Dark Season: The Complete Box Set (111 page)

Shelley

Callerton, New Mexico.

"She was here," Benjamin says, looking down at the decapitated body we've found on the forest floor. He uses his foot to push the body aside, and then he walks a couple of meters to where the severed head has been left. "The body has been drained of blood. One of the arms is broken, and she has a few scratches here and there. Abigail was obviously compelled to feed. I wasn't sure whether she'd have that need, but I guess now I know." He pauses for a moment. "Given the injuries this girl sustained, I can't help thinking that perhaps Abigail tortured her a little before she killed her. If so, that's a worrying development. It means she's as heartless and cruel as her father."

Taking a deep breath, I try to hide the fact that I feel nauseous. I've already let Todd see me vomit because of one dead body today, and I really don't want Benjamin to think I'm weak. I have to just hold it in for now. Worryingly, the feeling isn't too strong this time, which means me think that maybe I'm becoming desensitized to all the violence I've seen.

"Do we know the name of the victim?" Benjamin asks, turning to Todd.

"Not yet," Todd replies. "We're working on it. We're trying to find out if any girls have been reported missing overnight, but the local police aren't exactly the most helpful bunch. They say there's nothing they can do until the DNA tests are done."

Leaning down, Benjamin picks up the severed head and stares straight at its face. "She looks to have been around the same age as Abigail. Perhaps they knew each other previously. It might be worth checking to see if any students are missing from the school Abigail attended." Sighing, he drops the head, which lands with a heavy thud on the forest floor.

"Hey!" I say, taking a step forward.

"Is something wrong?" Benjamin asks, looking puzzled.

"Just..." I pause for a moment, looking down at the head. "Shouldn't you have some respect for the dead?" I ask. "She was a real person."

He smiles. "You're quite right. I'm sorry." He turns to Todd. "The events of the past twenty-four hours have changed my perception of Abigail a great deal. I wasn't sure that she'd have the same blood-lust that we've seen from her father, but now there can be no doubt. She captured and tortured this girl, before killing her and drinking her blood. I wanted to believe that Abigail had more compassion, and more humanity. Now we have to accept that she's far more dangerous."

"Are you sure Abby did this?" I ask. "Maybe it was Patrick..."

Benjamin shakes his head. "I've seen Patrick's victims. He rips them to shreds. This was a more tentative kill. Anyway, Patrick doesn't need to feed any more, not now that he's dying. Abigail killed this girl, and she did it for one reason only. She wanted her blood. She must have been overcome by a need to take a victim. She's a lot more like her father than I anticipated. From now on, we approach her with extreme caution, and we take no risks."

"Where is she?" I say. "Why did she come here, do this, and then leave?"

Benjamin pauses. "I'm not sure," he says. "Perhaps... I'm worried that she might have been found by Patrick. If that has happened, we're going to need a lot of luck in order to find them. He could do incalculable harm to her; he could take these dark elements of her personality and twist them until she's nothing more than a clone of her father. We could lose her forever."

I look over at Benjamin's soldiers, who are searching the forest, checking for any sign of tracks leading away from the dead body. It's hard to believe that Abby would do something like this, but I can't deny the evidence that's right in front of me. She looks so much like Sophie, but it would be too easy to assume that she lacks Patrick's darker edge. For the first time, I start to wonder whether Abby is entirely safe. After all, if she killed this girl, she might turn on anyone. She has Patrick's soul, but Sophie's face, and that's a deadly combination.

"There's still time," Todd says. "We don't know what Patrick plans to do with her. He'll be dead in a few months anyway, and then she'll be on her own. She came back to Callerton once. She'll come back again. Besides, she's stubborn. I learned that much when I met her. We can't assume she'll just blindly follow her father."

"She's impressionable," Benjamin replies. "She'll do what she's told."

I can't help but smile. "You really don't know much about girls, do you?" I point out.

"I know about vampires," he snaps back at me. "She's more vampire than girl."

