“Honey, where are you?”
“Brooke and I are with Mr. Davis.”
A relieved sigh slipped from her mouth. “Thank God. Have him bring you to the Sanctuary. We’re getting everything ready.”
“Everything ready for what?” I asked, growing warier with every breath. What were they going to do?
“We just figured it out a little while ago, hon. We had to act fast. I’m so sorry we couldn’t get word to you, but we didn’t know where Jared was, if he would hear us or read a text if I sent one. There was just no way to know.”
“Well, he’s not here now.” Resentment hit and hit hard. I was out of the loop yet again. “What is going on?”
“Can Mr. Davis hear me?” she asked, and I glanced over at him. He was ordering someone to pull the fire alarm so the building would be evacuated completely.
“I don’t think so.”
“I can’t take the chance. I’ll explain everything when you get here, but for now, tell him you don’t know what’s going on.”
At least I wouldn’t be lying. I took in a deep breath that caught in my chest. “Fine.” I hung up. “Grandma wants you to take us to the church.”
He looked at me, surprised. “I was thinking the sheriff’s station.”
“The sheriff is going to meet us there,” I said. He was confused and I was right there with him.
“Of course he is.” He worked his jaw. I could almost hear his teeth grinding from where I sat. “A tranquilizer dart? They shot him with a tranquilizer dart? Who does that?”
I looked back, scanning the area for signs of Cameron and the sheriff. “I don’t know.”
“Of course you don’t.”
He was angry. And worried. I could see it in his eyes. That, and fear. When Jared mentioned his brother, I sensed a jolt of fear rush through him. Not that I could blame him. From what Jared told us before, Mr. Davis had looked right into his eyes that day as he was taking Mr. Davis’s brother. And he had never forgotten him.
Just as we pulled into the church parking lot, I spotted Cameron and the sheriff coming up from a back road. They pulled around the side entrance, their tires kicking up dirt when they skidded to a stop. Several members of the Order were waiting, and I wondered how many were in on this.
When we pulled up, I climbed out of the SUV and headed to the side entrance with Brooke right behind me. Tabitha was in the backseat, staring, while Grandma rushed out the front door. She headed off Mr. Davis as he tried to follow us. I heard her talking to him, but didn’t stick around to find out what she said.
Out of sight of the main road, Cameron, Sheriff Villanueva, Granddad, and Mr. Walsh, one of the elders, carried Jared into the Sanctuary, down the stairs, and past the anterooms to the main rooms in the back of the massive underground structure. Jared was bleeding from the last blow Cameron had given him. He was bound from neck to ankles in industrial-strength chains with metal shackles that looked like something from a horror movie.
“Granddad, what is going on?”
“Lorelei,” he said, surprised, “get back. Are you crazy?” He looked around and spotted another member just coming into the anterooms. “Get her back!”
Betty Jo, Grandma’s best friend, rushed forward, took me by the shoulders, and started to drag me away.
“Wait,” I said, but Brooke, having caught on, was helping Betty Jo. I fought them both. I wasn’t stupid. I knew to keep my distance, but I wanted some answers. “Wait, Granddad, what are you doing with him?”
I heard a sound come from Jared, deep and guttural like a growl, and saw Granddad take out a syringe. “Hold him if you can.” He plunged the needle into Jared’s leg. In return, Jared offered him a look I could only describe as pure, seething hatred.
Then he bucked under their grip. They lost their hold and he fell to the ground with a thud. He tried to roll onto his knees, but he overshot the move and almost toppled over. Shaking his head as though disoriented, he tensed, panting and gasping as the drug took effect. Then he collapsed, the chains rattling as he hit the floor.
“Get him in there,” Granddad said. “Quickly, before it wears off.”
They took him into the archive room. It was more like a vault than like a room, created to protect the ancient documents that had been passed down. But why there?
“Hurry, close the door.” Granddad rushed out.
