Caleb stopped in front of a lean-to with a rusting metal roof. A sheet of cardboard blocked the entry. He bent, tugging a flashlight from his belt. “Stay here.”
The beam of light preceded him through the rough opening. Dylan waited until both disappeared before he stooped and followed.
The smell assaulted his nostrils. Not demon. Not all demon. Human vomit, piss, and sweat. Corrupted flesh. Charred meat. Dylan gagged.
Caleb, kneeling over a pile of rags at the back of the lean-to, appeared immune. Inferior human senses? Or superior self-control?
Dylan set his teeth and took a shallow breath.
The rags moved. Moaned. Dylan distinguished a boot, the shape of a leg under a thin green army blanket, the corner of a sleeve, a hand. He frowned, his attention caught by more than smell or sight. Something about that hand . . .
He took a step forward.
“Stay back,” Caleb ordered.
“Who is it?”
“Jones.” The beam from Caleb’s flashlight played over a thin face gleaming with sweat. “Where’s Regina Barone?”
The man twitched, turning his head away.
“Regina,” Caleb repeated inexorably. “Where is she?”
Jericho stared at him a moment, his mouth working. And then his eyes rolled back in his head.
“Damn it,” Caleb snapped. “Jones? Jones.”
No answer.
“Drunk,” Caleb said in disgust.
Sweat broke out on Dylan’s forehead. His father’s gray and ruined face rose in his mind. This was what he came from, he thought in revulsion, what had sired him, what he could return to if he became entangled in human affairs: mortal flesh, human corruption.
He forced himself to think logically. To observe dispassionately. There were differences, after all.
Unlike their father, this man was not drunk.
“No,” Dylan said.
Caleb stiffened; turned. “You think he’s possessed?”
“I—” Dylan allowed the fetid air through his nose. Smells thick as sewage rushed in on him, clogging, choking . . . He cleared his throat. He could discern a charred odor, an acrid taint burning his sinuses. Demon, yes, faint but unmistakable. And . . .
“I think he is burnt.”
“What do you mean, burnt?”
Dylan could not explain. He just knew. He surveyed the man lying under the blanket. Reaching for his bony wrist, he turned over his hand.
Caleb hissed. “Holy Christ.”
* * *
The dark was worse than the cold.
Regina could keep warm— well, warmer— by moving. But nothing could help her see, and her blindness hobbled and terrified her. She could not stumble more than a few feet without slipping and tripping over things. Rocks. Walls. She could not stand upright for more than a few steps in any direction. She was trapped underground. Buried alive. The blackness dragged on her, pressed on her, weighted her chest, swallowed her up. She was sweating, heart racing, throat tight, and she had to take long, slow breaths to keep from screaming, crying, battering her hands bloody against the cold stone walls in the dark.
Swallow. Breathe. There was a way in. She was here, wasn’t she?
Another breath.
There had to be a way out.
She just had to find it. On her hands and knees. In the dark. Her heart thumped uncomfortably.
She explored her prison, fumbling, crawling with a hand or hip always pressed to the rough rock wall on her right so she could find her way back, so she wouldn’t get lost. Lost. She swallowed a sob. What a joke.
She remembered a long-ago shopping trip to Freeport, the mall full of shoppers, and her kneeling to unzip Nick’s coat outside a store. “If we get separated, I want you to stay put, okay? Don’t move, and Mommy will find you.”
She would have torn the mall apart looking for him.
But who would be looking for her? How would they even know where to begin to search?
I’m sorry, Nick. Ma, I’m so sorry.
The heel of her left hand was bruised from supporting her weight. Her knees ached. The fingers of her right hand were cracked and bleeding. But she figured out she was in some sort of— tunnel? chamber?— in the rock, bounded by water at one end. She sniffed. It smelled fresh. She lifted a cautious finger to her lips. The moisture was cool and welcome on her parched mouth and burning throat. But the drop left a mineral aftertaste, a warning hint of brine. With a sigh, she abandoned it and crawled the other way.
