Bloodbreeders: The Revenge (16 page)

“Don’t leave,” Tanda said sitting up. “Please, don’t leave us again.”

“Oh baby,” I replied going to her. “I’m just going to check on the others, but Ashley’s going to watch over you until I come back. I swear, I will not leave this place without you.”

“I love you,” she stated, throwing her arms around my neck. “You are my mother now.”

“And you are my little girl, forever and ever.”

I laid my head down on top of hers and looked over at Garvin. He smiled back from his cot, wiping the tears that had rolled down his cheek. I rose up and kissed her forehead, and told her that I had to go. She gave me the most beautiful smile that I had ever seen on her in return and it shot a spark right through my heart. I got up and walked over to Ashley and hugged her just as I had Tanda. I put my hand on the top of Garvin’s head and knew if I spoke even one word at that moment, that I would lose it. I felt, in a small way, that I was with my siblings back on the farm. How was it that they could remind me so much of my own family?

“I’ll be back soon.”

I left before I became emotional all over again. I stood waiting at the top of the stairs for what seemed like hours, thinking that the boys had found themselves some trouble, when I heard the click of the door knob. I held my breath, while holding my knife ready, just in case it wasn’t one of mine. The door slowly opened and Derek slid in backward, never seeing me in the darkness of the corner. Once the door was closed I placed my hand on his shoulder, causing him to scream out and bolt down the stairs.

“Derek…Derek, it’s me,” I called out, laughing at the same time.

“Renee?” he asked turning around. “That scared me half to death. I thought that nutty old lady done had me.”

“I tried to be quiet, but that was so funny,” I continued to giggle.

“That depends on who’s doing the laughing here. Gee, I could’ve had a heart attack,” he
claimed holding his chest.

“Now I wouldn’t take it that far,” I said, putting my arm around his neck. “Where are the others?”

“Oh shit! I’m supposed to go back out and let them know the coast is clear,” he replied, running back to the door just in time to get knocked in the face, as Bo and Brandon were coming through it.

“What the hell were you doing?” Brandon asked the second the door was closed, not seeing me.

“I think…”

“Holy shit you scared me,” Brandon hissed out, cutting my statement short.

“That’s what happened to me,” Derek replied, laughing so hard he was holding his stomach.

Derek picked on Brandon all the way back down and I didn’t say a word, because of the way that I laughed at him. Both boys, Brandon and Bo, had come back in carrying a small goat. “Why didn’t you get a pig, the blood tastes so much better?” Derek asked.

“Can you not answer that one yourself? Let’s go, he can think on it, on the way down.” Bo rolled his eyes and then winked at me.

Bo made sure to give Garvin and Tanda their fill first. Then the rest of us had ours. Now that Tanda was fresh and clean and had her second feeding, she was looking radiant. Derek couldn’t seem to take his eyes off of her. It was the one thing that we had all taken notice of.

“Hey Derek, have you thought about why we didn’t bring back a pig?” Bo asked, watching the way he was watching her.

“Too heavy for ya?” he remarked, acting like he was fiddling with his knife.

“No silly,” Tanda said smiling. “They make far too much noise. Haven’t you ever tried to pick up a pig?”

“Well, sure,” Derek stuttered, as a fine rose tint covered his cheeks. “I’ve carried plenty.”

Bo and Brandon burst out laughing, and Ashley just turned her back making snorting noises. Garvin was sitting up on the side of his cot looking at us like we had lost our minds. Here we were, about to face death itself, and we were all just laughing it up. I was going to explain to him, or at least try, about how it was sometimes better to joke around, because it eased the nerves. As soon as I opened my mouth, I lost my own composer and started laughing with the rest. We all recalled the conversation that we had with Derek on the boat, about him one day becoming smitten with a girl. Now, seeing him with moon shaped eyes looking at Tanda and seemingly being tongue tied, was more than enough to break us all out into laughter.

“It’s a long story, Garvin,” I said, standing up and rubbing the top of Derek’s head. “He always cracks us up.”

