Jillian Cade (16 page)

I turned a corner and found myself in a room made from stone. It could have been a wine cellar or a dungeon. It was empty except for two candles on a narrow wooden table and the most welcome sight I'd ever seen in my life: Norbert in a heap on the floor.

He blinked up at me. “Jillian, I found the lair.”

I tried to swallow back the lump in my throat. He had no freaking clue how scared I'd been for him. “Good job,” I managed, hoping Norbert wouldn't notice how my voice shook. “Are you okay?”

He set a hand on the side of his head and winced. “Not sure
. . .
I think something hit me.”

I reached his side and helped him stagger to his feet. There was a dark smear along his temple and cheekbone. “Norbert, we really need to get out of here.”

“First we should look around at—”

“No.” My grip tightened around his shoulders. “I'm serious. We have to get out.”

He forced a smile despite his pain. “Copy that,” he said.

I grabbed his hand in my own, clutching my makeshift metal weapon in the other, and turned back toward the corridor ramping down from above. But something blocked our path. Norbert's fingers tightened around mine. I shoved myself in front of him. “Stay there,” I murmured.

A flare of light erupted, so brilliant that I thrust the iron dagger in front of my face, temporarily blinded. Norbert and I reeled backward, blinking. A wave of something foul but oily—kerosene, I think—hit my nostrils and made me cough. I blinked furiously, my eyes watering against the light and the smell, until a man took shape.

He was seriously tall and muscular. He was also seriously naked. He held a torch, staring at us from the only exit.

“The Abomination is coming,” he croaked.

We are starring in our very own horror movie.

“What is the Abomination?” Norbert whispered from behind me.

“Shh,” I whispered back. I didn't want to question the large naked guy. I just wanted to get past him. His eyes were unfocused. He sniffed, like a bloodhound trying to find game. He cast his head about in jerky motions.

“The key,” he said. “We want the key.”

“I don't have it,” I said, edging toward the exit.

“It is hidden.”

“Um, who hid it?” Maybe if I pretended that we were having a normal conversation (like any part of this was normal), he'd drop his guard.

“The seven who didn't sleep,” he said.

“Do you have any idea where they might have put it?” I asked. I vaguely remembered reading that if you are ever taken hostage, you should try to connect with your kidnappers so they'll think of you as a person and not kill you.

“The seven lied. The seven lied and one of them died. Six aren't enough to hide the key.”

So much for connection. He was basically a naked, crazy Dr. Seuss. Awesome.

“What is the key for?” I asked, taking several more tiny steps in his direction, tugging Norbert along.

The man moved slightly to block the exit. “The key leads to the bridge.”

My insides clenched.

His words were crazy, yes. But this time they were
familiar
crazy. For a dizzying instant, I was Norbert's age. Back in my mother's room. Back where she was chained to the bed so she wouldn't hurt herself again. Back where, no matter how hard I'd scrubbed, some of the walls were still streaked with bloodstains. I remembered her incoherence and the way she had shrieked until she'd lost her voice and could only ramble in whispers. The same words had tumbled out over and over and over before she died: “Burn the bridge, burn the bridge, burn the bridge
. . .
”

The man swung his large head toward me. “It is prophesied.”

I hesitated. I wanted to know more. I
had
to know more—but first I had to get Norbert out of here. “Okay,” I said to the man in what I hoped was a soothing voice. “I'll go look for the key.”

He moved the torch in my direction, and this time we were close enough that I could see his face clearly. Patches of red whiskers dotted his skin. His bloodshot eyes bounced around the room, never seeming to fix on anything. “We will find the key! The key will lead us to the bridge! The armies will come—”

“I called the police,” I shouted, just to shut him up. I raised my iron dagger again and tried to stop my voice from trembling. “They're on their way and we're just kids, so if you want a prayer of not getting locked up for the rest of your life, you'll back up and let us go.”

The man surged forward, lowering his huge face right in front of mine. His breath was hot and smelled like cooking meat. “The world is splintering,” he growled. “We won't stay out forever. Some of us are already here. Like me. Like her.” He paused, sniffing at the air again. I tensed to make a run for it. “Her gold.” He snarled, spittle flecking his curled lips. “You have her gold!”

Gold. The lump of gold in my pocket. Holy crap mother of God, he could freaking smell the freaking gold in my freaking pocket
. . .

No time to wonder how or why. My cousin and I were trapped in the presence of a muscled giant who—best-case scenario—was off-balance. A guy with a voice like a beast and a hair trigger.

I reached into my pocket for the circular gold lump. I held it level with the man's face. “You want this? Here you go, right here. Her gold.”

