Cross

Book 2 Chapter VII - Dani and Celeste

Chapter 17 - Dani and Celeste

"I have to complain about the behaviour of that Rah girl," Grievous said angrily at the next meeting Terror called her "lieutenants" (as Sébastien had started to refer to himself, Ruthven, Carmilla, Orlok, Nightmare and Grievous) to. "She attacked me and gave me these," and he pointed to the three long marks across his face.

"Serves you right," Sébastien said under his breath.

"Did you say something, Nicolae?" Terror asked, looking at him.

"No."

"Hmm." She wasn't convinced, but turned back to her son. "Why? Did you do something to annoy her or was it completely unprovoked?"

"I did nothing to her."

Orlok raised an eyebrow. "Then you did something to someone else, is that it?"

Grievous didn't answer. That was a very good answer.

"I see," Terror said dryly. "I believe I'll ask Miss Rah for her version of events later, and then I'll ask whoever witnessed it. By the way, has there been any sign of the escaped werewolf?"

Moon (how unimaginative) LaMorgan, one of the werewolves they'd captured, had broken her chains somehow and escaped the day before. How was anyone's guess.

"Nothing yet," Orlok said. "She's almost certainly dead."

~~~~

Meanwhile, where was Dani? Running through the corridors as quietly as she could, trying to find a way out and getting well and truly lost. Several times she heard someone coming towards her, and had to find somewhere to hide (which usually involved racing back along the corridor she'd just come down and diving behind a curtain).

Finally, she found herself on the ground floor. There were more people around than before, and she was seen more than once. The first time, she almost had a heart attack. But the person who'd seen her simply walked past her without a second glance.

They must think I'm allowed to wander around, she realised after the third time this happened.

What they actually thought was that she was the child of one of the humans (Terror only let a select few know the details of most of her plans, and humans were rarely included), but she had no way of knowing this.

After forty minutes of wandering around, Dani came to the conclusion that there was no easy way out. This place was a mansion, and it was built in a kind of semi-circle enclosing the courtyard, with just a few gaps for other buildings or gates. Every time she went outside she could be seen from at least a dozen windows, so it would be very difficult to get away unseen.

Nor would it be easy to get out the gates - she had watched people coming and going from a window in a room filled with boxes of something, and saw at once that they had to stop and key something (probably a password) into a keyboard at the side of the gates before they were allowed to leave. There was no way out for her that way.

This place is more like a prison than a mansion, she thought gloomily.

She left the storeroom and wandered aimlessly around the place, taking care to never leave the floor she was on. It was unlikely any way of escape would present itself, but she had to be ready, just in case.

Dani was so absorbed in thinking of how the characters in the books she'd read had escaped from places they were held prisoner that she never noticed the passage she was walking along was heading downward. She didn't even notice that there were no longer any windows, and the light was provided by overhead lamps.