The Demon Hunter (15 page)

Oliver glared back at him.

“Sorry!” Dean pleaded. “It's habit!”

“Tsk tsk, Oliver,” Lythia said. “Why would you come here? Didn't I tell you that I was going to save you?”

Oliver tried desperately to find a response.

“Yeah, right,” Emalie spat.

“Quiet, blood bag,” Lythia snapped. “Poor Oliver. You probably think you're doing the right thing, trying to save big brother. But you don't know what he was really up to.”

“I don't care,” Oliver shot back. “I'm not going to believe anything you say.”

Lythia smiled. Her teeth were freshly coated in magenta glitter that matched her hair. “Have it your way, but it doesn't matter. Tyrus and my father are here, and they'll be dealing with Bane quite permanently.”

“Why are you doing this?” Oliver asked.

“Not telling,” Lythia said. “Minion!”

“Yes, Master.…” Dean mumbled.

“Dean—” Oliver began. Lythia must have been too strong for the charm.

“It's no use, Oliver,” Lythia purred. “He's my toy, not yours. Take the blood bag here and throw her in the cell.”

Dean grabbed Emalie.

“Dean, stop!” Emalie shouted.

Lythia stepped toward the cage. “Let's give the poor kitty boy one last snack.”

Oliver watched in horror. The necklace must not have been strong enough. He lunged at Lythia, slamming into her. They stumbled across the room and ended up face-to-face against the wall.

“See, Oliver?” Lythia murmured, her face inches from his and her eyes blazing in lavender glow. “I knew you liked me.”

“Shut UP!” Oliver yelled, but he still felt a second of that usual foggy-headedness that Lythia and her demon caused.

That was all Lythia needed. She hurled him across the room and he crashed into the wall, his shoulder exploding in pain as he crumpled to the floor atop the unconscious zombie.

Lythia brushed herself off and typed on a small keypad on the cell. The locks clicked open. The jaguar turned and crouched, hissing, ears back.

“All right, kitty,” said Lythia. “Time for a big treat.” She glanced back at Dean, who had Emalie by the arms. “Excellent.” She pushed open the cell door and turned to grab Emalie. “Well done, Min—”

Dean's fist hurtled through the air. It caught Lythia in the temple, and her whole body was thrown, rocketing backward into the cell, where she slumped over, eyes closed.

“I'm not your minion,” Dean muttered, letting go of Emalie as he did so.

Oliver staggered to his feet. Dean reached out a hand to right him. “Nice,” Oliver mumbled, rubbing his shoulder.

“That felt good,” Dean agreed.

Oliver turned to the cage. “Bane,” he called.

The jaguar growled menacingly.

“Bane, I know you hear me. We have to get you out of here—”

The jaguar lunged, knocking Oliver to the floor and roaring in his face.

“Bane! You have to get control!” Oliver shouted desperately.

“He can't,” said Dean. He ducked into the cage and rooted through Lythia's pockets. “The Nagual is too strong. Here.” He stood, holding a small ebony statue. It had a tiny feline body and an oversized, demonic head, with an angry face of wild eyes and gritted teeth. “It's the totem that controls the Nagual. Obey!” he shouted.

The jaguar whipped its head around, hissing at Dean, but backed off of Oliver.

Dean moved to the door. “Come on, kitty.” He started down the hall. The jaguar slunk out of the room after him.

Oliver turned to Emalie. “Ready—” he began, only to find Emalie reaching into her bag and producing her wooden stake, whittled from a hammer handle. She started toward Lythia, her eyes cold.

Chapter 11

The Lair of the Nagual

“WAIT!” OLIVER GRABBED EMALIE'S
arm.

She shot an icy glare at him. “What?” She tried to shake her arm free, but Oliver held her firmly.

“You can't,” he said, frowning. “It will destroy Dean.”

Emalie lowered the stake reluctantly. “But I
really
don't like her.”

“Neither do I. Come on.”

Emalie sighed but let Oliver pull her back out. As they left the cell, she slammed the door shut. Lythia didn't stir.

They ran down the hall, following the scent of Dean and the jaguar. The string of lightbulbs ended, and they ran on through darkness. The air grew wet and cool.

