14

The kitchen was huge. Mahogany paneled cabinets and a walk in pantry the size of Kya's bedroom back home, complete with three sinks for washing dishes. Kya could almost imagine the use it would have been put to, the smell of turkey in the air at Thanksgiving dinners. Behind her Sam walked around the dining room in a separate room, although slightly visible from the kitchen. He had been quiet ever since the encounter with both Jess and the ghost. She imagined there was a lot on his mind that he needed to come to terms with. Personally she was having trouble dealing with Jesse and the fact that now he would never be going to college.

She knew there was a balance in life. Her martial arts training had taught her that. The balance of good and evil were necessary enemies. Without evil there could be no good and vice versa. What she hated was that evil had to claim so much innocence for its own. She leaned against the kitchen counter and stared at the tile top.

She was beginning to understand the mansion and how it worked. She wondered how far other people had gotten in it and whether or not there were any survivors still wandering the halls. The way she understood it this house acted on psychological terror as well as physical. The specifics were still lost on her but if Sam had seen his dead girlfriend it meant that the mansion was able to conjure up ghosts of painful memories. What else could the thing conjure? Her stomach turned at the thought.

Her train of thought was interrupted by the sound of labored breathing coming down a hallway to her right that led away from the kitchen and into some other part of the house they hadn't explored yet. She pushed off from the counter and called to the boys before a figure exploded into the kitchen. Kya jumped back before she realized that it was a young girl.

"Holy crap!" she cried.

The girl was stumbling, falling several times, before getting back up and running on. She collapsed in Kya's arms who had run to stand in front of her. The girl had a mop of unruly black hair that fell to her shoulders. Her clothes were torn and bloodstained in so many places that Kya couldn't count them all. Her wrists were abraded to the point of raw skin and blood and Kya imagined they had been caused by bonds of some kind. Her face was bleeding from a cut on her cheek and forehead. There was another nasty cut on her shoulder and the girl was clutching at her thigh as she stumbled.

"Help me," she moaned. "Please don't let him take me again. Help me!"

"Who are you talking about? What did this to you?" Kya demanded as the boys came running up behind her.

"Jesus Christ," Dean said, having nothing else to say.

"That crazy bastard," she gasped. "There's a basement . . . .I got away."

The girl's ranting was interrupted by another figure exploding into the kitchen. Kya wrapped her arms around the girl and pulled her backward, narrowly avoiding the swing of a wickedly sharp knife. Kya didn't have enough time to make out the face of the madman before she felt Dean's hands shoving against her backside.

"Run!" he yelled. "Get her out of here!"

Kya pulled the girl through the doorway that led into the kitchen, appearing in the foyer again. She looked around frantically and made out the sound of a muffled groan from the kitchen followed by a crash.

Dean held the shotgun up and fired at the man, but the shot went wide and missed. He was barreled into and went crashing into the cabinets, causing the dishes inside to rattle precariously. Dean was forced to drop the shotgun as the knife came up to hover near his throat. He grabbed the man's arm and pushed back, trying to keep the knife at bay. This close he could make out long dark brown hair, tattered clothing, and a disfigured face. He thought that he had seen this guy in some movie or another but he was a disadvantage to be thinking of such things.

"Sam!" he yelled.

Dean's back was being grinded against the counter as he was bent over backward to avoid the knife and from the pressure of the man leaning in to stab him to death. The man went stumbling back as his brother hit him over the head with an iron pot. Dean stumbled away from the counter toward his brother.

The man came at them again, not fazed much by the blow of the pot, and wrapped an arm around Dean's throat. He yelled as the blade buried in his shoulder, right above his heart.

"Dean!" Sam yelled.

He wrenched his brother from the madman's grasp and Dean fell back against the cabinets, sliding to the floor. He gasped in pain as sweat poured down his brow. Blood leaked from the stab wound and he gripped the hilt of the knife with shaking fingers.

Kya pulled the girl farther into the foyer. She could hear the sounds of battle behind her but couldn't risk leaving the injured girl alone. It was up to her to keep her safe in this madhouse. She had to trust that the brothers could hold their own against a knife-wielding maniac.

"Come on," Kya urged. "This way!"

Kya dragged the girl up the first few stairs before the girl collapsed, unable to go much further. Kya knelt down, repeatedly glancing over her shoulder for attacks, while she gave the girl a cursory glance over. She had been through some kind of hell. Her injuries were many but Kya immediately made out the source of the girl's inability to properly walk. There was a stab wound in her right thigh that was so deep it must have penetrated all the way to the bone. Blood leaked from it at an astonishing pace. Kya ripped off a piece of her shirt and quickly tied it around the wound like a tourniquet.

"You're gonna be okay," she said quietly. "What's your name?"

"H . . .Heather," the girl said.

"I'm Kya. But we have to keep moving," she replied.

"I . . .I can't," Heather stammered.

"Yes you can," Kya told her firmly. She wrapped an arm around the girl's waist and lifted her up, supporting the vast majority of her body weight as they climbed the stairs too slowly for Kya's taste. She was so focused on keeping the girl and herself on the stairs that she never saw the blow come. Heather screamed as Kya tumbled down the stairs to land on the tile foyer floor at the bottom. The injured, frightened girl looked down helplessly at the unmoving woman at the bottom of the stairs and back up at her attacker.

"Please don't kill me," she begged.