Dad, taking a page from Mom’s book, sighed. “Just don’t touch anything.”
Mom snorted. “That’s like telling a fish not to swim…”
“Hey,” I said. “Have some faith in me, will ya?”
“It has nothing to do with faith,” Lukas remarked. “We all simply know you.”
Wow. I was in hostile territory, getting ready to take a header due to friendly fire. How was that for harsh? “Can we play gang up on Jessie later? We kind of have something important to do.”
“This way,” Dad said. He was trying to hide a laugh, but I saw it. The guy had serious work to do on his poker face.
We walked for a while. For the most part it was uneventful. Once, something skittered across the floor behind us, but when we turned, there was nothing there. Truthfully, I found the whole thing a little disappointing.
Our footsteps, along with the red Vile Root muck dripping onto the ground, echoed through the cave. Plink. Clop, clop, clop. Plink. Clop, clop, clop. The deeper into the cave we got, the more plentiful the Vile Root became. There was so much that it gave off an eerie red glow, adding to the creep factor of the whole scene. Once in a while we’d come across a puddle on the main path and have to carefully inch around it, but thankfully most of it was along the edges, dripping from the walls.
The odd screaming had stopped, and I couldn’t help feeling like that was a bad sign. The calm before the storm. The farther in we went, the more suspicious the whole thing felt. This was too easy. If Lucifer stored all his baddest toys here, why wasn’t it better guarded?
“So how far in do we have to go?” The sooner we got out of the creepy cave, the better.
“All the way,” Dad said. He took another step and froze. “No one move.”
I looked around, but didn’t see anything. “Why? What’s—”
He covered my mouth with his hand. “That includes your lips, kid.”
Mom leaned in close. “What is it?” she whispered.
I debated pointing out how it wasn’t fair that she got to talk, but someone interrupted me. Well, more like something. A tremor rose from the ground, followed by a bone-rattling roar. The kind of noise you could have heard even if you were deaf. Hell, legions of dead probably had to cover their ears. Mom jumped and Dad’s mouth fell open.
Oh. Yeah. Not good at all…
Dad grabbed a handful of Lukas’s and my shirts and propelled us forward. We both stumbled, using each other to keep from going down. “Run!”
Debris, as well as larger chunks from the ceiling, rained down on our heads, and the sporadic roar increased to a menacing bellow. Our footsteps pounded the cave floor as the quaking grew louder. It almost sounded like we were running toward the noise rather than away until I realized it was all around us. Not coming from a single source, but multiple ones.
Lukas realized it, too, because he called, “What are they?” He huffed, dodging a nice sized piece of rubble and pulling me with him.
“Lesser Chimera,” Dad said. He was right behind me, urging us forward.
“Lesser?” Lukas stumbled once, but Dad caught him. We stopped in the middle of a four-way split. “That’s good, right?”
“Not a chance,” Mom said. “Lessers are erratic. Unpredictable and feral.”
Dad chuckled. He ducked a chunk of the ceiling, doing a cool-looking spin and a shimmy to the left. “All Chimera are feral, dear.”
“Which way?” I asked, glancing to my right and then to the left. All four paths looked the same. Dark.
Dad never got the chance to answer me because one of the beasts jumped into the path ahead of us.
I’d never seen a chimera before. Mom made sure I knew the lore, including them in my early studies, but seeing one in person? Yeah. Not at all what I’d expected. The creature blocking our path had the body of a lion, with thick, golden fur. Its legs were spindly. Like a chicken, or turkey, which was unsettling to say the least. The worst part, though? At the end of those legs, tipped with razor claws, were three extremely humanlike fingers. It had the head of a horse, and when it opened its mouth to roar, there was row after row of deadly, jagged black teeth.
We started backing up into the tunnel behind us, but another, this one slightly bigger, bounced into the path. Seconds later, two more came, each blocking the remaining two escape routes. I braced myself for attack, but none of them made a move. Instead, they stood, blocking our path and roaring.
