“The infamous Mouthy Mary who told Dree she had to protect ye all?” he queried gently.
“Aye, Mouthy Mary,” she said with a sad smile. “She was the only one brave enough to stand up to him. She said we’d not do it, and he could go to hell. She would go find Dree, who would fix him real good for what he’d done.” Beth released a sigh. “The last word had barely left her mouth before Jamieson had crossed the room and ripped off her head. Quick as that,” she added, sounding a bit bewildered. “None of us had ever seen anything like it. And none of us . . .” She shook her head. “In truth, I think we all just kind of shut down. Sank into shock or something. But none of us had the nerve to protest further at that point.”
“What happened next?” Scotty asked solemnly when she fell silent again. The sooner the story was done, the sooner she could forget it. Hopefully forever.
“Jimmy had us clean ourselves up, make ourselves presentable, and then sent us out with the order to each bring back a man,” Beth said and then admitted, shamefaced, “When I left that house, I was too scared and shocked to think anything but that I should do what he said. That anything was better than having me head torn off like Mary. But after walking half a block I began to regain my senses. My body was crying out for blood so bad it was hard to think, but I simply couldn’t bite anyone, and I couldn’t—I wouldn’t—lure anyone back to that house of hell to be tortured and murdered. I decided I was going to run away, that I would find Dree somehow, but in the meantime, I would hide and not return to that house.”
“And the other women?” Scotty asked, though he knew the answer.
“I tried to convince the others to come with me, but they were too afraid. They were going to do exactly what he ordered them to do. But I should go find Dree, they said, and bring her back to save them.”
Beth sighed unhappily. “I tried so hard to convince them that doing what he said was the wrong thing to do, but they were all so terrified of him after what he’d done . . . and the bloodlust was on them too, I think.” She looked down as if in shame, and murmured, “So I left them and fled.”
“Where did you go?” Scotty asked quietly. He’d known some of what she’d told him, but not all of it.
“The only place I could think to go,” she told him. “The old house, the brothel. I knew Dree wouldn’t be there. She was still off on the Continent somewhere, but I needed to think, to figure out how to find her. And that, to me, seemed the safest place. At least it was somewhere familiar, and Dree hadn’t sold the place yet, so I knew it was uninhabited at the moment, which seemed a very good thing indeed.
“That was a terrible trek,” Beth admitted solemnly. “It was night, people were everywhere, and I was so hungry and they smelled so good. There were times I didn’t think I’d manage to get to the house without attacking some poor passerby and biting them. But I did,” she said, lifting her head proudly, and then a wry smile curved one side of her mouth and Beth admitted, “The problem was, I didn’t know what to do once I got there. The bloodlust was so bad I could barely think. I certainly couldn’t figure out how to contact Dree. I couldn’t even remember which country she was visiting just then, or what her next stop was. I thought if I just had some blood, just a little, my mind would clear enough that I could figure things out. But I simply couldn’t bite another human being.”
“What did you do?” Scotty prompted gently when she fell silent.
“I fed on rats,” Beth admitted with disgust. “That was how desperate I was. We had cats when we lived in the brothel, but we took them to the new house when we moved. Without the cats there, rats had moved in. For two weeks I stayed at the house, sleeping during the day and then waking up to feed on any rats I might be able to catch in the house, before slipping outside at night to try to find other small animals. Usually all I found were more rats or the occasional bird, once even a mangy old cat. None of it seemed to help, but I still couldn’t bear the idea of biting another human being.” She shuddered at the very thought.
“And then one night I was chasing a rat around the corner of the house when a carriage drove by. It slowed as it passed, and I glanced up and gaped at the woman peering out the window. It was Dree. For a minute, I couldn’t believe me eyes, but it was her riding by, and the carriage had nearly passed the house. Terrified she would leave without seeing me, I just shrieked. Fortunately, she heard me and had the carriage stop. When she got out, I rushed over and threw myself at her.”
Beth paused briefly and then said, “She’s told me since that she didn’t even recognize me at first, I was so filthy and haggard. But she said I was babbling incoherently about Mary getting her head ripped off and Nelly dying, and she sorted it out. She said she tried to get me to go to the retirement house right away, but I kind of freaked out. I don’t remember that. Actually, it’s all kind of blurry from my seeing her until a day or two later, but Dree told me that when I refused to let her take me to the new house, she ushered me into the old one and took care of me there.
“I was in a really bad way. Even so, I wouldn’t feed when Dree brought a man in off the street for that purpose. She had to control both myself and him to get me to feed. She brought several people in over the next two days and did that again and again. Then she had me rest. I slept all day and most of the evening, but when I woke up I told her everything. About Jimmy coming and what he’d done, what he’d wanted us to do. I told her I tried to get the others to leave, but they’d feared if we all left he’d hunt us down one by one and do what he’d done to Mary, and that they were waiting for us to save them.
“Dree wanted to go to the house alone, but I wouldn’t let her. I insisted on going with her. Once we got there, though, I was almost sorry I had.”
Sighing, she leaned her head back against the headboard again and said, “You know what happened there. We thought we were only going to have to deal with Jimmy, that the women would be happy to see us. Instead, the things Jimmy had made them do broke them, and the women had given in to madness. The house, our beautiful charming house, was a blood-spattered mess littered with corpses and body parts—not just of men, but of women and children too. And the stink . . .” Her nose wrinkled with disgust at the memory, and then she sighed unhappily. “Jamieson said ‘Attack,’ and they attacked at once. Women who had been friends . . . family for decades. They came at us like Valkyries, eager to rend us to shreds.”