It wasn’t a lock, and there wasn’t a key. Whoever had twisted this cage shut on Adriana never meant to open it again.
I put my hands on either side of the knot’s tail and prayed that I somehow could Hulk out and get Adriana free. “Come on, come on—”
“Edith?” came a weak voice from outside the room. Almost no one called me Edith anymore. I stood up straighter and looked around. The woman in the cage, nearly skin and bones, pulled herself halfway up.
“I’m so sorry—hang on—I’ll be right back.” I started backing out of the room. The woman in the cage reached a bony arm through its bars out at me.
She didn’t cry. She might have been too dehydrated to cry.
I made it back to the landing without fishing around inside bones to find the light switch again. I went to the second door and opened it up.
“Edith—I smell you.”
“Dren?” Jorgen’s owner, my erstwhile Husker, the vampire who’d tormented me, whom I’d cost a hand. “Dren?” I asked again, my voice rising.
“Don’t turn on the light. Just come here.”
I stood in the doorway. “Dren, what’s going on? Why are you here?”
“It took Jorgen long enough to find you. Come here.”
Was this where Jorgen had wanted me to come all along? Nice. And ironic. No wonder he’d been so pleased.
“Come here,” Dren demanded again.
“No.” He sounded weak, but that didn’t mean that it was safe to wander in blindly and say hi. “How about you come here? I need your help to free this girl.”
“I’m not in a position to free anyone right now. Get in here.” There was a long pause, and then a word I never thought I’d hear. “Please.”
That was weird—and frightening. “Dren, tell me what’s happening. Now.”
“Edie—I’m weak. They’ve…” His voice sunk low. “If you turn on the light, we might be seen. We don’t have much time before he comes back. Hurry.”
“Hurry and do what?”
“Help me, goddammit! Please!”
A piece of vampire lore returned to me. Honor and whatnot, when sworn. “Swear not to hurt me.”
There was a dry laugh. “I swear it. I couldn’t hurt a fly. Come closer, Edie. I’ll need to lean on you.”
There was movement at the back of the room, him, fabric, the bang of something metal. I took a step inside, and another, waiting for my eyes to adjust to the darkness ahead of me. He was laying on a metal table, draped in a sheet not unlike a gown, one hand folded in across his lap, the other hand missing.
“Come on already.” I waved him to come forward. The charge around me, what I’d felt when I first came into this cursed place, was increasing now. The pins and needles were beginning to feel more like teeth.
“I can’t. I need your help.” He reached out to me, with his arm that ended in a stump.
“And swear to help my mom,” I added.
“I swear, but only if you hurry the fuck up,” he hissed.
I’d wanted to save my mom, right? And I’d found Adriana. Only I couldn’t get her out. I was torn between the two rooms, like a kid frozen between horrors at a haunted house. Neither of the rooms was a good option, and everything felt like it was getting worse, fast—it was
I ran toward him instead, and drew myself up short at his bedside. He was lashed down, restrained across his chest, abdomen, thighs, and feet. I ratcheted the ties off him, unlacing their ends, freeing him. He gasped as the last one came loose, and pushed himself up.
He lurched up, swung his arm around my neck, and shoved himself off the table. He hobbled, as if one of his legs didn’t work. Because it didn’t. I looked down at his other flaccid arm.
“The bones. They take them out each night. Alternating. And then I heal, and then they take them out again.” His voice was dancing on the edge of mania.
I grit my teeth to not puke, and took a step forward. Stumbling, he came with me.
“Jorgen’s outside.”
“Good. Let’s go.” Dren said, his face tucked in against my neck.
I would have rather saved the old grandmother again than Dren. This place was so much worse than the storm drain where I’d found her. It’d only been trash there, things forgotten. This place was full of bad intent. Someone had done this to Dren—was doing that to Adriana.
“Is there any way—” I started to ask, even though I had no idea how I’d manage to carry them both out. And Dren couldn’t even use both his arms.
“No. She’s as good as dead. Just hurry—go—” he pleaded.
I was saving the vampire instead of the girl. I heard her whimpering as we crossed the upper landing. She must know we were leaving her behind. She deserved saving more than Dren, but he was the only one I could get out. It felt so wrong, but I couldn’t think of how I could undo her cage’s knot.
How much more moral ambiguity could I take? I’d work on sorting it out tomorrow.
“I’ll come back,” I whispered to the girl, praying that she could hear me, that she’d understand—that no one had ever lied and told her that before.
I just needed to get Dren over to Jorgen. Who knew where the hell they would go together, but after that, he would owe me. This had to be worth some blood.
And then maybe I could come back for her. I didn’t know what I could do against welded rebar and magic, but there had to be something, something, something—we reached the top of the stairs, and the door opened below.
Fuck.
Dren started panting into my neck. “Don’t let him hurt me, Edie. Don’t let him hurt me again—” His voice was rising like a boy’s.
“Shhhhh.” There was nowhere for us to hide, only one way out. I thought about throwing Dren down the stairs—it wasn’t like he could die, right?—and somehow tumbling after him, getting the door open again, somehow hauling Jorgen inside to help us.
That was a lot of somehows.
The bottom floor’s new occupant arrived at the bottom of the stairs, putting his foot on the first creaky step. He stepped into the half-light the downstairs switch provided. And I knew him.
“Ti?” My zombie ex-boyfriend. I almost dropped Dren in surprise.
“Ti—this is awesome timing—can you help?” I shouldered Dren up higher as he hung limp against me, like a rag doll. “Dren’s been hurt, and there’s this girl upstairs—” I began, and I realized my great luck. “You’re strong enough to open her cage, awesome!”
“Edie,” Dren warned, with true fear in his voice.
Ti was silent as he came up the second and third stairs.
“Ti?” He had to have seen me. Right? “Come on. Hurry up and help.”
Dren started quivering, trying to control his disobedient limbs and lurch away. “See if you can get us past him—hurry!”
“What—” I looked down at Dren, who was trying to let go of me and brace himself against the wall, and then back to the still-ascending Ti.
Who was holding a long butcher knife.
“No. No no no. This is not happening,” I bartered aloud. I backed us up an awkward step as Ti rose. “Ti— you can’t do this. This isn’t you.”
The Ti I knew put honor above almost everything else in life. Wanted to help people, not hurt them, not unless they deserved it. Wanted to get to go to heaven when he died, once he’d earned back the lost half of his soul. “Ti, please—”
