Bequest
(A Birthright Short Story)
Amy Saunders
Copyright © 2015 Amy Saunders
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Other Books by Amy Saunders
The Birthright
Inborn (Book 1)
The Belinda & Bennett Mysteries
Cliffhanger (Book One)
Auf’d (Book Two)
Drive-Bye (Book Three)
Overkill (Book Four)
Unexpected (A Short Story)
Personal Shopper (A Short Story)
Standalone Titles
Biohazard (A Novella)
The Jester’s Apprentice
Dead Locked
Bast & Immie (A Short Story)
Table of Contents
Bequest
More Books by Amy Saunders
About the Author
Bequest
Every time I tried to fall asleep, it was like lightning struck my core. I jolted awake for the millionth time, and rolled onto my back in despair. It was going to be another sleepless night.
I’d had a lot of those recently, but that night was a little different. I’d drifted off long enough to dream about the Lockewood mansion, where all the really fun stuff had gone down. I dreamt about the original Lockewood, the guy who built the house around the end of the nineteenth century. Lachlan and Bryce seemed to think that the ultra-secret basement in the mansion was originally just an alien-outfitted medical facility, and that Lockewood’s descendent transformed it into more of a science lab. But I had to wonder. Maybe the descendent wasn’t the only one doing experiments.
I wasn’t in the mood to just lie there and wait for dawn. We’d been living in a hotel the last couple weeks, deciding what to do from there. I had my own room and Xavier was in the one next to mine. I got out of bed, trying not to make noise while I got dressed. If I couldn’t sleep, I may as well do something. And since I’d been to the mansion more than I wanted to think about, all I had to do was create a portal and step through it to poke around and see what I could learn about Lockewood.
I started in the mansion’s master bedroom, where Lachlan and Bryce and I discovered the hatch to a tunnel that led to half of the secret basement and the containment unit-slash-elevator. The room still looked the same: faded red damask curtains, oak paneling, and an oak four-poster bed. The bed was still at an angle where Lachlan and I pushed it to reach the hatch. That felt like a long time ago now.
I inhaled the mildew, using the mini flashlight I’d brought to maneuver around the hall. Beyond trying to find the tunnel, I hadn’t explored much. At the time, I was okay with that. But now…I was curious. And while in hindsight, hanging out in an abandoned mansion in the middle of the night seems foolish, I honestly thought it would be fine. I found a study down the hall from the bedrooms. A study might have papers or notes.
I waved the flashlight around, slowly walking into the room, shaking off a spider’s string from my arm. The walls were lined with books, a red Oriental rug covering most of the floor, and a desk on one end. I scanned the book spines, tilting my head to read the titles. Inches of dust settled on and around them. Most of the titles seemed to be scientific, many on biology. It was a nice human kind of book collection, but I had to figure someone with a nested secret basement had to have more than that.
I started pulling out random books, flipping through them, peeking behind them, but nothing. I flopped into the torn leather desk chair, which groaned under my weight. I glared at it. I hadn’t eaten that much lately and I considered the noise kind of insulting. But when I looked down at the chair, I saw the bottom drawer of the oak desk.
I leaned over and pulled on the bronze handle, the plate shaped like a leaf. Locked. I frowned, rubbing my fingers together, now sticky from an unidentified substance on the handle that I chose not to think about. If Lockewood hid something important, it might be somewhere as simple as a locked drawer, though that seemed too easy.
After rifling through the other drawers, I found a letter opener and jimmied open the locked one. Modern account books and folders holding business documents filled it up. I took everything out, piling it up on the desktop. Then I knocked on the bottom, wondering if it was false. But when I finally risked getting super dusty and got on my knees, shining my flashlight all around the empty drawer, I noticed something odd in back.
I reached into and above the drawer, around the tracks that let it slide in and out, and found a book nestled into a narrow shelf. Now we were getting somewhere. When I pulled it out, though, it still looked like an ordinary book. Actually, an old anatomy book with a brown leather-bound cover, still in perfect shape, except for the dust and some yellowing on the page edges. I flipped through, puzzled. It was just a plain anatomy book. Not even an alien anatomy book.
Stumped, I laid the book on the rug beneath me, about to look in the drawer again. Maybe that was a diversion. But as I did so, the book flopped open to the middle, and something flickered. I turned off my light, thinking I was seeing things. But something near the edge of one of the pages flickered again–almost like the laser walls of the containment unit in the mansion basement.
I held the pages down with my fingers and once I touched the paper, it came to life. Instead of the yellowing pages of a plain anatomy book from the late nineteenth century, I saw an old alien tech computer screen light up on the pages, filling with words. Lockewood had a plain book merged with our technology.
Once things loaded and I could see what was going on, I realized they were notes. Old Lockewood’s notes, specifically, dated around the turn of the twentieth century. It was appropriate, maybe even ironic, that he hid them in an anatomy book, because his notes were all about his studies of alien biology. That would explain the lab under the secret basement.
