Unbreakable l-1

by Kami Garcia

Alara stood in the doorway, staring at the view from Darien Shears’ cell. “I think I know.”

  30. DEATH HOUSE

  Alara kept her distance. “Do you think any of them were innocent?”

  A crude wooden chair with heavy armrests was bolted onto a raised platform in the center of the room, like a dead man’s throne. Padded leather wrist and ankle cuffs were buckled below the thick straps that secured the prisoner’s chest to the chair. A coiled black wire snaked up the back and attached to a medieval-looking headpiece, with a metal band that matched the scarred skin around Darien Shears’ head.

  Lukas stopped in front of a row of numbered switches under the words CAUTION—HIGH VOLTAGE. “I don’t know, but it looks like they all suffered.”

  Rows of hatch marks extended across the wall beside the panel. Someone must’ve been keeping a tally of the men who had died here.

  “Maybe they deserved to suffer.” Jared sounded like the guy who burst into my house the first night I met him, not the boy I kissed inside the wall.

  Echoes of murmuring voices bombarded us, too faint to decipher, and the unmistakable sound of frantic scratching coming from behind the walls.

  “Well done, Jared.” Alara sprinkled salt around the base of the chair. “Good to know you can piss off the living and the dead.”

  The scratching grew louder. Then all at once it stopped, plunging the room into an eerie silence.

  Priest took a step back and bumped into the panel of switches.

  “You’re all monsters.” A disembodied voice slithered through the room. “That’s what they said right before they threw the switch.”

  Alara’s body lurched back violently and she fell into the electric chair. The padded cuffs unbuckled themselves and closed around her wrists and ankles. The leather chest strap snaked around her torso and tightened, completely immobilizing her.

  “Stop it!” she screamed.

  Jared and Lukas struggled to unfasten the cuffs, but the leather straps held tight.

  “Leave her alone, Darien,” Priest shouted.

  The voice laughed. “It’s not Darien.”

  Faces appeared one by one, solidifying into full body apparitions—men still wearing their prison-issue orange jumpsuits. With their shaved heads and identical scars circling their foreheads where the metal had seared their skin, they looked like shells of the men who had died in the same chair where Alara was sitting now.

  A man with dark shadows around his eyes stepped in front of her. “Do you have anything to say? They gotta ask you that before they throw the switch.”

  The one with empty gray eyes nodded. “It’s the law.”

  “Let her go.” Jared raised the semiautomatic paintball gun. “Or I’ll give you a new set of burns.”

  Lukas aimed his own weapon and a vengeance spirit with a jagged scar across his cheek and the number thirteen tattooed on his neck smiled. “Ain’t nothin’ left to burn. Except your friend.”

  Jared and Lukas opened fire, the lethal mixture of holy water, salt, and cloves spraying across the walls until they ran out of ammunition. Two vengeance spirits exploded, but a half dozen stood fast.

  Priest and I lifted our weapons.

  Before I could squeeze the trigger, the gun was ripped from my hands.

  I searched for a faded form, or the shadowy features of a spirit that wasn’t fully materialized, but there was nothing. Priest was disarmed the same way, his weapon floating in the air next to mine.

  Our guns hovered for a moment, then turned and pointed directly at us.

  Then the weapons changed direction, and the rounds discharged in rapid succession, hitting the tally marks on the wall over and over. When the ammo was spent, the weapons dropped at our feet.

  “A prisoner built this chair. That seem right to you?” The spirit with the dark shadows around his eyes appeared. “Saying goes that if you die in this prison, your soul stays here. Don’t matter if you’re an inmate or not—no heaven or hell, just Moundsville.” He lowered the metal cap onto Alara’s head. “Let’s see if your friend makes it out.”

  Alara screamed as Darien Shears materialized and clamped his hand over her mouth. He held a finger to his lips. “Shh.”

