Queen of The Hill (Knight Games) (22 page)

He’s a dick!
Kathleen from ICU wrote.

You can do better
, Silas fumed.

I didn’t open all of them. When I reached the end of the list, my eyebrows knit.

“Rick sent me a text the morning of the wedding,” I said.

“What? I thought you said he didn’t know how to text?” Michelle asked.

I blinked at the screen, disorientation making my eyes blur. “He doesn’t.” I tapped on his name. “It says, ‘Gracias,
mi cielo
. I adore new beginnings only slightly less than I adore you.’”

“What was he thanking you for?” Michelle asked.

Perturbed, I shook my head. “I have no idea.”

Slowly, I stood from the floor, a hot, hungry nebula of rage forming inside me, demanding to be fed. Why was Rick with Tabetha? Why did he leave me the way he did? I wanted to believe Tabetha had made him do it, but how?

“I’ve got to go to Salem.” I started for the stairs.

“She’ll be stronger than you within her territory,” Poe said matter-of-factly. “Perhaps a spell or incantation to draw him out?”

I shook my head. “She’d never let him go, even if he wanted to leave. No matter how she lured him there, if I know Tabetha, she’s sunk her claws in and won’t let go until I cut them off.”

Michelle widened her eyes. “After everything you’ve told me about her, you can’t just walk up to her front door and ask for Rick back. She’ll kill you.”

I took one more look at Rick’s text. He hated to text. Despised it. That text proved that at nine ten on the morning of March twentieth, Rick loved me. I had to know what happened between then and now. I had to know if the disaster that was my wedding day was real or manipulated by my nemesis. It was worth my life to know the truth.

I paused, one foot on the steps, and met Michelle’s eyes. “I am going to Salem, and I am confronting Tabetha.” I shook my head. “I have to know if what happened to me in that church was because of Rick or because of magic. If it’s magic, you better believe I will take my caretaker back or die trying.” My voice cracked.

“But—”

I shook my head. “It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters until I know why, one way or another.”

I
parked in the street and walked to the gate of Tabetha’s residence, the same way Rick and I had. Only, I didn’t have Rick to give me a ride over this time.

“Poe, fly over and see if there’s a button or something to open the gate.”

He flew from my shoulder and circled around inside. Without thinking, I placed my hands on the bars and gave the gate a little push while I was waiting. The wrought iron moved easily under my hand.

Poe flew back to my shoulder. “It’s open,” he said with concern.

“She’s expecting me.”

The gate squealed as I allowed it to close behind me. I didn’t think it was possible for the driveway to be creepier than it was the last time, but the tendrils of fog that wrapped around the trunks of the fruit trees writhed like they had a life of their own. The animals were back. To my left, the herd of albino deer stood like ghosts, half buried in the fog and partially concealed by the trunks of the grove of trees.

Closer to us, an albino buck was feeding on fallen fruit. He raised his branched horns to look at me, lips stained purple from his feast, a harsh color against his bright white coat. The deer’s red eyes bore into me. It looked dead, or undead. The pulse in its neck throbbed as it trotted a few feet away inside the tree line in response to my presence. Not a vampire deer. Still, weird. It stopped a few feet inside the tree line, not far enough to be safe if I was a true predator, but then the deer seemed to know I wasn’t a threat.

“Is this stuff good?” I asked the deer, crouching down to wave the fog away from the half-eaten fruit. The peel was bright red, but inside was purple with green seeds. I’d never seen fruit like that, although something about it gave me déjà vu. What would it taste like? I stood and reached for a low-hanging specimen, breaking it open between my fingers. The smell of sex wafted to my nose and blood rushed to my crotch.

“Hmm,” I said to the buck watching me. “Is that why you like this? Does it make you horny, baby?” I did my best Austin Powers impression.

Poe leaned over for a whiff. “That is definitely genetically modified.”

I inspected the fruit, the leathery red skin, the kiwi-like texture. An odd tingling began in my palms where the juice touched my skin. I dropped the fruit and wiped the juice on my pants. Better.

“It makes you horny
and
numb,” I said to Poe. “No wonder the animals love it.”

