Three figures stood close by Kendra’s desk examining an object held between them. Kendra and Daphne looked up when they entered and rushed to help, Kendra taking Sid’s weight and Daphne Rachel’s. The third person stood stock still, his eyes on Sid.
Sid lowered himself next to Rachel on her bed and closed his eyes for a long moment. “Hello, Bruno,” he finally said.
The older man, Bruno, nodded in hello to Sid. The overhead light caught at a long-healed scar slashed down his face from eyebrow to jaw. “The vampire is dead?” He spoke with a heavy French accent and carried himself like a warrior.
Rachel felt Daphne and Kendra stare at them, waiting for an answer. Yet she wasn’t sure how to answer when she felt anything she said would be wrong. Sid reached for her hand and squeezed it then nodded at Bruno.
Bruno’s broad shoulders slumped just the slightest at that, but he recovered quickly and held a golden urn up to the light. It was etched in an ancient script, every inch of the metal marked with words. Bruno turned the urn in his hands to expose the back of it, where a jagged scar rent the vessel nearly in half. He set the urn carefully on Rachel’s desk and turned back to the group.
“The beast of old has returned. Abbadon is awoken.”
DESCENDANTS 2
EAT YOUR HEART OUT
CHAPTER 1
The beast descended in a storm of locusts. Worms crawled from the earth, and swarms of moths doused the village fires.
The village was beset, cutoff, without hope. Abbadon, the great beast, preyed on the villagers by day and night and snared them in his spiders’ webs. The valiant men fought, armed with scythes and axes. But what were the weapons of farmers and woodsmen against a greater evil? The villagers gathered, ready to face their end. But help came from the unlikeliest of sources—witches.
The bravest of the village yet living followed the witch deep into her coven’s Vale, a place no man had entered and returned alive. There they struck a bargain: Their help for their blood. It was a steep price, steeper than they knew.
Those original thirty returned to the village changed, something unheard of in the history of man. A hunter. A warrior. Born of women but with the blood of demons. They became the Descendants.
They were the first of their kind, but not the last. These volunteers passed on their gift to a single member of the new generation, each inheriting at the precise age his or her forebear did. And for more than a thousand years, the progeny of those first, frightened villagers have had the sight of witches, the healing power of vampires, the strength of giants, the blood of demons.
Yet the coven demanded payment. The witches gave of themselves and expected something in return. Though the thirty new Descendants—powerful in their infected blood—were safe, every other child of their generation became sacrifice.
It was a sacrifice the village still remembers in its roots and bones and ancient walls. But it was a worthy sacrifice. Using a spelled urn, the Descendants tied the beast Abbadon to the metal and trapped its spirit for the rest of eternity …
“Wait,” Kendra cut through Bruno’s tale.
Rachel blinked into the dorm room’s dim light. She stifled a yawn with her left hand—careful to keep her right arm immobile in its wrapping—but the movement still made her ribs pulse with a dull ache. Everything ached. Her right shoulder where the vampire Willem had bit out a chunk seared with heat; her cheek where he had raked his fingernails stung when she opened her mouth. Even her eyelids felt raw and scratchy against her eyes. And heavy, like they were possibly made of the same material as Bruno Guillory’s all-important urn. The large Frenchman was even holding it up as a prop as he paced the room and told his tale to Rachel, Kendra, fellow demon hunter Sid, and her mom, Daphne. The peculiar symbols and letters etched along the golden urn’s surface caught the light, seemed to shimmer as if alive.
“Wait,” Kendra said again. She unhooked her arms from around her knees and let her legs flop over the edge of her bed with a heavy thump. “So, like Aladdin?”
From her position leaning against the sink, Daphne Chase choked out a laugh, but covered it with a cough. Bruno frowned and ran a massive hand down the side of his face, one finger tracing the length of a scar slashed from cheek to jaw. “No, I said Abbadon.”
Kendra waved a hand through the air. “But he’s in an urn? Like, a genie in a bottle? I mean, that’s kind of nuts. A whole new world and shit.”
Bruno stared at Rachel’s best friend for a moment, his mouth opening and closing. Above, the ceiling fan made a whoosh and a rattle with every rotation, throwing spinning shadows across the walls. Bruno palmed the broken urn back and forth, a crease working between his thick eyebrows.
