“It’s easier if you just come along. Trust me, I know from experience.” He looked around, assessing the scene. “Or I’ll let them have you.”
As if on cue, the noise from the abalsoms around us grew louder. Hailey cried out, covering her ears. She cowered, not wanting to go farther. As gently as I could, I nudged her along. We had to keep moving. I had no doubt Franco would do as he threatened.
I circled an arm around Naira to help her limp along. “Where does it hurt?”
“All over,” she replied, “like from the inside out.”
We had to find Nana the first opportunity we got and get out of this literal hell.
I was worried for Naira. She looked ashen, her lush, vibrant mahogany glow growing paler by the minute, her strength draining as if it were blood. We filed up the rickety wood staircase leading to the open space of the kitchen. Lyle swiped a palm over his bloodied nose, flicking the blood away.
The droplets flew into the abyss below us, to the abalsoms sticking their fingers through the spaces in the stairs. The zombies frenzied at Lyle’s blood, a cacophony of their snarls and screams reverberating against the enclosed walls of the stairwellto deafening proportions. In this moment, we worked as one, all of us rushing, Franco and his henchmen included, hurrying up the stairs and closing the door to the cellars behind them before those things reached us.
We walked into the open kitchen and saw it was night outside, where more of the Endowment’s hired goons stood around. The ones who’d rammed us and brought us here, I guessed. They had their weapons at the ready, their unease so thick, we could cut it with a knife.
“Don’t linger out there in the dark,” he continued. “With her preoccupied, they will be restless.”
No one had to imagine whotheywere. We could hear them, rustling the trees, inhuman grunts and moans coming from out of the darkness. Not even the wildlife made a sound.
Franco continued, “Go straight to the van and back to the city. I’ll check in with you in the morning.”
“Mr. Hall said we’re not supposed to leave without the blood samples and his niece and nephew,” the guard who’d hit Lyle said gruffly. He pointed at the plastic biocontainer sitting on a makeshift workbench with empty glass vials and packaged syringes beside it.
“Do you want to tell her that?” Franco asked, head inclined toward the stairs leading to the second floor.
The Endowment guards shared glances that said they’d seen enough of Effie to never want to tell her anything.
They started to file out the back door, and I wondered: If they went with their guns, what would keep the things downstairs away from us?
Franco turned to us and said, “Let’s not keep the new lady of the house.”
We were ushered into the grand entryway, and there I was able to see it. I could almost imagine it in its former glory, if you could call it that. It wasn’t glorious now, gutted out from the restoration project taking place on it and funded by… three guesses, the Endowment, this smarmy, mysterious organization. I couldn’t tell you what their end goal was. All I could tell you was it was no good. Scaffolding and plastic sheets lined the walls, exposing the inner pipes of the house.
“They started putting in gas pipes for the fireplaces. Not trying to mess too much with the original makeup of the house, of course, but what do I know about restoring old houses? I’m an artifacts guy, myself.” He laughed since he found himself so funny, and he was the only one.
“Watch your step. The floor is starting to go,” Franco said helpfully as he led the group.
“Something is wrong,” I said under my breath to the group so Franco couldn’t hear as he continued his grand show of this decrepit place. Even if this was where Effie and Ama had been, why would she ever want to come back? There was nothing left of this mausoleum of horror but nightmares and angry ghosts. The energy of it rippled through the foundations of the building.
Effie bellowed, “It was not your choice to make!”
And then a crash, so hard the massive building trembled as if an earthquake had hit. Her rage, her howl of unrestrained rage, could only be directed at one person. My grandmother.
I didn’t wait for anyone. I barely registered how the creaturesbelow surged with renewed energy from their link to their master. They moved with her emotions. When she angered, they riled. When she was in control, they froze, like they did when they had Hailey and me surrounded.
Nana Ama said all of this was new. Abalsoms. The hollowing, a devastating infection that turned innocent humans to raging monsters. That the one person who’d kept them at bay and remaining below was confronting the one person for whom she harbored centuries’ worth of growing hatred, and maybe for reasons anyone could understand if we really thought about it.
I raced up one side of the pair of curving staircases, jumping across the steps with holes in them, hoping I was going fast enough to not fall through to what was waiting below, to not get pulled back by Franco. Or maybe he was telling something else to stop, or maybe Lyle and Sekou had taken the opportunity to make their move. I didn’t know. I didn’t care. All that I could think about was getting up there and to my grandmother.
I reached the top of the steps, searching for where they were, trying to use both my physical and mental senses. But it was like I was being blocked, as if Nana was trying to keep me away. But she couldn’t. The block she was putting up was being battered by something else, something like rage and revenge. Something like hate, and that was what I felt most of all when I finally found them in what must have been the rooms of the master and mistress of the house.
That was where I saw Effie, tall like Nana. Regal like Nana. Enraged unlike Nana.
I found Nana Ama was in the air, an invisible force holdingher against the wall that she had crashed into. Nana struggled against it, and when she saw me, any fight she had seemed to drain out of her.
She looked like Nana did when she didn’t age herself to assimilate with humans. Effie looked no older than me. Except her eyes told of someone much, much older.
Effie’s eyes, red to Nana Ama’s gold, made their way down to me and caught me up in their snare. They froze me completely. She stared at me and I at her. She was beautiful. She was so young, as if she were no more than twentysomething. She watched me watching her, taking in all of her in her human form, with inhuman talons stretching from her fingertips.