“May I suggest you focus on the task at hand?” Poe said. “The gate was open. She knows we’re here.” I nodded and turned back toward the house, refocusing on my mission

“Poe, I don’t want you to come in with me. I need you to wait and watch at a safe distance, in case I need you. This could be a trap.”

He took to the air and circled over my right shoulder. “If you insist.”

I couldn’t blame him for not arguing the point with me. Tabetha’s house was terrifying in an abandoned-insane-asylum way.

“I insist you back me up if I need it,” I said firmly. We’d reached the end of the drive, where a few feet of yard stretched to the wide steps of the stone veranda.

“You know what’s weird about these trees?” Poe asked from the air.

“The fruit smells like sex and the juice numbs like lidocaine?”

“That too, but what I see from the air is it looks like she’s staggered the time of the planting.”

“What?” I narrowed my eyes at him.

“Bird’s-eye view,” he said. “From the air, it’s obvious the oldest trees are near the gate, and these, near the house, are relatively new. Seems strange to landscape like that, doesn’t it?”

I checked out the one closest to the house. The soil around the base of the trunk was still mounded from planting. Although, from my perspective, the tree was large enough to be called full grown. “Less fruit,” I muttered. “This must be the newest one.”

“And this,” Poe circled over a hole prepared across from the youngest tree, “must be where the next one will go.”

“What’s with the planting schedule?” I asked.

“I have no idea,” Poe admitted.

With a gesture of my head, I told Poe I was going inside and took the first steps toward Tabetha’s front door. This time I avoided the large flowers on either side of the threshold, although their heads swung menacingly toward me, and their petals snapped like steel jaws. I didn’t bother to knock. The gate was left open for a reason, and I was sure the door would be too.

The knob twisted under firm pressure, and I entered the foyer. A bare-chested blond man in dark pants and a bow tie smiled at me. “Greetings, Miss Knight, Mistress Tabetha is waiting for you upstairs.” The man’s perfectly straight teeth gleamed white as he pointed a hand toward the curved wooden staircase to my right. “Shall I get you a drink before you head up?”

“No, thank you. I’m fine,” I said. My gaze drifted to the tight cling of his pants.
Damn,
Tabetha had an appetite for attractive men. This was the third I’d seen in her residence, including Logan. My stomach sank as if I’d swallowed a brick. Rick was here. What was Tabetha doing with Rick?

On shaky legs, I approached the stairwell. The rail and spindles were completely grown over with blood-red roses. The flowers were the biggest I’d seen, but so were the thorns. I positioned myself in the center of the runner, sure if I got too close, the plant would go for the jugular. On the second floor, the vines covered the walls, floor to ceiling. The roses were everywhere. Living wallpaper. The heady scent of the flowers was suffocating, intoxicating. Slightly dizzy, I had a sudden horrifying thought the smell could poison me. Enchanted roses meant to stupefy? My heart beat faster and panic gripped me by the throat. Too late. No turning back.

Whispers and light came from a room at the end of the hall. The door was open, but I couldn’t see inside because of the angle. This was a trap. Definitely a trap. I took another step. I couldn’t help myself. I needed to know. I needed to face what Tabetha had in store for me and confront Rick. With a deep breath, I turned into the light.

The first thing I noticed was the massive four-poster bed. The thing was castle-worthy with posts the size of tree trunks covered in red roses. The second thing I noticed was who was in the bed. Rick’s broad sculpted shoulders tapered to the mounded muscles of his back, nakedness disappearing under a crisp white sheet. Tabetha’s bare chest hovered over the curve of his waist. She was sitting up in bed behind him, her arms resting casually on his side, her dark eyes and red lips facing my direction. Her lipstick was the exact color of the roses growing around her. From a thick collar of gold around her neck, a matching scarab amulet dangled between her collarbones.

“Rick?” I rasped.

He looked over his shoulder, but didn’t meet my eyes directly. Once he recognized who I was, he returned his head to the pillow. His expression was vacant, almost bored.

“Would you care to join us, Grateful?” Tabetha said through her teeth. She scraped the red nails of her right hand down Rick’s spine.

Bile rose in my throat, and I gasped for breath. I thought I could do this, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t be here. I couldn’t watch this for one more second. The stench of the roses burned in my throat.

