Chapter 16
The drive back to the Reinfer estate felt as if it took no time at all. Dominick, absorbed in his thoughts, tried to come to terms with what Mitchell had told him, and so barely even noticed the scenery flitting past. Each time he thought he had come to terms with the new information, the sheer insanity of it would overwhelm him.
The idea that their legacy was that of a cult …
It seemed impossible to fathom and went against everything he’d been taught. They didn’t come from the cult; they were the ones hunting the cult. The good guys, right?
Right?
He could fully understand Frieda keeping such a huge secret from them. What a horrible thing to learn about their history, and it went completely against everything for which they stood. Technically, he knew, it didn’t change anything because he remained the same person. Yet, that logic proved hard to cling to: it didn’t change the fact that everything he’d thought true had become a lie. Nothing was how it appeared.
Dominick pulled into the driveway of the Reinfer estate and waited for the gate to open. He felt so distracted, it took him a few minutes to realize that nothing had happened and that the screen looked dead. Trent had given him a badge for situations like this, but when he waved it over the reader, again nothing happened.
The power must be off.
Something had gone wrong.
Instantly, Dominick’s mind shifted into high gear, and all worries about the Council or Frieda vanished. He came back to the present and assessed the situation.
The front gate appeared untouched, but without power, it might as well have been a brick wall keeping him out. He could see the driveway leading up to the estate through shrubbery and trees, but no patrolling guards on the roadway or in his line of sight from the parked car.
He climbed out of his vehicle and flipped on his phone. He called Trent, but it rang through to voicemail without an answer.
Had someone attacked in his absence? Certainly not at the front gate, but maybe Nida and her team had breached from somewhere else on the estate.
Maybe it came down to something more mundane, but not likely. The fact that the power went out meant that multiple points of failure had become compromised and all the backup generators had gone offline. Either they had run out of power—they should have been able to last a day, so not likely—or someone had destroyed them.
Either way, he would know soon enough.
He walked up to the gate and climbed his way to the corner. Two cameras watched him do it, but he doubted they had power either. He reached the top and dropped onto the roadway on the other side. By now, alarms should have sounded throughout the property, and a security team should have converged on his position.
Instead, only silence.
He drew his pistol and moved up the driveway. It meant about a half-kilometer hike to reach the actual estate, and as he got closer, his sense of wrongness intensified. No patrols, no warnings, nothing. Just empty lawns and complete stillness throughout the entire place.
Not until he reached the front of the manor and the circular turnaround did he see signs that something had most definitely gone wrong. The double entry doors looked broken and hung open, and next to them pooled a puddle of blood on the front steps. It had begun to dry but remained a little wet, so whatever had happened, must have done so in the last few hours.
Dominick walked into the antechamber of the estate, raising his pistol and keeping his eyes peeled for any signs of movement. Inside the main entryway, more bloodstains and signs of violence met him: a broken chair, bullet holes, and tears in the carpeting.
But, aside from that, he identified nothing in the main place. No bodies of guards, butlers, or enemies. He took a few more steps into the estate, and then froze.
From off to his left, in the dining hall, came a chewing and slurping sound, like someone eating noisily. He moved through the foyer toward the slurping sounds, padding quietly across the floor and with his gun held ready.
Slowly, he rounded the corner, gun leading the way, and stared into the dining hall. A man sat at the center of a long table, hunched over. Though dressed in a guard’s outfit, it looked like blood covered it. The noises came from him, and it appeared as if he sat gnawing on a turkey leg.
The room seemed relatively untouched, otherwise. Dominick took a step further into the room and saw that a body lay on the ground behind him. It looked like one of the butlers, and he lay there, definitely dead. He had a missing …
Dominick looked back at the seated guard: no, not a turkey leg but the upper arm of the butler lying on the floor. It dripped blood while the man shoved his face into it, ripping off huge mouthfuls of flesh and eating as fast as he could.
Dominick had seen some disgusting stuff in his life, but this made for one of the worst. Dominick fought down his gag reflex and backed slowly out of the dining hall and back into the antechamber. The man remained too invested in his meal even to notice.
He crept back to the double staircase, leading to the second floor, and headed up. Part of him wanted just to leave, knowing that searching the building wouldn’t net anything positive. The odds of Jill Reinfer remaining alive seemed incredibly small, but he needed to find out, nonetheless.
The head of security, Trent Dopper, hadn’t sent any texts after that first, which meant that whatever had happened, it must have happened fast. It only took a two-hour drive to get here from Mitchell’s shop, which meant the attack had occurred within that timeframe.
Dominick felt so frustrated with himself for leaving. He’d promised Frieda he would stay here to protect Jill and keep her safe, and he’d failed at that. Still, right now, he had bigger concerns.
Like, did the attacker remain here? With such a short timeframe, the possibility existed that whoever had invaded the estate still hid in the building. If that were Nida, then he would need to prepare.
It caught him a little off-guard at just how still the building felt. After the last few weeks of near constant activity and sound, the house seemed a lot less inviting this empty.
