Hanner had met the young couple. Compelled them to follow her home while they had been on their honeymoon, no less. Probably the couple had met a certain specification for Hanner. I suspected they neither had family nor many friends. Few would look for them. And those who did would easily be turned away by a simple phone call that would reassure anyone concerned that they were okay. Hanner, in effect, had kidnapped them.
“Who’s in the basement?” I asked.
“A bleeder,” said the man.
“A bleeder?”
“Yes.”
“What’s a bleeder?”
“We bleed her for others, Samantha Moon. In fact, we have recently bled her for you. Would you care for a drink? It’s chilling in the refrigerator now.”
I should have shuddered. I should have recoiled in horror. I should have called Sherbet to come out and shut this craziness down.
Instead, I found myself about to nod. My ears rang a bit. And my thoughts were fuzzy.
In fact, I started to nod, then shook my head vigorously. As I did so, I backed up—but not at the reality of an innocent woman who was being bled in the basement below. But at the horror of my very, very strong bloodlust.
Yesss, came a single word from the depths of my mind. Yesss, yesss, yesss, yesss....
Fresh blood. Procured unwillingly. Taken against another’s will was her ultimate craving. Such blood, I knew, would feed not me...but her.
“No,” I heard myself say, as the hissing continued, a long, slow leak just inside my eardrum. “No, thank you.”
“Are you sure, Samantha Moon? It was tapped for you and you alone. It will be wasted otherwise.”
Well, in that case... I wanted to say, but I didn’t.
Tapped, he had said. Like tapping a maple tree. This should have sounded horrific to me. But it didn’t. No, it sounded intriguing. It sounded...interesting. Tell me more about this tapping business, I wanted to say.
But I didn’t.
I rubbed my head, pressed my fingers hard into my temples. She was in here somewhere. Where she was, exactly, I didn’t know. But she was getting bolder, stronger.
No...she was getting desperate.
She wants out.
She wants her freedom.
Her freedom meant my imprisonment, of course.
I took in a lot of air and held it and willed her out of my mind, and the hissing, finally, faded slowly away. I expelled the air and looked at the compelled couple.
“No, thank you,” I said again.
Behind them, the ghost faded in and out of existence. Once or twice, she looked at me, but she was lost. Lost even before death, I suspected. A runaway, I sensed. Lost and forgotten, even in life and death. How many other such spirits were here, I didn’t know, but I suspected more.
“Why don’t you go home?” I said to the couple.
“We are home, Samantha Moon,” said the woman.
“We are very happy here,” said the man.
I doubted that. I doubted they even knew what they were saying. I suspected that Hanner’s compulsion was so extensive that she controlled them either from afar, or gave them pre-recorded responses, so to speak.
“Why were you waiting for me?” I asked.
“Because our mistress said you would come.”
I looked at them again. Had they been recently fed upon? Hard to know, since vampire wounds inflicted on mortals—those living, that is—healed almost instantly, as was my experience with Allison. But I was suddenly sure of one thing.
“She was here recently,” I said.
They said nothing.
“Tell me, goddammit.”
They continued smiling, heads tilted to one side. They both blinked together.
From below, I heard the chained woman crying up through the floorboards. The bleeder, as they had called her. Bleeders, I suspected, didn’t last long in the house of horrors.
When Hanner had been here, I didn’t know, and how she knew I would come calling, I didn’t know that either.
No, I thought. She would have known. Everything she had done, thus far, had been orchestrated to lead me here. But why?
I looked again at the bloody tissue before them.
“What’s under the napkin?” I asked, although I suddenly didn’t want to know.
The woman nodded slightly and straightened her head for the first time. She rested the flat of her palms on the table. She held my gaze. “Mistress has a message for you, Samantha Moon.”
I swallowed and stepped forward. Curious and repulsed at the same time, horrified yet intrigued.
What’s wrong with me? I thought.
“Mistress wanted you to see this.”
And with that, the woman lifted the napkin. Underneath was a severed finger...a pinkie finger with a ring still attached to it. I knew the ring. It was Danny’s pimp ring, as I called it. An ugly garnet ring, too big for any man to wear with a straight face. He loved that ring.
Had I any color in my face, I suspected it would have drained about now.
“What the hell did she do with Danny?”
“We don’t know,” said the man. “But he is the first.”
“The first what, goddammit?”
The finger had been neatly severed, with the use of a knife, no doubt. Blood crusted around the open end. I could see the dozens of dark hairs lying flat across one side, beneath the main knuckle.
“Master wanted you to know that she will systematically kill your entire family until you meet her.”
“I’m here now,” I said, unable to take my eyes off the pale finger. Oh, Jesus, Danny...
“Not here, Samantha Moon.”
“Then where?”
“She will tell you.”
“Where is she?”
“Mistress is busy at the moment.”
I nearly leaped across the table. Nearly strangled them both. But I couldn’t. They were just the messengers, after all.
For the first time in a long time, I felt sick to my stomach. “Busy doing what?”
They both looked at me for a heartbeat or two, and for the briefest of moments, I sensed a small wave of compassion coming from them. But then, that compassion was gone as quickly as it had appeared.
“She is seeking another.”
“Another what, goddammit?”
But they didn’t answer. They only smiled and looked at me and stood together at the far end of the table, heads cocked to one side. As if listening to someone or something I couldn’t hear.
Chapter Thirty-two
I was back in my minivan.
Had my body been any less than it was, I would have been hyperventilating. My hands were shaking as I did my best to dial my sister’s home number without crushing the phone into pieces.