Jared was already regaining consciousness and the men were struggling to close a door I had never even paid attention to. It was behind stacks of boxes and filing cabinets that had to be cleared before they could close it.
“Bill, hurry!” Grandma yelled. She must have gotten rid of Mr. Davis. She stood behind me, her eyes glued to Jared.
I turned back to him as he shook his head again and rolled onto his knees once more.
“Bill,” she whispered, her voice faint with fear.
I didn’t like seeing her afraid. I stepped to her, took her arm into mine as Jared watched me from underneath his lashes, the same arrogant smile sliding across his face, the same taunting air. In one concentrated effort, he forced his arms apart, broke the chains. They slipped from his body like satin falling to the floor.
“Bill, please.”
His hands were still shackled behind his back, and with the force it might have taken me to break a silk thread, he pulled them apart.
In a breathy whisper I barely heard, Grandma tried one more time. “Bill,” she said, and the hopelessness in her voice broke my heart.
NIGHT VISION
“Push!” Granddad said, straining under the weight of steel. Just as the huge door swung shut, Jared rushed forward, his eyes locked on to mine until the thick, metal door separated us.
He slammed into it with all his might, and the six men who were trying to shut it skidded back, losing valuable ground. Two actually fell. But before Jared could take another run at it, Cameron pushed it shut, his teeth clenched with the effort, his face red as he pushed with every ounce of strength he possessed.
Another loud thud echoed in the room, but the door barely gave that time. Granddad rushed forward and spun the vault handle to lock it. Cameron collapsed and slid to the ground, holding his abused throat and coughing. Brooke hurried to him.
He looked up at the sheriff. “Took you long enough to get there.”
“Sorry. I couldn’t find the right tranquilizer darts. We only had the ones for small bears.”
I gasped. “What did you use on Jared?”
The sheriff turned to me. “The ones strong enough to bring down an elephant. Since we don’t have many pachyderms in these parts, took me a while to find them.”
Cameron grinned at Granddad. “We totally need to oil that door.”
Granddad stood and nodded in agreement, winded from the effort it took to get the massive thing closed. Then he turned on Betty Jo. “What part of ‘get her out of here’ didn’t you understand?”
I had never in my life heard him talk to anyone that way. Especially not to Grandma’s best friend.
“Do you know what he could have done to her? Do you understand the consequences?”
“I’m sorry,” she said, then added, “She’s stronger than she looks.”
Granddad was in her face before I could blink, and I jumped to her defense. “Granddad, this isn’t her fault.”
“You’re right,” he said, turning his anger on me. “It’s yours.” He pointed to the door we’d come in through. “When I tell you to get away—”
“What?” I asked, interrupting his tirade. “Are you going to tell me how right you were to insist Jared stay away from me? Are you going to keep more secrets from me until I’m in another perilous situation where that information would have come in handy? Are you going to send me away?”
Both Grandma and Granddad stilled.
“Bill,” Grandma said as another thud echoed around us. She squeezed his arm to calm him.
But my own anger refused to be squelched. It spread like a nuclear blast. “Just so I have this str
aight, you guys get to keep things from me again and again, treat me like I’m an idiot, and I’m just supposed to obey your every order like a robot?”
Granddad seemed to snap to his senses. He stepped back as though appalled at his own behavior. “I’m sorry, pix.”
The thought of being sent away caused a hollow pain to well up inside me. My chin wrinkled as I tried not to cry. Did they really think so little of me? To decide my future without even talking with me about it?
I stood there, accusing them with my stare. I was six again and my parents had just disappeared and I had no control over my life whatsoever. No direction other than certain doom.
“We just want to keep you safe.”
“Then stop lying to me. Stop keeping things from me.”
He wanted to talk more. I could see it in his eyes, but he cleared his throat and dropped it for now. Turning to Betty Jo, he said, “Betty, I am so sorry. I—”
“No,” she interrupted. “You’re right. I risked everything by not following your orders. I was just … I was so scared.”