“I did not see what was so funny,” he innocently replied.

“Once you get to know everyone, you will,” I said, then softly clapped my hands together. “I have a plan and I think we need to put it into action, before the sun decides to make its appearance.”

Fortunately there was an antique clock hanging on the foyer wall, and Bo had noticed the time when they came back in about thirty minutes ago, which put it around three a.m.. I explained how we needed to make sure that the foyer and second floor was empty, or as Derek had so boldly put it, ‘dead’ before we took the third and final floor—Yvette’s personal space. The one thing that we didn’t need was someone coming up behind us. Garvin tried to argue, wanting to stand with us against his Mistress, for causing pain to his sister. I explained that he could barely wash himself, much less swing a weapon trying to defend himself. He agreed reluctantly, but took pride in the fact that he would be guarding the two young girls left in his care.

“You don’t want me to go?” Ashley asked with tears welling up.

“It’s not that, honey. I don’t want you getting hurt. Besides, what if Sydney wakes up? He isn’t going to have a clue who Garvin and Tanda are,” I added, hoping it would give her comfort.

“Yeah, he might think something happened to us and that they’re going to hurt him again,” Bo said, knowing exactly where I was coming from.

“Garvin, do you think that she knows we’re here?” I asked.

“If she had, you would have already known.”

“Then if everyone is okay with the plan, then I say let’s do it,” I said, looking directly at Ashley.

“Here take my gun for good luck, yours takes too long to load,” she smiled, handing it to me. “I know it only holds two bullets, but you never know.”

“I forgot you even had this little thing,” I smiled looking down at the small handgun. “Keep this door locked until you hear us banging on the outside of it. Garvin is a strong man and won’t let anything happen to you, so you listen to him, okay?”

She nodded, too afraid to talk, or the tears that were threatening to fall would come freely. I gave her a quick hug, as well as the other two and we closed the door to the torture room. Once we heard the lock slide into place, the four us turned for the stairs. Once we were at the top, Bo put the torch in the slot by the door and opened it enough to peek out, then said, “The two across the hall.” Then he was out the door. I started after him, but felt someone pulling me back by the back of my shirt.

“He knows what he’s doing, Renee. Trust him,” Brandon said nodding once.

I didn’t respond, I just went back to the door and held it open enough to listen for any sign of a ruckus. A few minutes later Bo slipped back in. He told us that there was a door that led down a hall of some sort, but that it was too dark to see just how far. The other one was locked. He also saw several doors on the other side and one under the staircase. We decided to see what was down the hall first.

“Derek, I want you to stay here and keep an eye open,” I said as we we’re about to make our way out the door.

“Why?” he asked closing the door. “I don’t want to wait here.”

“Someone needs to watch our back and who better, Derek?” I asked in reply.

“If you see someone going through that door after we’ve already gone in…you take ’em out, little brother,” Brandon added, building his ego.

“Yeah, that’s right. I got your back, now get,” he said, pushing us toward the door that he was now pulling open.

Chapter Sixteen

Not one of us could hold the little snickers in, as we rushed across the dark foyer. Brandon and I followed Bo’s movements. If he stopped in the deeper shadows of a corner, we froze with him. I automatically turned the knob on the first door as we passed it, knowing that Bo had already said it was locked, but I wanted to be sure. The thought of someone or something grabbing me as I walked by, sent shivers up my spine. Once I was past, the thought hit that they could simply unlock it from the other side, causing my stomach to drop into the lower pits of my abdomen.

“You alright back there, Renee?” Brandon asked.

“Yeah, why?”

“You just started breathing hard.”

“Had a bad thought, but it’s gone,” I explained, putting my hand up on his shoulder.

“Stay close,” he said, placing his hand on top of my and squeezing. He didn’t have to say that twice, because I was as close to him, as he was to Bo.

Bo opened the second door with the hall behind it and quickly darted his head in and back out just as fast, then opened it up enough for us to rush in. Once he had the door closed, it was so dark we couldn’t see our own hands in front of our faces. “Feel for a light switch,” Bo instructed A few minutes later, little red lights came on all the way down the hall. Each one had a painting underneath it.

