'
'He never said anything about sponsoring a frat. Damn it, where is he?' Holly rose and ran up the rest of the stairs. Had Ben said something about coming here this morning, and she'd just tuned out his breakfast monologue? Fear and guilt drove her heart, slamming it against her ribs.
'Holly!' Alessandro surged after, taking the steps two at a time.
The upstairs landing opened onto a large area flanked by two more hallways. A large drop cloth made a ghostly heap beside the banister. Holly looked from one side to the other, searching for some sign of the dark river she had seen in the dining room. Her mind felt suddenly sharp and clear, her thoughts ticking over with digital precision.
Alessandro stopped, lifting his head. He took a short, sharp breath and made a face. 'There is death here.'
'Where?' Holly said, her voice flat and cold.
Alessandro pointed straight ahead.
The house's rustling deepened into a throaty female laugh, fading away into a soft chuckle.
The last of the chuckle slipped away, leaving behind empty silence. Holly strode along, her heels loud on the hardwood. She flung open one door, then the next, pausing only long enough to sweep the empty spaces with her flashlight. All she saw were small, plain rooms with slanted ceilings in the far corners. Bedrooms, perhaps.
She thumped the wall in frustration. The center of the house's consciousness was nearby—she could feel it, but the exact location eluded her. 'Give it up, Scrap Heap,' Holly called out. 'Where'd you put your playmates?'
Alessandro glided past her. He opened the last door in the hallway, pushing it open and then recoiling, poised and ready to fight. Holly marched toward him, barely slowing until he raised one hand, palm out. 'Wait. This is the source of the black river,' he said. 'I can see it now, too. There was a look-away spell. That explains why the police didn't see any of this.'
Holly stopped next to him in the doorway. He was right. It was there in plain, horrific view, none of the corner-of-the-eye stuff anymore. She swallowed hard, doing her best not to gag. There was the faint trace of heat she had felt before, now joined by a pungent smell, like hamburger left too long out of the fridge.
The blackness flowed along the slope of the old oak floor toward the outer wall, where it ran down into the dining room below. Six bodies lay covered in the sparkling ooze. One victim had tried to make it out the window on the far wall, but now lay slumped beneath it. Holly looked frantically from one to the next, trying to figure out which one was Ben.
The house sighed, low and intimate, as a tingling sensation swarmed up Holly's neck.
'I can't tell if they're alive,' Alessandro said softly. 'It all smells putrid. What were they doing up here?'
'They probably tried to save one another and got caught like flies in flypaper.' Holly's voice was high and choked. She stepped forward carefully, making sure the toes of her shoes did not touch the black ooze. It would have worked, except the ooze edged toward her with a wet, sticky slurp.
'Can you use your power on it?' asked Alessandro.
Holly extended her fingers, giving off a blast of energy. She was gratified to see the blackness retreat from the thin stream of sparks. With hot, tingling bursts of power she chased it back a few feet, approaching the body closest to the door. She flicked off her flashlight, sparing the batteries, and worked by the faint light of her own power.
With a rustle of wind and fabric, Alessandro levitated to the other side of the room, his coat flaring around him. Holly ducked, startled, but was relieved to hear his boots hit dry floor. The ooze hadn't reached the far wall.
She felt the attention of the dark liquid shift to where Alessandro now stood. Black and slick as a seal's head, a pseudopod rose out of the muck, probing the air in the vampire's direction. Alessandro poked it with the end of his flashlight. The slime head lashed out, and Alessandro dodged with the air of a matador.
'Watch out!' Holly exclaimed. 'What do you think you're doing?'
Alessandro danced away from the thing, his eyes flaring yellow. 'It wants to fight. I'll keep it busy. You look for survivors.'
He crouched, his smile giving a flash of fang. Normally that look made her shudder, but Holly was fresh out of fear. Let the vampire play with the slime monster. She had civilians to save.
The dead-meat smell clotted in Holly's throat, as choking as the worry that her strength would fizzle and leave her stranded in the sea of black. Worry became panic when she chased the ooze from the first body and saw what it had left behind.
The figure wore a team jacket, so she knew it wasn't Ben.
The man had been big-boned and dark-haired, but now those bones held up a drapery of flesh sucked dry of life and substance. The face had collapsed like melted wax, flowing and pooling against the oak floor.
Holly made a noise in a voice she didn't recognize as her own and backed away. She stood a moment, panting, trying to pull herself together before she began working toward a second collapsed form that sprawled a few yards away. Was that one Ben? Fear made her thoughts scatter. What if he wasn't here? What then?
A wrench sailed through the air, smacking her on the shoulder. Her arm went numb, the stream of power flowing out her fingers sputtering like water from a pinched hose.
'Ow!' Holly looked around.
'Over there,' Alessandro said, pointing.
There was a toolbox in the corner, and now the contents were floating above it, missiles in the house's arsenal. She had seen this before—tawdry poltergeist nonsense, but it could hurt.
A hammer sailed through the air at Alessandro. In a blur of motion he snatched it mid-flight and used it to smack one of the pseudopods wriggling toward him. He was clearly enjoying himself in a Conan the Barbarian sort of way.
Holly batted an airborne caulking gun with the side of her flashlight and shuffled as fast as she could toward the next body, staying low to avoid the rain of tools. The second body wasn't Ben either. The young man looked pale and blue-lipped, the skin shriveled as if he had been in the bath too long, but he was alive. Holly felt a surge of joy.
'Hey. Hey!' She shook him by the shoulders, but he stayed limp, his mouth half-open.
The young man's breath came in short, shallow rasps. He was fighting for oxygen. She touched his throat and felt a faint pulse. The temperature of his flesh was far too low. He was alive now, but wouldn't survive for long without medical help.
The moisture the goo left behind dried almost instantly, leaving the man's russet hair caked and stiff. It looked like he'd been gelled by a herd of manic hairdressers.
'Don't worry; we'll get you out of here,' Holly murmured in his ear. Grabbing his wrists, she dragged him toward the door, farther away from the slime, and then set off toward the figure slumped under the window. It looked like this one had tried to get out, but the window had jammed. The slime grew thicker over the body as Holly approached, ripples of sparkling black flowing toward it like an incoming tide. Apparently the house had figured out what Holly was doing and was rushing to stop her.
Something slammed into her back, hard, and fell with a clatter. The blow knocked Holly to her knees, her eyes filling with tears of pain. She twisted her head around to see the red tool box lying empty on the floor behind her.
'Holly, are you all right?'
Glancing up at Alessandro, she understood why the house had thrown the box. It had run out of tools. Alessandro had caught them all, stuffing them in the capacious pockets of his coat.
'Yeah.'