That made Granddad feel worse. He pressed his lips together and put a hand on her shoulder. “No, this is my fault. I should have caught on to this sooner, when Cameron first felt it.”
“Felt what?” I asked, questioning Cameron, but he didn’t have time to answer before another thud echoed in the room. “This won’t hold him,” I said, my tone worried. “It doesn’t matter what you put him in, he can dematerialize and pass through anything. I’ve seen him do it.”
“Not in there, pix,” Granddad said. “That room was built to hold anything supernatural. Do you remember the symbols on the walls?”
I thought back and nodded. There were hundreds of symbols carved into the metal walls. I just thought it was decoration.
“Those are impenetrable bars to supernatural entities, like a steel cage would be to us. Nothing preternatural can get past it. It will hold him.”
I was shocked. “You built this room to hold Jared?”
Exhausted, Granddad stepped to a folding chair and lowered himself into it. Grandma knelt beside him. He squeezed the hand on his arm, then said, “No, hon. We built this room to hold you.”
I glanced at the vault, at the thick metallic walls and steel door. “Does the word ‘overkill’ mean anything? Because I’m pretty sure a small closet would suffice. And what did I do to deserve imprisonment anyway?”
He smiled sadly. “We built it after you were taken. After you were possessed. We thought that if we managed to exorcise the demon, we would need a place to hold it. Otherwise, he could just jump into someone else. And, we just didn’t know what you would do with it inside you. If you would try to kill us. We had to plan.”
“Oh. And I love that you never told me that either.” Now I was just being childish. What were they supposed to do? I had a demon inside me. They had little choice.
“You’re right. I’m so sorry, pix. You’re getting old enough to be able to handle all this. We won’t keep anything else from you.”
For some reason, I seriously doubted that.
“I think it’s going to hold,” Mr. Walsh said. He’d been inspecting the room, walking around it and checking for faults in the metal. Brooke was sitting against the vault door with Cameron, and for the first time, I realized she was shaking uncontrollably. I was about to step to her but was blindsided.
“It’s up!”
We all turned to Glitch as he beckoned us from the doorway.
“Glitch?” Brooklyn asked, surprised. “What are you doing here?”
He winked at her, then turned back to my grandparents. “We have audio and video out. Nothing in. Didn’t have time.”
After another thud that sounded like the earth beneath us was giving way, Brooke and Cameron stood. We followed Glitch as he led the way to yet another outer room, a small supply closet on the other side of the vault. There was a monitor set up, along with other technical equipment.
“Did you do all this?” I asked him.
“With the help of Mr. Lusk, Cameron’s dad, yes.”
Mr. Lusk popped up from underneath the desk and nodded a hello. “Cameron, how are you?”
Cameron massaged his throat. “I might need a beer, but I’m okay.”
Mr. Lusk cast him a dubious frown.
I frowned at him too. “I thought beer didn’t do anything for you.”
“Okay, an aspirin, then.”
I looked closely at the monitor, at the green glow of a night-vision camera projected onto the screen. It was Jared. I sank into a chair and watched as he paced like a caged animal, his shoulders hunched, his movements sharp and calculating.
Glitch reached over and turned a knob on a speaker. “It would be better if I’d had more time, but it should work.”
That’s when I heard Jared’s breaths, his whispery curses, his soft footsteps.
“We can hear him, but he can’t hear us. I didn’t have enough—”
“Are you sure?” Brooke asked, interrupting. She’d come in behind me and noticed the same thing I did. “Because the minute you said that, he turned.”
Jared had spun around when Glitch spoke, looking up at the camera in the corner, his eyes bright, his stare hard and intentional.
I decided to test it. I leaned forward and asked, “Can you hear me, Jared?”
A slow, purposeful smile spread across his face, one that I was getting used to. One that held no humor whatsoever, no warmth, nothing but scorn and indifference.
“What happened to you?” I asked him.
He took a step forward. “Open the door and I’ll tell you.”
“I can’t do that.”