The passage meandered up and down, over boulders and around curves, gradually getting narrower. Tighter. She bruised her knees; bumped her head; inched forward on her stomach until she was blocked, stopped, squeezed in the rock like a roach in a crack.
She laid down her head, resting her cheek on the cold, damp grit, and cried. She gasped and keened and whimpered until her nose ran with snot and her throat was on fire. Water. She needed water. She wanted to get out. She wanted to go home. To Nick. To her mother.
Hot tears leaked from her eyes. Regina wiped her face on her shoulder. It was so quiet. So dark. She could feel her heart beating in the darkness, hear each wheezing breath. The silence was a weight like the rock, pressing down on her.
Slowly, she began to inch backward, pushing herself with fingers and toes, hissing and gasping when the rocks scraped her hands, when she bumped her head.
When the tunnel widened again, she curled into a ball with her back against the wall, listening to the soft lap of the water. Gradually, her sweat dried. Her breathing evened. She no longer worried Jericho would come back for her. She worried he would not.
Not a good thought.
Let him come. She’d kick his ass. Bastard.
Of course, she hadn’t done so well in their first round. He’d practically killed her. She swallowed against the pain of her abused throat.
Why hadn’t he killed her?
Maybe he was coming back after all. She’d seen a news story about a guy who kept a woman locked in his basement. For years.
Regina shivered, wrapping her arms around her knees to hold in her body heat. The air was cold and moist. The floor was cold and damp. Her butt was numb.
She heard a slither and a soft plop as something slid into the water. A rock? A rat? A snake? What kind of animals lived down here in the dark, in that water? Things without eyes. White, slimy, hungry things. Maybe Jericho was still there in the dark, watching her. Waiting for her.
She shook herself. She ought to get up. Get moving. In a minute.
She was so tired, her muscles cramped and aching.
How long had she been down here? Hours? It felt like hours. The quiet stretched on forever, like the dark.
Was Nick awake by now? He would be worried when he awoke and she was gone. And her mother . . . Please, dear God, get me out of here, and I’ll never fight with my mother again.
How long had she been down here? She wished she wore a watch. A luminous dial would be really nice right now. But kitchen workers didn’t wear watches. She strained her eyes against the darkness. Nothing to tell her whether it was day or night, no hint of light or anything else. Only her body warned her time was passing. She was thirsty and cold and she needed to pee. Her limbs were shaking. Her whole body was shaking.
Okay, she really had to get up. Nobody was coming to get her out of this one. Not Alain, not her mother, not Caleb, not . . .
She didn’t want to think about Dylan. Dylan was gone, like her father, like Nick’s father, like every other man in her life. “You knew all along I would not stay.”
Her anger was good. It warmed her, a hard little lump smoldering like a coal in the pit of her stomach. So she didn’t have a knight in shining armor riding to her rescue. She still had a life waiting for her somewhere in the sunlight. She had a son.
She climbed to her feet.
There was a way in. There had to be a way out.
* * *
“Holy Christ,” Caleb breathed.
The unconscious man’s exp
osed palm was orange, raw and swollen; the fingers blistered dirty white; the skin puffing, sloughing off. And black in the center like a brand was the oozing sign of the cross.
“Yes,” Dylan agreed simply. “If he was possessed, he is not now.”
“You can’t know that.”
“Demons would not inflict such a mark.”
“You think he did this to himself?”
Dylan shrugged. “It would protect him. No demon would willingly stay for long in a host branded by the cross.”
Caleb sighed. “I hate this woo-woo shit. Okay, say a demon possessed Jones. You’re sure about that?”
Dylan nodded. “The fire spoor is all over him.”
“I’ll take your word for it. Jones gets burned, we don’t know how. Demon . . . jumps?”
“Probably not at once,” Dylan said. “The mark would gradually grow more and more unbearable. But it would take time for the demon to relinquish its host.”
“Or to find a new one?” Caleb asked. His voice was steady. His hand holding the flashlight was not.
