The Grenier Ascension - Pt 7

Niella and Vicky carefully lifted Lexi's body back onto the couch.  Physically the girl seemed ok, just impossible to awaken; but Niella couldn't shake the memory of the Count's dreamscape, and the sight of Lexi dying as he raped her.  Was Lexi's soul still in her body, or had he consumed it the way he did her life energy, and that of Vicky, Wendy, Denise? ... Niella's too now.  Only days before, she would have considered such questions to be madness.  But maybe that was the Count's greatest power; turning his victims' lives into an insanity they could neither escape nor find rescue from.

She shook herself.  Lexi was stable and there was nothing else Niella could do for her now, but that didn't mean there was time to get lost in reflection.
She put a hand on Vicky's shoulder.  "Are you ok?"
Vicky nodded.  "I think so.  For now.  But I'm going to end up like that, aren't I?"
"We won't let it happen," Niella said.  But the words sounded hollow even to her; they hadn't intended to to let it happen to Lexi either.

Wendy's turn next.  The dark-haired woman still on her knees beside Vicky's couch.  Niella helped her onto it.
"Thanks," Wendy said.
"Thankyou," Niella countered.  "Lexi's most likely alive because of you.  And the same might be true of Vicky; maybe even me."
"How is she doing?" Wendy asked.
"We can't wake her up.  I don't know what's... it looked like she died in the Count's dungeon.  I just..."  ... don't know what to do.

   ****

Sonny looked in his rear-view mirror.  There was definitely a car following.  He resisted the temptation to try to lose it; as long as it was after him, it wasn't making trouble for Eve.  And there was little the pursuers could do; attacking him in a crowded street was impractical.  So for now they were just trying to find out where he was going.  Well, they knew who he was, and Niella; the hospital wouldn't be information that was either new or helpful to them.  Let them waste their time.

He looked across at Denise; she was slumped against the passenger window, but here eyes were open and blinking.  "How are you holding up?" he asked.
"Glad to be out of there," she answered.  "But I won't be ok till I know Criss is too."
"I know what you mean," he replied.  The image of turning and leaving Eve was still running over and over in his mind; she'd told him to do it, and she was right, but that didn't make him feel any less like he'd betrayed her.

   ****

Eve chose speed over stealth; it was only a matter of time before someone else was sent to check on Criss's room, or why the first guy hadn't come back, and the hallway offered nowhere to hide but rooms she'd then be trapped in.  If she encountered anyone, she'd just have to fight or run... as best as she could do either with Criss's unconscious body draped over her shoulder; the girl still hadn't woken up.  The next quandry was direction:  the only route Eve knew through the house and ground was the same one she and Sonny had entered through, and which Sonny and Denise had then used for their own escape; would it still be guarded, or would the Greens have assumed there was no more point?  She had to chance it; trying to find another way out would dramatically increase the chances of running into opposition.

It felt faintly miraculous as she made it down the staircase without incident.  But her luck ran out as she made it to the side door; to men on guard.  They turned to face her, but hesitated as they saw Criss, uncertain of how to respond.  In the moment, she struck:  a high kick into the first man's jaw, sending him down, turning her momentum into a spin and a knee into the second one's stomach; she grabbed him before he recovered, slamming his head through the window beside the door.  But her burden slowed her considerably, and she wasn't fast enough that neither of them got out a shout.

Without bothering to check if either man was staying down, Eve gripped Criss more tightly and sprinted out into the garden, following the path toward the side gate.  Behind her she heard a voice cry out, "No!  The Bride!"  A gun; one of them had a gun.  But she made it to the gate and out into the street before anyone caught up with her.  As she'd hoped, her car was unmolested; after seeing Sonny drive off in his, they hadn't realised the other one nearby belonged to a second intruder.  Eve scrambled in, awkwardly shoving Criss across to the passenger side, and started the engine, just as three men emerged from the gate.  She gunned the engine, unsure if they would risk a shot in public, and rounded the first corner she got to, and the first after that.

   ****

Wendy looked up as Niella's phone rang.  "Sonny," the psychiatrist said after taking the call.  "He's just arrived here; with Denise, he said. They're coming in now."
"What about Criss?" Wendy asked.  "Or Eve?"
"I don't know.  It sounded like it was just them."
Niella's words were confirmed a few minutes later when Sonny and Denise entered the room, alone.  Denise immediately came to sit beside Wendy and put her arms round her.  "I'm sorry," she whispered; "all of this is my fault, I'm sorry."
"None of it's your fault," Wendy murmured back.  "We're all victims, and we're all fighting back."