“I have demon blood in me?” Rachel said it out loud without even realizing. Kendra’s head shot up, and the girl poked at the gills slashed along her neck—evidence of her own half-demon lineage. “I mean,” Rachel said. She shook her head, but it only made her temples throb and the stitches along her hairline pull taut. She tried for a smile instead. “I mean, that’s totally fine. I just … didn’t know.”
Bruno sighed deeply. “Am I able to continue?”
Rachel slumped against her headboard in answer. The middle-aged Descendant had arrived in Georgia, what, a day ago? And already he was taking over. Rachel knew the Descendants still living in France were the leaders of their little band of demon hunters, but she knew it kind of like she knew statistics. It wasn’t concrete. Tenuous at best.
Statistics. Rachel wondered idly when her final grades would be in. Though, maybe she didn’t want to find out. She clenched her left hand into a fist.
Sid’s fingers inched across the space between them and squeezed Rachel’s fist. “I know,” he whispered out the side of his mouth, throwing an eye roll toward Bruno.
That pulled a small smile from Rachel, and she nearly didn’t feel the sting in her cheek. She eyed Sid. He appeared nearly as bone-tired as she felt. His normally straight back was curved with exhaustion, and the fight with Willem had left his face a mottled purple and green. And those were just the injuries she could see. She hadn’t missed the way Sid winced with every movement. Sid shifted so their knees touched, so she could feel the heat from him. A flush crawled up Rachel’s neck, and she edged away.
It was hard to believe that a little more than twenty-four hours ago, she and Sid had been fighting the very creature of which Bruno now spoke. Rachel had known something was wrong with the vampire, felt it all the way to the pit of her stomach. But that Willem had been taken over by some greater demon?
Bruno had jumped back into his story, and as much as she wanted to collapse against her pillows and forget everything that’d happened in the past day, she needed to pay attention. Or at least try to pay attention.
“Abbadon’s trapped spirit was buried in a lead coffer in consecrated ground,” Bruno said. “It was buried beneath the crypt of a church. But the church was deconsecrated and turned into a family home, and the family’s son unearthed Abbadon’s prison.” He held the urn up to the light and shook it a little, like they may have forgotten it.
“And the boy was turned into a puppy, and he made the family very happy. The end.” Sid stood with a wince he failed to hide.
Bruno frowned again. In fact, he looked like frowning was perhaps his natural state of being. “Why would Abbadon turn someone into a dog? No. He warped the child, who then killed his entire family.”
Rachel groaned. “Of course he did.”
The Frenchman opened his mouth to continue, but Daphne pushed herself away from the sink and set her face in a placid smile. “Monsieur Guillory, I know we have much to discuss. But these two have been through a lot in the last day. They heal faster than most, but they still need to sleep.”
Bruno started pacing, flipping the urn between his giant palms with increasing speed. He used words like “urgent” and “ultimate evil,” but Daphne stood her ground.
Their voices receded to a dull whine that poked at Rachel’s ears. H
er eyes wandered around her dorm room, from Kendra watching her closely to the last of her things to be packed. Her duffle leaned against her closet door and bulged with a jumble of clothes and toiletries, but mostly with weapons. Her mom had refused to pack those up until they were actually leaving Saint Etienne University in the morning to head back to Shipley on the Georgia coast.
Her gaze wandered from Sid’s back where he leaned heavily against her bedframe to the alarm clock on her nightstand. The time blinked green at her: 11:59. She kept staring until the numbers blinked anew: 12:00.
Happy birthday to me.
If you’d like to continue reading EAT YOUR HEART OUT, visit Jenny’s Amazon Author page after 3/15/14 or contact Buzz publicity at [email protected] for a reviewer ARC.
About Jenny Peterson
Jenny is a writer and editor based in Denver, CO. Reading and writing YA and new adult is her first love, and she spends an inordinate amount of time dreaming up fantastical worlds for kick-ass heroines. As you do. She splits her time as an assistant editor for a YA publisher. The Descendants Series, my e-novella trilogy, is being released by Buzz Books USA.
When not writing or editing, she enjoys exploring the mountains and lakes of Colorado, shopping local, dominating at trivia and traveling. She lives in an old Victorian house with her husband and two lazy tabbies named after Harry Potter characters. Because she’s awesome like that.
Learn more about Jenny, her writing and travels at www.jennycoonpeterson.com. Or, you can follow her on Twitter @JenC_P, Facebook, Goodreads, or even Pinterest.
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Creature Discomforts (Descendants) Page 9