The man's eyes tried to focus. I waved it around. He lurched forward, grabbing at it.

I whirled and threw the gold as hard as I could. It clinked against the far wall.

I spun back to the man. “Go get it,” I told him. Clutching the iron dagger so hard that it cut into my skin, I darted to one side, pulling Norbert with me.

It was a super great escape plan, and it totally should have worked, except that the giant heaved first toward the gold, then back to block us. He came to a complete stop, staring at us with wide, angry, bloodshot eyes. He threw his head back and—there's really no other word for it—
howled
up into the darkness. The sound echoed back down to the floor where we stood. I felt Norbert crowd close behind me, his body sticky hot against mine.

“The Abomination!” The man's voice was so loud it hurt my eardrums. “Blood of the seventh! The Abomination is near!”

And then he went apeshit crazy, waving his torch around and shrieking.

I gave Norbert a hard yank toward the exit. The man whipped around with a speed that shouldn't have been possible for his size. He hauled back and hurled his torch at us. I ducked, pulling Norbert down with me, and the torch flew over our heads. It hit something in the corner—a pile of debris—which burst into flames. Norbert and I screamed and careened away from it as the man charged toward us.

The whole world was fire and smoke and the thundering sound of the man's footsteps. I launched myself between him and Norbert, flung my hands up in the air, and just like outside Lilith's Bed, I
pushed
. Something erupted from me—an energy, a force, a wall of strength larger and stronger than the fire burning around us—and I felt it slam into him. He was hurled backward, crashing into the edge of the doorway. Norbert screamed again as the wooden doorframe cracked. The top half came loose, already smoking from the fire, and fell onto the man. It knocked him off his feet and pinned him to the floor, holding him there as the flames leapt to his body.

The man's screams mixed with Norbert's, and I tried to scream too, except I had gone weak, and my voice didn't work, and my legs wouldn't hold me up. I might have fallen, but my cousin caught me and dragged me toward the opening. As the flames jumped even higher, they illuminated something in the corner, beyond the debris. Something that had been previously hidden by the darkness.

No, not
something
.
Someone.

Huddled in confusion and terror was the person whose face had haunted my every waking minute for the last few days:

Todd Harmon.

*

Sirens had already begun
to pierce the air when Norbert and I emerged onto the smoldering balcony, a half-conscious Todd Harmon supported between us. We coughed, watery eyed, and staggered through the smoke pouring from the broken entrance at our backs. The heat grew in intensity, pushing us forward, trapping us against the railing. I looked down and relief washed through me.

Below were a pack of firefighters and cops. “They're up there!” one of them yelled.

I leaned over the edge, trying to scream that there was still someone inside. Instead I nearly puked up a lung.

“Go, go!” Norbert choked out.

I realized that he was trying to get me to jump over the side onto a trampoline below. No way. I'd go last. I dragged Todd Harmon toward the edge. Embers whizzed out of the building, landing like tiny red darts all around us as Norbert and I hefted Todd up and over the railing.
There he goes
. . .

The fall didn't look so bad. Not far at all. It looked almost
pleasant
. Todd landed smack in the middle of the trampoline. Firefighters cleared him off of it in a flash and stared back up at us, waving us to jump. “You go,” I instructed Norbert between wheezes.

He looked like he was going to argue, but I gave him a hard shove and he obeyed. When he was safely on the ground, I followed. My insides heaved as I dropped, weightless, and I felt only a gentle smack on my back when I landed. A firefighter gave me her hand to help me to the ground. And I was coughing again . . .

When I saw Sky.

He appeared out of nowhere at a dead run and launched himself straight at me, flinging his arms around my body and swinging me off my feet before I could stop him—or even remember that I wanted to stop him.

“Thank God, thank God, thank God,” he kept saying into my hair.

Maybe I would have remembered his lies and pulled away from him. Or maybe I would have been too dizzy and exhausted to make a fuss. I'll never know because I didn't get a chance to make a decision. Before I could say a word or take a stand, the building exploded.

Twenty-Four

Ambulance rides are
never fun, but a hospital is all things I hate: sterile to the point of anal, everything placed at right angles to everything else, riddled with unhelpful employees using inscrutable medical terminology. Worse yet, this particular hospital was full of sanctimonious cops.

I experienced the great joy of being lectured by one of them about the dangers of exploring abandoned buildings.

His name was Officer Simon (his cop badge was very shiny, so his name was hard to miss). He was young, maybe five years older than me, with round red cheeks and blue eyes that blinked a lot.

“Maybe you think this is a game
. . .
” Officer Simon was saying.