“This way,” a voice called from beside them.

Oliver and Emalie halted, finding Dean and the jaguar in a small side passage. “I remember going this way,” said Dean, leading on. “When I was doing something for Lythia. I think it's a way out.”

Oliver glanced over his shoulder. “We're not going to have long before Lythia comes to, or Tyrus comes after us. We've got to free Bane.”

Dean hurried ahead, the jaguar trotting at his heels. “This will work.”

Moments later they reached the tunnel's end. A metal ladder led up to a wooden trapdoor.

“Head up there and get things ready. Then I'll call him up.”

Oliver and Emalie climbed, pushed open the trapdoor, and emerged in a dark, cobwebbed basement with a dirt floor. Faint evening light shone through small, grimy windows.

Emalie pulled a glass bottle from her bag and began pouring a circle of gypsum sand on the ground, right beside the trapdoor. She moved away from it and sat. “That's for the jaguar,” she said. She traded the sand bag for a weathered gray coin: the memory rite that she'd used to enter Oliver's mind back in the winter. “Put that in the circle,” she said.

“What memory are we going into?” Oliver asked, confused.

“I don't know,” said Emalie. “One of Bane's … whichever one we're drawn to. The memory rite is the only way I know to bring you guys into his head with me. Désirée made it sound like we were all supposed to go in.”

“Yeah,” Oliver agreed. “But Bane's inside an animal. Do you think it will even work?”

“You're always worrying,” Emalie said with a smile, but also with less of her bravado than before.

Oliver placed the rite in the sand circle, then turned to see Emalie dabbing small drops of liquid from a silver flask onto her wrists. She put out a hand. Oliver took it. Their other two hands were outstretched for Dean.

“Okay!” Emalie called.

Dean leaped up out of the trapdoor and sat down beside them, grabbing their hands. “Sasha, come!” he called.

The jaguar lunged up out of the hole, landing in the circle. It looked around, and hissed.

Then there was a rush of darkness.

Oliver wasn't sure what he'd been expecting, maybe something like the trip into
his
memory, where they'd ended up in a version of his school.

Instead, they found themselves gazing out at the night skyline of Seattle, its lights sparkling and refracted by raindrops. Clouds rushed across the building tops. Rain pelted their faces.

Oliver had a moment of panic—they seemed to be in midair—but then looked down to find his feet planted on a carpeted floor. Teeth of broken glass jutted up just beyond his toes. They stood before a floor-to-ceiling window that had been smashed, high up in a downtown building.

Sirens wailed in the distance. The street far below glittered with police lights.

“Where are we?” Dean asked.

Emalie and Dean were on either side of Oliver, looking around and trying to figure out their surroundings. More than just this window had been destroyed. The entire wall in either direction had been blown apart. Only twisted metal beams and glass shards remained. Oliver had already counted the rows of windows across the street and guessed that they were on the twenty-third floor.

“Whoa,” Emalie gasped. She'd turned around.

Oliver did the same. They were standing in what might have once been an office, only most of the walls were gone, the furniture charred, splintered, melted. Everything was dark except for the occasional electric spark from a stray wire. Tiny pockets of flame flickered here and there.

“This must have been some party,” Dean commented dryly.

Emalie started into the devastation. Oliver and Dean followed.

They picked their way down a long, destroyed hallway littered with debris. With each step deeper into the building, the air grew warmer and more humid. Emalie reached out to the blackened wall and touched a long vine of thick green leaves.

“What's with that?” Dean asked.

“This is what Désirée meant,” said Emalie. “We're in Bane's mind, but we're in the jaguar's, too.” As they walked, the leafy vines increased, winding through the blasted walls, twisting across the floor. Oliver heard a sound like crickets, and a bird call.

The hallway ended and the three stopped. Before them was an enormous chamber. It seemed as if the building had been hollowed out for five floors, up to the triangular roof, where large skylights had smashed and now allowed a light rain to fall inside. Three levels of balconies ringed the space, ornately decorated like those in a fancy theater, but large sections had collapsed or hung cockeyed from the explosion. All the windows were blown out. There was an enormous fountain on the floor, buried in rubble.

