Ichor : Blood & Secrets

Chapter 49

I jumped when Schroder bumped against the back of my seat as he rolled onto the floor.

I put my fist in my mouth to stop myself from screeching. I was scared, but my yowling about it wasn’t going to help anything. It might even wake the monster up. I clutched the steering wheel and got into the fast lane. I was flying down the road at a dangerous speed, but I doubted I’d get pulled over. After all, I was driving the Police Chief’s car. I blew a piece of hair out of my eyes and pressed harder on the gas.

To my utter terror, Schroder’s moaning turned into words. “It hurts,” came his garbled voice.

I told myself not to lose my spunk. I said I could do this and I could. I took in a deep breath and talked to him rather than ignoring him. After all, he might not remember what happened.

“What hurts?” I asked in my I’m-a-receptionist voice. “Your head?” “No. My heart,” he muttered.

“Can you breathe?” I asked, thinking of the cloth wrapped around his head.

“Who, the hell, needs to breathe? Who needs to exist if I can’t help her?”

My tone turned icy as I replied. “Maybe she doesn’t need any help.”

“I don’t care if she needs me or not. I need her. I need the dream of her.”

He sounded so pathetic from the backseat it was hard for me to remember what a monster he was, but I remembered in time and kept my tone cold and my conversation strict. I wanted to know what he had been up to. “What do you want to do to help her?”

“Money. There was so much money.” His voice trailed off.

Were we even talking about the same thing?

“How did you earn it?” I asked. “Selling vampires to humans?”

“Why would I do that? I’m not like other vampires. I’m talented. If she had any idea how talented I am, her heart would melt.”

“Why not try to earn her heart that way?”

He suddenly bolted upright in the backseat and pulled Pierce’s jacket off his head. In the rearview mirror, I saw his bloody face and bald head. “You’re right!” he exclaimed. At that moment, our eyes met in the mirror and he recognized me. “Where are we going?”

I didn’t know how to answer. A part of me wanted to tell him the truth and a part of me wanted to hold off just in case he didn’t trust me or Pierce. On the other hand, he probably knew Pierce’s home. He wouldn’t like my answer.

So I lied. “It’ll be a while before we get there. You should lie down and sleep.” I changed lanes. When I looked in the mirror next, he was lying down.

“You’re listening to me?” I muttered incredulously to myself, but apparently, he heard me, because he responded.

“It’s a small thing to give you.”

After that, he didn’t say anything else and it wasn’t long before I pulled up in front of Pierce’s house. From my humble experience, Schroder’s home was a mansion, but Pierce’s was a castle.

Vampires were such materialistic bastards.

I stopped the car and cut the ignition.

“Are we there already?” came the weak voice from the back.

I feigned ignorance. “I’m not sure. There’s someone inside I need to talk to. Wait here. I’ll be back.”

There was no sound from Schroder, so I just assumed his assent and got out of the car. The bottoms of my shoes made weird sounds on the stone steps. I should have felt comfortable, but I didn’t. Feeling the atmosphere around me, I wasn’t sure if the air felt so charged because of the people watching me from inside the house or the vampire inspecting me from the car. I swallowed the creepy lump in my throat and pretended it wasn’t as distasteful as swallowing a spider.

I rang the bell.

The door swung open. Someone really had been watching me. Two men stood in the doorway. One was dressed much the same as Schroder’s maid. The other was dressed more like a butcher with a long white apron horribly stained in blood.

“Are you The Scissor Man?” I asked, inspecting the many tiny cuts on the man’s face and his razor-sharp haircut. It was so short it looked like it had been cut earlier that day.

He didn’t smile, but instead gravely introduced himself and the man next to him. “I am Kelly and this is Kilmeny. I’m not normally called The Scissor Man to my face and I’d prefer it if you didn’t start the trend. Pierce phoned us. He said you have a vampire for me to see.”

I resisted the urge to squirm. He didn’t sound like a doctor. I wanted to ask him if he had just come from surgery and if he’d lost the patient. That was the only explanation I could summon to account for his grim expression. Then the idea occurred to me. What if his grim expression had everything to do with me?

I took a step backward. “He’s in the backseat.”

The two men stepped out of the house and down the stairs very deliberately, rather like they were approaching a snake. Kilmeny took hold of the car door handle and opened it carefully and quickly.