"Sir!" calls out a voice from nearby. I look over to see one of Benjamin's men waving to us. We hurry over and the man shines an infra-red light at the forest floor, illuminating a set of shoe-prints.

"This was Patrick," Todd says, turning and looking at another set of prints nearby. "Abby walked over here, and then..." He pauses. "There are two sets of prints for Patrick. The first set are coming toward Abby, and the second set are going away, but look at how much firmer the second set appear to be. It's almost as if..." He looks over at Benjamin. "It's as if Patrick was carrying her."

"Follow them," Benjamin says, and we hurry after the prints. Finally, we reach a clearing and come to a stop. Benjamin takes the infra-red light and shines it all around, but Patrick's prints seem to have simply vanished.

"Where did he go?" I ask. "Where did he take her?"

"This doesn't make sense," Todd replies, grabbing the infra-red light and shining it closer to the ground. "No-one can just disappear like this. Not even Patrick. He has to have physically moved in one direction or another."

I watch as he keeps checking. "He can't... fly, can he?" I ask. As soon as I've said the words, I realize how dumb they sound.

Todd turns to me. "No," he says flatly, "Patrick can't fly."

"Just thought I'd check," I mutter.

"This isn't possible," Benjamin says, unable to hide the frustration in his voice. "He has to be somewhere! Abby has to be around here!" He turns to Todd. "I've worked so long for the moment when I could finally get my hands on Patrick's child. I won't accept her being taken away so easily. None of us will sleep until we've found her and got her back to the facility."

"Where do you want us to start?" Todd asks.

"Everywhere!" Benjamin shouts, spitting the word out. "We don't stop until she's standing in front of me again. And this time, don't take any chances. Have weapons primed and ready to use. When you see her, take her down."

Todd takes a deep breath. "If Patrick wanted to make absolutely certain that he and Abby were in a place where we couldn't get to them, there's only one place that would be any use"

"There's nowhere," Benjamin replies. "Wherever they are, I'll track them down. Patrick knows I won't give up, he knows I..." Suddenly he stops speaking. "Unless..." He pauses, seemingly lost in thought. "Unless it's far too late," he says eventually. "Unless Patrick has done the one thing I never, ever thought he'd do."

"The last we heard," Todd says, "that place had been destroyed."

"He could still take her there," Benjamin replies. "If he was crazy enough to take her away, he might decide to go there so he can teach her about her past."

"Where are they?" I ask, starting to worry.

Benjamin turns to me. "The one place I never thought he'd dare to go again," he says. "The one place where we can't possibly reach her, and where she'll have no choice but to embrace her darker side forever. He's taken Abigail to meet her destiny, and there's nothing we can do to save her. All we can do is wait for her to return, and hope her mind is intact."

"I don't get it," I say. "Why can't we go after her?"

"It's not possible," Todd says.

"Wait!" Benjamin says, starting to smile. "If she's where I think she is, then there might be a way. It won't be easy, but we can go in, get her, and bring her out. It's the last thing Patrick's ever going to expect." He pauses. "It's going to be dangerous, but we're going to follow them and we're going to get Abigail back before she's lost to her father's curse forever."

Abigail

Far away.

When I wake up, the pain is gone. Opening my eyes, I'm totally disorientated for a moment as I find that I'm a dark, quiet room. I sit up, immediately feeling soreness across my chest. I tense up, expecting the pain to come back, but fortunately my body feels completely calm. I take a deep breath, looking around and seeing that the room is lit only by a single candle that burns on a dressing table near the bed. I seem to be in a large, high-ceilinged room with a huge window on the opposite wall. It's like something out of a fairytale, and when I look up I realize that I'm in a four-poster bed. The air seems different here: cleaner and fresher. Something's changed. Even though I've been unconscious, I can tell I've traveled a great distance.

