Chapter 16 #2
As soon as they reached the entrance, they tucked low, Uriel reaching up to test the door, nodding when he found it unlocked. He eased it open a foot, each of them squeezing through the gap one by one.
Ellery took up the rear, slowly shutting it and flicking the lock into place as soon as they were all inside. There were blinds, and he pulled them down, the rest of them already moving around the glass box of a building to do the same, until they’d blocked out most of the outside world.
“Well,” Ell turned to them once they were finished locking the place down, “that was boring.”
“Yes, it would have been much more entertaining if one of us had been torn apart,” Uriel drawled sarcastically.
Ryker shook his head at them and got to work, checking around for computers.
The pool house was a single level, but it branched off in the back, one way leading to a changing area, the other bathrooms and showers.
There was a single phone on the wall before the hallway, but when he picked it up, it was clearly dead.
After checking all of the lockers in the changing room, in case someone had left something behind, and trying to see if his multi-slate could connect to anything, he gave up and returned to the front empty handed.
“Anything?” Ellery asked, sighing when he shook his head. “Here either.”
“Why was Cosima so set on sending Tod here?” Ryker asked. “There’s no computer setup, and as far as I can tell, while the building is on a separate power source, there’s still no service.”
“He’s correct.” Uriel was typing at his device, also not having any luck. “I ran a scan, and there’s nothing in the vicinity that can connect us.”
“I’d suspect her, but she’s dead, so…” Ellery winked when Ryker rolled his eyes. “What now?”
“We prepare for the other reason we came out here,” Uriel said.
“How big is the smallest one, roughly?” Ryker wasn’t looking to get eaten today.
Especially not by some monster-horror possibly from another dimension.
“We don’t know much. Four legs, can walk short distances on two.
Mimics voices. Not just the dead, since it was able to sound like Uriel when it tried to trick me. ”
“A code then?” Uriel suggested.
“Plan on fanning out that much?” Ellery gave a mock shudder. “Personally, I’d like to keep you both in sights at all times.”
“Please, you’re voted most likely to go off on your own and get yourself killed,” Ryker corrected.
“When did we take a vote on that?”
“Just now,” Uriel quipped, “and he’s right.”
“If you two are half as good at ganging up on the monster as you are at ganging up on me, we’ll be fine.
” Ellery hopped onto one of the lounge chairs.
There were several of them, all facing the glass wall that overlooked the pool.
They couldn’t see it now, of course, but he rested back and folded his hands beneath his head anyway.
“The goal is to kill it right, not capture?”
“Kill and study,” Uriel confirmed.
“That means we’ll need time and space.” Ryker glanced around. “There’s no way we’re fitting something like that through the front door, even if we could clear the area for it.”
“If we can take it out silently, we should have enough time to look it over fast.”
“And if we don’t? If it calls for help?” Too risky. “We need a better plan.”
Getting to the pool house had been the easy part, and Rue had already been highly against it. If Ryker showed up missing an arm or covered in visible monster teeth marks? He could kiss any chance of climbing back into Rue’s bed goodbye.
“We could just do nothing,” Ellery suggested casually. “Just chill here and wait it out.”
“Rue is back there,” Ryker said.
“So?”
“Watch it.”
“He’s one of us,” Uriel reminded his cousin. “Even if Ryker wasn’t fucking him, he’d still be one of us.”
Ellery clicked his tongue. “He refused the Black Hart title and won’t take a room at Castle Black. Doesn’t sound like he’s willing to be one of us at all. Just because he likes sitting on cock—”
Ryker grabbed the nearest item and chucked it with all his might.
The water bottle pinged off Ellery’s shoulder, clattering to the floor.
“Damn it! That hurt, asshole!” Ell shot to his feet, but a shush from Uriel had him stilling. “At least your anger management issues still flare when Stepbrother isn’t around. We’re going to need it.”
“Not leaving the rest enough time to prepare was smart,” Uriel said. “But it doesn’t help us narrow things down.”
They’d sprung their plan on the group to ensure no one could sneak off and…
do anything. Ryker didn’t know what, but that was because he still didn’t have a clue who could be behind all of this.
Or why they’d bother. He couldn’t even be certain he was an actual target.
There was a good chance he’d merely drawn the short end of the stick by being the last one on guard duty last night, and that’s why the creatures had attempted to speak to him and not someone else.
Mind games?
“If it’s one of them,” he guessed, “they could have opened a door and let those things inside. But they haven’t. Why?”
And would they?
“Maybe they don’t have control,” Ellery suggested. “Come on. These things are still creatures. Animals.”
“Or ghouls,” Uriel put in, but they ignored him.
“They’re feeding them information,” Ryker said, “that much we know for sure.”
“How? How are they getting them to sound exactly like us?”
“And to what end?” Ell asked.
“Murder? Revenge?” Ryker shrugged. “Hell if I know.”
“Against the company?” Ellery pursed his lips. “That pans.”
“The board is made up of a bunch of selfish pricks.” Ryker’s father being top of that list. “But they’re probably all dead now, so why are these things still here? Why hasn’t the fog lifted?”
If they’d gone fishing in the middle of the woods, where these things clearly lived, it was pretty safe to assume Rhys and the others had been killed off already.
“Perhaps whoever started this has lost hold of the situation.” Uriel brushed the edge of a blind out of the way and peered outside.
The music had cut off a few minutes ago, Ellery hitting pause on his device once they’d safely entered the pool house.
“Either it’s one of the people who’s stuck by us, or it’s one of the missing workers. ”
“Could still be a third party as of yet unknown to us,” Ellery corrected.
“Ideally, if that’s the case, they’ll find them when they do their sweep.” Ryker didn’t want to think about that. About how he’d left Rue there with a potential threat. Still, it had to be safer in there than out here. “Let’s come up with a plan to take one of those things down.”
At least that was something they could focus on in the present.
The rest would have to come.