“Why don’t they attack?” I covered my ears and yelled over the noise. It was like the damn things were singing a chorus of ick.
Dad grabbed my arm and yanked me hard as a piece of the wall crashed down on the spot I’d been standing. Good thing, too. It was covered in Vile Root muck. “They are attacking,” he screamed.
“We need to—” The rest of what Mom was about to say was lost when a chunk of rock winged her left shoulder. It was small enough to not do serious damage, but large enough to send her off balance. She went down on one knee, wobbling slightly, then hit the ground when another piece, this one slightly bigger, crashed across her back.
Dad dived for her, but with the chimera still screaming like banshees on crack, the entire place was coming down around us. Lukas hollered—I couldn’t hear what—and in an instant I was zooming backward and the ceiling, instead of being above our heads, was on the ground.
Chapter Twenty-Five
“Are you okay?” Lukas dragged me to my feet and pulled a piece of debris from my hair. The chimera had brought the ceiling down on our heads—Dad had pushed us to safety. We were trapped on all sides, but alive.
“I think so. Ma? Damage report?”
No answer.
“Ma?” I turned and squinted against the darkness. The faint red glow coming from the Vile Root muck was just enough to see that Lukas and I were the only ones here. My heart started to pound erratically. A cold sweat broke out against my neck. “No!”
I shoved Lukas aside and threw myself at the rock barrier. A little voice inside screamed that this was suicide—I could bring the entire thing crashing down on top of us—but I ignored it and began yanking rocks from the pile. A set of strong arms pulled me away, and even though I struggled, it was only halfhearted because I knew he was right.
“Jessie,” he whispered against my ear. “Please, stop.”
I pulled free and went back to the wall, and narrowly avoided sticking my hand into a smear of Vile Root crap. “Can you guys hear me?” There was no answer, and my heart skipped a beat. Knowing they were in there, powerless, and possibly crushed, was sucking what little air there was from the small space. “Dad?” I tried again.
A few more minutes passed. Some of the most agonizing of my life. But finally, Dad called, “Jessie?”
The air rushed back into my lungs. “Oh my God. Are you guys okay?”
“We’re fine,” he said. “You two?”
“We’re okay,” Lukas answered. “But trapped. No sign of the chimera.”
“We killed the one on this side. The others probably ran off. The wall between us has too many large rocks. Can you dig yourselves out into one of the other tunnels?”
“Look,” I said, dropping to my knees. There was a small opening with a brighter red glow coming from the wall across from the one that separated us. “I bet we can make this big enough to slip through.”
Lukas nodded and went back to the rocks. “I think we can get out, Damien,” he called to Dad. “What about you? We don’t have the weapons.”
“We have them,” Mom confirmed. “The ceiling only caved in on this side. We’re free to continue down one of the paths.”
I was on my feet and at the barrier between us in a second. “I don’t like it. Splitting up is a bad call.”
“Fine,” Mom said from the other side. “Supply us with an alternative, and we can go from there.”
Damn her and that stupid voice of reason.
“Nothing’s changed, Jessie. We came here to get the prison, and we still need it.” Her voice was a bit louder. She must b
e leaning against the rocks.
I placed a hand against the cool stone and took a deep breath. I trusted Dad to have her back, but it wasn’t the same. I knew her moves. Her strengths and weaknesses—the few there were. It should be me by her side.
I sighed. There was no choice. “I guess we’ll tunnel out and meet you outside.”
“Be aware of everything,” Dad said. “Remember what I told you when you were younger. Everything in the Shadow Realm is out to kill you. This cave is no exception. It will prey on your weaknesses. Your fears.”
I nodded, even though he obviously couldn’t see me. “Be safe.”
I heard their footsteps fade as they walked deeper into the cave, and turned back to Lukas. He’d already started moving some of the smaller rocks from above the opening I’d found. “They’ll be all right,” he said, lifting a chunk of rock and taking care not to touch the patch of Vile Root fluid. “Damien knows his way around.”
“He’s human. Just like Mom. Just like me.”
