't very easy to take down, as the carnage in this room proved.
Bones appeared, grimly taking note of the blood-sprayed closet and Denise's condition. "No one else is in the house," he stated, confirming what my senses had already suspected. "I don't see any signs that Kramer's here now . . . or was here before. None of the sage jars are overturned or disturbed. They merely burned out, but not too long ago from the looks of it."
Spade brushed a matted clump of Denise's hair back, and I winced at what stuck to his hand.
"Can you tell us what happened, darling?"
From the way her gaze seemed to roll around the room, she was having trouble focusing. No shocker there; I was amazed she was even conscious. She must have been shot a couple hours ago for her to have healed to this extent, but even with her demon-blooded regenerative abilities, she was still in rough shape. I wasn't sure a vampire or ghoul could have survived all the damage she'd sustained, yet despite the fact that she looked like she'd dove headfirst into a wood chipper, she managed to mumble out a reply.
"Lisa and Francine . . . asleep. Heard . . . awful noise. Came in here . . . saw Helsing . . ."
My kitty wasn't in the room at the moment, from the two sole heartbeats I heard now that Dexter had quit barking. Helsing was probably hiding downstairs. All the recent run-ins with Kramer had taught the kitty to seek cover at the first hint of loud noises, so the gunshots would've sent him running.
Denise lifted a crimson-painted hand and vaguely pointed at the wall behind her. "Pulled him out . . . of the noose . . . then felt the gunshots."
Noose? That snapped my attention to the belt dangling from the closet rail, the bottom of it hooked into a circle. All the clothes were pushed to either side, leaving that single item in the middle, but with the bloody remains of Denise's head all over the wall, I hadn't focused on it at first glance.
Bones edged around Spade and Denise to pluck out the belt, a muscle in his jaw flexing as he sniffed it.
"How did he get in, Denise?" I asked, kneeling so we'd be more at eye level. "Can you tell us anything that could help us find out who he is?"
Her gaze rolled around again, and she blinked several times, as if she were fighting to stay conscious. It was Bones who spoke, and his voice was dryer than ashes.
"Not he, Kitten. She."
Denise managed to nod, while her eyes rolled back in her head. "Sarah," she mumbled right before passing out. "Sarah shot me."
Chapter Thirty-Three
I didn't want to believe it, but even with pieces of her head not fully regenerated yet, I didn't doubt Denise's statement. The woman we thought we were protecting from Kramer's evil intentions must actually have been his accomplice instead.
"I'll kill the bitch," Spade snarled, emerald blazing from his eyes and fangs flashing out from his upper teeth.
From the roiling fury leaking out of Bones's aura, Spade would have to take a number and get in line.
"Get Denise cleaned up, Charles," Bones said. "She's been through enough without waking up covered in her own blood and brains again."
Spade scooped Denise up, carrying her out of the room while still muttering under his breath about all the different ways he was going to kill Sarah. I was too shell-shocked to begin plotting her death, but I knew my own murderous rage would come soon.
"Kramer hates women, why would he partner up with one?" I wondered, trying to sort through this bombshell.
"Easy. He knows what he intends to do with her once she's fulfilled her usefulness," Bones replied shortly.
She'd been useful indeed, getting her enemies to lead her right to Lisa and Francine. No wonder Kramer had been so smug the last time I'd seen him. Guilt burned its way over my emotions. We'd promised Lisa and Francine that we'd protect them. Instead, we'd helped the co-conspirator in their murders to orchestrate the worst sort of betrayal right under our noses.
"Where'd she get the gun?" Ian asked.
"We kept three of them here in anticipation of the accomplice's accompanying Kramer in his attack," Spade replied from another room in the house. "Showed each of the women where they were, how to use them . . . though Sarah already knew how to shoot, bloody slag."
She must have forced Lisa and Francine to go with her at gunpoint. After what they would've seen her do to Denise, I had no doubt the women would have been too frightened to refuse.
Bones gave me another of those unreadable looks before he spoke. "She didn't leave with Lisa and Francine on foot. Did you have another car here?"