Schroder was lying inside with his head on the seat. His face was smeared with blood, his lips were colorless, and his eyes were closed. He looked dead.

Kelly had a roll of duct tape around his wrist and he tore off a piece.

“What are you going to do with that?” I whispered.

He put one scarred finger to his mouth to silence me. “All vampires have fangs.”

Kelly leaned over Schroder. His fingers trembled as he stretched the silver tape over the vampire’s mouth. His hands shook so much, he was having difficulty making it straight before he put it on.

I bit my tongue to hide my anxiety. Something seemed wrong and I couldn’t pinpoint what it was. Was it these strange people or was it Schroder?

Something was scratching my leg. Ouch! I slapped it and looked at my hand to clear away the bug guts. A mosquito had gotten me. Blood stuck on my fingers.

Schroder’s eyes snapped open. Kelly hadn’t got the tape on him yet. Suddenly, he struck Kelly across the side of his face and within an instant had adjusted his position so he could kick Kelly in the chest. Kelly fell on his back and Schroder pushed his way out of the car.

Kilmeny slid a gun out of his sleeve and shot at him, but Schroder moved out of the way in time. The butler tried to shoot a second time, but something inside the gun jammed.

Schroder was on all fours licking his own blood that pooled in the dimple between his nose and his mouth. Then he pounced on Kilmeny like a wolf, grabbed his head between his two hands, and slammed it repeatedly against the cement. He was going to kill him.

“Stop!” I screamed.

Schroder didn’t even look at me. He was finished with Kilmeny by now and was on the lookout for Kelly. The Scissor Man had pulled two pairs of long silver scissors from out of nowhere and was approaching Schroder with purpose.

Schroder snarled and reached for one of The Scissor Man’s hands. He wasn’t fast enough and The Scissor Man scored a hit in the fat part of his palm.

I stood back—so appalled I couldn’t even move.

Schroder made a second attempt to grab one of the pairs of scissors but was again rewarded with a collection of cuts across his fingertips. I couldn’t believe Kelly was able to keep the vampire at bay. He moved lightning fast. I’d thought he was a shaky old man.

Schroder stuck his bleeding fingers in his mouth and sucked hard. Then he made a jump toward the gun Kilmeny had. It hadn’t even occurred to me to get it. I rushed to get it at the same time, but Schroder was faster. I half-crouched in front of him with one of my hands on the pavement and our eyes clashed.

He whacked me across the side of the head with the gun. I fell sideways and hit the ground like a black plastic garbage bin.

I would be dead before morning. I really was an amateur at this.

When I woke up, I felt like a broken porcelain doll. I was lying on a black leather sofa in front of a huge glass wall. It was morning and the sunlight that came filtered through the window was gray. Beyond the glass was a large body of water. Was it the ocean? Was it a lake? I couldn’t see the other side. Rubbing the back of my neck, I sat up.

Where was I?

I let my head fall back onto the couch and replayed my last memories. I was in the car with Schroder. We were at Pierce’s mansion. He got one whiff of my blood, went psycho, and attacked Kilmeny and Kelly. Then he banged me on the side of the head and that was the end. Now the most important question was whether or not Schroder had beaten The Scissor Man. It wasn’t ‘where am I?’ It was ‘who am I with?’

Looking out the window, I determined that I was nowhere near the city because there was no major body of water very close by.

No matter how I thought about it, I couldn’t figure out why I should have ended up in a place like this if The Scissor Man had won. That meant Schroder had probably killed him and brought me to this place—probably a second home of his where he could drink my blood and kill me whether I drank his blood or not.

Was that what was happening?

I was right the first time—I was already dead. It was only a matter of time before that monster stopped my heart.

I checked my body. A horrendous bruise had spiked out from my forehead where Schroder had hit me with the gun, but other than that there were no other lesions. This surprised me. I expected him to drink my blood at the first opportunity.

Looking around the open floor plan, the kitchenette was too small to be practical (another piece of evidence that I had been kidn*pped by Schroder). Stairs led up to a second floor. A door hung on its hinges revealing the edge of a toilet seat. Another door obviously led outside.

I lurched to my feet. It was probably locked, but I had to give it a try. Wobbling, I made it to the entryway, where my shoes were sitting beside the door. As quietly as I could, I sat down on the floor and pulled them on. Then, I tried the doorknob. It gave. I winced, expecting an alarm to sound, but it was silent. I opened the door and stepped outside.

