Beast wants to hunt and eat cow. Like bison but easier to kill. Jane says no. But Molly can kill cow?
No. Molly won’t— Jane made air breath sound in mind. Never mind. Upstairs. Quick. Please, she added. Jane was trying to be good beta when Beast was alpha. I turned and padded to stairs, long tail bumping hallway. Raced up stairs. Doors closed up here, but were levers in dark metal. Bronze. Period reproductions, Jane thought. I opened doors. One room piled high with things, dusty, old. One room was bedroom, dusty, not used. Bed had tall tree posts like Evangelina’s and tent on top. Canopy, Jane thought. Decorated in pink and lavender. Curled photos around the mirror. An old laptop. CDs. Jewelry in a pile. Crap. It’s a teenager’s room.
Pulled door closed. Room for bathing and cleaning body was dusty too. Big house-den for one witch woman. Waste of den space. Last room at end of small hallway was different. Smelled scent from this side of door. Blood. I sniffed, learning scent. Male. Blood many years old. I pressed lever with paw and door opened. Room had wood floor, couch, table, TV. Smelled of cigar smoke. And old newspapers. And dead human.
Stepped carefully, slowly, inside. Blood was on floor, smell oldoldold. Chemicals had been used on it. Clorox, Jane thought. Detergents. I padded to back of couch and found rug there, against wall. Rolled up. Sniffed at end. Dead human was inside. Jane cursed, fear in her heart.
Beast is not afraid. Beast is not prey, I reminded her. I turned and left room, pulling door shut with paw until it snicked closed, hiding dead man in rug. Checked other doors. All closed. Padded up to third story. Door at top had round handle, not lever. Will not be able to go here.
Ran down stairs. Saw door at bottom, not able to see going up. Low light came from around edges. Opened door to see stairs leading down. I stopped. Tasting, testing. Air sparkled like taste of lemon. Taste of onion. Bad taste, like sting of bee. Remembered bee landed on food. Ate it. Hurt for long time. Could smell nothing here but bee smell. Nose curled. Hacked. Sneezed. Bad taste/smell. Heard soft groan. Sound of breathing, snoring, came up stairs, with light from room at bottom. But stairs were dark. Unlit.
Good thing we aren’t in a bikini, Jane thought, or this would be seriously dangerous.
Did not understand Jane’s laughter or Jane’s fear. Stepped over threshold. Checked door handle, to see if I could get out. Good lever handle on both sides. Started down stairs. On wall at end of narrow stairs I saw a picture in frame. Jane slowed to study it. I let her be alpha. Jane thoughts flooded my mind.
I drew on my human sight. The painting was a depiction of a witch circle with a pentagram in the center; there were adults standing at the points of the pentagram. The female participants were dressed in belled skirts, big sleeves, and corsets that came to a point below the navel. The males wore knee pants, lace and satin, big-buckled shoes, and white wigs piled up high. And all had fangs. Lying in the center of the pentagram were two human-looking children, naked and bound. One of the wigged and goateed men held an athame over them. On his chest he wore a gaudy, heavy, gold chain set with a thick casing holding the pink diamond—the blood-diamond—the casing shaped of horns and claws. It looked barbaric, brutal, and powerful, an artifact from a distant time and place.
I knew this painting. It was a depiction of a black magic art ceremony intended to bring vampire scions out of the devoveo, the state of insanity they entered into when they were turned, and which they endured for ten years or so, until they found themselves again amidst the bloodlust of vamp-hungers. I nudged Beast down the stairs, slowly. As we moved, more paintings appeared on the white-painted basement wall ahead, all hung at the same level.
I had stolen these paintings from the vamps who had killed witch children. There were fifteen, a batch of seven from one century, the fifteenth century, I thought, and seven from the sixteenth century—or maybe it was sixteenth and seventeenth century. The only thing that mattered was that this was art from two time periods that had been used to chronicle experiments of black magic—blood magic. I had given them to Evangelina to destroy or store. Not to use.