Immortal Ever After(4)

“He’s back. Send help,” she hissed.

“Who’s back?” the dispatcher asked.

“Who do you think?” she asked harshly. “The man who kidnapped us. And when he gets up here and sees that Igor is dead, he’ll probably kill me and maybe even the other women. Send help now.”

“Ma’am, just stay calm. I—”

“Have you traced the call yet? Do you know the address?” she interrupted, and then as the whirring stopped she added, “It doesn’t matter. I’ll leave the phone off the hook. Trace the call and send help.”

“Ma’am, I need you to remain calm and stay on the line. I—”

“Yeah, well, I need an UZI and silver bullets, but I guess we’re both out of luck,” she said dryly. “I’m leaving the phone off the hook and booking it. Trace the call and send help,” she repeated grimly as the whirring below started again. The garage door closing, obviously, Valerie thought as she set the phone on the table. He’d parked and would enter the house and come up here next. She only had moments.

Rather than risk moving back through the house and running into the monster she was trying to escape, Valerie turned to the window, relieved when it slid up easily. She was even more relieved to find there was no screen to have to deal with. Thank God it was an old house and obviously let go. If it had been a new house with those fancy newfangled windows that didn’t open all the way and had screens, she’d have had to take a chance and leave the room to find an exit.

Valerie leaned out the window and peered down. She was on the second floor overlooking a large backyard. There was no handy tree or trellis to climb down from, but bushes lined the house below. If nothing else, they’d break her fall.

Grimacing at the thought, she swung one leg over to straddle the ledge, then paused as she heard a door close somewhere in the house. Probably the door from the garage to the house, Valerie realized and threw her other leg over the ledge, only to pause again. There was a window below this one. She didn’t know the layout of the house very well and had no idea if he might now be in the room below her. If he was and he saw her drop past the window . . .

Valerie closed her eyes and forced herself to wait and listen to the faint sounds of movement in the house. But the moment she heard the thud of footsteps on the stairs, she pushed herself off the ledge.

Anders stepped out onto the porch and sucked in a breath of fresh air. The house he’d just left didn’t smell pretty, but then the situation it presented wasn’t pretty either. He hadn’t seen many worse.

Spotting Justin Bricker coming back up the driveway, he started down the porch steps, asking, “Did you handle the police?”

“Done and dusted,” Bricker assured him as they both stopped. Glancing curiously to the house, he asked, “Did you find the caller?”

“No,” Anders said grimly, his gaze now sliding over the house as well. Their team had been brought here thanks to a 911 call that had suggested there might be something unusual about the situation. One didn’t usually wish for silver bullets or stake mortal attackers.

All 911 calls were monitored for anything that might include rogue activity in need of cleaning up. This call had definitely fit that bill, but they’d arrived to find the mortal police already on scene. A quick read of their minds had alerted Anders and the others to the fact that this was no crank call and that inside they would find seven cages in the basement: one empty, five holding live women, and one with a dead woman. There were also half a dozen corpses in a back room. All of them, both the living and dead, had bite marks that had completely bewildered the mortal officers.

Unable to open the locks on the cages, the officers had done a cursory search of the main and upper floor of the house for the 911 caller, but then had come outside to call for back up, and find something to break open the locks on the cages and release the women. That was when Anders and the others had arrived. While Bricker had seen to erasing the memories of the police officers, the rest of the Enforcers had entered the house.

They’d searched the main and upper floor first, much more thoroughly than the police had. When that hadn’t turned up the 911 caller, the others had gone to the basement to free and tend the caged women while Anders came out to continue the search for the missing woman.

“There’s an open window in the master bedroom. She may have escaped,” Anders announced now.

“Damn,” Bricker grimaced. “If she gets to the authorities and tells them about this she’ll undo all the work I just did erasing those cops’ memories before sending them away.”