Crisp air cooled my hot skin. It felt especially good on my bruised head. A light mist curled around the house reminding me the shirt I had borrowed from Dudley was inadequate.

I expected to see a car parked next to the house, but there was none. There was no driveway, no garage, no fence, no neighbors, and absolutely no houses anywhere on the distant rolling hills. The grass around the house was unkempt and the grounds were wilderness. A little lane marked in the grass seemed like it hadn’t been used in ages and it only led to the back of the house toward the water.

Feeling like I had no choice but to follow the path, I wrapped my arms around myself and walked down it. It began as grass and quickly became sand. The landscape beyond startled me as I realized how large the body of water in front of me was. It wasn’t a lake. It was something much bigger. I was at a place I knew nothing of. I could be anywhere on the planet.

Walking down the shore, I found a dock, but there were no boats moored there. I didn’t know what to do, other than to continue along and see what I could find. There might be other houses, other people, a boat—something to help me find my way back.

When I was a little girl, my mom read me a story. I stood there at the shore and the haunting tale came back to me.

It was a fairytale about a man who won a parcel of land. The size of his prize was determined by the parameter he could walk in a single day. Bright and early, he began walking. He felt energized and optimistic, so he walked far in a straight line. Before he realized it, the sun was high overhead. The sun’s journey was halfway done. Turning, he walked quickly to the east, to widen the property. He walked as far as he dared to before turning a second time. By this time the sun was starting to get low, so he turned back toward the starting place, even though he knew his land would be an irregular shape. He increased his speed and pushed his limits of endurance. He had been walking all day. His breath came short. It was further than he calculated to his starting place and soon, he was running, trying to get to the beginning before the sun set. As he reached his goal, the man had exhausted himself. He dropped dead.

What did land matter to a dead man?

I held my breath as my mother revealed that the mysterious giver of the land was, in fact, the Devil himself.

As I walked away from the vampire's house, I wondered if I had been as foolish as the man who had unwittingly made a deal with the Devil?

I thought I was being offered a wonderful chance for escape since the front door had been left unlocked.

Since I couldn’t get away, I would be dead by sunset.

As I walked along the shore, I kept thinking the next turn would show a house or a boat or possible help in some form, and each time I was disappointed. And there was always the temptation to turn back toward the mainland whenever I saw a break in the grass beyond the beach. On closer examination, they didn’t look like trails, so I kept to the shore. After all, anyone who lived in this area would want to be close to the water, wouldn’t they?

So I walked.

It was cold. I was tired. My head hurt. My belly rumbled. My mouth was dry and my ragged breaths scraped my throat. My feet ached as I trudged the uneven ground.

Slowly, the gray morning and cloudy afternoon turned orange. The sun was beginning to set and I finally concluded I was on an island. That was why there were no other houses—no other trails. That was why the door was left open. I had nowhere to go.

Why didn’t my captor say so? Obviously, I wouldn’t have believed him.

Now I didn’t know how far it was to the house where there was clean water to drink and a place to lie down.

Finally, I found a fallen log and sat down just in time to watch the orange sun sink into the water.

Then a voice sounded behind me, “Have you finished exploring?”

I turned and saw Schroder—sans wig. The place where Dudley shot him in the head was held together with silver staples. He was wearing a pair of dark sunglasses and leaning against a tree “Yeah,” I muttered, getting to my feet and brushing off my clothes. “I’m done.” “And you’re going to come back to the house without a fight?” he asked skeptically.

“It’s a little late to fight.”

“Wonderful,” he said, coming over to me and pointing into the forest. “There’s a shortcut.”

My feet hurt like hell, and obviously, he had no vehicle to spare me. On this island, there was just the house, him, and me.

“So,” I started. I wanted to sound casual, but my voice failed me. “Why did you bring me here?”

“Well, I thought about what you said in the car. You said I should have tried to earn your heart. I had never thought of that as a possibility. When you showed up at my place last night, I was talking to Pierce. He was telling me about a particular woman he favored—a human.”

“Really?”

“Hard to believe, huh? I thought so too. So, I asked him how he was planning on having a relationship with her that didn’t end in a blood bath. He said he was simply going to leave blood out of the equation. He was just going to love her and never drink a drop. I had never considered having a romance that didn’t revolve around the sharing of blood. In case you didn’t know, it’s the blood that makes the love affair intense.”

