Downside Rain: Downside book one (22 page)

“Checking
out this place. The ward safeguards this floor, doubtless so Blayne’s domestic
staff don’t hear what’s happening, and nobody outside the house can. I expect
only Blayne, the elf and the sorceress can breach the barrier - and scumbag
here, I guess - and her magic discourages anyone else from coming to this floor.”

“If
I - ” I move my foot, and bite down on the sound which sears up my throat. “If
I could get free. . . .”

“Hang
in there, sweet cakes. I’ll get help.”

“How?”

“You
and Wool see me, I bet others can, your new boyfriend for instance.”

River?
“No, you can’t bring River. He can’t go up against them.”

“I
know, but he can tell Sauvageau. He’ll come charging in like a knight in
shining armor. If anyone can do it, the vampire lover can.”

He
fades out.

“So,
you going to tell Calla about your new imaginary friend?” I ask with a sideways
look. Wool is stiff as a board, still looking at the space where Castle stood.

He
sinks down and pulls the duvet over his head.

I
can’t scream anymore. Despite the bonds, my body tries to fade out but nothing
happens, not a single, microscopic cell shifts.

~*~

Angelina
and her bed are River’s world. Lost in perfume and honeyed skin, he’s so weak
he can barely move his limbs. Yet she touches him and he hardens, and craves her
scalding tongue and the tight moist passage between her legs. She cleanses him
of sweat and bodily secretions with a cool damp cloth and feeds him from her
fingers.

She
rolls off him. River lies supine, mind dazed, everything seen through a haze.

Becoming
solid for her pleasure is harder each time. The flesh is willing, but weak.
Yesterday he feared he wouldn’t be able to please her and she’d tell him to go;
today, he knows he’ll soon be unable to.

As
Angelina’s lust depletes his body, his mind discovers a thread of sanity. If he
could speak, he’d say she’s killing him. If he could get out one word, any
word.

“Hey,
jackass, wake up.”

The
fog in his head clears. Is that a voice?

“Shake
it off, pea brain.”

He
opens his eyes a crack; lashes fracture his vision. A man stands near the bed;
tall, bulky, pale skin and black hair, he wears a tan trench coat and is
agitatedly waving his arms as if to draw River’s attention to him.

“Yeah,
I’m talking to you. The bitch is gonna suck you dry. You gotta snap out of it
while you still can. Rain is in
big
trouble. She needs you.”

He’s
talking to me.
River’s head lolls to one side. Angelina’s
face is near, she looks past him, across the room but doesn’t react to the man.

Does
she see him?
He doesn’t believe so. To River he’s
more a shadow than a solid person.

“Listen
to me! Rain needs you!”

Rain
needs me? Rain?

He
blinks, squeezes his lids together, blinks again. The big guy becomes clearer. Why
doesn’t Angelina see him?

“She’s
gonna die if you don’t help her.”

Die?
Something
moves in River’s chest, at first cold and sluggish, picking up pace until it
pounds. It is his heartbeat. Acid burns in his gut.
Rain will die?
He fights
for words, trying to pull them up his throat by force of will. One word.

The
big man rakes his fingers through his hair. “Gods dammit! He’s too far gone.”

He
fades to a mere, man-shaped discoloration. River struggles with a sound.
Wait!
Don’t go.

It
whispers out, a rough exhalation like sand in the wind. “Wait.”

Too
late.

“Did
you say something, darling?” Propped on one elbow, Angelina leans over River, index
finger tracing his pecs. “You’re a strong one.” Her nails scratch his chest, her
breath plays over his ear. And he wants her, her body made for his hands, his
lips.

He
sees Rain’s smile.
Rain needs you.

“Beloved,”
Angelina whispers.

Rain’s
laughter, like water tinkling on copper.

River
surprises himself by rolling to the bed’s edge. So surprised, in fact, he falls
off. Angelina’s laughter echoes in his ears. His body loses substance. A pain .
. . no, a sensation, as though his guts are being pulled out. His muscles
tighten in rebellion, but he knows
this is it,
and deliberately,
consciously lets go.

For
a second, a mere second, darkness engulfs him.