Lukas rolled his eyes. “He’s not human.”
“Might as well be.” I took the next rock from him and set it down at my feet. “Remember, he told us this place strips you of your demonic mojo.”
He stopped moving rocks and turned to face me. “Your parents are two of the most capable people I’ve ever known. Klaire is intelligent and resourceful, and Damien is smart and careful. Even without the use of his demonic abilities, I still believe him to be lethal.”
“Huh,” I said, punching him lightly in the arm. “Someone has a guy-crush.”
He didn’t respond, instead turning back to the rocks, but I could have sworn he’d rolled his eyes.
We were careful, pulling rubble from above the opening rather than under it, and before too long, we were able to squeeze carefully through. Lukas insisted on going first, and it was in my blood to argue, but I bit my tongue. The chivalry thing was as much a part of him as those big brown eyes I loved. Letting him take the lead was the polite thing to do. Last month, Kendra had pointed out that I’d probably need to play the femme fatale once in a while to ease Lukas’s old-fashioned brain. I was beginning to think she was right.
When he didn’t scream bloody murder or poke his head back through the hole to tell me to stay back, I assumed it was safe and climbed through the opening. Before the roof caved in, we’d been traveling down the narrow tunnel, taking extreme care to avoid touching the walls. When the cave-in started, we’d been standing in the middle of a four-way intersection of sorts. Now, the intersection was gone. And so were the walls.
The entire tunnel had changed.
“Whoa…”
“This must be what Damien meant,” Lukas said. His eyes were wide as he scanned what used to be the tunnels. We were in a room now, and in the middle was a massive wooden canopy bed complete with heavy draping and a pristine white bedspread. Next to it was a large, borderline gaudy chest with six drawers and an antique-looking mirror. “My God…”
“How did we end up here?” I stepped up to the bed and pressed down on the mattress. Soft—and solid. Not an illusion. “And more importantly, whose bedroom is it?”
“It’s my parents’ bedroom,” he said, breathless. He was looking a little pale. “No matter how much time passes, I will never forget this place. How is this possible?”
“It’s not,” I said, crossing the room and tilting his head toward mine. “Look at me. This is not possible. It’s not real. This is the cave messing with us. That’s all. Remember, Dad said this place would dig around inside our heads and muck things up.”
He nodded, and for a second I was sure I’d gotten through to him, but movement at the door changed all that. I turned to see what had caught his eye. A petite woman with long raven hair and a beautiful, but sad, smile. Her hands were clasped behind her back, and as she took a step into the room, Lukas sucked in an audible breath. “Mother?”
Hell in a hailstorm…
“My boy,” she said with a sigh. The very definition of graceful, Sarah Scott glided across the floor and over to her son. “I am so sorry…”
It was obvious Lukas was struggling with this. He tensed, and I knew a part of him understood this wasn’t real, but there was also a part that didn’t care. I couldn’t blame him. If I’d been in his situation, having lost my mother and everything I cared about, only to see her over a hundred years later—illusion or not—I didn’t know how I’d react.
With a shaky hand, he reached out to touch the side of her face, eyes widening when he found her solid. But when he went to put his arms around her, she pulled back and brought her hands to the front. In them was a small, unassuming wooden box. The one he’d been trapped in for over a hundred years. The box containing the Seven Deadly Sins.
“No…” he whispered, tripping over his own two feet in an attempt to put some distance between them.
“Yes,” Sarah said. Her voice took on a hard, cold tone, and her eyes narrowed. “This is where you belong. You have violence and rage in your heart. You don’t deserve to be free because you are a monster.”
He backed himself against the wall, head shaking and mouth forming silent words. I threw myself forward and stepped between them as Lukas sank to the ground and let his head fall forward. “Don’t,” I snapped, and sank down with him. “She’s not here. The box isn’t here. Your mother would never do this to you, Lukas.”
“How do you know?” He growled. He lifted his head to meet my gaze, and I choked back a gasp. His eyes were blood red. The same red they’d been when Wrath was close to the surface. “Before I was trapped in that box, I was a horrible person, Jessie. I planned to do horrible things.”