I pretended to listen as we stood near the third-floor nurses' station, waiting for updates on the conditions of Todd Harmon (smoke inhalation), Norbert Cade (mild concussion), and Sky Ramsey (general assholery—at least as far as I was concerned). It was the first time I'd been allowed out of bed.

“But you should consider any property with which you are not personally familiar to be inherently dangerous.”

“I'm sorry.” I hoped my apology would put an end to the harangue so I could go check up on Sky. And then perhaps murder him. A few minutes earlier, I'd caught a glimpse of him—up and about and out of his hospital room—but somehow he had managed to duck away, leaving me to take the brunt of Officer Simon's speechifying.

“Methamphetamine labs contain poisonous and flammable materials,” Officer Simon informed me. “That is why criminals often do their cooking in abandoned houses. You kids are lucky you got out of there before it blew up. You could have been killed. At the very least, you were illegally trespassing.”

Leave it to Misty to pick a meth lab as a place to live. Or maybe that was
why
she had picked it. So she could blow the place up and make a quick getaway. The irony was almost tragic: she herself had been reduced to ashes before she could torch her “lair.”

Still, I bristled. “We were trying to help someone.”

Officer Simon glanced across the waiting area. I followed his pitying eyes to an open recovery room, where Todd Harmon lay in bed, gazing up at Corabelle. She was perched beside him, her back to us, holding his hand. As we watched, she leaned over and nuzzled against his neck.

I had caught sight of her face when she'd sprinted through on her arrival not long ago. She had looked awful. Nothing but stringy hair and smeared makeup and sagging clothes. She still may have been a rank bitch to me, but there was one thing I
could
say about Corabelle LaCaze: she wasn't a liar. She really
had
wanted her boyfriend back.

Maybe it was the Todd-Corabelle snuggle fest, but Officer Simon softened. “Well, you did one thing right today, miss.”

He gave me a nod and walked away, adjusting his belt as he went. He'd barely disappeared around the corner when Sky appeared behind me. He grabbed my upper arm, pulling me to face him. “I have to tell you something,” he said. His voice was low and urgent.

I yanked myself backward, out of his grasp. “Don't touch me.”

Yes, I needed to tell him what a horrible person he was, that he had turned my feelings into a joke, and that he'd made me a pawn in his sick game. But I needed to wait. If I said those words out loud right then, I might start crying. So instead, I whirled away and marched across the waiting area toward Norbert's room. Allowed or not, I was going to visit him.

When I came in, he was sitting up in bed. His head was wrapped with a thick bandage. There was a bloodstain on it. “I'm fine,” he told me, reading a look I wished I'd hidden. “Head wounds bleed a lot. It's nothing. Don't freak out.”

I forced a smile. “The doctors say you have a mild concussion,” I told him. “You'll get discharged any time now.”

Sky burst in behind me. “You guys have to listen,” he said. “Where's—”

“Shut up!” I turned around with a snarl. “This is family only. Stay away from me and my cousin.”

Sky gaped at me. “What's going on? I'm trying to help you! Everything I do is to help you!”

“Oh, really?” I shouted back. “You know what was super
helpful
? When you snuck my obituary into my locker! That was wildly helpful! I'm so grateful for your wonderful, generous
help
!” I stopped, breathing hard, knowing my face was flushed, hoping against hope that the floodgates behind my eyes wouldn't burst in front of Sky-the-Liar.

“That was
you
?” said Norbert weakly.

Sky blinked at him, then at me. He had no response.

“Why were you trying to scare me?” I asked. “I didn't even
know
you! Did someone at school put you up to it?”

“No!”

“Oh, so it was just fun to terrorize the daughter of your hero?”

“Jillian, stop.” Sky grabbed me by the arms. I tried to shake away from him but he hung on. “I will explain everything, I promise, but right now we have a bigger problem than your obituary.” He let go of me and held up a cell phone.

Correction:
my
cell phone. The shattered screen was a dead giveaway.

“Give it back!” I grabbed at it, but Sky held it out of my reach. “How did you get that?”

“I took it from your pocket outside Misty's lair.”

“Ballsy,” said Norbert.

Of course. I remembered how Sky had thrown his arms around me right before the building exploded. It hadn't been to save me; it had been to rob me. I felt like there was a thick rubber band squeezing the blood out of my heart. “So you're a liar
and
a thief.”

“No! I'm a
. . .
” Sky struggled for the right word. “Detective. Researcher. Historian.”

“Dick.”

“Call me whatever you want, but I needed to talk to your father.”

It always comes back to my father.