As the two friends clung to one another, Wendy listened to Sonny and Niella's own reunion.  "We got separated," he was saying.  "They figured out we were there somehow."
"I think that was me," Niella said.  "The Count saw through me; realised I wasn't just there as one of his victims.  He must have had a way to warn the family."
"He lives in their lives," Denise interjected.  "That's what his book said.  Maybe he can talk in their minds."
"Eve stayed to get Criss," Sonny grimaced.  "She figured if they saw me they might assume I was the only one there."
"So I guess we wait to find out if she was right," Wendy said.

   ****

The wait felt interminable to Denise, though it couldn't have been much more than a quarter of an hour.  Eve phoned Sonny, and after confirming he was at the hospital, said she would be arriving there soon herself.
"A wheelchair?" was his response to her next words.
"What's wrong?" Denise asked.  If Eve was driving, she wouldn't be the one needing a wheelchair, and that meant Criss...
"I don't know," Sonny answered, hanging up the phone.  "I'll be back soon."

Another brief but endless wait; Denise badly wanted to pace, but her legs felt as if they'd buckle under her if she tried.  When the office door opened again, Sonny and Eve were pushing a wheelchair with a sleeping Criss.  The pair backed away as Denise and Wendy went to her, giving them room; Niella joined them, checking Criss's pulse and breathing.
"Is she ok?" Wendy asked Niella.  "Is she like Lexi?"
"In the castle, she told me she was drugged," Denise said.
"Do you know what with?" Niella asked.
"No."

"I wasn't gentle with her," Eve added.  "And she still didn't wake up.  If you told me it was horse tranquiliser, I think I'd believe you."
"There's nothing we can do for now," Niella said.  "It'll wear off, or we can try giving her something to wake her... or..."
"Or she's like Lexi," Wendy said.
"Yeah."

   ****

Vicky had numbly watched the reunions.  Followed by Niella and Sonny making Criss as comfortable as they could on one of the couches. And everyone sparing a grim pause as they looked between her and Lexi.
All the while, a thought churning at the back of her mind, trying to take form.
"Did you get the book?" Denise asked once the room was still again.  "Can we burn the thing now?"
"I had to leave it," Eve replied.  "I couldn't carry it and Criss at the same time."
"Good," Vicky said, surprising herself almost as much as everyone else.
"Why?" Sonny asked.

Vicky took a few breaths before replying; in that moment, she was sure she saw comprehension cross Wendy's face.  "In the dungeon," she began, "when Lexi... looked like she died, I saw that design on the floor light up.  Like it was..."
"Like she was pulled inside it," Wendy finished.
"If destroying the book kills the Count, then it probably destroys the Castle as well.  And I don't think we should do that until we know if we can get Lexi back out."
"And Criss," Denise said.

"I don't know anything about anything like this," Eve interjected.
"None of us do," Niella replied.  "We're all feeling our way blind."
"Ok," Sonny said.  "But there must be people who do know about things like this."
"Like who?" Vicky asked.
"I might know someone," Denise said.
Every eye turned to her.

"This isn't the first time Wendy and Criss and I have run into something supernatural," Denise continued.
"It's not?" Niella asked.
"A ghost, in a theatre," Wendy said.  "It tried to kill us; Criss saved us."
"Why didn't you say something before?"
"There wasn't anything from then that seemed like it would help.  And you were having a hard enough time believing in one ghost."
"After it happened, I started researching," Denise said.  "I didn't find much, but there was a place.  A book store, and owner, that... I don't know; it seemed like maybe, it might be worth going back there."
"Call them," Vicky said.

   ****

The dance seemed endless, the Count tireless as he swept Criss around the ballroom, his hands effortlessly guiding and leading her, lifting and spinning her, as if she were an extension of his own motion.  Between glimpses, the ballroom shifted between gilded grandeur and the impression of attentive watchers, and the blank emptiness of a tomb.  She wondered if it would be her tomb... she marvelled at the wealth and luxury, and magic, that could be hers at the Count's side... she struggled to hold onto the knowledge of which thought was hers and which the intrusive violation disguised as seduction.  She just had to hold herself together until-

"I know about the ones in the living world," the Count said suddenly; "the ones who come for you."
"What do you mean?" Criss asked, without any real hope of him believing her.
"I have warned my progeny.  And even if you should be taken from them, my soul holds tight to yours.  You will not wake.  You will remain here, within my walls and my arms, until you once more accept your destiny."
"You won't have me," Criss said.
"I have chosen you girl, but do not mistake yourself.  You are a small thing and you cannot resist me forever."

   ****

Lexi couldn't see, yet she knew she was suspended in a bright web above a dark labyrinth.  She couldn't hear, yet she was torn through by the endless screams of souls flowing around her.  She couldn't feel, yet a fathomless cold leeched into whatever it was she had now, in place of life.