"Yes." The bitterness in Spade's voice was clear despite the sounds of a shower turning on. "I left it for Denise in case of an emergency."
Sarah used it to cart away Francine and Lisa instead, probably stuffing them in the trunk after binding and gagging them. If she really wanted to ensure a smooth ride, she'd have bashed them in the head and knocked them out for the trip. Just thinking about it made me want to bash my own head in frustration. From the looks of Denise, they'd been gone for hours, long enough to be far away by now. Sarah probably put her plan into action shortly after Spade left to meet us at the facility.
Maybe she left something that would give us a clue as to where she was taking them. I doubted it, but just standing around was making me crazy. I left the ruined bedroom and went downstairs, looking for trash cans. Please let Sarah be stupid enough to have jotted down incriminating information on something, then thrown it away.
"I'm surprised you didn't hear any of her plans from her thoughts, Crispin," I heard Ian say.
"They were scattered, unstable, and frequently incoherent. I thought it was because of Kramer's abuse, not malicious intentions," was Bones's measured reply. "Believe me, I wish I'd paid closer attention."
Me too, but the brief time we'd spent with Sarah had been mostly while we were flying. That made her scream mentally and verbally-not much coherency there. Then while we waited for Spade, she'd only shown a fear of vampires-understandable ninety-nine percent of the time with people who had just found out about their existence-and a desire to meet Lisa and Francine.
Boy, had we been wrong about her motivations behind that. The other sickening part of this whole situation was the knowledge that if Sarah was Kramer's accomplice, not his third intended victim, that woman was still out there. As if in pitiless reminder of how time was running out, I passed a clock on my way to the kitchen. Five minutes after three in the morning, making it officially October 31. Halloween was upon us, and we'd been the ones tricked all over the place.
"One of us should fly over the area to see if we can spot the car while the others stay here and search for clues," I stated, heading for the trash can in the corner. "Someone should go by Elisabeth's apartment, too. Kramer might have damaged her phone after she sent that last text, and there's still a third victim to be found. Maybe Elisabeth's noticed another woman who Kramer's been hanging around-"
"I know who the third woman is," Bones stated.
That stopped me in the process of pulling out wadded-up bits of food, paper, and packages from the kitchen trash can. He came down the stairs, his expression frozen into beautifully sculpted, unyielding planes.
"You do? How? Who is she?"
That dark brown gaze didn't waver despite the babble of questions I lobbed at him. "It's you, Kitten."
"Me?" I blurted in disbelief. All activity upstairs ground to a halt from the sudden silence. "It's not me. Why would you even think-"
"You're the only one who fits," he cut me off. "Who else has Kramer fixated on these past several weeks? You. He followed you around even before he knew we were setting a trap for him, always attacking you first except the one time I was kissing you, and he tried to kill me for it. The time frame of when he picks his victims fits because he met you right when Francine and Lisa said he started tormenting them. You've suffered recent tragedies like they have. You've been staying in the Sioux City area. He even had Sarah try to hang your cat! Why would he do that unless he considered Helsing to be your familiar as he did with Lisa's and Francine's cats?"
"He knows animals can sense him," I whispered, reeling at all the points Bones brought up.
"Sarah didn't do a thing to Dexter, did she?" he noted. "You fit Kramer's profile perfectly save for one thing-you're not single. But he has a plan to separate you from me, and I'm telling you now, I won't allow it to happen."
I scoffed to cover the realization snaking through me that everything Bones said made sense. What was the first thing I'd done when I met Kramer? Told him I had witchcraft in my veins and sicced a bunch of Remnants on him. He'd called me a witch from that day on, among other choice names, and talked about how I would burn, but I'd brushed that off as meaningless ranting. Too late, I realized that nothing Kramer did was meaningless.
I'd been so sure I'd beat him because he'd vastly underestimated me. Looked like I'd been the one to vastly underestimate him.
"Kramer knows he can't separate us," I began, then the final realization hit me, making my jaw clench shut.
Not unless I thought by going to him alone, I could save Francine and Lisa.
Bones's smile was more a twisting of his lips. "That's right, luv, which is why I expect it won't be long until you're visited by a ghost."
