Page 78 of Thief of Night
Something metallic slid off her body as she moved, hitting the road with the tinkle of metal on icy asphalt. She reached down and picked up a familiar ring of keys. He’d left the keys to the van?
A growing fear punched a hole in her fury. He’d obviously left her the keys in case he didn’t return. Which meant he thought that was a possibility.Charlie still wanted to scream at him, to snarl in his face, to make him pay. But she needed tofindhim and make sure he was all right before she could do any of that.
That was when she recognized the dizzy emptiness swirling inside her, the lack of a warmth she hadn’t realized was present. The tether was gone.
And without being bound to him, there was no thin line of shadow to follow. He must have gone on foot, so she suspected he couldn’t be far, but that didn’t help her know which direction. And while Charlie had followed him into the gas station bathroom and seen the address, she’d only taken a photo, assuming she’d have access to her phone. She only sort of remembered—the street started with anMand was something found in nature. Mulberry? Maple?
Fumbling through her pockets, she was relieved to find her phone where she left it. Another sign that he had intended her to get away easily when she woke. She looked up the photo of the address, then plugged it into a map app.
Less than a ten-minute walk, her phone informed her.
She exchanged the sleeping bag she was using as a coat for three onyx knives from her emergency Blight-hunting kit.
Three turns down three streets later, she came to a nondescript house. It was small, with a scrubby lawn and no lights on behind the closed blinds. Down the street, she could see garbage cans set out at all the houses but this one.
Charlie went around the back, listening intently.
From a few doors over, music was playing, too faint at this distance for her to be able to pick out anything more than a pounding bass. The swipe of tires through slush came occasionally from the road where Charlie had left the van.
The house was silent.
A back door gaped open, though the screen door had shut, as though someone had left in a hurry. Behind it was only darkness. She pulled open the screen door, wincing at the creak of rusty hinges.
The smell hit her first. Spoiled meat, left to rot for days. It made the air feel thick in her throat.
She couldn’t go farther without some kind of light. After hesitating, she flicked on the flashlight of her phone. Then she sucked in a sharp breath.
The kitchen floor was smeared with wet blood, looking as though someone had tried to mop it, then gave up. Charlie stepped to one side, levering herself over with her palms on the messy, food-covered countertop, sleevespulled down over her fingers so she wouldn’t leave prints. Then she slipped into the living room.
Two bodies rested on the couch. A dead couple. Middle-aged, and purpled with rot. Shallow slashes covered their arms and chests. The cushions beneath them were black with blood and covered in flies.
Nausea turned Charlie’s stomach.
She forced herself to look around the room. Dark spatter decorated the walls, bringing her viscerally back to months ago when she’d walked into her house to find a dead man and walls streaked with blood. Dizziness hit her hard, the memory of that terror overlaying the terror she felt now. Despite it, she forced herself to get closer to the bodies. A series of what looked like human bites ran along the woman’s lower arms. Indentations braceleted both the victims’ wrists, as though from restraints.
She moved into the next room, where the splintered wood of a dining room table littered the floor. A fine black powder coated everything, suggesting that more than one Blight had died there. Slivered shards of wood had hit the walls with such force that they were buried in them.
Moving around her flashlight, Charlie saw a shadow on the ground, lit at the wrong angle. Holding an onyx knife in front of her, she squatted down and pushed back debris to see the shadow better.
Nearly insubstantial, Red appeared little more than smoke.
“Char,” he whispered, the words sounding like something caught by the wind. “They’re looking for you.Go,you’ve got togo.”
Her gaze went to the stairs, to the hall, but she saw nothing and no one.
“Not without you, you monstrous idiot,” she told him.
“He—” Red started. “They—” But he didn’t seem able to say any more.
Charlie bent down, and pressed the blade of the onyx knife to the side of her hand. It hurt more than a razor blade, requiring her to stab her own skin. She gritted her teeth. Blood beaded up and began to drip.
She didn’t have to worry about her DNA being discovered at the crime scene, though. Not a single drop hit the floor—it ran over her wrist to her elbow, then disappeared into his shadow.
Leaving him barely more substantial than before.
She shifted closer.
“Don’t,” he rasped. “I will drink you dry.”
