Chapter 17 #3
We headed toward Witherborne Mansion, or so I’d thought, but the more we ran, the less sense our surroundings made. The massive palm trees that had stood like a barrier between the two properties had moved. The fence and low wall weren’t where they should have been.
A split opened in the path up ahead. Roots burst from the ground on the right. I veered left. Theo narrowly dodged a lashing root as he ran after me. And there was the box house, lit up and rising out of the darkness like an ugly airport terminal building.
“What the fuck?” Theo slowed. “That’s behind us.”
I turned. The path behind us had closed up. There was no going back, not unless we wanted to fight with a wall of bushes and thrashing roots that moved below the earth like snakes through grass.
We were being herded back toward the house. Jeremy didn’t need to come after us. His garden was doing it for him.
“You got anymore salt?” Theo asked, voice cracking with concern.
“I left it by the pool.”
Theo gasped, and doubled over again, clutching his chest. “Ugh . . . damn.”
Of course he wasn’t okay. He’d died. And now his body was going through whatever vampires went through when they stopped being mostly human and became other. I really had to get him home. Geraldine would know what to do with him, and how to help.
“C’mon, let’s keep moving. Maybe we can sneak around the side and the bushes won’t notice?”
He breathed hard and nodded, then stumbled along beside me. He didn’t look so good, honestly. But if we could just get away from the Briar house, and get him back home, he’d be alright. He’d died and come back, which meant he was technically immortal now, right?
If only vampires came with set-up instructions.
Theo grabbed my shoulder, using it to hold himself upright. “It’s just my humanity dying off. I’ll be alright in a minute.”
“That pesky ol’ humanity, huh?” I laughed, making light of something I didn’t understand, and probably didn’t want to. Not now, or ever.
“Yeah.” Theo smiled, but it hung sadly on his face. “I’ll be fine.”
I hoped so, because if we saw Jeremy again, I was going to need more help than a sickly half-drowned vampire.
The gardens closed in, roots and brush weaving into walls too high to climb, corralling us back onto the box house’s patio.
The pool shone, calmer now. Theo side-eyed it, and we both gave it a wide berth as we snuck back through a side door into the house.
We entered what appeared to be the music room.
One wall was all glass, and looked out over the pool.
A shiny black piano sat at the back of the room, and a guitar rested on a stand.
Silence wrapped around us. Each of our footsteps crunched grit onto the smooth, spotlessly clean floors.
If we could just make it to the front door, maybe nobody would notice we’d left.
“I’ve really had enough of nosy neighbors.”
Jeremy appeared in the door ahead, filling it with a body that was too large for the space. He didn’t really look like a man anymore. He looked like something that had decided to wear a man and didn’t fit.
“I need that vampire’s blood, and nobody is leaving until I get it!” the Jeremy thing growled in his horrible, gravelly voice.
“He’s transitioned,” I blurted. “He’s useless to you now. So let us go and nobody has to know any of this happened. I’ll even keep cleaning your pool. For free. Every day. For a year. Forever? How’s that?”
Theo leaned hard against me, body heaving with every breath. “Don’t think . . . he wants . . . that,” he wheezed.
“The heir is fine, just wet,” Jeremy said, loping forward. His limbs had gained a few extra joints. His jaw too. He looked like a wooden doll that had been crushed and put back together with crazy glue. “Give him to me.”
“Nuh-uh, no, nope.” I shoved Theo behind my back. “You really don’t want to do this. I know for a fact that Geraldine Witherborne will be very upset if you hurt her favorite son.”
“Pffft, I’ll be doing her a favor. She hates her children. As for the father, he’s a barely functioning idiot, too tired to lift a finger. The family are doomed. Vampires are a dying species. They shouldn’t have come out. Fools. I’m just helping them along. Natural selection.”
“Nothing about this is natural, honestly.”
“What do you know of nature?” His voice got all hissy now, and his motion more jagged, which couldn’t be a good thing.
“Humans have been disconnected from nature for centuries. It will be your downfall. We will take it from you, make it ours, make it mine! We will root here, and feed on the vibrancy, and then you will know your true place in the hierarchy.”
He stalked us, coming closer. I maneuvered Theo behind me with every step, so all three of us were doing a slow dance around the vast music room.
Any second, Jeremy could fling out a root limb and skewer me like he had Bentley.
The only reason he hadn’t was probably because he didn’t want to accidently hurt Theo.
“Look, we can still talk about this,” I said. “Nobody else needs to get hurt.”
“Talk?” Jeremy laughed. “I’m tired of talking. All I’ve done is talk for centuries. I want my people back where they belong. Our time has finally come to emerge from the Underthorns. Give me that Witherborne now!”
Jeremy lunged. I swung my right fist at his ill-fitting face.
My knuckles met his jaw, snapping his head sideways, and then I stamped on his foot.
He growled, as though I wasn’t much more nuisance than a fly, and the root arm came at me.
I batted it aside, diverting it around me.
It plunged into the piano, shattering it in a cacophony of broken notes and splintered wood.
“Run!” I shoved Theo toward the door.