Into the Fire - Anne Stuart [66]
She froze, listening intently. And then another sound, like something being dragged across the floor. Dillon must be up there, though she couldn’t imagine why.
If she had any brains at all she’d go downstairs and find something to eat and keep her distance from Dillon for as long as she could bear to. Her body needed time to recover, because if he put his hands on her she wouldn’t be able to say no. Wouldn’t want to.
But right then she didn’t seem to have any brains at all. She was going up to the third floor to see what Dillon was doing, and if they ended up doing something else she’d manage to survive. Besides, there were other things she was interested in trying. In having him show her.
The stairs were cloaked in shadows—if there was a light anywhere it had burned out. The top of the stairs was dark, unwelcoming, and if she had an overactive imagination she’d think there were monsters up there, waiting for her. But she was a practical woman. Except where Dillon Gaynor was concerned.
The stairs creaked beneath her feet. But she stepped carefully, not willing to make contact with another mangled rodent. She had the oddest sense that someone, something was watching her. But it was too dark—she could barely see in front of her. Nothing on this earth would be able to see her in this darkness.
The hall at the top of the stairs was identical to the one beneath it. All the doors were tightly shut except one, halfway down on the left side. The place must have been some kind of boarding house, long ago. The room with the open door would have been two rooms down from her own austere cell.
The only light was coming from that room, the stark gray of snowlit daylight.
“Dillon?” she called out. Her voice was swallowed up by the darkness, and there was no answer. Just the sound of something moving in that room.
It wasn’t the scrabbling feet of rats. It was something bigger, more forceful. She walked down the hall, the ancient wood beneath her creaking loudly, announcing her approach. “Dillon?” she called again. Still no answer.
She reached the door, but it was only partway open, just letting out a sliver of light into the hallway. She pushed it the rest of the way, but the room was empty. Not a living soul in sight.
She stood motionless as her eyes adjusted to the dim light. The room was a twin to her own, except there was nothing inside—no mattress on the floor, no light. The walls and bare wood floor were covered with dark stains, and the plaster had been crushed in several places, as if someone had smashed something into the wall. The stains were darkest there.
She could feel it, like an icy blanket draping around her. The pain. And the evil. And she knew this was where Nate had died. The stains were the marks of his blood soaking into the walls and the floor of this old building.
The heat didn’t reach up to this floor. Or if it did, she was beyond feeling it. Beyond feeling anything but the pain and horror that had filled this room only three months ago. And still lived within the walls like a ghost yearning for revenge.
She could feel him behind her, and a crawling sense of horror began to snake up her spine. There was no one there—she knew that with every practical bone in her body. She didn’t hear anyone, the air wasn’t disturbed around her, there was no body heat radiating off another soul. But she wasn’t alone any longer, and she didn’t dare turn around and look, suddenly terrified at what she might see. She simply froze, staring blindly ahead of her at the room covered in dried blood.
In the end it didn’t matter. The push was as insubstantial as a puff of wind, as hard as an angry shove, and she fell forward, into the room. The floor gave way beneath her feet, and she went crashing through