Ian left the house to do a flyover of the surrounding areas on the off chance that Sarah was dumb enough to park Spade's car where it could be seen. Spade stayed upstairs with Denise, cleaning her up and accelerating her healing by giving her some of his blood. From what I could hear, she was sleeping almost normally now, her pulse no longer weak or thready. Bones was on Spade's laptop, hacking into every account of Sarah's he could find to see if she owned or rented any other properties where she might have taken Francine and Lisa. We could hope she'd been that dumb, but if she was directed by Kramer, I doubted it. The ghost had proven to be more than clever, and there were so many empty, abandoned places they could use that wouldn't leave a trail leading back to Sarah, it would be a miracle if we found anything that way.
Spade ripped the front door off as well, disappearing into the house. The three of us were close behind him. Sharp barks coming from upstairs made it impossible to detect any heartbeats, and the sound made Bones pause before entering, dragging me to a halt with him. Maybe Dexter was barking because of the crash the door made when Spade tore it from its hinges.
Or maybe it was because Kramer was still in the house. Had he managed to manifest flesh a day early? Bloody shoe prints showed that someone had come down the staircase and gone out the door, and I didn't smell any sage burning. Denise was immune to most kinds of death, but Spade always kept some demon bone on hand in case any hellish buddies of the one who had branded her showed up looking for vengeance. Had the bone knife that was made of the only substance that could kill Denise been used against her? Oh God, what had Kramer done to them?
Ian didn't wait, but went into the house with a brusque, "Get some sage lit before you follow." Upstairs, Spade cried out, a harsh sound of grief that made my knees almost give out. Tears making my gaze blurry, I grabbed a handful of the waterlogged sage I'd kept in my pants and lit it, hurrying inside and then up the staircase carrying my smoking bundle. From the sounds and smell, Bones was relighting and refilling the jars in the house, trying to form a protective barrier though it might be too late.
I didn't need to follow the bloody shoe prints that led to the first room on the right. Spade's choked voice was a heartbreaking beacon. I burst into the room, anguish ripping through me when the first sight that greeted me was a mass of blood, bone, and things I didn't even want to name splattered on the wall of the open closet. Ian stood to the side of it, Spade at the bottom of that grisly montage, cradling a blood-soaked form that didn't move. Dexter was off in the corner, growling and barking while tracking crimson paw prints on the carpet.
"I'm okay," I heard a feminine voice say beneath the barking and Spade's ragged repetitions of Denise's name.
I stuffed back the sob of relief that rocketed up my throat. Ian was more practical, pulling on Spade's shoulders.
"Let her go, Charles. You're probably holding her too tightly for her to breathe."
Spade leaned back, revealing the upper half of my friend that I hadn't seen before, and I staggered where I stood. Denise had three mangled holes in her sweater that looked like exit wounds from bullets. She'd been shot in the back enough times to kill any normal person from their tight placement near her chest, but not enough to put her down. She must have turned around and gone after her shooter. That was why the assailant aimed for her face next. From the wall, her still-misshapen features, and the cherry pie look under the back of her head, he'd emptied his gun into her.
The accomplice had somehow found this place and attacked when the rest of us were away trying to hammer the final nails into Kramer's coffin. How had he gotten in? I wondered, still shocked from the sight of Denise. She knew not to let any unfamiliar men in, and she wasn't very easy to take down, as the carnage in this room proved.
Bones appeared, grimly taking note of the blood-sprayed closet and Denise's condition. "No one else is in the house," he stated, confirming what my senses had already suspected. "I don't see any signs that Kramer's here now . . . or was here before. None of the sage jars are overturned or disturbed. They merely burned out, but not too long ago from the looks of it."
Spade brushed a matted clump of Denise's hair back, and I winced at what stuck to his hand.
"Can you tell us what happened, darling?"
From the way her gaze seemed to roll around the room, she was having trouble focusing. No shocker there; I was amazed she was even conscious. She must have been shot a couple hours ago for her to have healed to this extent, but even with her demon-blooded regenerative abilities, she was still in rough shape. I wasn't sure a vampire or ghoul could have survived all the damage she'd sustained, yet despite the fact that she looked like she'd dove headfirst into a wood chipper, she managed to mumble out a reply.
