Chapter 20
They found some of the others about an hour later, after waiting a while to ensure the monster was really gone.
Rue was in Ryker’s pants, the Black Hart strutting around in his black boxers, somehow pulling the look off.
Instead of heading to the upper level, they’d decided to do a quick run through down here, and that’s where they’d discovered Bowie, Lenore, and Ishleen hiding in a corner billiards room.
“Thank Light!” Lenore threw her arms around Rue the second she realized it was them. “I was so worried!”
“The creature walked by earlier,” Bowie told them, standing from where he’d been hiding behind the bar across from the entrance. “It didn’t come inside, but we thought maybe it’d gotten you.”
“Have you seen any of the others?” Lenore asked, looking disheartened when Rue indicated he hadn’t.
“You made it back.” Ishleen was suddenly at Ryker’s side, her hand on his arm. “Are you okay?”
“Fine,” Ryker replied, and even though there wasn’t so much as a hint of friendliness in his tone, that didn’t seem to deter the woman one bit.
“Now that you’re here, I feel a lot safer,” Ishleen said.
“What happened to your pants?” Bowie asked, and it took Rue a second to process the question was meant for him.
It was obvious he was wearing Ryker’s clothes since they were a bit too big on him.
He shrugged, downplaying it on purpose. “Mine got dirty.”
Rue did not elaborate, knowing full well where all their minds went from that casual statement. He glanced over to find Ryker smirking, but the Black Hart didn’t correct their assumptions either, seemingly pleased to allow the misunderstanding to stick.
“Oh.” Bowie dropped his gaze.
Ishleen let Ryker go, though she didn’t immediately move away. She gave him a searching gaze, as though silently asking him to clear things up and say it wasn’t true.
She must not have stuck around long enough to hear the two of them going at it in the kitchen earlier.
Pity.
“You’re the first ones we’ve run into,” Ryker answered Lenore’s earlier question, ignoring Ishleen. “Since the monster already passed this place, we should stay for as long as we can. Night is falling.”
Right, and with the power still out, that was going to make moving around and avoiding the creature a hell of a lot more difficult.
Right now, there was still some light coming from the windows, though they’d pulled the blinds over them, so it wasn’t providing much.
Enough to still see everything, in any case.
The billiards room had three tables set in a row, a leather couch and two armchairs at the far end, and the bar.
None of the furniture was light enough, or near enough, for them to move to block the door, which was probably why he and Ryker had been able to walk in so easily. There wasn’t even a lock.
It didn’t seem all that safe, but at the same time…Was anywhere?
“Did you find anything outside?” Bowie asked Ryker, and Rue realized he hadn’t found any of that out himself yet.
“The pool house is on a separate power grid,” the Black Hart said, “but the service was still down, and there weren’t any computers or anything of the like we could even attempt to make a connection from.”
“So that’s it?” Ishleen crossed her arms. “What now?”
“The fog has to lift eventually,” Bowie stated, frowning when Ryker snorted.
“I wouldn’t be so sure about that.” Ryker stepped around the bar, searching the contents behind it before grabbing something. When he popped back up, he immediately held out a bottle of water to Rue.
“What does that mean?” Bowie asked.
“If someone really is responsible for all of this it wouldn’t end that easily.
” Ryker watched as Rue drained half the water.
As soon as he was satisfied he’d had enough, he opened his own bottle and took a chug before continuing his explanation.
“Someone doesn’t want us leaving. I don’t think they’re just using the fog.
A lot of us checked the weather forecast before arriving.
Did any of you see this predicted? I didn’t. ”
“You’re saying a person created this fog? What, like with those machines they use at crappy parties?” Ishleen glanced at the window. “And the monsters?”
“Developed from a game,” Rue risked revealing, watching Ryker’s face closely for any signs that could give him away.
But the Black Hart merely frowned along with everyone else. “What?”
“I found a game manual in Cosima’s office,” Rue continued. He’d snuck it out of his soiled sweats and into Ryker’s jeans when the Black Hart wasn’t looking before they’d left the closet, but he didn’t take it out to show anyone just yet.
He didn’t want anyone seeing Ryker’s name inside of it.
“One of those creatures is clearly shown on it. Whatever we’re dealing with, it’s not entirely natural.”
