Hotbloods (Hotbloods #1)(18)

“A tower,” Lauren repeated, now also staring at the ceiling. “You really think those wooden boards are loose enough?”

I let out a breath. “We can only try. And we’d better do it fast.”

Navan had said we would stay the night here, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t visit us again to intimidate us.

And so we scrambled about the room, deciding the best way to go about this—which furniture to use, and in what order. We chose the small dining table first, then a coffee table, and above that, a basic dining chair. We were lucky the ceiling wasn’t very high.

I took a step back, staring at the end result. It really didn’t look safe, and I had no idea whether it could take my weight. But there was no time to doubt.

“I’ll climb it first,” I said, figuring that Angie was a bit too short for this, and I was more athletic than Lauren and would do a faster job.

“Are you sure?” both of my friends asked.

I nodded curtly, and then stepped onto the table. I climbed slowly, wincing each time the tower wobbled, but managed to make it to the top without the whole thing tumbling down.

Breathing heavily, I looked up at the ceiling and stretched out my hands, beginning to feel the floorboards, my flashlight clenched between my teeth. It was as I had hoped—they were loose—and from here, I could even see gaps, directly exposing the room above.

I just had to hope nobody was up there. When the guys had left us, it had sounded like they had retreated deeper within the ground floor of the house, so hopefully that was where they were staying.

I fumbled with the floorboards within my reach. They all felt pretty weak, like a hard enough shove could dislodge, maybe even crack, them. The wood had gone soft with age, the nails rusty and loose. This old house really was a wreck.

Lauren handed me up a piece of wood Angie had found in one corner, which had probably broken off from some piece of furniture. I gripped it hard, and pressed its tip between one of the cracks, using it as leverage until the board loosened and gave way, creating a hole directly above me. I then worked on the boards on either side, until I had created just a large enough gap for me to squeeze through. Given how fragile I had just proven the floorboards to be, I felt nervous about trusting them with my weight but… Here goes.

I placed my hands through the hole and gripped its edges, and managed to haul myself upward, until my head and shoulders appeared above the floor. I gazed around anxiously at this new room. It was dim, except for the light trickling through from the hallway. The windows were boarded up here too.

I lifted myself the rest of the way, until I was up through the hole and on all fours, floorboards groaning beneath my weight. I looked back through the hole, and my friends gazed up at me, their eyes shining with fear.

“There’s nobody up here that I can see,” I whispered down. And then I paused, realizing that it made no sense for them to come up, too. Not only was I worried about the floorboards’ strength—perhaps they were the reason those creatures appeared to be sticking to the lower floors?—but also, we were much more likely to be caught with the three of us lumbering around.

“What is it?” Angie asked.

I hesitated, unsure of how they were going to react. “Guys, I think you should stay down there for now.” They opened their mouths to respond, but there was no time to argue, and the more we spoke, the more likely it was the creatures would hear us. “Trust me on this,” I whispered. “I’m gonna try to figure out where they are in the house, then locate an exit. If… If I think I can make it out, I’m just gonna run for it and get help, okay? There’s more chance one of us will make it out of here than all three at the same time.”

Their faces fell, and I could see what a hard pill that was to swallow. I felt it too, but it was the only way to go about this.

They looked at each other, then back at me, and nodded.

“Okay,” Lauren said. “Just please be careful, Riley.”

I sucked in a deep breath and nodded, then backed away from the hole, staying on my hands and knees as I crawled to the open doorway. Once I reached it, I stilled, listening. Everything seemed quiet. There wasn’t even the faintest sound of the injured guy—perhaps he had fallen asleep.

Straight ahead was the staircase, and I moved toward it. I peered down cautiously until I was certain it was empty. I wasn’t ready to attempt going down the stairs yet, as I worried about how much noise that would make. As I had told my friends, the first thing I had to do was pinpoint the monsters’ location, assuming they were still in the house. I passed the staircase and crawled deeper along the corridor. Splinters wedged into my hands as I moved, and the floor was rough on my knees, but none of that mattered—all my brain could focus on was the location of our strange neighbors.

After a couple of minutes, I detected the sound of deep voices. I was sure they were coming from below the room directly opposite me, so I crawled into it, more careful than ever to move slowly and avoid creaking, until I was positioned directly over the room. I pressed my ear against the floorboards, and held my breath, listening.

“I can’t believe we didn’t sense their arrival,” a voice muttered.

“Navan already warned us of this,” a voice I had not heard before spoke up. It sounded older than any of the others—which made me realize that there were more of these creatures than we had seen. His voice held a maturity that I would attribute to a human in his late fifties. “This level of heat renders a coldblood’s senses practically worse than a human’s.”