Stopping, I looked at his face. He was scarred from the fire eight years ago. He didn’t even have eyebrows, even though the rims of his sunglasses hid the fact. When I looked at him I felt a twinge of pity for what I had done—not because the monster didn’t deserve it—but urgh! I didn’t know. It was easier when I woke up in the morning and there was nothing left but ash, not a person walking around maimed… because of me.

Who could have a romance with him when he looked that way? They’d have to find his inner beauty. Did a vampire with five bullets in his head screwing him up have any inner beauty?

“I want to give it a try,” he said.

“With who?” I asked bitterly, hoping against hope he didn’t mean me.

“Who do you think?” His voice sounded less than amused.

Who was I kidding? Why else would he have brought me out here if not to use me for his little experiment?

“Have you ever heard of the story of Cupid and Psyche?” he asked suddenly.

“Cupid?” I repeated stupidly.

“Sounds like you haven’t,” he said, moving a branch out of my way before I got to it. “Cupid was the son of Aphrodite.”

“Oh?”

“Psyche was the third daughter of a king and her beauty was renowned. She was so famous

Aphrodite became jealous and told the king she would destroy his kingdom if he didn’t leave

Psyche as a sacrifice to her.”

“This sounds like the kind of story a vampire would like,” I said drolly.

“Perhaps,” Schroder said, looking at me like he didn’t understand my joke. “In any case, Psyche doesn’t die. She’s strapped to the edge of a cliff to await her doom. Aphrodite has sent her son, Cupid, to dispose of her, but when he sees her he doesn’t have the heart to kill her.

Instead, he takes her to his castle where he sets up a situation for her to go on living.”

“How does that work?”

“He arranges it so she cannot see his face whether it be day or night and makes her his lover.”

I felt a chill run down my spine. “I take it she cannot leave his castle even if she wants to.”

“No. I imagine she couldn’t,” Schroder said, pulling away another piece of greenery to reveal the house.

It was a shack—not half the size of his mansion by the city, but it looked exactly like Cupid’s castle to me.

Back at the house, Schroder brought me a bottle of water and a bowl of vegetable soup with some crackers. He set them on the coffee table in front of the couch and sat down on the other side of the sectional to watch me eat.

“Sorry, I haven’t got anything better, but we came here in a hurry last night and I didn’t have the chance to shop.”

“It doesn’t matter,” I said, drinking the soup directly from the bowl rather than bothering with the spoon.

“You’re not worried that it’s poisoned?”

“Why would you try to murder me?” I asked, setting the bowl down when all the liquid was gone. “Aren’t I here so you can seduce me?”

“Seduce isn’t the word I would use,” he said. His voice was rather sharp.

“Love? You expect me to believe that you love me? I can’t believe that. I still maintain you didn’t even know me.”

“I did,” he said ardently. Apparently, he was not turned off by my unladylike display with the soup. Pity. I guessed vampires liked slurping.

I cracked open the crackers and shook my head. “It’s not going to float.”

“That’s because you drank all the broth,” he quipped humorlessly. He hung his head in an almost human gesture of despair. A few moments passed in relative silence before he spoke next.

“I can prove it.”

“How?” I asked saucily. No matter what he said, he couldn’t convince me.

“It’ll take four days—at least.”

“And what happens at the end of the four days if I’m not convinced?”

“At the end of four days, we’ll see if I can win your heart. Before that, I have to get some more provisions for you.”

“Does that mean there’s a boat moored somewhere around here?”

“No.”

“Then how do you plan to bring anything here?”

Then he smiled—a strange twisting smile that reminded me of the line a snake would make as it disappeared through the grass. “Did you really think I would tell you how I plan to keep you here? It’s laughable you even asked.”

“You might tell me a thing or two, just so I don’t spend my time pursuing a dead end—like I did today. I felt like an i***t. You could have just said, ‘We’re on an island so don’t bother’.”

“I see. Well, when you put it that way, the electricity for this place is provided by a generator in the back of the house. Don’t mess with it. The only one who will suffer will be you. The well water isn’t particularly good, so drink the bottled water. There is no radio, or telephone out here. If you have a cell phone in your bag, it won’t work because there’s no reception out here. There’s no boat. I think that’s about it.”

I rolled my eyes. Yeah, that covered just about everything. I was screwed. “Well, when you’re getting those provisions, please remember to get me adequate personal hygiene supplies.” “Are there really that many things?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll get you whatever you want,” he said like he was just now deciding to be gallant.

