Eleven jeered at me and threw a blanket into my arms. Her eyebrows rose in annoyance. “Yeah, start a fire if you want. The smoke will alert every Dog in the area.”
“Yeah, great idea, idiot,” Twelve condescendingly agreed, her eyes rolling as she let out a dramatic sigh.
Darkness fell, and the last sliver of light disappeared, leaving us in quiet darkness as we slowly unpacked our supplies for the night. My hand trembled slightly as I touched the aged, worn wood of the staircase railing, silently praying it wouldn’t give way under my weight.
Thankfully, it didn’t.
“Where’re you going?” Jude’s concerned face looked up at me. “We should stick together.”
I shrugged. “Just going upstairs to find a bed to sleep in.”
“Oh,” Twelve elbowed Eleven. “The little prince wants to sleep in a bed tonight. I guess that means us peasants have to sleep on the floor.”
Ignoring their taunts, I climbed the creaking staircase, my chin lifted in defiance. I didn’t give the two immature women the satisfaction of throwing a comment back at them. Instead, I wanted them to revel in their words. After all, it looked like they were used to sleeping on the floor.
Which was the exact comeback I kept to myself.
Chapter Seventeen
With each step, the aged floorboards groaned beneath me, and as I reached the landing, I feared I might plummet through to the kitchen below. I took a left and found a room with a bunch of windows on one side. One was shattered, letting in the wind and rain, and the floorboards beneath it were warped and rotting from years of exposure to the elements. A large, antique chest sat in the center of the room, surrounded by an array of broken plastic toys and moldy stuffed animals. A colorful mat depicting a quaint town with winding roads and storybook houses was spread on the ground. I looked at one of the papers that had fallen off the wall, and it was a child’s drawing of a rainbow with four poorly drawn people beneath it. In an almost illegible scrawl were the letters D-A-N-N-Y.
A slow breath escaped my lips as I pictured Danny and his family in the photos downstairs. What happened to them? Did they turn into vampires? Did they find their way to Silvertown? Or did they flee and possibly get caught by the Dogs? Whatever happened to them, I wish I could’ve helped somehow.
I pursed my lips together and moved to the next room, which was bathed in hues of an aged pink, almost white. A crumpledblanket lay discarded on the bed, a contrast to the otherwise perfectly ordered room. A purple stain spread across the white dresser, a small, overturned bottle of nail polish lying nearby, its sticky residue clinging to the wood. Opened drawers revealed a jumble of mismatched items: cheap plastic earrings, heavy gold bangles, and stiff makeup brushes.
A beautiful, jewel-toned box on the dresser made my eyes light up. Years dulled the paint on its outside to a dim hue, but the box was adorned with finely carved leaves circling its top, complemented by murky stones. As the mirrored lid clicked open, my reflection appeared, a perfect copy staring back from the polished surface. A faint, slightly off-key melody, barely audible, drifted from the depths of the antique music box, its notes softened and blurred by time.
“Shh!” a voice sounded from the doorway.
In a panicked jump, I slammed the lid shut. I turned to look and saw Eleven standing silently in the dimly lit hallway, her eyes fixed on me.
“What’re you doing?”
“I dunno.” I shrugged. “Getting a feel for who used to live here. Reminiscing of times before everything went to shit, I guess.”
“I wish I knew what that was like,” she admitted wistfully, her fingers tracing the worn wood of the doorway.
A sudden, sharp crash downstairs caused us to freeze, our muscles tensing. The shattering of glass sent a sharp, high-pitched ring through the air, followed by a monstrous bang—like the front door had been blown off its hinges by a cannon. Loud, angry voices started booming from the floor below.
“Who da fuck is in ma house? Ya’ll fangers?”
A woman’s voice, sharp and shrill, cut through the air with a shout. “Git outta here!”
I looked to Eleven, and she put a finger to her lips, her body tense as she flattened herself against the rough-textured wall.
“Fangers ain’t welcome here!” With that, a gunshot pulsed through the silent house, the sound bouncing off the walls.
“We aren’t vampires.” I heard Jude attempt to explain to the intruders. “We’re human.”
The sounds of rapid gunfire echoed from below, a jarring cacophony that shook the ground beneath our feet. Eleven’s grip was firm as she pulled me across the hall and into the primary bedroom. A huge bed took up most of the room, and next to it lay two nightstands, their drawers hanging open and contents spilled across the floor. The blankets lay in a haphazard heap, tossed aside in a rush.
“What the hell is happening?” I asked as she closed the door.
“Uncivilized humans, I guess.” She shrugged, looked under the bed, and rifled through the closet as gunshots and screams rang downstairs. “I knew I should’ve brought a weapon with me, fuck.”
The last gunshot echoed, then a heavy, unnatural silence fell over the house. Was everyone dead down there? I watched Eleven, her movements as silent as a shadow, tiptoeing toward the door, careful not to creak any floorboard.
I examined the wall and floor near the bed, noticing the fine spray of blood droplets scattered across the surfaces. Someone here must have had BRETH. Maybe that’s why they left so abruptly.