He
finds himself crouched on the floor in Angelina’s bedroom. He pushes to his
feet and almost topples. Head swimming, incredibly weary, he staggers toward
the bedroom door. And an amazing thing happens - his energy and physical strength
returns.

Angelina
kneels on the bed, hands fisting the sheets. Her head whips in his direction.
She snarls, for an instant she is ugly, but her features realign and she smiles.
“Come back, my love. Come back to me.”

A
sneer curls his lip. “Good-bye, Angie.” If he doesn’t leave, he’ll do something
he’ll later regret.

He
stoops to gather up his clothes and the first, clear, achingly lovely note
threatens to stop him in his tracks. Hot rage boils through River; he swears
inside his head, plows through her song to the bed and wraps his long fingers
around her neck.

He
squeezes, and the siren song chokes off along with her breath. As his fingers
gouge into her flesh, he whispers into her face, “You’re a monster, Angie, and
you know what happens to monsters.”

Her
eyes are wide and terrified. His fingers dig deeper, seeking her trachea.

He
jerks his hands away. “Remember that, Angelina. Try it again, I’ll kill you.”

~*~

I
understand why people say what interrogators want to hear to make the pain
stop. I know why they admit to crimes they never committed and knowledge they
don’t have.

But
I have nothing for Calla Blayne.

They
leave me for a few hours, suspended in the chair, a red and white rag doll.
Pain makes my body spasm. I moan with helplessness and fading hope.

“Didn’t
work. He’s too far gone. I couldn’t get through to him.”

I
hear Castle but can’t open my eyes. My words come out as lisps through split,
swollen lips. “What are you babbling about, Castle?” I probe at my gums with my
tongue, at the spaces several teeth happily filled yesterday.

“Oh,
shit, Rain.”

“That
about describes it, Castle.”

One
eye is closed, I manage to crank the other open to a slit. My face throbs
constantly and the split skin over my cheekbones stings. My feet are so
swollen, the skin is tight and shiny and each looks like one big toe. One big,
broken toe.
I got hippo feet
.

Castle
stares. I’d snap my fingers to jerk him out of it if I could.

He
kneels in front of me. At my side, Wool’s eyes are huge and his trembling
transmits to my skin and shivering body.

“No
one’s coming, sugar.” Castle lets his head hang.

“River?”

“He’s
with Angelina. I tried. Couldn’t get through to him. He’s a zombie, babe.”

A
pained chuff boils up my throat and out of my mouth. “Well, everything else is Downside;
I always wondered if zombies are tucked away someplace, you know, like a zombie
reservation.”

His
head lifts and swivels to Wool. He speaks through his teeth, looking at Wool
with a glare which could melt steel. “Set her free, you bastard or I’ll make
your life miserable. I’ll be with you twenty-four-seven.”

“I
- ” Wool begins, but the door opens.

My
audience troops in: Calla Blayne, Phaedra, the elf following. He bends and comes
up with a knife. My muscles lock as he walks to me. Castle disappears. I don’t
blame him, he can’t help and seeing what comes next will send him over the edge.

Calla
watches, gaze intense, lips parted. Her chest lifts and falls rhythmically and
her eyes shine like blue opals.

I
know the knife is sharp when the elf wraps one hand in my shirt, pulls it away
from my body and cuts from hem to neck. The blade slides through the material
without snagging, as if cutting through water. The sides fall apart. He looks
into my eyes, his glinting, as he slices through my bra and it also separates
in two pieces.

He
pinches my left nipple with his hard fingers and tugs. So keen, the blade, it
will no more than sting.

He
laughs sour breath over my face and releases my nipple. “Next time, half-life.”

He
carves a line from between my breasts down to my belly.

~*~

Naked,
carrying his clothes and the backpack, River jogs up the steps. Why dress when he’ll
lose it going through Rain’s wall?

Fading
to nothing is easier this time, a tiny twinge inside which he can ignore. Inside
the apartment, he opens the door and reaches back to the passage for his
clothes and bag.

Rain
needs help.

Does
she? Did he imagine the voice, the spectral outline of a tall broad man? Was
the vision a side effect of Angelina-induced delirium?

River
doesn’t believe so. The man’s words, tone, his sheer desperation resonated in
River’s skull and had the impact to release him from Angelina’s hold.