“What’s wrong, sister? You look like you might be sick.” She lowered her lips to Rick’s neck and planted a kiss on his jugular. “I’ll give you one more opportunity to do something intelligent for a change. Hand over your territory, and you can have your caretaker back.”

“No,” I croaked.

The roses on the bed and walls snaked and twisted, tangling toward me. Threatening me. “Then you can show yourself out,” she said through her teeth. “I suggest you run.”

A thorny vine whipped at my throat. Head swimming from the floral stench, I turned on my heel and ran, tripping down the stairs and flying past the man in the atrium to charge the exit. No one tried to stop me. That would be beside the point. This is what she wanted. She did this to punish me, to ruin me, and she wanted me to live to remember it.

I stopped at the base of the drive and vomited, desperately inhaling great gasps of fresh air to clear the poison odor from my lungs. My entire body shook violently. My emotions were raw, yes, but the more I reacted, the more I was sure it was also the roses. I was stronger than this, wasn’t I?

Poe came to rest in the tree above me. “I take it that did not go well.”

“He’s with her now.”

Poe groaned. “She’s drugged him.”

“Probably. Maybe. I don’t know. What if he wanted this?”

“You’re confused. You know that couldn’t be true.”

I leaned on my knees and panted toward the mound of dirt under the tree. I was going to be sick again. This was my worst nightmare. All of my insecurities were colliding into one horrific moment. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think. I swallowed repeatedly and spit on the ground.

Mmmmm.
A muffled humming sound came to me on the wind.

“Did you hear that?” I paused my sobbing to ask Poe.

“Hear what?”

Mmmmful.

“There it is again,” I said. I narrowed my eyes and tipped my head, straining my ears to listen.

Mmmmm
.

“I hear it,” Poe whispered. “It’s coming from the tree.”

Brow furrowed, I straightened my spine and took a step back, scanning the length of the trunk and the mound it was planted in.

Mmmmmful!

I searched for something to dig with. No shovels handy, of course. Evil wood witches didn’t leave the tools to dig up their plants at the enemy’s disposal. I improvised. Concentrating, I called on the air around me. I raised both hands and commanded a tornado to funnel down from the night sky. With a little effort, the suction of the swirling winds tore the young tree out by the roots and set it gently on the lawn. Success. I stepped to the edge of the resulting hole and looked inside.

“Oh dear God!” I said. Poe flew to my shoulder to get a better look. At the bottom, a body lay in the shadows.

“Who do you think it is?” Poe asked.

“I have no idea.” I leaned over the hole, but it was too dark. “I’m going in.”

I jumped into the hole. It wasn’t a huge undertaking, only about five or six feet deep, but I had to straddle the body and plant my feet in the dirt to keep my balance in the irregular hole. Still too dark to see.

Drawing Nightshade, I focused the blue glow from her blade toward the body. It produced just enough light for me to make out the details of the shriveled specimen. A face worthy of a historical museum stared up at me, mummified and ancient, with pruney, parchment skin, protruding teeth, and wispy white hair. The creature’s eyeteeth had elongated to wedge the jaw open.

“It used to be a vampire,” I called up to Poe. “But the body is decimated. I’m not even sure I’d be able to revive it if I wanted to.”

“Then come out of the scary hole,” Poe said from above me.

I leaned over the body one more time. “Something doesn’t make sense. These clothes, they’re dirty but new. This vampire is mighty fashionable for someone who looks like he’s been buried for fifty years.” I shook my head. “He’s completely dehydrated.”

“Be careful, Grateful,” Poe warned. He must’ve suspected what I was going to do.

I brought Nightshade’s tip to my thumb and pressed. A bead of blood formed there, and I dangled it over the opening between the mummy’s canines. One drip, then two fell into the mouth and rolled over the leathery tongue. The creature was too far gone to even swallow. I straightened, planning to leap from the hole. And that’s when the vampire’s eyes flipped open. They were blue and fixated on me with an unwavering and familiar stare. “Mmmm,” came a moan from deep within the throat.

“Julius!”

“I
’m coming out,” I said to Poe. I gathered Julius in my arms. It wasn’t difficult. He was a skeleton held together by shriveled skin and sinew. Maybe fifty pounds. Still, I was in an awkward position in the irregular hole. I tried to wedge my toes in the dirt, but the ground broke apart under my weight.