“You intended to protect your family,” I snapped back, taking his hands. “To protect your mom. You were a good guy then, and you’re a good guy now. This is not real.” I stood and faced off against the fake Mrs. Scott. She was smiling like she had some big secret.
She laughed. Her voice was delicate and musical, but had an odd otherworldly echo to it. The sound trickled through the room and bounced off the walls, surrounding us. “I’m very real.” She spread her arms wide and laughed again. “Everything you see is real, Jessie Darker. It is all truth. In fact, it’s more truth than you’ve ever gotten, little girl.”
Obviously, Lucifer was going to put protective measures in place to guard his treasures, but the number one rule when dealing with all things demonic was to remember they didn’t—couldn’t—lie. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means that while I may not be the real Sarah Scott, my words are spoken with candor.” She gestured to Lukas who was watching us, still on the floor. “He is a monster. Stained and weak of heart. Human or demon, it matters not. He is a paradox and will only mean your end.”
“He’s my end? So I guess that means you aren’t going to kill me?”
“Kill you? No. To kill you would be to anger forces far greater than I. Your companions, on the other hand…”
“Jessie?”
“Ma?” I whirled away from the Sarah impersonator as Mom and Dad burst into the room. I started forward but pulled up short when the fake Mrs. Scott, no longer behind me, popped up behind Dad.
The scream built in my throat, but never came. Dad’s eyes widened, and he convulsed a half second before the red stain spread across the front of his shirt. He looked down at it, confused, then back up, meeting my gaze with a look of terror. He sank to his knees, and Mom went with him, screaming.
Sarah stepped aside, a blood-covered hand stretched out in front of her. She turned it over several times, examining it. When she finally looked up, her lips were set in a grim line. “Your father is not an inhabitant of this cave. While inside these walls, Damien of the House of Pride is nothing more than human. Give up the search for the prison and get him beyond the cave entrance, and he will recover. If you do not, he will die.”
There was a horrible creaking sound, and the door to the room fell away. It crumbled and turned to dust, drifting to the ground
as the walls of the cave rumbled back into existence. Several yards ahead was the entrance.
“You will not be warned again.” In a puff of thick, black smoke, the demon with Mrs. Scott’s face was gone.
I rushed to where Dad was. Mom had his arm pulled across her shoulders and was trying in vain to lift him to his feet. I got on the other side, but it was no use. He was just too heavy. “Lukas,” I called, hoping to God he’d snapped out of it. “I need your help.”
He didn’t say anything, but was off the ground and in my place in a matter of seconds.
Mom was pale. “Damien? Damien, can you hear me?”
Dad’s eyes fluttered open, and he gave a weak smile. “I’ll always hear you, Klaire.” He pulled away and propped himself up against the nearest wall. “Go with the kids. Get the prison. I can make it out on my own.”
He took a single step away from the wall and went down like a sack of quartz powder. Mom and Lukas dropped to help him back up. We had to get him out. But we needed the prison. Kendra’s life depended on it, and I wasn’t willing to walk away from that.
“I can do it,” I said. Of course I knew damn well Mom would object, but in the end, it’d be pointless. We were there for a reason. She couldn’t argue that.
“The hell you can,” Mom cried. She almost let go of Dad’s arm in the process.
A knot twisted in my stomach. “I don’t wanna freak you out because, well, we’ve obviously got enough dust kicked up at the moment, but I can do this. In fact, I think I’m the only one who can.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“The demon said something to her before you and Damien arrived,” Lukas said. He didn’t look happy about it, but it seemed he was on my side. “It said it wasn’t allowed to hurt her. The rest of us are fair targets, but not Jessie. For all intents, she is off-limits.”
Mom’s face, if possible, grew even paler. “Why? Did it say why?”
“Ma, we don’t have time to talk this out right now. Dad needs out of this cave, and Kendra needs away from that bastard before he changes his mind and sucks out her soul.”