The Bonding Ritual (Girls Wearing Black: Book Four) (28 page)

Letting his nose guide him, Sergio took Lena under the waterfall and down the corridor to the rear wing of the house.

“I’ve never been back here,” Lena whispered. “Are you sure this is where we’re supposed to go?”

“Actually, no,” Sergio said. “I’m just following a hunch.”

“A hunch? Isn’t this the way to her crypt? I’m not comfortable with this, Sergio. I want to go back.”

Sergio grabbed onto her wrist.

“Just a little bit farther,” he said.

*****

Eve and Alvin led Jill into the library at the back of the house. A maze of wooden bookshelves, the library was a great place to hide. The stacks climbed so high there was a balcony level required to access the books near the top. Quietly as she could, Jill ran down a path of leather-bound volumes, stopping to hide underneath a winding staircase in the center of the room.

*****

The smell of strawberry perfume led Sergio into the space beneath Daciana’s house.

“Would you please tell me what we’re doing?” Lena said. “If Daciana asks me, I’m telling her you forced me to come down here.”

“Someone’s been here,” he said. “One of the students.”

Lena’s eyes opened wide. “A student
? How could a student possibly have been her?”

“Come on,” Sergio said, yanking Lena’s wrist. “She’s not here anymore.”

*****

“Jill, I need you to stay right where you are,” Eve whispered. “Make your breathing as quiet as you can, and don’t move a muscle. Sergio and Lena are headed to the library now. I’ll let you know when they leave. For now, total silence, okay?”

Jill tapped on her earring, then huddled tight in the shadow beneath the stairs.

*****

Sergio figured out who he was chasing. He remembered the scent.

The night he stood in the forest, just beyond the remains of Renata’s mansion—that was when he smelled this one before.

The Wentworth girl. Nicky’s friend.

He had been so consumed with thoughts of Nicky this week that he hadn’t given much consideration to Jill Wentworth. He had intended to program her, but circumstance kept him away.

No, not circumstance. Fate. Nicky found him before he could get to the Wentworth girl, and now, free of Sergio’s programming, this strawberry-scented member of the senior class was roaming around in the back half of Daciana’s mansion.

It was meant to be. Jill Wentworth had a role to play in Nicky and Sergio’s bonding ritual.

But what?

Smiling, Sergio reached into his pocket, and placed his fingers on the Ping-Pong ball he had been carrying around with him. Fate was a funny thing.

The strawberry scent led Sergio to the library, and now it was mixed with sweat. The girl had been running. She was scared. Perhaps she knew Sergio was close.

He came to the door just outside Daciana’s library, but decided not to go through.

“The girl we’re looking for is in there,” Sergio said. “She’ll be hiding somewhere in the stacks. Let’s enter on the top level so we can see her better.”

Lena didn’t argue. She was much more amenable to Sergio’s tour of the rear wing of the house now that they were chasing a rogue student.

They took the stairway at the end of the hall and stepped into the library via the mezzanine. Sergio stopped to listen.

There was another heartbeat in the room with them.

Sergio looked at Lena, whose entire face was lost in a giant grin. She heard the girl too. Shallow breathing, a racing heart—the library was too quiet a place for a frightened human to hide from a vampire.

What did he do now? What did fate want from him?

Lena pressed close and whispered in his ear.

“May I go get her?” she whispered. “I promise I’ll be gentle. I know Daciana will want to be the first to look in her mind.”

Sergio shook his head. He wasn’t certain what he was meant to do with Jill Wentworth tonight, but he knew that Lena couldn’t be a part of it. After all, this little game of hide and seek was merely a diversion before Sergio took Lena out back to kill her.

He looked across the library. Jill was hiding at the bottom of the stairs. The nearest exit to her led to the storage room.

Where Jill would have a clear line of sight all the way to the cremation furnace.

Yes, that’s why fate had brought him and Jill together tonight. Her role was to tell Nicky what lengths Sergio would go to in order to protect her.

“We will leave the girl be and tell Daciana what we saw,” he whispered, pointing at the security camera in the nearest corner. “Daciana may wish to watch and see where this girl decides to go.”

Lena’s shoulders slumped in disappointment. Sergio led her out the way they came in, but when he closed the door behind him, he did it just loud enough for Jill to hear.

*****

“They’re gone,” Eve said. “You did great, Jill. But there’s more activity near the moon room. Do you remember that storage and utility area from the blueprint?”

Jill imagined the sketch of the entire mansion filling a movie screen. In her mind, she saw the library in the rear corner, and next to it, an open room marked “Storage and Furnace.”

She tapped twice on her earring.

“Good,” said Eve. “The servants have no reason to go into that room tonight. Get in there and hang tight until all this activity clears out of your area. I don’t want you moving again until Sergio and Lena are back at the party with everyone else.”

*****

Sergio took Lena outside, as if they might find Daciana in the forest behind her mansion.

“Who was that girl?” Lena asked. “One of the students, right? I can’t believe it!
A student at Thorndike Academy. Our enemies have a spy right under our noses!”

Sergio led her around the southeast corner of the house, away from the forest.

“What’s back here?” she said. “We sure are going on quite the--”

He had his hand on her throat before she could finish the sentence. Leaning in with the full weight of his body, Sergio threw Lena to the ground and landed on top of her, using his legs to restrain both her arms.

“I’m going to let go of your throat and we’re going to have a talk,” he said. “A quiet talk. Do you understand?”

