“What room?”
She tutted. “The one way upstairs where they locked me up, silly.”
“Of course,” Gray said. “How’d you get out?”
“Picked the lock.” She smirked a little. “Licorice taught me. He’s in the band at the Cage, but he used to help people when they got locked out of their houses.”
Sure he did. “Good for you, kid. I want you to do exactly what I tell you. You’re going to let me put you out through the window, then you go hide behind the bushes by the gate and you just wait there. Can you do that?”
“My mom’s here,” she said. “Somewhere.”
“And I’m going to find her,” he told her, hoping he was right. “Now, do what I’ve told you to do—fast—so I can get on with it.”
He lifted her, but when he went to put her through the window, she clung to his neck. Gray wasn’t used to children, but he didn’t dislike the feel of the trusting little arms. “What is it?”
“I think they’re down in that place. In the place under the floors. I saw the stairs in the pantry.”
He thought so, too, but reinforcement didn’t hurt. Gray hugged Erin, lifted her outside and leaned to set her on the ground. “The only people you come out of hiding for are me or the police. Got it?”
“Got it,” she said and immediately scurried off into the darkness.
“Gutsy kid,” he murmured and wasted no more time finding his way into the hall, behind the left staircase and along a corridor toward where he figured the kitchen must be. He didn’t hear a sound or see any evidence of another soul.
Finally he paused and pulled out his cell phone. He couldn’t risk talking but he could text. The message he sent was to Nat Archer and it was specific enough that he knew his old friend would grind his teeth to nubs with rage. And later he, Gray, would suffer. But he had to do this his way.
He kept moving all the way to the bottom of the steps into a concrete reinforced area camouflaged beneath the house and lawns. The silence gave him the creeps.
Now where?
“Go. Don’t wait. She needs you now.”
He spun around, but didn’t see any ghostly face. What he heard was one of the whispery voices that had spoken to him in Marley’s workroom.
“Go where?” he muttered.
Whispers seeped in on all sides and rose to an ear-battering crescendo.
“Speak one at a time,” he said, wincing.
He saw the locker and ran to wrench open the door. Bright light hurt his eyes and he flinched at the sight of two bodies hanging from hooks. He stared, and saw living eyes looking back at him. As fast as he could, he cut harnesses suspending each of two women, lifted them down and tore off gags. He released them from plastic bags tied at their necks.
“Thank you,” one of them croaked. An African-American with scratch marks on her lovely face, he recognized her as Pearl Brite.
“I want you up those stairs and outside,” he said, taking his knife to the bonds at their wrists. “Pearl and…” He didn’t recognize the other woman.
“Amber,” she said. “They went down there.” She pointed to a flagstone that had been removed from the floor at the far end of the room.
“Okay,” he said. “Outside now. The police are on their way. Do not show them how to get down here. I can’t risk any slips.”
He didn’t wait to watch them go or give more than a cursory glance at a precise row of what looked like white, top-loading ice boxes.
The hole in the floor led to a tunnel where gravel had been spread underfoot. The tunnel only went in one direction and he ran, ignoring the sound his feet made—until Eric Fournier and Sidney came around a corner, their eyes staring. Eric dragged Pipes Dupuis behind him.
“Get out of here,” Eric screamed. He looked wildly about and yelled, “No, no. Get down on your face and don’t move.”
Gray looked at him steadily and broadened his stance.
“On your face, punk,” Eric howled. “Get down.”
Sidney flattened herself against a bricked-in wall. She breathed loudly through her open mouth.
“You’re wasting my time,” Gray said.
Eric released Pipes and fumbled with his jacket. He didn’t seem the type to have a gun but Gray wasn’t trusting that instinct.
“Right,” he said. He gave Eric an openhanded blow to the face and caught him by the back of the collar as he went down, whimpering. “Pipes, get going. Erin’s safe.”
“Oh, oh, no,” was the best Sidney could do as Pipes stumbled past Gray on her way out.
Holding Eric a foot off the floor and at arm’s length, Gray spun Sidney around and picked her up the same way. He brought their heads together with a thwack and felt their bodies go limp.
His own amazement seeped in. That kind of strength was nothing he’d ever thought of having. Dropping the unconscious brother and sister, he ran on with a vague thought for the way the window had shot from its tracks on the way in.
Strength wasn’t something he’d ever questioned—he had it—but not like this.
An image flashed, quickly, and was gone. The children in the foster home laughed when they were feeling bad because he, Gray, could make them laugh. The people supposedly caring for them hated it. They hurt the kids and Gray made them laugh.
He did it by…telling them what they were thinking and being right. All these years and he hadn’t recalled that.
And he was so strong for a little kid that the adults fought to get him on that kitchen table and tie him down before they took their knives, or whatever weapons they chose for the occasion, to a part of his body they could hide under his clothes.
He’d reached the end of the tunnel and there were several steps up. He could see the sky far above, but at the top of the steps a white building picked up a sheen, even though he could see moss staining its walls.
Without pausing, he reached the door and pushed gently. It swung inward slowly and he recoiled from a bestial, inhuman howling that burst over him.
Moving as carefully as he could force himself to do, he hugged a wall and edged around until he saw the whole place. In truth he only saw Marley bent forward with an unspeakable creature attached to her back and shrieking at her.
Long, covered with a spined yellow-gray hide that had torn free of underlying flesh in many places, the beast had its claws around Marley’s neck. The side of its belly had burst open and parts bulged through the hide.
Its tail thrashed, but thick legs shook as if they would collapse.
“Take me there now,” the creature yelled at Marley. “Now. I can’t wait anymore. I have to go.”
The thing had a long, broad head and when it opened its mouth, a double row of thin teeth, like long, backward-curving needles, dripped slime.
Gray smelled the foul odor again. Now it was overwhelming.
He worked his way carefully up two steps and started around the room, behind divans, making for the rear of the monster.
Marley yelled. She didn’t cry or scream, she gave a great, full-throated yell, reached back to push her fingers into the thorny hanging folds beneath the thing’s jaw and forced her hand up with enough effort to shake her whole body.
The creature staggered backward, pulling her with it, and she attacked the other side of its neck, pushing in, grinding her fingers back and forth.
Gray rushed and grabbed hold of the talons at Marley’s neck. He yanked, and the legs flew wide, letting Marley spin away. But the weight of the lizardlike animal slumped. Its head fell forward and Gray let it go.
He glanced at Marley in amazement. She had immobilized a sort of immense dragon. It lay twisted on the floor of an unreal-looking white stone and silk-draped chamber.
“Come here,” he told Marley. “Please.”
She came, her face serious, and stood at his side. They put an arm around each other. “Who is going to believe that?” Marley said.
“Do we believe it?”