The door rattled a final time, somewhat definitively. The knob kept twitching, and the scraping sound was someone pushing.
It’s unlocked. But the invisible stuff is holding it closed. She tried to focus on every clue he’d given about the force-field, backing up nervously in case the little green men came boiling through. The hinges were on this side since the door opened inward, maybe she could work on those?
Finally, after a long nerve-stretching quiet, she edged closer, laid her palms against the invisible wall once more. Once more the prickling threatened when she pushed too hard.
But if she was slow, and patient, maybe something was possible.
Sure, superstrength and speed were handy to have. But tiny, incremental efforts were more often than not surprisingly effective. If he was waiting outside, at a certain point he might make it easier just to draw her out, and then he’d have a reason to do what he wanted.
Just like a man.
Bea pushed, very gently. The prickles intensified, quickly mounting to the threshold of actual pain.
But they didn’t get worse. The sensation seemed to top out, and the shimmer wobbled unhappily. Her hand closed over the doorknob; a burst of wild, terrible hope inside her chest made a small whining noise slip between clenched teeth. A slow, slow turn, fighting invisible recalcitrance. The prickles still didn’t get worse; the necklace was a hot coal glued to her chest.
The knob wouldn’t move any further. Setting her sneakered heels again, Bea leaned back, easing the slab of wood free of its socket. Hinges rasped, metal grinding; half-inch by grueling, painful half-inch the door swung inward.
Holy shit.
Her hand left the invisible field’s border six inches inside, and the relief was so intense she almost lost her grip on the still-resisting door. The wooden rectangle fought her, trembling as its inner edge hit the border of the invisible field; she had to not only ease it through resistance at that slow, steady pace but also force it to obey, the pressure calibrated just right.
Beyond lay a short landing and the stairs going up, sunk in near-absolute darkness despite the empty archway at the top holding a faint tinge of electric light.
When she pushed a sneakered foot into the field, the prickles intensified. Bea strangled a gasp, listening intently as she worked her leg into the shimmer. Sure, it felt awful, but it didn’t seem to do any actual damage.
Which might change if he came back and found her like this, trapped like a fly in sticky paper.
Fuck it. Bea leaned into the invisible field, turning in slow motion, and began easing herself into the tense, resisting gap.
The worst moment wasn’t holding her breath until soft black splotch-patterns bloomed at the edge of her vision, nor was it the sudden cessation of resistance after a terrible, squeezing crunch at what had to be the midpoint of the ‘seals’. It wasn’t popping free and spilling onto the stairs, her body twitching and suddenly halfway up the long flight, nearly overbalancing, her shoulder clipping the wall hard enough to send a hot jolt down her entire right side. Nor was the worst a sudden flood of sound assailing her ears, the volume turned down with a reflex she hadn’t known she possessed, or the necklace suddenly cooling as it lay against her sweater, sending a venomous green glitter into the dimness.
The worst was hearing heartbeats at the top of the stairs—two of them, both popping along quickly as her own—and fighting the urge to dive back into her prison, hoping nobody had noticed. If he caught her…
But the pulses weren’t Lukas’s slow, somehow more intense beat. Mortal death is a process, not a terminus.
He could put that on a T-shirt, make some pocket money. Bea pushed herself away from the wall, crimson fear pouring down her back, stiffening each hair, every inch of skin still ringing with that terrible prickling pressure.
Instinct took over. She bolted up the stairs, unprepared for how lightly her feet landed, how each push suddenly provided a lot more oomph. In fact, she was at the top in an eyeblink, whirling, and the house throbbed with voices, movement, bright light, smells concentrated and fired past her because she was moving with inhuman speed.
Someone shouted as she burst from the staircase’s gloom and bounced off a wall, her sneakers barely touching carpet before she was at the far end of the hallway. The sound was behind her in a trice, falling away like a train whistle dying in the distance. Her body suddenly knew what to do, careening through brightly lit passageways, and maybe she’d been subconsciously planning because before Beatrice was quite ready her arms had come up, shielding her face as she burst with a crackling tinkle through a wide picture-window looking over the grassy expanse before the mansion.
A moment of weightlessness, then the new, undeniable reflexes took over, tucking her into a compact ball just before she landed. The world turned over, a furrow dug in soaked turf and she was running again, streaking for the driveway’s wet glistening. Heavy icy drops pelted her face and hands, her hair stripped back by a stiff breeze mostly made of her own motion, and she streaked down the hill faster than the BMW had mounted it upon their arrival.
Holy SHIT. Crazed glee mixed with a bright white diamond glare of fear—what if he was waiting in the bushes? What if this was all part of the trap?
The big wrought-iron gate reared before her. Bea screamed, a harsh rising caw of effort, and her body, fueled by hallucinogenic monster blood, uncoiled in a terrific leap.
She overcalculated, landing in a tangle of vines and cold-dripping underbrush, but that was okay because she’d cleared the fucking gate, and the wild pounding drum that was her heart sang.
At least for a little while, she was free.
The road rose up under her—another leap, she’d somehow also freed herself from the bushes’ stick-arms, was over before she could quite brace herself. She hit and staggered drunkenly, the sudden certainty of pursuit, of the trap closing on her, giving fresh hysterical strength to every muscle. The necklace jounced against her sweater, tapping with the rhythm of desperate escape.
Bea put her head down, her arms pumping, and streaked into the night.
CHAPTER 24
Even the ichor of other sanguinant was near-tasteless now, though it did not stop him from gorging.