“I’ll take you quick, Lorelei, painlessly, if you open it now.”
Grandma gasped and put a hand to her mouth. Granddad draped an arm over her shoulders.
“Why do you want me dead?” I asked.
His head tilted to one side. “It’s what I do.”
My chest squeezed painfully around my heart, hitching my breath, stinging my eyes. Was it all just a game? From the beginning to the times that we’d kissed, was he just playing with me?
“Come on, pix,” Granddad said as he took my arm to lift me out of the seat. “No good can come of this.”
“Stay,” Jared said, his voice calm, threatening. I stood to leave the room and he stepped closer to the camera. “Stay or they all die.”
I hesitated, then sank back down into the seat. Grandma kneeled next to me. “If he gets out of there, hon, we’re all dead anyway. He’s just taunting you, baiting you.” I suddenly understood why everyone was so afraid of Jared when they had found out what he was. I could now empathize on a level I didn’t want to.
“No,” Cameron said, bending to the monitor. “He probably does want her to stay, so he’s making empty threats.”
“And the hybrid speaks,” Jared said.
“How is he hearing us?” Glitch asked, checking wire after wire. “That room is encased in steel ten inches thick. And there is no audio in. I guarantee it.”
Cameron reproached him with a baleful look. “He’s an archangel, Glitch-head. He can do things like that.”
Glitch flipped him off, but Cameron paid no attention.
“Why would he want her to stay?” Grandma asked, and Cameron offered her a much softer version of his reproach.
“Because he really is in love with her.”
My grandparents bristled, but I didn’t believe him. This wasn’t love. This was hatred. Contempt. Blind rage.
“Then, then I don’t understand,” she said.
“He’s an archangel, a messenger. He doesn’t kill for the sake of killing. He kills because he’s been ordered to. But there’s a balance.” Cameron sat beside me. “You remember what I told you? About how he is made of light and darkness, right?”
I nodded, trying to understand, but sinking deeper and deeper into a state of despair.
“Something has shifted, has caused the darkness to overtake the light.?
??
“What?” I asked in helplessness. “What could do that?”
Before Cameron could answer, Jared took another run at the door. He was still strong, still ridiculously fast, but he apparently couldn’t dematerialize. Granddad was right.
When he failed again, Jared gazed into the camera. His expression was filled with so much hatred, so much apathy, I took a mental step back. Then he turned away, and the strangest thing happened. When he spun back around, he became a blur. He did dematerialize, became a mass of smoke and fog that spun and swirled like a whirlwind.
As though proving he still could.
As though he’d heard my thoughts.
The camera shook, vibrating until the room went completely black and only sound was left. And the sound we heard was like the fluttering of a thousand birds. It grew louder and louder, feathers brushing against the speakers, wings rustling against one another in a chaotic frenzy until, in an instant, it stopped. Silence, abrupt and surreal, settled in the room like a blanket.
I gazed into the monitor, searching the blackness. “Jared?” I whispered. When I received no answer, I asked, “Is he still in there?”
Granddad looked worried too, but Cameron nodded and said, “Parlor tricks. He can’t get past those walls. I guarantee it.”
After another minute of waiting and watching, Granddad took me by the shoulders and lifted me out of the chair. He set guards on the vault and one at the monitor while the rest of us went back to the house to regroup. I just wanted an explanation. Something to help me understand what was happening. Before Jared escaped and killed us all.
My grandparents had been right all along.
* * *
“How did this happen?” I asked as we sat around our kitchen table. Betty Jo was making coffee and Glitch was setting out sandwich meat and bread at the behest of my grandmother. She sat in the chair beside me, so tired and so scared, she seemed to have aged right before my eyes. A sadness had consumed me as well, along with a genuine desire to die. I’d never been particularly suicidal, but would death be so bad? On the plus side, the pressure to save the world would end.
“I don’t know how they did it,” Cameron said, “but somehow, when the descendants got a hold of Jared, they branded him with some kind of symbol.”