  Flashes of the prisoners’ faces superimposed themselves over hers—the spirit with the shadows around his eyes, the one with the number thirteen on his neck—a parade of faces rotating in front of Alara’s. Each man buckled and strapped in the chair, the metal headpiece secured to his skull.

  Each one screaming and writhing in pain the way Alara was now.

  Jared and Lukas ran for the chair.

  “I wouldn’t do that.” Number Thirteen flipped the switches on the panel.

  “It’s okay,” Priest said. “There’s no power in this building anymore.”

  The vengeance spirit tilted his head, considering it. “Who said anything about using the building’s power?”

  The spirits focused on the control panel, and the indicators lit up one by one.

  Oh god.

  The last indicator blinked, but the light didn’t fully illuminate.

  “Shears,” Number Thirteen called out. “We need more juice. Hit the generator downstairs.”

  Darien looked at Alara, then back at the rest of us. “Now don’t go anywhere. Everybody will get a turn.” He vanished, leaving the other vengeance spirits behind.

  Priest reached under his hoodie and pulled out the caulking gun from the hardware store, the barrel loaded with purple cans of cheap hair spray.

  What was he doing?

  He aimed at the vengeance spirits and pulled the trigger, simultaneously igniting the fireplace starters wired to the end of the caulking gun. It was a makeshift flamethrower made from Aqua Net, electrical tape, and ingenuity.

  A stream of flames shot out, and Priest scorched the wall from left to right. The prisoners’ faces contorted as the fire burned them to ash—and then nothing.

  I knelt in front of the chair, unbuckling the stubborn leather cuffs.

  “Come on!” Alara jerked against the restraints, her face streaked with tears. “Get me out of this thing!”

  “I’m working on it.” I fumbled with the ankle cuffs, pulling the last one free. Alara leapt from the chair.

  My eyes were still level with the base. A single piece of wood attached the chair to the platform.

  A piece shaped like a cylinder.

  Someone had cut a crude notch in the wood. I held my breath and reached inside. The wood popped out, and a strip of silver glinted behind it.

  My hand closed around the metal that felt as smooth and seamless as glass.

  It looked exactly like the sketch in Priest’s journal—strange looping symbols cut into the outside, and empty slots where the disks slid into place.

  Lukas noticed the casing in my hand, his expression a mixture of awe and relief. “You found it.”

  Jared’s eyes darted to the door. “We still have to get it out of here.”

  “Shears said he was coming back. He might catch us before we make it,” Priest said. “We have to destroy him.”

  “How?” Alara’s voice trembled.

  The answer appeared in my mind slowly, like a print developing in a darkroom. “I know what to do, but I need you to distract him.”

  Jared grabbed my arm. “What are you talking about?”

  “I don’t have time to explain.” And I knew he would never agree if I did. “Do you trust me?”

  The words hung between us—the question the four of them had been asking me all along. Now I was the one asking.

  One by one they nodded and Jared spoke the words. “I trust you. But—”

  “Then I need you to buy me some time.”

  Priest handed me the disks. “Take these just in case.”

  “No.” I tried to push them back into his hand.

  “Don’t you trust me?” Priest gave me a lopsided grin, but his tone was serious.

  I shoved them in my pocket.

  “I’ll buy you tha
t time,” Priest said before he turned to Alara. “You have to get back in the chair.”

  She stumbled away, her eyes wild. “Are you crazy? I’m not going anywhere near that thing.”

  Priest led her by the elbow as I took off down the hall. “It’ll be fine. I’ll disconnect the wires.…”

  31. DEVIL’S TRAP

  I was the only person within these walls, living or dead, who wanted to get into a cell—especially the cell of a psychotic serial killer’s ghost. But there was only one way to destroy him and if I was going to do it, I needed the element of surprise. And about eight minutes.

  That was all the time it would take me to draw the one thing Darien couldn’t use his disappearing act to escape.

  The Devil’s Trap.

  I pictured the intricate design as I stepped back into Darien’s cell—the pentagram inside the circle, within a heptagram inside another circle—every line, every shape, every letter of languages I didn’t recognize.