Atop all of this were coils of slithering vines. Thick trees snaked up the walls. Birds called from the rafters. A small waterfall cascaded down one of the collapsed balconies, creating a tropical pool lined with flowers among the concrete debris.

“Where are we?” Dean asked.

“I don't know,” said Oliver. But the place did seem somehow familiar to him.

“Charles!” Oliver whirled to see Phlox standing up from the wreckage, throwing aside a large piece of concrete. She was dressed in a formal black gown, her hair up, but covered in dust.

“She's part of Bane's memory,” Emalie whispered.

“Phlox.” Sebastian appeared, clambering over the wreckage on one of the balconies. He had Tyrus over his shoulder. Both their tuxedoes were singed and torn. Sebastian leaped down to the floor, laying Tyrus on a collapsed table. “Where is he?”

“I don't know …” Phlox stumbled about, digging through the rubble. “Charles!”

“I remember this,” Oliver whispered, even though the people in Bane's memory wouldn't have heard him. “I remember my parents coming home from this night. It was awhile ago … something like fifteen human years, give or take, and … I know this building. Of course, the twenty-third floor. My parents and Bane came. It was before he got his demon.”

“So you're not in this memory?” Emalie asked.

“No, I was still too young to attend the ball.”

“The ball?”

“The Darkling Ball,” Oliver explained, “for the Festival of Waning Sun.”

“Isn't that the thing that's coming up next month, for you?” said Dean. “Where you're going to get all powered up by that demon lady?”

“Vyette,” said Oliver. “Yeah.”

“Here he is!” Sebastian shouted in the memory. Oliver saw him digging into the rubble and pulling Bane free. Bane was also dressed formally, but unconscious and badly wounded. He looked so young.

“That's right,” said Oliver, remembering. “Bane was at the doctor for, like, weeks after this. He got hurt bad.”

“What happened to this place?”

“There was an explosion,” said Oliver. “I don't think my parents told me exactly what happened—”

“I found Ravonovich!” They looked up to see Leah calling down from one of the balconies. “He—” But Leah couldn't finish. Suddenly, thick vines wrapped around her and sucked her down into the rubble.

“Um …” Dean began.

There was a great slithering sound, and Sebastian and Phlox were wrapped in vines as well. They didn't protest, but rather froze in place as they were pulled down into the wreckage because, Oliver guessed, the vines weren't part of Bane's memory. Tyrus was dragged out of sight as well.

Bane remained lying there, out cold.

“He changed,” said Emalie.

Oliver saw that Bane had morphed into his current self. The tuxedo had been replaced by his black jeans and a tight T-shirt. Green stripes appeared in his hair.

“What just happened?” asked Dean.

A terrible, shredding hiss tore through the silence. “I think that did,” said Emalie. Oliver and Dean followed her gaze into the dark shadows on the far end of the chamber. Two fiery orange eyes lit in the darkness. There was a scraping sound, like claws on stone, and suddenly a smoky black form lunged, landing in front of them.

“So, that's probably the Nagual,” guessed Oliver.

The creature was ten feet tall, standing upright on thick hind legs. Its face was feline as well, but also covered in spikes like a
vampyr
demon. Its body was a cross between a giant cat and a human, yet its features were hard to make out. It seemed to be composed of smoke, except for its huge claws and jaws, which looked very solid and lethal. It unleashed a grating, deafening cry.

“Time for these,” said Oliver, and pulled out his jaguar statue. Emalie did the same.

“What are those?” asked Dean.

“Now,” said Oliver, and the two hurled the statues against the ground. They exploded into jets of fog, which slipped up to their hands and formed the obsidian-studded Aztec blades.

“Hey!” Dean whined, eyes wide. “Why don't
I
get a sword?”

“Sorry,” said Oliver.

Seeing these, the Nagual howled viciously.

“You might be glad you don't have one,” said Emalie nervously.

The Nagual hurled itself forward.

The three scattered. Oliver dove, slashing with his blade as he did. The sword sunk deep into the smoky torso of the creature—but slipped right through. The Nagual's body rippled in its wake and re-formed.

“I don't think the swords work!” Oliver shouted, and then was slammed in the back by the creature's enormous paw. Its claws tore at his skin.