“This is really weird.” Brandon’s brows wrinkled as we started to make our way in.

The hall was no more than six feet wide. The walls looked like they were painted a dark brown or even black. The floor was the first wooden floor that I had seen in the place and it was varnished to a glass finish. I heard Bo gasp and looked up to see what he was looking at and had to take a step back. The painting that we were all fixed on, was the most horrid thing that I had ever laid my eyes on. There was a female hanging upside down from a wooden cross with her stomach cut open from her privates to her throat—I think. I say I think, because her intestines were covering her entire head, and draping much further down. Her breasts were spread to the side in a morbid pose with her hands lightly gripping them, as if pulling her own flesh apart.

“Who would want something like this hanging in their home?” Bo asked, taking a step back.

“The sick bitch that we’re going to kill,” Brandon answered, backing away with him.

We continued down the hall of grim paintings, stopping at the one down and across the hall. I had thought the first was the worse that I had seen, until I laid my eyes on this one. As soon as you looked at the painting you knew that it was a human skin nailed to the red wall, with blood running down like sap from a maple tree. It’s what lay on the ground at the bottom of the hanging skin that proved to be the worse of the two. It was the crumpled form of the individual that had once worn it. He or she lay reaching toward the artist with its very visually painted hand that resembled that of raw meat. The whites of its eyes showed brightly against all the red gore of what was left of its face. Its mouth was open in a round dark circle of agony that in this painting, will last an eternity.

“Do you think this person just thought this stuff up, Renee?” Brandon asked.

“Do you want an honest answer, or do you want me to just keep it to myself?”

“Probably better just to keep it to yourself.”

I don’t think that any of us looked at anything but our feet until we reached the end of the hall. I know that I didn’t care to ever look at another one of those paintings again for the rest of my life. Knowing how sick minded Yvette was, I had no doubt that the artist had used barely alive models when they made the demented artwork, adding more reasons to burn this place to the ground.

“There’s no door knob.”

“What?” I asked, recoiling out of my thoughts.

“I know this is some kind of a door, but there’s no knob,” Bo added, as he felt around the edges.

“How do you know it’s a door?” I asked, thinking it looked like the rest of the wall.

“Feel here,” he said bending down, placing his hand at the bottom. “You can fell the air coming out.”

“I see what you mean. Maybe it slides,” I replied, as I started feeling the edges of what I could now see to indeed be a door.

“They did good hiding this thing, but not good enough,” Bo grinned. Then a sound of a soft click rang out. “That’s it.”

Bo stood up and pushed the door in, holding one brow high above the other. He showed Brandon and I where the small pin was on the bottom of the crack under the door. He then admitted that his father had one put in the upstairs of his home. He said his father was always worried that he was going to be robbed, and came up with the same idea, like these hidden rooms. The first thing that we noticed when we walked in was the smell. It wasn’t one of death and decay, but one similar to chemicals. To me it was almost a mixture of sulfur and ammonia, which had my nose and eyes burning within seconds after entering the room.

“What is it?” Brandon asked.

“I haven’t got a clue,” I replied. It was then that Bo found a light switch.

The room lit up so brightly that we all covered our eyes. When mine were adjusted, I lowered my arm to find that we were in a laboratory of sorts. The room was stark white from top to bottom; the only color came from two, long, metal tables that sat along the right side. There were shelves that extended as high as the ceiling, on the back wall.  The shelves were filled with various shaped and sized, labeled bottles. On the left side of the room were several barrels with what I could only guess, was the foul smelling chemicals that were burning our eyes. The room was spotless. Even the floor that had a drain in the middle, glimmered as if it had just been shined. The only thing that looked out of place was a white curtain that was hanging from the ceiling to the ground, in the far back corner of the left side of the room. The cloth hung so out of the way, that if you weren’t paying attention, you would actually miss it with all the other items in the area.