  The square cell was tiny. If I drew the outer circle big enough, the curved lines would touch the walls, leaving only the four corners of the room unmarked. Darien would have to step inside the symbol when he entered the room.

  How can I get him in here?

  It didn’t matter unless I finished the Devil’s Trap.

  Shouts echoed from the other end of the hallway.

  My hand started to move. I worked quickly, trusting the part of my mind that remembered the details on the face of a dollar bill, and the spot where every kid stood in our kindergarten class picture. I ignored everything else but the voice of my memory.

  Seven names surrounded the circle—Samael, Raphael…

  Looping the script perfectly, I copied the unfamiliar symbols like I’d written them hundreds of times. But I was careful, haunted by the entry in Jared’s journal from the night the Legion summoned Andras.

  What if I make a mistake?

  I stopped, momentarily paralyzed by the thought, until a metal door slammed at the end of the hall.

  My hand shook as I finished the last few details.

  “Where are you?” an agitated voice called.

  Darien.

  How could I hide the Devil’s Trap long enough to get him to step inside?

  I glanced at the tiny window cut in the door, hoping the spirit wasn’t as close as he sounded. The opening was only about eight inches across. If I stood right in front of it, Darien wouldn’t be able to see anything except my face. My knees buckled as I stumbled toward the door with the final piece of the Shift in my hand.

  “I’m right here.” I held up the cylinder, my face positioned in front of the window.

  We were only a foot apart when his body passed through the door. I scrambled into the corner—one of the only places the curves of the Devil’s Trap didn’t touch.

  Darien looked down, his feet firmly planted within the confines of the circle. His eyes mirrored the terror in the faces of the men that had flashed over Alara’s in the electric chair.

  He lunged forward until his fingers hit the edge of the circle. The supernatural force field threw him back into the center. “What have you done?”

  “I think we both know.” I huddled in the corner, clutching the Shift’s casing against my chest.

  “Kennedy!” Jared and Lukas called out, their footsteps getting closer.

  Darien focused on the door. The metal rattled and the cell’s heavy bolt clicked into place.

  Bodies slammed against the door on the other side, and Lukas’ face filled the small opening. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah.” I slid my back up the wall until I was standing. Drawing the circle up to the very edges of the walls had made it easier to trap Darien. Now I realized that it also made it impossible for me to get out.

  “Don’t move,” Lukas said. “If you step inside the circle, he can hurt you. Stay there and the Devil’s Trap should destroy him.”

  Should?

  It sounded like something else they weren’t sure about.

  “How long will that take?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” Lukas answered.

  What if he found a way to get out before then?

  Darien ignored Lukas and pointed to the cylinder in my hands. “You have to put it back or innocent people will die. That’s what she told me.”

  “Who?”

  “The one who asked me to hide it.”

  “You mean the demon,” Lukas shouted from the other side of the door.

  Darien sank to his knees. His shoulders sagged as though he couldn’t hold himself upright. The Devil’s Trap was slowly killing him a second time. “A woman gave it to me. She told me I could redeem myself. Make my worthless life mean something.”

  What was he talking about?

  “He’s lying.” I recognized Jared’s voice immediately. “Vengeance spirits lie just like demons.”

  Darien frowned. “I killed six men in this prison protecting that thing and gave my life to the chair. That’s no lie. You put that piece back where you found it before people get hurt outside these walls.”

  Jared’s face appeared in the window. “Don’t listen to him. He knows we can use the Shift to destroy Andras.”

  The spirit’s eyes widened in horror. “The Shift doesn’t destroy Andras. It frees him.”

  “What did you say?” I asked.

  Darien spoke each word slowly. “If you assemble the Shift, it opens the gate.”

  “Liar!” Alara shouted from the hallway.

