The Blood of Athens (12 page)

“
Where are
you going?” Astin asked.

“
Call it
re-con. The minute I know what’s going on, I’m going back to
Penny.”

“
Astin?”
Diana whispered through the door.

“
Let me in.”

Diana cracked
the door open and Astin slipped inside.

Diana closed
the door. Peter was alone in the hall.

The screams
stopped downstairs and everything was quiet. Peter could hear the
noise of the busy city outside, but there were no sounds within the
hotel. Everyone was frozen in silent terror, waiting to find out what
would happen next.

The door to
the stairs opened down the hall. Peter pressed himself against the
wall. He held his breath as a man stepped into the hall. With all of
the doors to the rooms now closed, the hallway was dark. The only
light was the glowing red letters of the fire exit sign, running on
backup battery. It shone a dim red light on the man, casting his
figure as a silhouette. The way he held himself, it was clear that
this stranger wasn't a maid or hotel security.

Peter inched
down the hall. He held himself flat against Penny's door and waited.

As the man
came closer, just a shadow in the dark hall, Peter saw a long knife
in his hand. He passed Peter and stopped outside of Diana and Alexis'
room to listen. He put his hand on the doorknob and pressed his
weight down. The nickel doorknob groaned and snapped. He pushed the
door open, but was stopped by the chain. He kicked the door and the
chain snapped. The door swung open and the dark hallways was filled
with the sounds of broken links scattering about the room. The
stranger with the knife stepped inside, but Peter could tell from the
cool breeze and the light pouring into the hall that Diana and Astin
had already escaped through the window.

Peter looked
directly across the hall and saw the door to the opposite room creep
open. Evan Fuller peeked out. Evan looked down the hall, setting his
eyes on the killer as he stepped into Diana’s room. Evan took a
deep breath and bolted down the hall towards the emergency exit.
Someone in the room behind him slammed the door and frantically
locked it. The man with the knife darted out of the room, ready to
chase Evan down. It was no good, Evan's crooked run was too slow.
What was he thinking? Peter didn’t have time to contemplate Evan’s
stupidity. He took his opportunity and stuck out his invisible foot,
tripping the attacker and sending him sprawling across the floor of
the hall.

The man didn't
even grunt as his body thudded on the carpet. He didn't scramble to
get up or roll around in pain. He sat up silently and slowly rose to
his feet.

Peter slipped
Penny's room key into the lock and ran in. Penny jumped up and
slammed the door. She got the chain across the door before the man in
the hall started to bang on the door.

“
Alright,
Penny. Astin's got Diana. Where's Minnie?”

“
The guys
from Scholar's Bowl invited her to practice Ancient Greek questions
in their hotel.”

“
She's on
the boy's floor? Good. The fire-escape.”

The doorknob
jiggled.

“
I need to
get to my mom.”

Peter ran to
the window and looked out. There was an iron fire-escape just
outside. “He’s coming
now.
You get to the
ground level and get help. I'll go get your mom.”

The doorknob
groaned.

“
She’s my
mom, Peter.”

It snapped.
The door opened and stopped at the end of the chain.

“
I know.
I'll make sure she's safe. I'm stealthier alone.”

Penny took a
deep breath and nodded. “Alright. Keep her safe.”

Penny slipped
out the fire escape just as the door was kicked open. Peter hid in
the corner behind an arm chair and waited until the man with the
knife looked around the room and then moved on.

Evan Fuller
slammed the door to the stairs behind him and pressed his fingers to
the frame. The metal warped and melted, holding the door shut. He
just had to hope that his classmates were smart enough to stay in
their rooms. If he had been smarter, he thought, he would have
stayed. It wasn’t his job to stop the killer. Still, he knew what
he could do to help; if he had sat in the room and waited, he would
have forever blamed himself for whatever happened to his classmates.

Heavy
footsteps grew louder in the hall. The doorknob jiggled. Someone
slammed into the door. The knob creaked and jolted and then settled,
crooked and obviously broken. Someone slammed into the door again and
again, and then it was quiet. Evan sighed in relief. The welded
doorframe had held up.

Evan turned
and ran down the stairs. He knew he had to hurry. There was another
set of stairs at the other end of the hall; the killer wasn't
completely trapped on the girls' floor.

Evan turned
and looked down the stairs. He hated stairs. His limp made him
slow-going. Stairs in the dark were really no good. His hand fell on
the smooth railing, though, and Evan sat on the edge of it. He had
never slid down a bannister before. There was a first time for
everything. Evan slid down the first one and stumbled on the landing.
The second railing brought him down to the boys' floor. As he
approached the door, he tripped on something at-once soft and solid.
Evan caught his balance against the door. He groped around in the
dark below him. Whatever he had tripped over was warm and wet and
squishy. He realized, as his fingers mapped its features, that it was
face with the skin peeled off . There was a dead body slumped before
the door.

Evan threw the
door open and fell into the hall. A german tourist stood, ready to
strike anyone who came through that door with a raised
fire-extinguisher. He stopped before he struck Evan, his muscular
frame highlighted by the moonlight coming in through the window of
his room. “Sind Sie verletzt?” he asked.

“
Huh?”

“
Are you
injured?”

Evan shook his
head and held up his blood-stained hands. “Not my blood. There's a
body in the stairwell. I need to get to the power. I need to put the
lights back on.”