I shrunk away from him, backing toward Norbert's bed. “I
had
to steal your phone,” Sky went on. “I knew
you wouldn't give it to me. The only reason I didn't tell you
until now is because it was out of juice, so I had to go plug it in. Your dad is going to send a file. It should be here any second.”

I glanced at Norbert. “I can't do this anymore,” I told him. “I'll call you later. I'm getting a cab.”

“Hold on.” Norbert leaned forward and caught my wrist. “What did Uncle Lewis say? Jillian, wait.”

I waited, but only because my cousin had a mild concussion and I thought maybe I should be sweet to him. He let go.

Sky waved my stolen phone at me. “Dr. Cade said to tell you in no uncertain terms that you are
not
to go succubus hunting. They are extremely dangerous because of their addiction.”

Norbert frowned. “
Their
addiction? I thought men got addicted to
them
?”

“It goes both ways.” Sky's words came quickly. “Jillian, that's what Dr. Cade said. Succubi can go through life just being generally beautiful and feeding off the desire of random men who pass by, but what really satisfies a succubus is establishing a mutual addiction. It's like the relationship between bees and flowers. Bees get nectar from flowers, and at the same time, help them pollinate.”

I shook my head. I couldn't listen to this. Not now.

“So which one is helping the other pollinate?” my cousin asked.

“Both. Succubi have black, forked tongues.” Sky paused for a split second to shoot me a knowing look. “They're tipped with tiny fangs. When a succubus kisses a man, she can inject her poison—her drug—into his mouth. After that, he's gone. He thinks he loves her so much that he'll die if they're not together.”

I shook my head again, edging toward the door. “That doesn't make any sense. What is the succubus addicted to?”

“Desire,” said Sky.

I looked over at Norbert. He nodded slowly, brow furrowed under his bandage, as if putting the pieces together. “So that's what happened to Misty. She was addicted to Todd's desire.”

“Right,” Sky told him. “Once a succubus injects a man, his addiction manifests as desire, and the succubus
needs
that particular man's desire. They're imprinted on each other. If she can't get it, she loses her beauty and her power. Eventually, she goes crazy and dies.”

I wanted to leave. No, I wanted to slap him, then leave. But my mind was spinning, flashing back to Lilith's Bed, to the rage in Misty's face when she barked that Todd Harmon belonged to
her
. “So Misty picked Todd and stuck her forked tongue in his mouth,” I said. “He got addicted to her, and she got addicted to him. That's why he ditched his girlfriend and his roommates and his job? So he could follow a succubus to South LA where they could both be all addicty with each other?”

My phone vibrated. I took the opportunity to snatch it out of Sky's hand. “Allow me,” I told him, swiping at the cracked screen. First thing I needed to do after kicking Sky's ass and getting paid: buy a new phone.

There it was: an email from my father.

“What is it?” asked Norbert.

“The subject says
research notes
,” I told him.

“Read it out loud,” Sky said. He blocked my exit. “Please.”

I didn't want him listening to my father's words, but I also thought reading the email out loud would speed things up, so I touched the message. It was long. I took a deep breath and read:
“Succubi are highly territorial loners. Each one behaves as a queen bee who will tolerate no rivals. In cities, the size of a domain can be up to a dozen miles in diameter, as the succubi are few and far between. Her drones are all human: female supplicants and the men upon whom she feeds. The only reason she will venture beyond her own boundaries is to take a rival down. Stealing the imprinted man of another succubus will cripple the succubus from whom he is stolen. This is why a succubus will often imprint a man and feed off him for a while, but then kill him herself before he can be stolen by another.”

The message ended there. Of course there wasn't even a
Love, Dad
. This was a research file.

I was silent. So were Sky and Norbert. Maybe they were thinking the same thing I was: there
was
something here, a connection to all of this madness. But the puzzle didn't seem to be complete.

Sky's eyes locked on mine. “It's got to be ten miles from Misty's lair in Leimert Park to where she hung out in Little Tokyo.”

“Neither is anywhere near the Valley,” I said.

And that's when the pieces finally clicked together. That's when it took shape: the whole picture. That's when the horror started rising inside me.

“It's out of her domain,” said Sky.

“There's only one reason she would have been in the Valley,” Norbert added. His voice had gone thin and tight. “To take down a rival. To steal a man.”

Sky nodded. “Not just any man. An imprinted man.”

I wanted to contribute to the conversation, but words wouldn't come out. My gaze flew back to Norbert as he spoke:

“Misty grabbed Todd Harmon from another succubus.”

I sucked in a breath. The burst of oxygen kicked my brain into gear. When I spoke, my voice sounded hollow in my ears. “A succubus named Corabelle LaCaze.”

That's when we heard the beeping.