He found most of the guards and an explanation of what had gone on a few moments later when he reached Jill Reinfer’s personal quarters. The guards, he found in the entry room, laid around in various positions in the room and clearly dead. A layer of blood and dismembered body parts covered the flooring.
The blood looked fresher than what he’d seen outside, and the air still smelled of gunpowder, which meant the fight had only ended in the last half-hour or so.
Many of the guards had been dismembered and sliced apart with sharp blades, though he couldn’t tell if they’d received their wounds pre or post-mortem. Whatever weapon the attacker had used, it had a jagged and curved blade, and when Dominick inspected the cuts, he found them ripped as much by force as by cut.
Which meant the blades must be dull, and if the slices proved pre-mortem, they would also have proven incredibly painful. The entire floor felt slippery, making it difficult to move through without sliding on the slick ground.
Every fiber in his being told him to turn back now. In this room, he found more than eight dead people, and all of them trained and skilled combatants. He felt certain of what he would find in the next room: no way had Jill Reinfer survived.
But, he couldn’t turn back. He had to know for sure.
With a steadying breath, Dominick peeked around the corner into Jill Reinfer’s bedroom. She lay on the sheets, and at first glance, he took them as red sheets. Then he realized that they had once glowed brilliant white, and only showed red because her blood stained the fabric.
An odd and grotesque statue stood beside her bed, some sort of alien creature. She had weird tastes in culture, but that took it to a new extreme.
He let out a breath of air and lowered his gun, allowing a moment of pity for the lady of the estate. He hadn’t much liked her, but no person deserved what had happened to her. It appeared as though Jill had gotten ripped apart on her bed, with bloody limbs scattered around and tossed against the walls. Her face showed a mask of horror and pain.
Bits of her dress, the same one she’d worn at his fight on the lawn a few nights ago, lay strewn about on the floor and—
Dominick hesitated, turning his gaze back to beside her bed and the alien statue standing there.
That was no statue.
It looked almost insect-like as it stood perfectly still. The skin on it looked gray and rough, almost like an outer shell of concrete, and it had four arms that ended in long and jagged talons. Something had caught his eye, but he couldn’t tell for sure what. It didn’t move and looked locked in place. What had he noticed?
Suddenly, it hit him.
The talons dripped blood.
“What the hell …?” he muttered, raising his gun.
The statue turned to face him and opened its eyes. Blood-red eyes, filled with hunger and desperation.
Dominick raised his pistol and fired. He shot off three rounds at the thing, the first two thudding into its chest and the third clipping its head.
If the shots even hurt it, though, he couldn’t tell. For certain, they didn’t stop it. Slowly, the creature raised itself to its full three-meter height and turned to face Dominick.
“Uh-oh,” he muttered.
A high-pitched shriek filled the room and forced Dominick to cover his ears with his hands. Then he looked up.
The creature charged at him.
Time to run.
***
He stumbled back, nearly losing his balance and slipping on the puddles of blood in the room behind him. He caught himself on an armchair and pushed himself back across the floor, heading for the second-floor hallway.
As he ran, he saw that one of the dead soldiers had dropped his assault rifle. He reached down while he ran, picked it up, and ducked into the hallway just as the creature entered the room.
It had to bend to get through the doorway, and as it came into the entry area, it swung its bladed talons in wide arcs and let out another horrible screeching sound.
Dominick turned, raised the rifle, and then pulled the trigger. He hoped it didn’t prove empty, and grinned savagely a second later when the reassuring roar of rounds firing reached his ears.
They hit the monster in the chest—or carapace; he couldn’t be sure—and the creature staggered back. However, it didn’t stop coming. It let out another screech and rushed forward, swiping the blades at him.
Dominick ducked just in time to keep his head, and the talons sunk deep into the doorframe beside him. The creature seemed strong, and a single hit from one of those blades would mean lights out for him just like it had for the soldiers.
He fired off more rounds into the creature’s chest while he backpedaled down the hallway. It jerked its arm, trying to get it free, and managed to pull it loose on the second try. Dominick didn’t wait, but instead, turned and sprinted toward the staircase leading downward, the monster in hot pursuit.
Dominick didn’t try to run around the outer railing to reach the top of the staircase; instead, he jumped over the barrier and landed about four meters down on the stairs, tumbling the rest of the way in a controlled roll. It hurt like hell but bought him some time.
Or so he thought.
The creature smashed into the railing above, bursting through and staggering onto the staircase behind him. It lost its balance and slid down the stairs. Dominick sprinted away from it to the right, toward the dining hall.
The man he’d seen earlier, chowing down, had heard the commotion and came out to investigate. Dominick dashed right past him and into the hall, turning and heading for the kitchen.
He glanced back. The man came after him, but the creature came faster. It didn’t stop either, but instead, just swung a talon down and stabbed the blades into the guard’s back. It swung the other arm in as well, punching the blades through the man’s chest, and then pulled the arms apart.
