I swallowed down my fear. “Dracula is somewhere in this store, and—”
A scream pierced the darkness.
A very familiar scream.
“Mum,” I yelled, jerking myself to my feet. “We’re coming!”
A wave of nausea and pain nearly kicked me back down again, but I held onto Heathcliff until it passed. Nothing like an immovable wall as a boyfriend to steady yourself.
“You can’t go out there unarmed,” Jo cried, shoving herself in front of me. “You’ve seen what he did to Fiona and Quoth.”
I swiped my fingers around the rim of the last pasta sauce jar and smeared the garlicky sauce in two stripes across my cheeks. “We’re going to war. We won’t be unarmed. Where are those stakes Heathcliff sharpened?”
“In the storage room,” Morrie said.
“Then we’ll have to get to them. Find us anything on this floor we can use as a weapon. We’ll head there first.” I tugged the Vampire Vanishing Kit from my purse. Mrs. Ellis did the same thing, and we shared around the supplies of holy water, garlic, and the crucifix charms. “We need to go room-by-room until we find him. Whenever we find one of the Spirit Seekers, we send them back up here to hide out in this room, got it? No matter what happens, my mother isnotto go after Dracula, is that clear?”
“What about the last box of dirt?” Heathcliff asked as Morrie broke the legs off a wooden chair and handed them around.
“It’s gone. I destroyed it.” Fresh tears flowed from my eyes as I thought of Quoth’s beautiful artwork smashed on the gallery floor. “Quoth painted the dirt into one of his paintings. I broke it and doused it in holy water. It’s done. We can now go after Dracula.”
Heathcliff cracked his knuckles. “Good. I’ve been waiting to get my hands on that poxy bastard.”
As we made our way out of my bedroom and into the living room, Morrie went ahead into the kitchen and returned with an armload of kitchen knives. He pressed one into my hands. “That’s as good as we’re going to get. I also found this axe beside the fire.”
“That’s mine.” Heathcliff grabbed it.
“What do we do if we come across the Count?” Mrs. Ellis twirled her knife in her fingers like she’d been slaying vampires all her life, which at this stage I’d honestly believe. “Are we to kill him if we have the chance, or do we need to keep him alive?”
“I—” My gaze swept to Quoth. “I think we need to—”
“Mina…Miiiiiina…”
The sound boomed from the air itself. It sank through my body, pooling in my stomach and freezing my heart to ice. My limbs jerked as Dracula bent his considerable power to drawing me closer. He wanted me. Hecommandedme. I’d very nearly fallen under Quoth’s spell, and he had only a taste of the Count’s true power.
But Quoth… If we killed Dracula, we might lose our one chance at bringing back the people he’d tainted.
“We have to kill him.” I swallowed the lump that rose in my throat. “We can’t…fuck about, as Heathcliff would say. We can’t risk him taking the waters of Meles or hurting more innocent people. Under no circumstances is he to leave this shop or break into the room at the end of the hall.”
“I don’t know what the waters of Meles are, but you’re the boss.” Mrs. Ellis slid the knife into her belt.
Heathcliff’s hand squeezed mine. “But Quoth—”
“I know,” I whispered. “I know. But we have to believe there’s a way to save him.”
“Right then.” Mrs. Ellis brandished her chair leg. “What are we standing around here for?”
I swallowed again. With a lost look over my shoulder at my midnight bird who only wanted to be free, then at the shadow-shrouded faces of my friends and my lovers, of two men who’d step into hell itself for me, I raised my own weapon and yelled into the gloom. “You want Nevermore Bookshop? You’re going to have to go through us first. Bring it on, bloodsucker.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
We checked every corner of the flat first, in case any members of the Spirit Seekers were hiding up here, but Heathcliff’s gazillion KEEP OUT signs must’ve terrified them too much, because we found no one. We left Socrates and Victor guarding Quoth, Fiona, and Grey, and descended the stairs into the darkness. In one hand, I gripped Oscar’s harness far tighter than Evie, my guide dog instructor, would normally allow. The other held up the kitchen knife, the blade soaked in holy water.
Morrie strode beside me, holding out a chair leg and a torch made from a burning Dan Brown novel. Finally, theDa Vinci Codeput to good use.
Something moved on our left. A floorboard creaked. Heathcliff lunged, yelling in triumph as his chair leg hit home.
THUMP.
