Read Online Brood XIX by Michael McBride - Free Book Online

of which was a knoll crowned by a
Spanish-style hacienda with a red ceramic-tile roof and porticos
flanking either side. That was the extent of the detail she could
glean through the mass of cicadas that covered every available
surface. They filled the ring of trees around the manicured yard
and turned the formerly white house black. All of them had settled.
Not a single insect flew through the air. They just watched. She
felt millions of blood-red eyes focused upon her.
    And none of them made a sound.
    The silence was so intense that every noise,
from the scuff of her feet on the dirt to the thrum of her pulse in
her ears, seemed amplified a hundredfold.
    She recognized this place. It had to have
been more than five years since she had been here last, but there
was no doubt about to whom the house belonged.
    And her heart broke.
    There was no way that her daughter was here.
These were normal people, albeit more reserved: an educated
husband, a domestic wife, and a pampered child.
    Tears rolled down her cheeks. She had allowed
herself to hope, allowed herself to believe that some greater power
had sent the cicadas to lead her to Emma. Instead, she found
herself face-to-face with the grim truth.
    Emma wasn't here.
    She was undoubtedly buried somewhere in the
bayou where the gators and snapping turtles had laid waste to her
flesh. Her husband was gone. She was lost and alone. There was
nothing at all left for her in this life, and the time had finally
come to end it.
    Vanessa was just about to turn around and
embark upon the last long walk that would end with an overdose of
Sominex when something caught her eye. At first, she hadn't noticed
it with all of the black insects on the house.
    She walked silently across the lawn.
    Countless crimson eyes followed.
    The majority of the houses built at the edge
of the swamp didn't have basements. The water table and the
shifting soil forced most to be built upon aboveground foundations.
This elevated crest must have provided the necessary stability to
support the garden-level basement that featured windows set nearly
flush with the ground. From the distance, she had assumed they were
hidden behind a living skin of cicadas like the rest of the
house...until she caught just the faintest hint of reflected silver
light.
    As she approached, it became clear why she
had been led here. Decorative iron bars capped with florets had
been bolted over the windows. Behind the glass, a sheet of metal
had been affixed from the inside.
    They hadn't been there before.
    She thought about the couple who owned this
house, about their family...a mirror image of her own.
    They had been friends.
    Something stirred inside of her, an instinct
she hadn't felt this strongly in two years.
    Suddenly, everything made sense.
    The dying child.
    Emma's abduction.
    Warren's death.
    She needed to get inside the house.
    Her daughter was in the basement.
    And she was still alive.
    * * *

    Trey gave up on reaching his sister on her
cell. It was readily apparent she wasn't going to answer. He had
settled upon a plan. Jefferson was a small town. He could cruise
the length of every street in under half an hour. If Vanessa was
out there on foot, he would find her in no time at all. Only the
diner stayed open twenty-four hours, and there was nowhere else to
go. If he didn't find her by the time he reached South Maple Street
at the edge of town, then he would call Dr. Montgomery and make him
drag his weary ass out of bed and guide him through the clinic's
records, even if he had to do so at gunpoint. But what then? Did he
propose reading through every file? It wasn't like there was some
kind of search function that would allow him to sort through the
entire population by disease. He needed to take a step back and
evaluate it from scratch, narrow the field to a manageable
number.
    What were the facts? Whoever buried the
child's body had expected it to be found. Why else go to the
trouble of planting the clues that would lead to a