Devoted

by Hilary Duff

  Thanks to my parents’ international lifestyle, I’d traveled the world. I’d spent countless hours in the New York subways, the Metros of D.C., Tokyo, and Paris, and the London Tube. Every one was an underground city, teeming with commuters, buskers, and vendors; roaring with the sound of trains, conversation, and countless clicking and stomping footsteps; bright with lights and the colors of posters, newsstand magazines, and the strewn detritus of wrappers, pocket change, and other trash.

  Here there was nothing. The bones were there—the shapes that were so familiar to me from riding in those other undergrounds—but it was deathly silent and empty. I felt like an archaeologist visiting the site of an ancient community, wiped out by some horrible disaster.

  I felt that, but I knew it wasn’t accurate. From my reading, I knew this place hadn’t been finished, much less used. Yet here it was, a subterranean world lurking just beneath the city’s surface. And most of the population walking above had no idea.

  “Makes you want to believe in ghosts, doesn’t it?”

  I jumped at the sound of Ben’s voice. It echoed over and over through the cavern as he settled next to me on the step, his own flashlight adding its glow to mine.

  “We should keep our voices down,” I whispered. Even my whisper echoed, an indistinct susurration like a million hissing snakes. “We don’t know how far into the tunnels we’ll find them. We don’t want to warn them we’re coming. We want to slip in, find Sage or what he wanted us to find, and slip back out.”

  Ben nodded. He rose but waited for me to do the same and lead the way. The message was clear: He was happy to help, but this was my rescue mission.

  I got up and walked down the second flight of stairs. Once again I was glad Ben had thought to bring the sweatshirts. Even though mine was oversize and thick, I felt the chill of the catacombs.

  If the urban legends centered around a spot two miles away, we could have a long walk before we saw any sign of the CV’s lair. The platform on which we stood extended for another thirty feet. To go farther, we’d need to climb down into one of the tunnels that would have held the subway tracks. I walked to one of them, and found it filled with large plastic tubing.

  “The water main,” Ben said. “It runs through the subway on this track.”

  “So it could give us some cover if we need it,” I said.

  I shone my flashlight along the side of the water main to find a layer of watery muck. The main might give us cover, but wading through the muck would take much longer. And much as the main could help hide us, it also took up so much of the tunnel that we could be trapped if we hit a narrower section.

  “We’ll use the other tunnel,” I decided.

  Ben followed me across the platform to the other track, and I shone the light down to the floor, about five feet below—nowhere near the kind of leap we had to make earlier from the road.

  “Hop down. I’ll light your way. You’re wearing your gloves, right?”

  I couldn’t help it, but this time he didn’t act offended. He held up his gloved hands, waggling them in front of his face, then crouched and leaped down. He shone his flashlight at my feet so I could see as well. I hopped down, and this time I stayed on my feet.

  “Thanks,” I said, shining my flashlight so it glowed on Ben’s face. He had a huge, loopy grin that made it hard not to laugh out loud.

  “What?” I asked.

  “It’s pretty cool. We’re down on the tracks. Haven’t you ever wondered what it would be like to be down on the tracks?”

  I totally had—I knew exactly what he meant. I kind of think it’s impossible to stand on a subway platform and not wonder what it would be like to end up down on the tracks. Usually it’s a sick thrill of a feeling, like looking out over the rail of a high balcony and wondering what it would feel like to fall. You don’t want to experience it, but you can’t help thinking about it. Now here we were. And we were perfectly safe . . . at least perfectly safe in terms of speeding trains. Safe from evil groups out to destroy us and the man I loved? Probably not so much.

  Without thinking, I pulled out my phone to check GPS and get a sense of our position, but of course I had no service in the catacombs.

  “That way,” Ben said. He had pulled out the compass and was checking its glowing dial. “If we follow the tunnel that way, it’ll take us to Race Street.”

  I nodded and started to walk.

  “Clea,” Ben said. “Watch out for the third rail.”