  Panic spread through the spirit’s hollow features, and he charged at me. I didn’t have time to turn away before Darien hit the outer boundary of the circle again. His body convulsed like he was caught in an electrified fence. Then the force threw him back, and he slid across the concrete on his side.

  “Kennedy, put it together now,” Priest called out. “If the Shift can destroy Andras, it might be able to destroy him, too.”

  “I’ll just wait until—”

  Priest cut me off. “He’s not giving up. What if he finds a weak spot in the circle?”

  My hand shook as I searched my pocket for the disks.

  I sat down and piled them in my lap. I slid the first disk into the cylindrical casing. One of the symbols cut into the metal lit up, casting a beam of pure white light across the floor in the shape of the looping script.

  Darien opened his eyes, still lying on his side. “I sacrificed my life to protect it for nothing.”

  “You didn’t sacrifice your life,” Jared snapped. “You were executed because you’re a murderer.”

  My whole body trembled. “I should let you guys put it together. I can stay here until the Devil’s Trap destroys him.”

  If it destroys him.

  “Kennedy,” Lukas pleaded. “You’re too close to the circle. Don’t give him the chance to break through and take it away from you.”

  I struggled with the next piece, sliding it into the wrong chamber before I realized each disk fit into a specific one. The second symbol emitted the same clean white light.

  Darien crawled to the edge of the line separating us, so close I could reach out and touch him. “I killed men inside these walls. Evil men who tried to find the piece and give it to the servants of the demon. I promised to keep it safe.”

  Our eyes met, and I pressed myself flatter against the wall, trying to create distance where there was none.

  My hands shook as I lined up the next piece, and I lost my grip.

  The Shift rolled toward the edge of the Devil’s Trap.

  I scrambled for it, and Darien lunged at me again.

  For a split second, it looked like his hands were going to cross the edge of the circle, or the cylinder was going to roll into the Devil’s Trap. Darien hit the supernatural force field and my fingers caught the casing at almost the same moment—just as it reached the black line and Darien’s body was hurled back into the center of the symbol.

  “Kennedy!” Jared pounded on the metal door, but I didn’t move. I couldn’t.
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br />   I scooted back against the wall and slid the third disk into position.

  Light poured from the arced shape.

  Darien flickered, his cheek pressed against the cold floor I knew he couldn’t feel. “I failed. We all did.”

  “Who?”

  “Don’t talk to him,” Jared begged. “Just put it together.”

  “The spirits protecting the other pieces,” Darien finished.

  The last disk balanced between my fingers. All I had to do was slip it into place, but my hands weren’t working. Every doubt about my mother’s past, the Legion, and the four people who believed in me resurfaced.

  What if I made the wrong choice?

  “What if he’s telling the truth?”

  Jared pressed his forehead against the square opening. “Don’t let him get in your head. You saw the journal. You know what it says.”

  Lukas shoved Jared out of the way, taking his place. “He’s a vengeance spirit working for a demon. You can’t trust him. Trust us.”

  Alara edged her way in front of the opening, her face blurred by my tears. “We’re in this together.”

  “You’re one of us,” Priest called out from somewhere behind her.

  I was tired of being afraid. I wanted to trust them—the people who meant so much to me now, the ones who believed in me.

  “Kennedy, please.” Jared took Alara’s place, and his eyes found mine. This time he could see my tears. “We need you. I need you.”

  You can’t choose the person who really sees you—the person who knows what you’re feeling without you saying a word, the person who can make you laugh and cry and everything in between just by looking at you. The one you can’t imagine being lucky enough to have, or unlucky enough to lose.

  I was staring at him—the boy who was all those things and more.

  My hand trembled as I aligned the final disk.

  Darien faded, sputtering out like a candle burned to the wick. I snapped the disk into the casing and the final symbol illuminated.

  Darien blinked one last time and whispered, “May the black dove always carry you.”

  I froze.

  His spirit exploded.

  The Shift grew hotter and hotter until it burned my hands. I barely felt it, paralyzed by Darien’s last words.