Vendetta
At 7 AM, Keith woke screaming.
Pete was down the hall, running for Keith’s room as soon as he heard the first shriek. “Keith!?”
“John! JOHN!”
“Keith!” Pete shouted, grabbing Keith’s shoulders. “Keith, it’s okay!”
“He’s soaking wet! He’s wheezing!”
“Keith, what are you talking about?”
“I . . . I dreamed . . . he was wet . . . having trouble breathing . . . ”
Normally Pete didn’t put much stock into dreams. They were good for a laugh or good for inspiring songs, but they weren’t REAL. However, it was clear just from their own experiences and what they’d heard from the Four Winds that for them, dreams had meaning. “Wet where? Keith, take a breath, and tell me everything you saw.”
“That . . . was it . . . he was wheezing. He was wet. Nothing else . . . he was dressed . . . ”
“Okay, okay. Was he in a room? What was he wearing? Same thing as last time we saw him? Anything, Keith, anything!”
“Jacket . . . white shirt . . . he was inside but it was fucking COLD.”
“Okay, so he’s in a building somewhere. Was he hurt?”
Keith shook his head. “I’m losin’ it. It’s fadin’.”
“It’s okay, Keith. He’s alive.”
The words gave them hope. John was alive, and somehow they would find him. But Keith looked absolutely traumatised by his dreams. He was shaking in sympathetic chills.
“Keith, we’re going to get John back. We’ll find him. I swear it.”
Haunted dark eyes looked up at him. “I know.”
“Are you sure there isn’t anything else from your dream you can remember?”
“It . . . smelled like heather. Wet heather.”
“Wet heather,” Pete said. He rolled the two words around his brain, trying to figure out how they could help them find John.
“And John was so cold . . . ”
“So he’s outside, but inside.” Pete mulled that over. “Maybe . . . in a drafty basement, or something.”
“Maybe . . . I don’t know.” Keith shivered.
“Well, where can you be wet, but inside?”
“Somewhere with a leaky roof?” Roger asked.
Pete looked over his shoulder. The blond singer looked tired and haunted, as if he hadn’t slept at all the night before. His curly hair was in disarray and his blue eyes had circles under them. “What?” Roger asked, frowning at Pete.
“Did you sleep at ALL last night?”
“Yeah. Bad dreams.”
“Of what?” Pete asked, hoping that maybe Roger had some more missing pieces.
“A house. The grounds of an estate.”
Pete leaped off the bed. “Where?”
Roger frowned. “Like I know. It was a dream!”
“Describe it!” Pete’s tone was frantic, his hands reached for Roger as if to grab him.
“Stop yelling at me! Damn serpent . . . ” Roger moved to sit by Keith. “It was just—big.”
“Go on.”
Roger shook his head. “It was big and square. Lots of rooms and windows, with ivy clumbing up the sides, out in the middle of nowhere.”
Pete paced. “Okay, so he’s there. Wherever ‘there’ is. It HAS to be nearby, because there wasn’t enough time to take him further. So how many mansions are out there?”
“Wait, whoa, slow down! How do you know he’s there and I didn’t just dream some random house up because I’m so fucking worried?”
“Because Keith dreamed about John, and our dreams have meaning.” Pete punctuated the last four words by pounding his fist into his hand.
“So what did you dream?” Keith asked.
For a moment Pete hesitated. His first instinct was to say “nothing.” But the question brought images back to mind, images that had been shoved aside when Keith’s screams had awakened him. “Just . . . this big house.”
“Tell me about it,” Roger pressed.
Pete described what he’d seen, pausing toward the end, hesitating, as if what he had to say next was hard to say.
“Go on,” Keith urged.
“I saw a hand. It was . . . coming up from the ground, near the house. From a grate. I . . . I thought it was nonsense.”
Keith’s head snapped up. “Inside—but outside!”
“You don’t think . . . ”
“If the rain fell on him through a GRATE . . . ”
“That’s it!” Pete said. “We have to find that house!”
“But how?” Keith groaned.
“It’s a mansion, and it’s nearby. That cuts the haystack down a bit, now doesn’t it?”
“It does,” Roger nodded.
“Then let’s get moving.”
Morning found him stiff and sore. Breathing was a nightmare of tearing pain through his throat and chest. When the grate opened, he was barely able to force his head to look up.
A bag was lowered in and the grate was replaced.
“Hey!” he roared, lunging up with strength he didn’t know he still had.
A person, little more than a shadowy figure, a silhouette against the bright morning sky, looked down at him without answering.
“Who are you? What am I doing here? What’s going on?”
The shadow turned and walked away.
“Wait!” John shouted, reaching through the bars. “At least tell me why I’m in here!” All he received in response was laughter.
With a groan John sat back down, picking up the bag that had been dropped in. Inside he found a sandwich and a small bottle; cracking it open, he discovered it was only water. Still—it was food. He wolfed the sandwich down in a few bites, holding himself back with the water and drinking only half. He picked through the bag for crumbs, his stomach still loudly demanding more.
Nothing. Nobody returning either.
He settled back against the stone, his mind trying to work out who’d captured him. Mistress? They didn’t have too many enemies besides her. But this wasn’t her style. She was a braggart—worse than Roger and Keith combined. If she’d captured him, she would have made that fact known. She would have been there, taunting him relentlessly. No, this was different.
Deciding that sitting and rotting was out of the question, he got up. Unable to straighten, he set his back against the grate, bracing his feet against the stone ledge he’d been sitting on. Gritting his teeth, he pushed with all his might. The grate didn’t move.
Taking a breath, he tried again, pushing until every muscle in his body screamed in protest. Nothing. He sagged with a groan, bracing his hands on the wall as he caught his breath.
A shadow fell over the grate.
He looked up. “Who’s there?”
“You’ll do yourself injury.”
John snarled. “I’ll do YOU injury when I get out of here.”
“So you do have the constitution of your nickname.”
“Who are you?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It bloody well does when you have me locked up in here with no explanation!”
“I’m studying things, Ox.”
“What things?” John roared.
“You, for one.”
“Why me?”
“Why not you?”
Finally losing his slow-to-kindle temper, John lunged, forcing his hand through the narrow gap in the bars. He managed to snag the shadow’s pant leg, seizing it with all his might and giving it a sharp yank.
A body fell on top of the grate. He reached up with his other hand, desperately grabbing for a neck or a wrist, anything he could claw, scratch, or injure. The body wriggled.
“Come here, you—!” he spat, trying to find a hold.
He found himself holding a pair of trousers a moment later. Empty trousers. The body, freed from the article of clothing, was rolling off the grate. With one last desperate grab, he tried to snag an arm. Wrenching downward, he locked it against the grate with sheer strength and desperation. “I want some answers!” he roared.
“Not . . . YET!”
“Yes, yet, or I break your arm!” He was just beginning to solidfy his grip when something came down through the bars, hitting him in the collarbone with a hiss and sending pain shooting through him—pain that could only come from fire.
The arm pulled free. “Thank you, son,” the same faceless voice said.
John fell back, grabbing at the wound as the figures moved away. “Come back here, you cowards!” he shouted. There was no response, things going back to the same unnerving stillness. He slumped down with a sigh, his shoulder throbbing painfully. “Just great,” he groaned. It took his plugged nose a moment to register the strange smell—was his own burnt flesh.
“Keith . . . Pete . . . Rog . . . where are you guys?”
On to Chapter Three
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