“If it’s here, in the house, I know the place Avery may have hidden the talisman.”
I step to the fireplace. It has one of those massive stone fireboxes that is big enough to walk into with storage areas for wood on each side. The mantel is a solid slab of heavy, dark wood. There are two sconces anchored above it to the wall.
The fire scorches my skin as I get closer. I reach up, grab the sconce to the right and pull. There is a grinding sound and the left side of the fireplace moves in on itself. The storage area becomes a door and it opens into a long, dark staircase.
I hear Tamara’s breath catch. Then she’s beside me, peering into the void. “What’s down there?”
“Treasure,” I reply. “And pain.”
CHAPTER 63
THE STAIRCASE IS WOODEN, AND THE PASSAGE plunges straight down. It is clammy inside, dark, steep, and, at first glance, without end. It is so narrow, Tamara must walk behind me. She crowds close. I don’t like having her behind me. My senses are on high alert, the vampire ready to spring forth if it detects anything but the strange emanation of fear she’s giving off.
Fear of what? The dark?
But we’re nearing the bottom, and the smell of dirt and decay chases the question out of my head. I’m plunged into the nightmare of finding David at the bottom of these stairs, bound and near death.
At last our feet touch soil. Ahead of us is a doorway and it yields to my touch. I find the light switch to the right of the door and stand aside for Tamara to experience what I did that first time six months ago.
The room is large, a storage area with wooden crates stacked along one wall, rugs rolled and stored on another, rows of shelving occupying the center. The overhead light catches and reflects off the hundreds of items displayed helter-skelter on the shelves like the chattel of a deranged collector: piles of gold and silver jewelry, vases of bronze and silver, bejeweled ceremonial daggers, gold-leaf dinnerware that might have served a king. Chinese porcelain, Egyptian antiquities, Mayan pottery. The source of Avery’s wealth.
Tamara picks up a small golden chariot and hefts it in her hand. “I know how Howard Carter must have felt when he found King Tut’s tomb,” she says in a hushed voice.
I point to what she holds. “For all we know, that could be from the tomb. Avery may have been there, too.”
She returns the chariot to the shelf and looks around. “Do you know what’s in the crates?”
I shake my head.
“You aren’t curious?”
“No. This place holds bad memories for me. Avery holds bad memories for me. When this is over, Sandra can have it all.”
I let my eyes sweep the contents of the shelves. “What does the talisman look like?” I ask. “The book said it was a belt of fur. Does that mean literally a belt of fur? Or is it something symbolic?”
Tamara joins me in the search, taking one side of a shelf while I, the other. “It’s both,” she says. “It’s a locket that contains a bit of fur. At one time, it actually was a belt fashioned from the fur of a totem animal. Wearing a belt of fur marked us, made us easy prey for human hunters. Now we wear something a bit more discreet. Like this.”
She pulls a small gold locket from inside the collar of her jersey top and lets the chain drop between her breasts. “We always keep it with us. It’s our lifeline. Our most prized possession.”
I’ve finished my side of the shelf, finding nothing that resembles what Tamara described. I wonder if I’ve made a mistake thinking it would be here. Yet, this is the repository for Avery’s treasure. Where else would he hide it?
Tamara finishes, too, and comes around to join me. She’s looking toward the far wall, the place where I found David. “What’s over there?” she asks.
From our vantage point, what we see are rugs, rolled up and piled against the wall.
“Should we check it out?” she asks.
I have no intention of reliving the horror. “Go ahead. I’ll keep looking here. Maybe we missed something.”
She moves off and I make another pass at the shelves. I’m aware that she’s now standing on the rug that once held David’s body. I think I can still smell his blood, and it sends a tremor of horror through me.
In a moment, she’s back beside me. “Nothing. You don’t think it’s in one of those crates, do you? Jesus. There are a hundred of them. We don’t have time to open them all to check.”
She starts toward the jumble of wooden crates stacked nearly ceiling high. I follow her, letting my eyes scan the pile. “The dust on these crates is undisturbed. I don’t think anyone has been down here—” I start to add since the last time I was. I don’t want to have to explain the circumstances of that visit, though, so I drop it.
Tamara frowns. “So what do we do now? Finding that locket is the only way to free Sandra and rid ourselves of Avery once and for all.”
There’s a flash of movement from the doorway. It catches my eye like the glint of sun on a mirror. Sandra appears at the bottom of the stairs as if conjured up by Tamara’s words.
Gone is the vague emptiness that blighted her face, the helpless look of a lost child. She looks at me with the calm detachment of a predator. The neckline of her nightgown has been pulled lower, the outline of her body glows as if light were shining through.
I can’t look away. Instantly, my senses spin out of control. She dares me to resist and I know I can’t. I’m shivering. She is not close enough to touch me, not physically, and yet I feel her fingers trace a path over my skin, slide down my belly, skim between my thighs. Her fingertips brush against my sex, and I’m shuddering with excitement. She’s there, tormenting me with a butterfly’s touch. I want more. I want her to finish it. A moan escapes my lips, a plea for release.
A laugh, cold, bitter, breaks the spell.
“Ah, Anna.” Her voice. His voice. “You haven’t changed at all, have you?”
CHAPTER 64
FOR AN INSTANT, THE ROOM TILTS.
Tamara’s voice: “It took you long enough.”
I’m yanked back to the present as if from a dream, disoriented and confused. Then my head clears, and I remember.
Sandra’s eyes shine with a light that isn’t her own and she smiles at me with an expression that holds no warmth, no pleasure.
“What’s wrong, Anna? What did I do?” she asks. Her lips move, but it is Avery speaking. “Nothing but respond to your desire. It was the same before. I never forced you to do anything you didn’t want to do. You can’t dispute it. Your body betrays you.”
At once, warmth surges through me. A familiar spark of passion.
“Don’t.” I turn anger against the rising heat until arousal dissipates into ash. “I won’t let you manipulate me again.”
“You think you can stop me?”
“Sandra will stop you. We’ll find the talisman.”
“You mean that talisman? The one around Tamara’s neck?”
I’m given no time to respond. A blur of something comes at me with tremendous speed. I pivot toward it, hands instinctively outstretched to bat it away. It’s lupine, huge. My blow catches it at the shoulder and it falls back.
But how? Tamara’s clothes are in a heap on the floor. She must have made the change while Avery was toying with me.
The wolf leaps to its feet and comes at me again, but this time I’m ready.
We circle each other, the vampire and the wolf. She is as big as a mastiff, gold in color, black lips curled back in a snarl. Her eyes are yellow with slit pupils that reflect more than animal intelligence. She is aware. Acting not instinctively as a beast, but deliberately. Is she under Avery’s control? Until this moment, I wouldn’t have thought it. Tamara sought me out to help Sandra.