We leaned forward to peer inside. At first, my heart dropped, thinking we’d opened the wrong vault. The pale, gaunt figure inside resembled something out of a horror movie. A tattered gray gown with bone-thin flesh poking through. Face covered in a black muslin shroud. Then the smell hit me. Unwashed flesh and excrement. Fear and rage. I covered my nose and mouth with my hand as nausea threatened.
I glanced up at Adam, whose eyes were wide with shock. “What the—”
A spine-jarring wail cut off my question. I jerked my gaze back to the box, where blood-caked fingers clawed at the shroud. Out of instinct, I jerked back and pointed the gun at the body. Adam held up a hand and reached in to pluck the fabric from the face.
I gasped. “Maisie?” The name came out in the form of a question, because the being inside the box looked a hell of a lot more like the Crypt Keeper than my identical twin. Cheekbones jutted from skin so desiccated her fangs and teeth protruded from almost nonexistent lips. Unfocused blue eyes rolled wildy in their sockets. Black-and-red hair matted down with dried blood in places and sticking up like porcupine quills in others.
“Maisie, honey? Can you hear us?” Adam whispered.
Her head twisted toward the sound of his voice. But instead of calming her, it seemed to enrage her. A high, thin growl, not unlike a wounded animal’s, echoed through the cemetery. Her twig arms jutted toward the mage, her fingers bent into talons. Adam pulled back just in time to avoid being grabbed. Fear lit his eyes as he met my shocked gaze across her thrashing form. “Help me!”
I grabbed her flailing wrists as gently as I could. But even wasted away as she was, I had trouble subduing her. A major problem, since we were trying to sneak her out. “Maisie, it’s Sabina. You need to calm down and be quiet.”
But Maisie was beyond understanding. Blood-starved and terrified and enraged. Adam helped me try to hold her down. Our efforts only made things worse. She fought harder, alternating between rabid snarls and snapping her fangs at any available flesh.
“Ouch, dammit!” Adam yelped. A rivulet of blood ran down his forearm and splashed Maisie’s face. She snorted and tried to frantically reach the drops with her pale tongue.
The pitiful sight sent a shard of ice through my heart. “Bind your wound. I’ve got her,” I barked, taking her other wrist from Adam.
“I’m fine,” he said, his voice tight.
I looked up and glared at him. “The scent of your blood isn’t helping. Bind it. Now.”
A muscle in his jaw worked, but he finally pulled away to rip a strip of fabric from his shirt. Satisfied he’d take care of it, I focused on trying to restrain Maisie without hurting her. But the scent and taste of Adam’s blood made her jackknife up in the box in pursuit of more. She managed to pry a hand loose. Talon nails swiped a painful trail across my face. My skin throbbed hotly along the shallow slashes.
“Maisie, stop!” I pulled my face out of range of her snapping teeth.
I briefly considered trying to help her with my own blood. But I discarded the thought immediately. Allowing her to feed from my own vein was too dangerous. She was too ravenous. Besides, it was only a matter of time before Lavinia showed up to see my reaction to her little gift. Depleting my reserves now wasn’t an option.
“Adam, there’s a jug of blood in the bike’s storage compartment.”
He didn’t argue. One second he was beside me and the next he disappeared. Maisie had risen up above me, bearing down. It took everything I had to hold her off.
I felt rather than saw Adam’s reappearance. “Maisie!”
The scent of animal blood reached my nose the same instant Maisie’s body went stiff. Her head jerked around with a growl. She leapt at Adam, ripping the jug from his hands. She threw back her head and poured the red liquid into her mouth. It splashed her cheeks, ran down her chin, splattered the shredded remains of the chiton. She snorted and slurped at the plastic like a dog intent on licking every last drop from a bowl. Finally, she tossed it aside and proceeded to run her tongue over her fingers, her chin.
Meanwhile, I’d made my way slowly back around the vault to stand next to Adam. I wasn’t foolish enough to believe one measly container of blood would be enough to satisfy her. Especially when, in her haste, she’d managed to spill half its contents all over herself. She’d been without for more than a week and endured Lavinia and gods only knew who else draining her. So the desperation made sense. And if my suspicions were correct, the physical and psychological trauma of her captivity would demand twice or three time as much blood as she’d normally need. What worried me most, though, was that the blood she’d just consumed might give her just enough strength to make a real go at either Adam’s or my jugular.
Looking up at her red-streaked, skeletal face as she sucked blood from the fabric of her dress, I felt real fear. Palpable, bone-chilling fear. The kind that comes when you think you’ve seen it all but something comes along that far exceeds your worst nightmare. Because when the blood-crazed female finally opened her eyes, I didn’t see my sister in there. The earthy, generous, kind-hearted Maisie had checked out, and this blood-starved beast had taken up residence in her body.
“More.” The gravelly voice hinted at destroyed vocal cords. From starvation or from days spent screaming for help that never came, I didn’t know.
Adam held up his hands. “We’ll get you more soon. But first we need to get out of here.”
“More!” the wraith that used to be my sister screamed.
I stepped forward, slowly. “Maisie, sweetheart, Adam needs to take you home now. He’ll get you blood as soon as you get there, okay?”
Maisie threw back her head and howled. “Blood!”
“Maisie, stop!” I jumped at her, grabbing the frayed hem of her chiton and yanking. “We have to get you to out of here.”
Her body swayed and she cackled. Her knees creaked as she lowered herself to look into my face. “Shh.” A single dirty finger ran down my cheek. “The black dog howls at the crossroads.” She threw back her head and howled like a wolf at the moon.
Every hair on my body stood at attention. I grabbed her arms with suddenly frigid hands. Keeping my voice steady, I said, “Time to go.”
She cocked her head like a bird. “The skeleton clock is ticking, ticking, ticking.”
A chill ran down my spine, like someone walked over my grave. The words she’d spoken? They were straight out of the vision quest I had back in New York. I had no idea what they meant, but hearing them come from my sister’s mouth felt like a seriously bad omen. “Adam, grab her. You two have to get out of here.”