“What?”
“I don’t know.”
“Have you ever readThe Island of Doctor Moreau?”
“Many times. I’m not much of a reader, but H.G. Wells is one of the few authors I enjoy.”
Mollie couldn’t help but smile over this revelation; the man had taste. “What if this is something like that? What if these vamps are performing experiments on humans and vampires and have been for years? What if we weren’t in those cages to be turned into Savages or used for food, but for something far worse?”
“It’s possible, but I believe it is more likely they meant to turn us. These vamps may have been in the area for years, and these people paid the unfortunate price for that, but the Savages want blood and more vampires like them, not experiments.”
“Hmm,” Mollie grunted doubtfully.
“Come on; we should check out the lighthouse.”
Chapter Fifteen
Mollie’s kneeswere knocking together by the time she stepped off the last rickety stair and into the top of the lighthouse. She’d been convinced that with every step she took, the stairs would collapse and she would plummet to her death. A cold sweat coated her body, but entering the lighthouse didn’t make her feel any safer. Instead, she just had farther to fall if the rotten floor gave way.
A three-foot-wide path separated the outer half walls of the lighthouse from the inner half walls protecting the area where the flame once warned ships away from the land. The glass from the broken outer and inner windows once encircling the lighthouse tower and its beacon littered the floor along with debris from nearby trees. Chips of white paint remained on the outer and inner walls of the structure.
She winced when a pinecone crunched beneath her feet, and Mike glanced back at her. The sound wasn’t any louder than usual, but she felt as if she’d rung the dinner bell for every bloodthirsty vamp in the area.
Mollie crept carefully behind him to the front of the round structure and rested her hands on the wall. Beneath her palms, the wood was more mushy than solid; she pulled her hands away when dozens of pill bugs and centipedes spilled out to skitter across the wood. Shuddering, Mollie wiped her hands on her jeans, but it did nothing to erase the feel of the wood and bugs from her flesh.
Mollie took a deep breath and looked away from the rotting wood to the sea beyond. From here she could see that the cliffs dropped a good hundred feet to the white-capped ocean below. In some spots, massive boulders jutting up from the sea broke the waves and sent white plumes of spray into the air. To her left and right, more waves crashed against the rock walls of the cliffs until the forest swallowed her view of them.
Seagulls cawed as they banked through the air before diving toward the rocks where hundreds of them had settled. Dozens of gray seals sunned themselves on the rocks while others leapt into the water to catch fish or play.
The spectacular vista was so out of place with the events of the past few days that, for a second, Mollie almost forgot where they were and what happened. Something this beautiful couldnotcoexist with the horror they endured. But coexist it did, and though it was beautiful, it offered them no hope for help or finding Aida.
However, if she did end up dying here, she was glad she got to see this first. When the sea breeze brushed against something wet on her cheeks, Mollie realized tears were sliding down her face. She wiped them hastily away before spinning and striding to the other side of the tower. Mike went the opposite way around the structure and met her there.
Whereas the other side was beauty and the promise of the known, this side was beauty and the promise of the unknown. For as far as she could see, trees spread out in all directions. In the center of the seemingly endless trees, a large barn and acres of cleared land were visible.
Behind the barn, the burned-out remains of a crumbled building lay scattered across the ground. She suspected it was once the farmhouse that went with the barn, and that whoever had lived there didn’t survive the fire.
Mike studied the terrain as he tried to formulate a plan for their next move. Beyond the barn, the woods stretched out for acres again, but he saw the hint of a brick chimney sticking up from the trees. His angle and the trees made it impossible to tell if another clearing surrounded the building, what the building was, or if there was more than one, but something was there.
It had to be where the Savages were staying, as the distance between it and the barn would explain the time it took for the Savages to reach them last night. He also didn’t see anywhere else the Savages could be staying, but that didn’t mean the forest wasn’t hiding more buildings.
Mike glanced at the sea behind him before looking toward the land again; they had no choice but to head back toward the barn.
“All I see is the barn,” Mollie muttered. “And IknowAida isn’t in the barn, or at least she wasn’t.”
Mike realized her human eyes hadn’t detected the chimney. “There’s another building beyond the barn. It’s a few miles away. I’m not sure if it’s another home or something else, but I see part of the chimney.”
“We’ll go there,” Mollie said. “That must be where Aida is.”
“Maybe.”
He didn’t want to get her hopes up about finding her sister. Thousands of acres of woods surrounded them, and he had no idea how far the forest stretched beyond what he could see. They could pass within half a mile of where her sister was, or closer, and never know it. Plus, he doubted any Savage kept a human alive this long without changing them. And if the Savages had changed Aida, Mollie’s sister might be beyond saving, but he couldn’t bring himself to tell her that.
“We should get down before someone spots us,” he said.
Clasping her elbow, he pulled her away from the rotted railing and led her down the rickety stairs to the ground floor. Mollie kept her head averted from the corpses as they made their way out of the room.
“We’ll search the rest of the house for anything we can use before we leave,” Mike said.