  I rolled my eyes and continued walking. The tunnel floor was at least twenty feet wide, and very flat, so walking was easy. While there was no electrified third rail, parallel wood beams that would have held the two main rails for the subway cars ran the entire length of the tunnels. Ben and I fell into step on either side of one of these.

  The path felt eerier once we left the “station” and moved into the tunnel. While the station had felt familiar but vacant, this was an area where people were never meant to stand. The concrete walls arched all around us now. It was like a massive tomb, and I had the unsettling and completely irrational feeling that we’d reach a dead end, and the way back would somehow seal itself up, trapping us forever.

  “Here,” Ben said, handing me an energy bar from his backpack.

  I hadn’t even realized I was hungry, but the second I saw the bar, I was ravenous. My stomach growled to prove it, and the sound purred through the tunnel. Ben smiled.

  “Thanks,” I said, opening the bar. It was a Clif Bar, Blueberry Crisp flavor, my favorite choice whenever I go rock climbing. I adjusted my flashlight so Ben’s face was illuminated by the edge of its glow, but he was moving forward again, munching on his own bar.

  He knew me so well. Even better than Sage, in some ways. He knew details—like my favorite brand of energy bar, my favorite tea, my favorite place to sit on an airplane, and a million other favorites. They were the kinds of things anyone who spent enough time around me would know, if they cared enough to pay attention, and Ben had. Sage wouldn’t know any of those details, but he knew me. He knew my darkest places and deepest flaws, and he loved me not despite them but for them.

  It drew me in deeper than Ben’s most detailed list of Clea Raymond trivia ever could.

  I trained my flashlight back on the tunnel ahead. The darkness was so thick, it had weight and body. Ben and I were twin lighthouses, slicing through the inky blackness. With no landmarks, no change in the scenery, and no sound but the soft echo of our own feet and the dull white noise of the world just above, time slowed to a crawl. It was difficult to believe we were moving. We hadn’t gone far—the entire length of the tunnel was two miles, and we hadn’t even covered a quarter of that yet—but the near complete lack of sensory input left me quickly exhausted.

  I turned my mind’s eye to Sage. I let myself feel his arms around me as they had been in the dream-that-wasn’t-a-dream. I breathed deeply, remembering his scent. He had left a sign for me to come here, and I needed to stay strong and alert for him.

  Then I heard a low, gravelly laugh, and my blood ran cold.

  I spun to Ben, nearly blinding him with my light, but I had to see his face—had he heard what I’d heard?

  He had. I could see it in his eyes, wild now and darting around the darkened shaft.

  Then his eyes met mine. He gave a pointed stare and nod, then turned off his flashlight.

  I understood. I did the same.

  Without even realizing I was doing it, I took sideways steps toward Ben. He must have been doing the same, because I quickly felt him next to me.

  The laughter came again, female, but harsh and raspy. Its echo raced up and down the tunnel so we couldn’t tell where it was coming from.

  Everything was suddenly very real. A chill ran up my spine and I squeezed Ben’s hand, hard. I hadn’t even realized I was holding it, and now it was the only thing keeping me from screaming out loud.

  Ben pulled me toward the wall. We were too exposed in the middle of the tunnel. With the wall as our guide we coul
d keep moving forward, and before long we’d be out of this section of tunnel and in another open platform area.

  I pressed my back against the wall . . . and felt something cold and wet seep into my hair. I jumped away and reached up to feel it, letting go of Ben’s hand as I did. The goop was thick and sticky, and I had a horrible certainty that if I turned on my flashlight, I’d find my hand full of blood.

  Then the laughter came back . . . along with scratching, like a wild animal clawing at the cement walls. But the scratching was too loud—the animal would have to be a dragon, a giant beast raking its talons from ceiling to floor.

  I had to turn on my flashlight and see, but before I could, I felt a whoosh of air as something shot by me, slapping the flashlight out of my hand as it went.

  “Ben!” I screamed.

  I heard a clatter and knew the flashlight had been knocked out of his hands as well.