Most of it made no sense to me. It was complicated scientific gibberish. And outdated gibberish at that. But I did gather that he’d done a lot of examination of alien DNA especially, trying to figure out how our powers worked. That was interesting, especially in light of his descendant’s experiments on human women. I scanned, but he left no evidence that he was actually experimenting. I had a feeling his descendant probably found this notebook, an innocent study of alien nature, and twisted it, taking it to another level. Lockewood had passed on his house–and his knowledge–to a dangerous man.
I shuddered even thinking about it. And then I felt the house shudder. I froze, hoping I’d imagined it. It was a brief tremor, but enough to get my heart palpitating. Earthquake? Unlikely, though I guess I couldn’t rule it out. But I had another idea that made a lot more sense, and was much less appealing. When I was in the secret basement with Bryce and Lachlan and we learned that the containment unit was an elevator, the floor pulled away, shaking the room.
Someone else was in the house.
I shut the book, replacing it in its secret hideaway out of respect for Lockewood, quickly throwing everything back in the drawer and shutting it. I was about to skip out through a portal, figuring I’d had enough excitement, when a nagging feeling pricked my gut. If someone was still using this place, it might be a good idea to know about it.
As much as I wanted to go back to the hotel room and pretend I’d never been there, I knew it would bug me all night if I did. So I closed my eyes and took a deep breath to both get ready and clear my head. Then I did skip out through a portal, but into the secret basement. Rather, the tunnel that led to it from Lockewood?
??s master bedroom. I couldn’t hear anything in the basement and when I opened the door, it was empty. However, I was (unfortunately) right about the containment unit-slash-elevator. There was a black hole where the unit should’ve been.
I sighed heavily. Now I had to go downstairs and see who was there.
The best place to hide in the ultra-secret basement was in that awful room where my Mom had found all the girls’ bodies. But it was better than stepping into the open. So I portaled into the path that led from the main lab room into the scary tomb, then felt my way between the narrow stone walls to the door, which I forgot was like our secret tunnel entrance–invisible. I couldn’t just open it to take a quick peek and leave.
I pursed my lips, tempted to say forget it. I’d tried but failed. But I just couldn’t. Not when I could hear footsteps on the floor on the other side.
The only other relatively safe spot that might lend itself to some shadow was the elevator itself. Risky, but the room was open with no walls to creep behind. I inhaled, prepped to make a hasty retreat if necessary. I pictured what the containment unit looked like when Bryce and I were trapped inside it as it eased down the shaft. It was round, and the front in the upper basement had become the back when it settled down here.
So I imagined the back and hoped for the best, coming out of the portal and crouching down immediately, holding my breath. I’d forgotten about the metal floor, so even though I stepped lightly, it still made some noise. Nothing bad happened, so I carefully got on my knees and hands to crawl closer to the entrance so I could see. I got as close to the entrance as I dared and peeked out and around the stone shaft. Unlike last time, the large fluorescent ceiling lights weren’t on, which was technically good for me.
On one side of the room there was a meager amount of light from a desk lamp on a high metal table. I could make out the silhouette of a medical chamber nearby. There was a stand on the table holding six small vials next to a laptop, which had what appeared to be a flash drive sticking out the side, but I wondered. It could be a DNA tester like what Bryce and my parents had. But the laptop screen was what actually illuminated the person’s face.
My breath caught in my lungs and I scurried back in a knee-jerk reaction. I moved too quickly and carelessly, and the flashlight, which I’d stuck in my back pocket, slid out and crashed on the metal floor. I cringed and glanced up, locking on another set of eyes.
For a horrible few seconds, we were both paralyzed.
Then we reacted at the same time. I slid backward through a portal, forgetting to grab my flashlight in the process. I was too frazzled and portaled into the library again, on the floor where I started. I scrambled to my feet, about to escape to the hotel room, when I stopped. If the vials contained something–what? And what was it for? I knew the answers were down there, but it was too late now to investigate further. I’d been spotted.
I imagined the dead girls piled up in the stone room adjacent to the lab area–and decided to get out of there.
I returned to the hotel room, hugging my body, perched on the end of the bed. If I’d just seen what I thought I saw, I couldn’t ignore it any more than the mansion shuddering. On the other hand, maybe I was just dreaming and I’d wake up and none of that just happened. But I’d hoped that about a lot of things recently, and it wasn’t going to happen. I was living the nightmare. A waking one.
And I had a feeling I wasn’t even close to the end yet.
* * *
Thanks for reading! If you’re already reading The Birthright, thank you for the support! If you’re new to the series and would like to read more, Inborn (The Birthright Book 1) is available now. For more short stories and series updates, visit https://amysaundersauthor.com.
More Books by Amy Saunders
The Birthright
Inborn (Book 1)
The Belinda & Bennett Mysteries
Cliffhanger (Book One)
Auf’d (Book Two)
Drive-Bye (Book Three)
Overkill (Book Four)
Standalone Titles
Biohazard (A Novella)
The Jester’s Apprentice
Dead Locked
About the Author
Amy Saunders is a sci-fi/mystery addict with a soft spot for humor and romance. She lives in Massachusetts, and loves to bake and watch movies. Learn more about Amy and her books at https://amysaundersauthor.com.