“Thanks.”

I finished off the soup and pushed the bowl away from me. Then I leaned back and sipped the water.

“Now I’m going to leave,” he said, getting to his feet.

“Where are you going?” I asked, attempting to hide my relief.

“To leave you alone. You can sleep upstairs if that’s more comfortable for you. I just want to give you something to think about before I go.”

I looked at him quizzically. What could he possibly have to tell me that would make a difference at this point?

He bent down and looked me in my eyes. “Remember the night you slashed my chest and burned me?”

“Yes,” I admitted, recoiling further into the sofa.

“Have you ever wondered why I didn’t take the knife from you?” “Huh?” I asked, my fear forgotten as my eyes bugging out. “I could easily have taken it from you. I didn’t. Ever wonder why?” I stared at him. I had wondered why.

He backed away from me and looked down on me from his height. “That’s enough for tonight. I’ll let you digest that and I’ll see you tomorrow night. Try not to get bored.” Then he headed out the front door.

I glared after him. I should have had the spunk to follow him to see what method he used to get off the island, but after spending the whole day walking fruitlessly, I couldn’t make my body move one inch. I ached in places I didn’t even know I had. I put my head in my hands and moaned despairingly.

Just like Schroder wanted, I thought about what he said.

He had not taken the knife from me. He was willing to die at my hand. Somehow, his story rang true.

But was it enough to prove to me that he loved me? No. It only made me think he possessed enough humanity not to hurt a fifteen-year-old girl who was only trying to defend her sister.

Losing myself in thought, I fell asleep on the couch. I wanted to explore the house and get a feeling of where I was, but I was exhausted. The last few days had been murder.

In the morning, I got up and found some instant oatmeal in the cupboard. There wasn’t any milk, but there were clean dishes and a microwave, so I made it with water and gagged it down.

Then I went pawing around Schroder’s house. He said he wouldn’t be back until after dark anyway.

Upstairs, I found one bedroom. Its ceiling was slanted to match the slope of the roof, and the doorway was so low I had to duck to my head. It was a very ordinary room. It was dusty, except for the bed, which had been covered in plastic (the plastic was bunched up behind the door).

When I smelled the blankets though, they had a new scent to them, as if they were fresh out of the package.

There was also a bathroom on the second floor. It had a tub in it, though no shower was installed. I was going to have to take baths.

Going back downstairs, it took me a while to find the entrance to the basement. It was hidden behind a shelf containing linen in the bathroom. When I finally got the door open, I saw a spiral staircase that led both down and up. Fearing the unknown, I chose to go up before I went down. I found I had missed seeing the door in the upstairs bedroom closet.

Then I went down.

The stairwell opened up to let the person into an open space. My breath sputtered like an old lawnmower. Bloody hell, this was scary. Darkness shrouded the room. It took me a few infinite seconds to find the cord that turned on the light. When I pulled the string, about five lines of studio lights came on. And lucky for me, there was nothing grotesque to see.

One glance around the room told me what Schroder had meant when he said he was talented. He was an artist. Behind each of those lines of lights was an easel with a partially completed painting sitting on it. I didn’t have to be an expert to tell how good he was.

I looked at each painting and then at stacks and stacks of finished work he kept off to one side—except there were paintings I couldn’t see. At least I suspected the two huge vaults kept in the corner contained paintings. They might have housed anything really, like a two-way radio. The locks and hinges on them were super tight. I stepped away from them and examined the room. Why had I expected to find anything gory in the first place? London didn’t keep that sort of thing in her closet. Schroder probably didn’t want his best work spoiled if there was a flood, so he kept it in a water-tight container. Right? Or was there something more pertinent to my escape inside? I tugged on the handle again. No way was that sucker going to give.

So, I went upstairs and had lunch. Canned soup again.

The next day Schroder turned up at sunset. Vampires didn’t like the sunlight, so I couldn’t help but wonder where he had gone during that time.

He came lugging a sizable crate full of groceries.

“Wow,” I murmured, looking at the pineapple leaves coming out of the top of the box.

He dropped it on the counter and said, “For you.”

I was completely despondent. “This is a lot of food for just me. Are you ever planning to let me go?”

“Once you’ve been here for a while, you won’t want to go.”

“I seriously doubt that.