He
dresses and surveys the apartment. The calendar tells him Angelina had him for nearly
two days.

The
room is stuffy and warm. It felt like this when Rain first brought him here.
Apart from that, it seems the same as he remembers.

His
hackles rise. It is the same,
exactly
the same. Rain’s pile of dirty
clothes hasn’t grown. The same dishes are in the sink. As much as he can
remember, nothing inside the refrigerator has been touched, neither eaten nor
drank since he last looked in there. Milk in the glass bottle is on the verge
of turning. In the bathroom, shower and sink are bone-dry, as are the towels.
Towels take quite some time to dry in the damp Downside atmosphere so she didn’t
shower this morning.

He
pries up the floorboard - yes, he saw her hiding place – the cash is still
here.

Sitting
on the bed, he scratches behind one ear and sniffs. The place had this stale air
after Rain had been away Upside for a few days.

River
takes the pistol from its square box and loads the chambers, but how to carry
it? The weapon is too heavy for his waistband and he doesn’t have a belt. His
coat pockets are big and deep; the gun weighs down the side of his coat but is
hidden. A handful of spare ammo goes in the other pocket. Leaving the backpack,
he quits the apartment and crosses the street to ask Noddy if he’s seen Rain in
the past two days.

Noddy
hasn’t seen her.

Few
people are abroad. He stops a human couple and asks after Rain. He understands
wraiths are uncommon, so they must draw the eye; surely
someone
noticed
Rain out and about in the past two days. From their expressions, they don’t
like being waylaid by a wraith and say no, they haven’t seen another half-life.

He
follows his memory to streets lined with stores and restaurants, hotels and
financial institutions, searching for a small figure with night-black hair.
Eventually, he asks for directions to Alain Sauvageau’s house. Rain said the
guy has fingers in everything; hopefully he’ll stretch them to finding her.

People
are emerging in the dawn streets. A florist uses a long pole to hitch floral
baskets which bloom like colored stars to hangers above his windows. A vendor,
trying to make early sales, calls out prices for his belts and buckles. Two
women lean from the windows of their adjacent apartments and natter. A
copper-haired prostitute calls to River from a dark doorway. A butcher scrapes
offal into a bin in the alley alongside his shop.

The
hulking gothic house towers behind an equally gothic wall. Tall, loose-limbed,
a vampire in a charcoal-gray business suit stands outside the gates.

River
speaks with determination. “I’m River, here to see Alain Sauvageau.”

The
vampire looks him up and down with a sneer. “Give me a reason he’d want to see
you.”

“He’ll
want to know about Rain.”

The
vampire’s expression doesn’t change, but he opens a small door in one of the
gates and steps through. Head down, River kicks at a piece of broken pavement
as he waits.

The
vampire returns quickly and holds the small door open. “The main entrance is on
the right. Someone will meet you there. Don’t annoy the gargoyles.”

River
goes through the gate and turns right. The great gray house and other stone
buildings hunch inside the walls. Looking up and around at the bleak facades,
he crosses the flagstone courtyard and understands the reference to gargoyles
when several of them hop along the crenellate molding up near the roof.

A
tall, blond lady vampire waits for him, her dark eyes smoldering. Without a
word, she spins and goes inside and River hurries to follow. As she leads him
along passageways, it occurs to him that when Rain said Sauvageau is not a vampire,
he assumed the man is human. He jumped to that conclusion when she told him
they were meeting a man with a problem in his attic, but came face to face with
a goblin. River braces to meet another uncanny Downside creature.

They
pass through a great hall and into a small room full of shadows which threaten
to obscure the glass-fronted bookshelves on two walls.

Sauvageau
fingers his chin below a full bottom lip, ankles crossed and heels up on the
edge of a large oak desk illuminated by a lamp with fringed amber shade. He
regards River coolly.

River
lingers not far from the door. “I’m - ” he begins.

“The
new one. River,” Sauvageau interrupts. “What about Rain?”

Sauvageau’s
icy tone should send a shiver rippling up River’s spine; instead it makes him
mad. He bites the inside of his mouth in an effort to quench the emotion.
Giving in to illogical anger will get him nowhere.