"Lisa and Francine . . . asleep. Heard . . . awful noise. Came in here . . . saw Helsing . . ."
My kitty wasn't in the room at the moment, from the two sole heartbeats I heard now that Dexter had quit barking. Helsing was probably hiding downstairs. All the recent run-ins with Kramer had taught the kitty to seek cover at the first hint of loud noises, so the gunshots would've sent him running.
Denise lifted a crimson-painted hand and vaguely pointed at the wall behind her. "Pulled him out . . . of the noose . . . then felt the gunshots."
Noose? That snapped my attention to the belt dangling from the closet rail, the bottom of it hooked into a circle. All the clothes were pushed to either side, leaving that single item in the middle, but with the bloody remains of Denise's head all over the wall, I hadn't focused on it at first glance.
Bones edged around Spade and Denise to pluck out the belt, a muscle in his jaw flexing as he sniffed it.
"How did he get in, Denise?" I asked, kneeling so we'd be more at eye level. "Can you tell us anything that could help us find out who he is?"
Her gaze rolled around again, and she blinked several times, as if she were fighting to stay conscious. It was Bones who spoke, and his voice was dryer than ashes.
"Not he, Kitten. She."
Denise managed to nod, while her eyes rolled back in her head. "Sarah," she mumbled right before passing out. "Sarah shot me."
Chapter Thirty-Three
I didn't want to believe it, but even with pieces of her head not fully regenerated yet, I didn't doubt Denise's statement. The woman we thought we were protecting from Kramer's evil intentions must actually have been his accomplice instead.
"I'll kill the bitch," Spade snarled, emerald blazing from his eyes and fangs flashing out from his upper teeth.
From the roiling fury leaking out of Bones's aura, Spade would have to take a number and get in line.
"Get Denise cleaned up, Charles," Bones said. "She's been through enough without waking up covered in her own blood and brains again."
Spade scooped Denise up, carrying her out of the room while still muttering under his breath about all the different ways he was going to kill Sarah. I was too shell-shocked to begin plotting her death, but I knew my own murderous rage would come soon.
"Kramer hates women, why would he partner up with one?" I wondered, trying to sort through this bombshell.
"Easy. He knows what he intends to do with her once she's fulfilled her usefulness," Bones replied shortly.
She'd been useful indeed, getting her enemies to lead her right to Lisa and Francine. No wonder Kramer had been so smug the last time I'd seen him. Guilt burned its way over my emotions. We'd promised Lisa and Francine that we'd protect them. Instead, we'd helped the co-conspirator in their murders to orchestrate the worst sort of betrayal right under our noses.
"Where'd she get the gun?" Ian asked.
"We kept three of them here in anticipation of the accomplice's accompanying Kramer in his attack," Spade replied from another room in the house. "Showed each of the women where they were, how to use them . . . though Sarah already knew how to shoot, bloody slag."
She must have forced Lisa and Francine to go with her at gunpoint. After what they would've seen her do to Denise, I had no doubt the women would have been too frightened to refuse.
Bones gave me another of those unreadable looks before he spoke. "She didn't leave with Lisa and Francine on foot. Did you have another car here?"
"Yes." The bitterness in Spade's voice was clear despite the sounds of a shower turning on. "I left it for Denise in case of an emergency."
Sarah used it to cart away Francine and Lisa instead, probably stuffing them in the trunk after binding and gagging them. If she really wanted to ensure a smooth ride, she'd have bashed them in the head and knocked them out for the trip. Just thinking about it made me want to bash my own head in frustration. From the looks of Denise, they'd been gone for hours, long enough to be far away by now. Sarah probably put her plan into action shortly after Spade left to meet us at the facility.
Maybe she left something that would give us a clue as to where she was taking them. I doubted it, but just standing around was making me crazy. I left the ruined bedroom and went downstairs, looking for trash cans. Please let Sarah be stupid enough to have jotted down incriminating information on something, then thrown it away.