As much as she could, Lena tried to nod her head. Sergio took his hand off her throat.

“You were speaking to Nicky Bloom when I found you,” he said. “You were looking deep in her mind, or trying to at least.”

“You know, don’t you, Sergio?” she said. “You know
Nicky Bloom is wrapped up in some kind of deceit. I swear I’m not a part of it. I was trying to learn the truth about her.”

“Tell me what you know about Nicky Bloom and how you know it.”

“The night of the Date Auction I got a phone call,” Lena said. “From Melissa. She said she had uncovered betrayal of the highest order, and the Bloom family was guilty.”

“Who did you tell about this phone call?”

“Renata, and she told me to stay put so she could go deal with it herself. I promise you, Sergio, I didn’t know Renata was up to anything. I didn’t know anything! I still don’t!”

“Renata and who else?” Sergio said.

“Just Thomas,” Lena said. “I tell Thomas everything.”

Everything
. The thought made Sergio smile. When you have a bond you tell everything to that person. You are no longer one mind, but two.

“It was good of you to tell Thomas,” Sergio said. “Your bond comes before everything.”

*****

The
room that was marked “Storage and Furnace” on the blueprint of Daciana’s mansion might better have been named “Warehouse” for how big it was. A vast space with a high ceiling and a freezing cold concrete floor, the walls of the area were lined with huge wooden crates. On one end of the room was an industrial-sized air conditioner unit. A few feet down from it was a furnace.

Jill approached one of the crates and aimed the flashlight from her wand charm at the address label taped to the front. The crate had been shipped from some company named
Safari Freight & Storage. The address label had a date on the bottom right corner.

“This just got here,” she whispered.

“What’s that, Jill?” said Eve. “Everything alright in there?”

Jill went to another crate. It too had been shipped from Safari Freight & Storage just a few days ago.

“Are you guys able to see these address labels?” she whispered.

“It’s pretty dark in there,” said Alvin. “If you want us to see something, get close with your necklace.”

Jill leaned in so her necklace was right in front of the address label, and then she shone her light on it.

“Okay, I can see it now,” said Alvin. “You think it’s important?”

“Whatever this stuff is, it just got here,” Jill said.

“Probably the casino equipment,” said Eve. “Don’t worry about it now. Just find a place to hide and turn off that flashlight.”

A shadow danced along the back wall, startling her, and Jill immediately turned off her light. She stood in place, listening. She could hear voices outside.

There was a window on the back wall, facing outside, giving a clear view of Daciana’s cremation furnace. Staying against the wall, Jill approached the window. As she got closer, she could make out what the voices outside were saying.

“No one else knows about the phone call. Just you, Renata, and Thomas.”

It was a man’s voice. Calm, even a bit chilling to listen to.

“That’s right,” said a woman. She sounded scared.

“And you’re certain Thomas didn’t tell anyone,” said the man.

The woman’s response was a bit panicked.

“We kept it to ourselves because Renata told us to. We didn’t know Renata was up to no go
od. I swear. The only reason I-”

And then there was a horrible sound, like drumsticks being yanked off a chicken. Jill covered her mouth with her hand and ducked low behind a crate.

She didn’t have to hear any more to know what was happening out there. The man was a vampire, and he just killed the woman he had been speaking to.

Jill wished she had looked away at this point, but she was scared so much she couldn’t move. Crouched against the wall, her eyes gazing at the window, she saw
Sergio Alonzo stand up, his mouth covered in blood. He took a few steps away from the window. Jill heard him open the iron door to the cremation furnace.

He came back into view, leaned down, and picked up a severed head from the ground. Bloody entrails hanging from the neck, the eyes still open, Jill swore there was still life in that head.

The head looked at her through the window. Sergio was holding a woman’s head in his hands and the woman
saw
Jill through the window, and even made a slight expression of surprise.

Then Sergio threw the head into the furnace, like it was a bowling ball he was tossing down the lane.

She didn’t wait for word from Eve or Alvin. She had to get out of here. She had to go right now. Hardly even aware of what she was doing, Jill started to run. Out of the storage area, back through the library, into the south corridor, up the stairs, under the waterfall and into the moon room. She ran without thought of where she was or who might see her, her body entirely on autopilot now.

She was still in bare feet when she charged through the kitchen, pushing open the swinging door from the dining hall and running all the way through. Nobody saw her, but it wouldn’t have mattered if they did. She couldn’t have stopped running if she tried.

It wasn’t until she was in the hallway outside the foyer, looking at the door to the bathroom where her adventure had started, that her mind began to clear. It was as if, having made it back to the party, her body could finally relax and let her mind take control.

She stood still, waiting for her heart to quit racing. Thankfully, no one else was in the hallway, and she had some time alone to process what she had just seen.

Vampires are killers
, she told herself.
You know that. It’s who they are. You joined the Network to stop them. Why are you so shocked that you saw it happen?

Because it was another vampire whose head was in Sergio’s hands.

Yes, her mind clearer now, she was sure of it. The severed head that gazed through the window and looked right at Jill didn’t belong to some servant that Sergio was having for a snack. No, those eyes were familiar. Jill had seen them in the first briefing book the Network ever gave to her.

“Jill, what the hell is going on?” came Alvin’s voice in her ear.

“You’re lucky you didn’t get seen,” said Eve. “Sprinting through the mansion like that wasn’t part of the plan. What happened?”