  I reached for my backpack—we had more flashlights inside—but I was yanked backward as the pack itself was ripped from my back. I fought against the disorienting darkness and remembered my Krav Maga, throwing an elbow strike behind me, but I hit nothing. Whoever had been there was already gone. I kicked and punched into the darkness, trying to aim for anything I heard, but the echoing catacombs threw me off. I grew more and more frantic as each blow found nothingness.

  Finally one of my kicks made contact.

  “UGH!”

  Shit. I’d hit Ben.

  “Ben! Are you okay?”

  I staggered blindly forward until I found him. He was hunched over, gasping for breath.

  “Ben, I’m so sorry. . . .”

  Then I screamed as something landed on my face.

  And started crawling around.

  Several somethings.

  They were on my hands, too. Crawling up my sleeves.

  My hands flew to my face and I clawed at it, pulling away . . . spiders. They were spiders, crawling on my face, crawling toward my mouth. . . .

  I was losing it. I was going to be sick. I brushed frantically at my face, my hands, my body. I yanked off my sweatshirt and shook it out, then wiped it over myself, trying to brush the spiders away.

  Then the laughter started again. More of it than before, bouncing around from every direction. High-pitched, insane giggles mixed with the deep rumbling sound we’d heard before.

  It was too much. The darkness, the goo, the invisible attackers, the spiders . . . my nerves were on overload, and my body was exhausted from punching and kicking into the nothingness. I could feel myself shutting down. I could imagine myself curling up on the ground and falling asleep, hoping to wake up in my own bed, with this just being a terrible nightmare.

  My knees started giving way . . . until I heard the pitter-patter of tiny clawed feet and felt a large lump clamber over my foot, a thick rope tail slipping under the cuff of my jeans to tickle my ankle.

  A rat.

  I kicked it away and heard the sick thud as it smacked against the wall . . . just seconds before I heard a much more horrible sound coming from Ben.

  He was screaming, as if he were in agonizing pain.

  “Ben? Ben?”

  A gunshot.

  Then silence.

  “BEN!”

  I staggered blindly around the tunnel, reaching out for him. Where was he? What happened? Was he alive?

  Rough arms grabbed me from behind, and before I could kick back at them, someone else pulled a rope around my legs, tying them tightly together. I struggled, but within moments my wrists were tied as well, my arms held behind my back.

  “Hello, Clea Raymond. Remember me?”

  I did, and I didn’t need to see him to know it. His thick European accent and the hideous stench of his breath gave him away. He was the man who had attacked Ben and me in Brazil. The man who’d have kidnapped us had Sage not gotten in his way.

  The man clicked on his flashlight—my flashlight—and shone it up at his face. I could see his black, rotten teeth, his sunken cheeks, his pustule-covered skin, and the tattoo across his throat: a skull with fire in its eye sockets, branded “CV” for Cursed Vengeance.

  “What did you do with Ben?” I asked through gritted teeth.

  He smiled his putrid smile.

  But before he could say anything, twin beams of brightness snapped to life several feet in front of us.

  Headlights. From what looked like a Hummer. After so much darkness, my eyes had trouble adjusting to the blinding lights pointed straight at us. What I could see was a silhouette standing just in front of the car, legs spread wide, hands on its hips. Several large men with guns stood in a V formation, flanking the vehicle and spreading out from its nexus. I could see at least ten, but I could tell there were more, just out of reach of the light.

  “You shouldn’t be asking questions right now,” the silhouette in front of the Hummer said. She had a woman’s voice, but there was nothing feminine in its tone. “What you want to do is give me one reason I shouldn’t kill you right now.”

  thirteen

  * * *

  “CLEA,” BEN CROAKED.

  I spun around. It was dark where I stood, but there was enough headlight glow for me to see Ben, three feet away. He was tied up like I was, and it looked like he’d just managed to work a cloth gag out of his mouth so he could speak. He didn’t look good, but he didn’t look like someone who’d just been shot.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  “Of course he’s okay,” the woman in silhouette said. “What did you think we’d do, shoot him?”

  “I’d shoot him,” Rot-Mouth said, leaning close to my face. “I’ll shoot him right now.” He pulled a pistol from his belt and pointed it at Ben.