Lewis came out
into the hall.

“
Evan! Where
the hell were you? Where's Astin and Peter?”

“
I was
upstairs. Jess Silver forgot her wallet today and was paying me back
for--”

“
Doesn't
matter. Are the other guys alright?”

“
I think
Peter tripped the killer for me. The guy went down and there was
nobody else in the hall.”

The German
looked confused.

“
Listen,”
Evan said to Lewis. “I need to fix the power. The screaming started
right after the power went out, so unless there's two of them, the
killer took out the lights on this floor before he started his
spree.”

“
Yeah, he
got the guy refilling the soda machine first,” Lewis said. “Then
this woman who was getting ice. He turned for me next, but I bolted.”

“
So any idea
where he fried the power?”

A beam of
light shone from Nick and Teddy's hotel room. Teddy stood in the
doorway, holding up his iPhone to cast light on his allies. “I've
got a flashlight app. I'll help you look.”

“
Do you need
my help?” the German tourist asked.

Evan nodded.
“Go down the the lobby through the stairs and make sure they're
sending help.”

“
Do you
think it's the serial killer?” Lewis asked.

Teddy nodded.
“Probably. Did you see his face, Lew?”

Lewis shook
his head. “Naw. It was too dark.”

As soon as the
German went into the stairwell, Lewis took Teddy's phone and dashed
around the hall. A few seconds later he shouted, “Down here!”

Evan ran to
the light. Lewis was standing next to the soda machine. A door with a
Keep Out sign in multiple languages stood open. Two bodies, a man in
coveralls and a female tourist, lay in a shared pool of blood in
front of the door. They were beyond help. Evan stepped over their
bodies, trying not to look at them, and stepped inside. “Hold the
light,” he said to Lewis. “This should only take a minute.”

Celene dialed
Penny's room number.

“
Uh, hello.
The power's out,” Nick said.

“
Landlines
still work when the power is out.” She slammed down the receiver.
“That proves it's not just a power outage. Someone cut the phones.
I'm going out there to get Penny.”
Their
cell phones didn't work in Europe. She would have to go there
herself.

Nick stood in
front of the door. “No way. You're not opening this door. You heard
that downstairs. A generator would have kicked on by now if it were
just a coincidence.”

“
Nick
Morrisey, don't you get between a mother and her child. I'm going out
there.”

Nick shook his
head. “I don't feel like dying today, Dr. D.”

“
Then stay
here like a coward. I'm going.” Celene grabbed Nick's shoulder and
pulled. He moved away from the door, not willing to find out what she
would do if she had to be any more forceful.

Celene stepped
out into the dark hallway. A tall man, holding a large hunting knife,
banged on the door to the stairwell. It was jammed. He turned around
and set his eyes on Celene. In the dark, his eyes flashed red.

The shadowy
figure began to step towards her. He took his time, making each
footfall heavy and solid. Celene looked between the man with the
bowie knife and the door to Penny's room. Was it open? Celene
couldn’t tell from this angle, and she didn’t have a key to the
room if it was locked. How was she going to pull this off?

The killer
continued his approach. A low chuckle growled forth from his throat.
“Demeter,” he said. Celene's eyes snapped from the door to
Penny's room to the killer himself. He was half way down the hall
now. “You've come home.”

The door
behind her opened. “Get in here,” Nick hissed from the door. He
reached out. He grabbed Celene by the arm. Something struck her front
and shoved her back into the room. An invisible force slammed the
door shut. “Are you crazy, he's out there!” Peter Hadley said,
his head appearing in front of her. “Penny's going down the
fire-escape, let's go!”

“
He knew my
name,” Celene muttered.

“
Great, he
heard someone say it,” Nick took her hand and pulled her towards
the window.

“
No,”
Celene dug in her heels and stopped. “He called me Demeter.”

Peter's body
popped into visibility in front of her. “He did what now?”

“
He called
me Demeter and said 'You've come home.'”

“
He’s been
snapping doorknobs like they’re matchsticks,” Peter said.

Something
banged on the door, then there was a screech like the tip of a steel
knife being dragged across metal. Nick stepped out onto the
fire-escape. “Good for him. He's a Titan. Even more reason to run.
Let's go!”

Evan got the
lights back on a few minutes before the police arrived. They had to
cut open the door to the stairwell on the fifteenth floor. Nobody
could explain how it had been sealed shut. The students of Olympia
Heights gathered in the lobby for a headcount as bodies were carted
out. There were three dead. The maintenance man and the tourist that
Lewis had witnessed being killed, plus the redheaded woman that Evan
had tripped over in the hall. They carted her out with a sheet over
her face; her remains were so mutilated that the blood soaked through
the covering.

There was no
sign of the killer. He had vanished into thin air.

Celene's whole
body shook as she called off names. Candice Matthews, who had been
dragged out of her room by police, sat shaking in a corner, unable to
speak. It was up to Celene to call the parents. Thank God nobody from
Olympia Heights had been hurt.

“
Unless you
need medication from your luggage, you're going to have to go home
without it,” Celene said. “This hotel is an active crime scene.
Your luggage will be shipped to you when the police release it. The
school's travel agent is arranging for us to go home this morning.
The rest of the trip has been called off.”