The man split into shreds, and it seemed like watching a water balloon pop. Dominick winced, and then looked forward as he rushed into the kitchen.
He made it inside a few steps ahead of the creature and slid forward onto his knees, leaning his upper body back and gliding underneath the long metal table in the center of the kitchen.
A huge crashing sound erupted when the creature slammed one of its talons onto the table above his head, but it didn’t have strength enough to burst through. It stumbled into hanging pots and pans while it maneuvered through the room to try and reach him, but he had at least a few seconds’ head start on it.
To run didn’t seem an option, nor did fighting. He needed a distraction and safe place to get to. Brain calculating, he glanced over at the freezer. Could the creature open the door?
Hopefully not.
Dominick rushed over to the stove. It had eight burners, and all of them gas. Quickly, he turned them all to the maximum position without igniting any. He’d just flipped to the last one when the creature rounded the table and swung its talon at him.
He ducked and twisted backward, stepping away from the stove, and the beast came forward again. This time, he reached out and yanked a huge cast-iron skillet down from the ceiling. He dodged one attack, sidestepped a second, and then held up the skillet to block the third.
However, he’d underestimated the monster’s strength.
It blasted the skillet back into his chest, hard, and the impact threw him back across the room. He hit the wall, and pain split his chest where the skillet had hit. Thank God it had rounded sides and not sharp ones, but he still thought it might have cracked a rib.
Luckily, the creature stood in the position he needed it to. In pain, Dominick sucked in a ragged breath of air, and then fished his lighter out of his pocket. He snapped it open, flicked it against his pants to ignite it, and then tossed it at the creature.
He didn’t wait to see what happened, but turned, instead, and ran toward the freezer. A whooshing sound came from behind when the flames ignited, and then he yanked the door open and dove inside, jerking it shut behind him.
He doubted the flame had killed the monster, but hopefully, it had at least hurt or distracted it. His fear that it remained alive and well got confirmed a moment later, though, when an enormous thudding smacked against the door from the outside. It came heavy enough to rock the entire room. Then scratching sounds reached him, as the beast tried to manipulate the door handle, but it didn’t seem able to get a grip.
Dominick let out a sigh of relief when it banged against the metal once more. The metal door stood thick enough that it couldn’t break through—he prayed.
It whaled on the door for a solid ten minutes, though, before things quieted back down, finally. Dominick found a box of frozen goods to sit on and waited in the cold, shivering and rubbing his chest where the skillet had hit him.
He waited a few hours, and nothing changed. No longer could he hear the creature or anything else outside. Dominick checked his phone, but inside the metal freezer, he couldn’t get a signal.
For good measure, he waited an extra hour. The creature must have left. He could imagine it, though, standing as still as a statue outside, waiting for him to step out so that it could cut him into pieces.
Either way, he didn’t have a lot of choices. He didn’t have on heavy clothes and couldn’t stay in here forever. The cold got to him. Also, he needed to get in touch with Frieda.
As well as finding out what had happened, he needed to let her know that Nida had—most likely—gotten Jill’s blood.
With a steadying sigh to calm his nerves, he opened the freezer door, cringing at the thought of the creature’s blade waiting for him just outside.
Instead, he found nothing. The creature had gone, as had any sign of fire or otherwise. The burner switches remained on, but no gas came out. No doubt, a suppression system sat in place, which had taken care of shutting off the valves.
Dominick crept through the kitchen, pistol ready, and moved into the foyer. Again, he found nothing. He went to the security office. Empty. However, the computers had their own generator and had stayed online. When he went to one, he saw the bank of security cameras around the property.
Still jittery, he took a seat and went through them, trying to find out what had happened. It didn’t take him long to figure it out.
The cannibal guard must have come in as a Trojan horse, taken over by a demon to help bring the rest inside. The huge monster had attacked at the outer gates, but at the same time, the other guard had gone through the building and disabled the backup generators and alarm systems.
The guards had tried to respond, falling back to Jill’s quarters, but it proved of no use. The monster had walked through a hail of bullets and cut each one of them down before shredding Jill. Another couple of men had come onto the estate behind the monster and followed it into the room, gathering the woman’s blood into vials before leaving.
The feed cut out when the last generator got turned off, but Dominick knew what he needed to know: Nida had Jill’s blood now. That didn’t bring the only problem, though.
Nida hadn’t come here.
Slow and cautious, he made his way outside. The premises remained quiet, and Dominick felt confident the monster had gone. He flipped open his phone and called Frieda.
She didn’t answer, though, and he assumed her still on her flight stateside to meet him.
Instead, he called Mitchell.
“Hey, Dominick. You on your way? Frieda should be here in a couple of hours.”
“Jill’s dead.”
“What?”
“And something …”
He didn’t even know how to continue that train of thought. How could he ever describe the monster that had attacked him? It had killed the entire security team without assistance and would have had no trouble cutting him down if he’d stuck around to face it.
“What is it?” Mitchell asked. “What were you going to say?”
“Never mind.” Dominick shook his head. “Don’t worry; I’m on my way.”