  “Give it a rest, Damian,” the woman said. “We’re on the same side.”

  “We’re not on the same side,” I said.

  “’Course we are. We both want to find your boyfriend, right? Same side. So it’s time we had a little chat.”

  She left her position in front of the headlights to hop in the passenger seat of the Humvee. Someone else started it up and pulled it next to us. With the headlights no longer blinding us, I could see the car was a convertible, and I had a fairly clear view of the woman. She was tiny, and her ragged jeans and drab-white tank top clung to a body ripped with muscles. Her long hair grew black at the roots but was bleach blond beyond that, and was pulled into a greasy-slick ponytail. Her arms bore full sleeves of vivid tattoos—what looked like scenes of death and dismemberment. The one I could best make out was on her right bicep: a voracious wolf with bloodstained teeth disemboweling an agonized boy. The wolf’s eyes peered up from its work and glared out of the picture, as if warning anyone who looked that they’d be its next victims.

  “What are you waiting for?” she asked me. “Get in.”

  I looked down at my bound ankles.

  The woman laughed.

  “Damian, toss her in,” she said.

  Rot-Mouth treated me to a putrefying smile. “Love to.”

  I tried not to breathe as he pulled me close, crushing me into his body.

  “Jesus Christ, Damian, pick her up and dump her in the car. You’re not dancing at the fucking prom,” the woman said.

  Damian pressed me tighter into him, and I tried not to puke at the bulge in his pants that grew rock hard, then subsided.

  “Was it good for you, too?” he breathed into my ear. “’Cause it was real good for me.”

  He swept his hand under my knees, pulling me into a fireman’s hold, then climbed up and tossed me into the backseat of the car just as Ben was dropped down in the seat next to me.

  “You sure you’re okay?” I asked him again.

  The woman spun around in her seat. “Get over it. He’s fine.”

  “Where is Sage?” I shot back. “Did you bring him here?”

  “If he were here, he’d be dead, princess. We don’t have him, and we weren’t expecting you, but once we got the heads-up you were coming, we rolled out the welcome wagon. D
id you like it?”

  “Heads-up?” I looked at Ben—did she mean she saw us coming into the subway, or something else?

  The woman ignored me. “Now I’ll tell you why we’re going to work together. You’ll even get the grand tour.” She turned to the shirtless, ink-covered mountain of a driver next to her. “Go.”

  The man kicked the Hummer to life. As the car sped faster and faster, she clambered into the backseat and leaned back between Ben and me. “I’m Sloane.” She nodded to the road in front of us and grinned. “Check this out. It’s like Six Fuckin’ Flags.”

  Her grin grew wider and wider as the Hummer kept speeding up. The exhaust fumes in the closed space stung my eyes and choked me, but I wouldn’t flinch.

  “Um . . . Sloane?” Ben choked out. “We’re heading straight for . . .”

  He couldn’t even finish, but what we were heading straight for was a thick concrete wall that filled the entire tunnel.

  Sloane pulled the stub of a much-mouthed cigar from her sports bra and lit it up, sucking it in until it smoldered.

  I was calm at first. There was no way Sloane was seriously going to smash us into a wall of concrete. She’d said we were on the same side. Even if she was lying about that, would she kill herself and her driver just to get Ben and me? It made no sense.

  But the CV was filled with zealots. Making sense wasn’t a priority for them. Accomplishing what they wanted; that was their priority. And if killing Ben and me was what they wanted, they wouldn’t have a problem incurring a couple casualties. They might even enjoy it.

  “Scared yet?” Sloane asked.

  My heart was pounding now. I understood everything—luring us here had been the CV’s idea. They’d left the message on my computer, not Sage. Of course—they were the ones who could physically get to my computer; Sage was held captive. I’d been so ready to believe Sage and Amelia were working together in some supernatural way that I’d let it destroy my common sense. I should have known right away this was a trap. Sloane was lying—the CV did have Sage, and killing Ben and me was their way of breaking him before they finally destroyed him.