“Summoning creatures and somehow creating them are two very different things.” The Black Hart pursed his lips, considering this angle. “We assumed they’d hung speakers around the creature’s necks or something like that, to feed them our voices and scare us. But if there’s more to it than that…”
Rue knew Ryker. He wasn’t that good of an actor.
The Black Hart didn’t know what he was talking about.
The relief he felt over that truth had him swaying slightly, and he needed to brace himself on the edge of the bar. Bowie moved to help him, but Ryker was quicker, leaping over the counter top to land between the two of them, blocking his friend’s path.
“Rue?” Ryker rested one hand on his nape and the other on his arm. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” He couldn’t exactly confess that he’d doubted him. “Just…dizzy for a moment.”
“Come sit down.” Ryker swept him up into his arms before he could say it wasn’t necessary, carrying him over to the other side of the room. He placed him gently down onto the chair furthest from the window, then knelt before him so he could inspect him.
“I’m fine,” Rue reassured, smiling in the hopes that would help make it believable. “Really.”
“When was the last time you ate?”
“This morning. Before…You know.”
“Wait here.” Ryker stood and returned to the bar, where Bowie and Ishleen were standing.
Lenore had come over to the sitting area with them, and now she frowned down at Rue. “Are you really okay?”
“Yeah,” he said. “It’s just been a rough couple of days, that’s all.”
His friend was quiet for a moment, then glanced over to the others before saying in a low tone, “It was what you found earlier, right? Was there anything else in the manual? Any other clues?”
“No,” the lie came easily enough. Rue was capable of anything if it meant protecting Ryker. “I didn’t have enough time to really look through it. The monster came after me and I had to hide.”
“Holy shit, seriously?” Lenore grabbed onto his shoulder, but Rue eased her off.
“Ryker found me. Nothing happened. And Uriel and Ellery are planning on killing it. We just have to wait it out. This place is big, but not that big. They’ll encounter it eventually.”
“That’ll take care of the one inside,” she agreed, “but what about the ones out there? This is crazy, Rue. To think that someone put this whole thing together? To what end?”
“I don’t know.”
The speaker idea wasn’t a bad one though.
Ryker and the other Black Harts must have discussed it while they’d been in the pool house and come up with that theory.
It could still be correct. Someone in here could easily program a speaker placed on those monsters, the same way Ellery’s multi-slate had connected with the speaker they’d tossed outside.
Then it was just a matter of them having recorded their voices and taken the time to mess with the audio files. Whoever it was wouldn’t even need to be around.
Or, if they were around, they would only have to hit a single button on their multi-slates, or whatever other device they were using to send the files, and then act shocked right along with the rest of them when the familiar voices came through the window.
“Everyone was chatting on the drive here,” Rue recalled. “It would have been the perfect time to record us and capture our voices for later use.”
From there, it was relatively easy to figure out.
Everyone had known Ryker was on final guard duty that first night, so all the culprit had to do was program Uriel’s voice.
Making him call his name added a dash of reality and personalization to it.
If Ryker had opened that door, the creature would have eaten him and broken in, causing more mayhem a lot sooner.
The situation in the kitchen was no different. Despite the way Ishleen kept flirting with his man, everyone knew what was between Rue and the Black Hart. It would be impossible to ignore after the way Ryker had carried him off as soon as his mom had died.
The thing Rue didn’t know was what voice had been used to convince Jesse to let that thing inside. Maybe there hadn’t been one at all. Perhaps he’d originally been in on it but had lost control of the situation. The details there didn’t really matter. It still fit within his hypothesis.
“A program that can copy us that effectively only after a few stolen voice snippets would be expensive. All of this would have taken money. Lots of it. And influence.” Lenore stared at him pointedly. “We both know what that means.”
“You think it was Rhys.” Rue couldn’t say he hadn’t considered that himself, more than once.
“The Harts are the most powerful family on the planet. If it wasn’t Rhys, it might have been….” Her sentence trailed off, but she made a big show of looking over to where Ryker was.
The Black Hart was rounding the bar, a bag of snacks in his hand. His eyes found Rue’s, and in that split second of distraction, chaos exploded.
Ishleen let out a shrill cry and suddenly lunged at Bowie. Her hands wrapped around his neck, and she slammed him back against the wall, squeezing with all of her might. Her nails dug into him, tearing skin when Ryker grabbed onto her and pulled her away, but she fought back.
Lenore raced to Bowie’s side, putting herself between them. “What happened?!”