"I'm surprised you didn't hear any of her plans from her thoughts, Crispin," I heard Ian say.
"They were scattered, unstable, and frequently incoherent. I thought it was because of Kramer's abuse, not malicious intentions," was Bones's measured reply. "Believe me, I wish I'd paid closer attention."
Me too, but the brief time we'd spent with Sarah had been mostly while we were flying. That made her scream mentally and verbally-not much coherency there. Then while we waited for Spade, she'd only shown a fear of vampires-understandable ninety-nine percent of the time with people who had just found out about their existence-and a desire to meet Lisa and Francine.
Boy, had we been wrong about her motivations behind that. The other sickening part of this whole situation was the knowledge that if Sarah was Kramer's accomplice, not his third intended victim, that woman was still out there. As if in pitiless reminder of how time was running out, I passed a clock on my way to the kitchen. Five minutes after three in the morning, making it officially October 31. Halloween was upon us, and we'd been the ones tricked all over the place.
"One of us should fly over the area to see if we can spot the car while the others stay here and search for clues," I stated, heading for the trash can in the corner. "Someone should go by Elisabeth's apartment, too. Kramer might have damaged her phone after she sent that last text, and there's still a third victim to be found. Maybe Elisabeth's noticed another woman who Kramer's been hanging around-"
"I know who the third woman is," Bones stated.
That stopped me in the process of pulling out wadded-up bits of food, paper, and packages from the kitchen trash can. He came down the stairs, his expression frozen into beautifully sculpted, unyielding planes.
"You do? How? Who is she?"
That dark brown gaze didn't waver despite the babble of questions I lobbed at him. "It's you, Kitten."
"Me?" I blurted in disbelief. All activity upstairs ground to a halt from the sudden silence. "It's not me. Why would you even think-"
"You're the only one who fits," he cut me off. "Who else has Kramer fixated on these past several weeks? You. He followed you around even before he knew we were setting a trap for him, always attacking you first except the one time I was kissing you, and he tried to kill me for it. The time frame of when he picks his victims fits because he met you right when Francine and Lisa said he started tormenting them. You've suffered recent tragedies like they have. You've been staying in the Sioux City area. He even had Sarah try to hang your cat! Why would he do that unless he considered Helsing to be your familiar as he did with Lisa's and Francine's cats?"
"He knows animals can sense him," I whispered, reeling at all the points Bones brought up.
"Sarah didn't do a thing to Dexter, did she?" he noted. "You fit Kramer's profile perfectly save for one thing-you're not single. But he has a plan to separate you from me, and I'm telling you now, I won't allow it to happen."
I scoffed to cover the realization snaking through me that everything Bones said made sense. What was the first thing I'd done when I met Kramer? Told him I had witchcraft in my veins and sicced a bunch of Remnants on him. He'd called me a witch from that day on, among other choice names, and talked about how I would burn, but I'd brushed that off as meaningless ranting. Too late, I realized that nothing Kramer did was meaningless.
I'd been so sure I'd beat him because he'd vastly underestimated me. Looked like I'd been the one to vastly underestimate him.
"Kramer knows he can't separate us," I began, then the final realization hit me, making my jaw clench shut.
Not unless I thought by going to him alone, I could save Francine and Lisa.
Bones's smile was more a twisting of his lips. "That's right, luv, which is why I expect it won't be long until you're visited by a ghost."
Ian left the house to do a flyover of the surrounding areas on the off chance that Sarah was dumb enough to park Spade's car where it could be seen. Spade stayed upstairs with Denise, cleaning her up and accelerating her healing by giving her some of his blood. From what I could hear, she was sleeping almost normally now, her pulse no longer weak or thready. Bones was on Spade's laptop, hacking into every account of Sarah's he could find to see if she owned or rented any other properties where she might have taken Francine and Lisa. We could hope she'd been that dumb, but if she was directed by Kramer, I doubted it. The ghost had proven to be more than clever, and there were so many empty, abandoned places they could use that wouldn't leave a trail leading back to Sarah, it would be a miracle if we found anything that way.