I get out of bed and walk over to the window. The view is spectacular: I can see a large garden stretching away into the distance, and there appear to be mountains on the horizon, looming up against a pitch-black, starry sky. It's like no place I've ever seen before; I reach out and touch the glass of the window, and I can instantly tell that I'm not dreaming. Turning to look back across the room, I try to work out how I got here and finally I remember being carried by Patrick. I was outside Callerton and... Suddenly I remember Donna, and I feel my blood run cold. I killed her. I didn't mean for her to get hurt, but she fell from the tree and... Closing my eyes, I try to forget the sound of her body hitting the ground, and the image of her dead face staring up at me.

As I open my eyes, I realize there's music playing in the distance. Was it playing when I woke up, or did it just start? I walk to the door, pull it open a couple of inches, and hear someone playing the piano and singing in a nearby room. Figuring that there's no point sitting around in bed, I step out into the hallway. I'm still wearing the clothes I had in Callerton, but it feels as if I've been wearing them for far too long. As I walk slowly toward the door at the far end of the corridor, I hear the music getting closer. It's a girl's voice, singing some kind of fast-paced, old-fashioned song. She's running through the words too fast for me to be able to hear what she's saying, although occasionally I can make out a few words: something about a zoo, and elephants, and a queen's visit. It's a childish song, like a nursery rhyme.

Eventually I reach the door and peer into the next room, and I see a teenage girl sitting at a piano. She has a beautiful, light voice, and she's wearing a long, old-fashioned dress with bare shoulders. Her curly brown hair is held up in a tall, old-fashioned style. I stand and watch her for a moment, before slipping into the room.

"Oh no," she says, looking horrified as she spots me. She has a perfect, cut-glass English accent. Finishing the song abruptly, she stares at me as if I'm the most shocking thing she's ever seen. "Not another wastrel!" she says eventually, speaking so fast I can barely understand her. "I'm going to kill that infernal man!"

I stare at her.

"Who brought you here?" she asks, standing up and hurrying over to me. She speaks so fast and with so much enthusiasm, the words seem to tumble together. "I told them not to drag more children into the house. Why won't that man listen?" She leans close and sniffs me. "You don't smell too bad, though. Perhaps he didn't find you in the usual place. What the devil are you?" She pauses. "There's something not quite right about you. You're neither one thing or the other. You're not a vampire, and you're not human, so..." She frowns. "Well, how curious," she says with a smile, squinting a little. "I'm really rather fascinated by you."

"My name's Abby," I tell her. "I... I think I came here with my father. Do you know where he is?"

She shakes her head.

"His name's Patrick -"

"Oh!" she says loudly, looking shocked. "So you're..." She pauses, and slowly a grin breaks out across her face. "Well it's so nice to see you again. It really is. I mean..." She reaches out a white-gloved hand. "I'm sorry. What I mean is, it's so nice to meet you, Abby." She bites her bottom lip. "You mustn't take anything I say too seriously," she adds. "I'm really quite confused a lot of the time. I'm not reliable or..." She doesn't finish the sentence. Something about me seems to absolutely fascinate her.

As we shake hands, I look across the room. "I need to find Patrick," I say. "I need to talk to him."

"Good luck with that," she says, laughing. "He's not very talkative these days. It's a shame. Back in the day... He used to have such a wonderful singing voice. Such a shame about what happened. Oh, but where are my manners? Don't you want to know my name?"

"Gwendoline!" says a voice behind me. I turn to find that a stern-looking older woman has entered the room. "Are you bothering our guest?"

The girl steps away from me, looking sheepish.

"It's fine," I say. "We were just talking."

"You must forgive Gwendoline," the woman says. "She can be a little hyperactive, but it's just her way of dealing with fear."

"It really is," Gwendoline says, looking down at the floor. "I promise."

"You must be Abigail," the woman says, smiling. She's much calmer than Gwendoline, and she speaks much more slowly and with real gravity to her voice. "I must say," she continues, "you look so much like your mother. You have the same eyes, the same expression of intelligence and compassion. It's quite remarkable to be in your company. You..." She pauses. "But enough about that. We can talk about it over dinner. My name is Diana. Welcome home. Welcome to Gothos."