Dylan watched the trembling beam of the flashlight and felt a rare sympathy for his human brother.
Caleb had experience with possession. The demon Tan had tried to take him over. Caleb had been willing to die, had died, had drowned himself, rather than submit to the demon’s control. Dylan had dragged Caleb’s body from the ocean bottom.
This could not be easy for him.
“Yes,” Dylan said.
“Shit,” Caleb said again, wearily. He rubbed his face with his free hand. “So we’ve got some time.”
“We have time. Regina may not.” A deep and unfamiliar fear settled in his bones. Dylan forced his mind away from it, struggled to focus on the next step. “We don’t know what this Jericho did with her before the demon left him. Or where it went. You must arrest the men outside, the ones he had contact with.”
“I can watch them. I can’t arrest them. I need proof. Probable cause.”
“I can scan them,” Dylan offered. “If any of them are possessed, I will know.”
“It doesn’t matter a rat’s ass if they’re possessed. Not unless or until one of them breaks the law.”
“I don’t care about human laws. Or humans either.” Only Regina.
He shied away from the thought.
“That was always your problem, bro.” Caleb slid an arm under the unconscious man.
Dylan’s brows drew together. “What are you doing?”
Caleb raised Jericho to a sitting position. “Getting him out of here.”
“He won’t lead us to Regina. He can’t even answer questions.”
“Not now,” Caleb agreed. “Maybe when he wakes up.”
“Not then either.” Dylan watched in annoyance as Caleb staggered to one knee— his good knee— cradling Jericho in his arms. “The demon probably wiped his memory.”
“He’s still a human being. He needs help. Medical attention.”
Dylan scowled. He was not his brother. He did not think about others’ needs.
“That was always your problem, bro.”
Caleb lurched and grunted in pain as his bad knee took the brunt of Jericho’s weight.
Dylan’s mouth tightened. “Give him to me.”
“I’ve got him.”
Dylan blocked his brother’s way.
Their gazes locked.
Caleb’s eyes narrowed. Dylan didn’t know what his brother saw in his face, but after a moment Caleb sighed and surrendered Jericho’s body. “Don’t drop him.”
“Thanks,” Dylan said dryly and took his brother’s burden.
* * *
Regina sucked in her breath. The water was really cold. It soaked her sneakers, swirled around her ankles, saturated her pant legs.
She steeled herself to wade forward, ducking her head to avoid contact with the sloping ceiling. Her hands groped blindly, clutching at the rough rock with torn, tingling fingers. She was afraid of the water, of what might live in the water, unseen in the dark.
She felt the tremors start deep in her bones. She was already freezing. The water would drop her body temperature even faster, like a turkey defrosting in the sink. She could get hypothermia. She could die.
Of course, she could die sitting on her ass in the dark waiting for somebody who never came.
She gritted her teeth against the bone-biting cold and slid her feet forward over the uneven bottom. Holy Mary, Mother of God, don’t let me fall into a hole. Twist an ankle. Trip over a rock.
Her feet were numb. She couldn’t feel her toes at all. The water crept up her knees, her thighs. How deep was it? She wished she had a stick to test the way, to probe the cold black void. If Jericho had come this way, he would have had a light. Boots. A hard hat.
Maybe he hadn’t brought her in this way at all. But she’d already tried the tunnel on the other side. What was left?
The cold hit her crotch, and her bladder couldn’t take it anymore. A cloud of pee released into the cold water. Regina shuddered in relief, standing in her own pee, warm around her freezing thighs. She forced herself to shuffle deeper into the water and the dark.
The water level rose to her waist. To her ribs. She could feel a cold current around her ankles. Hope trickled in her chest. There was an opening somewhere. The water went somewhere. She strained her eyes in the dark. Silver spots and red webs floated on the face of the water, in the moist black air. The darkness was a thing, a barrier like the water, cold and choking. She waded through it, pushed against it, and smacked her head into the stone ceiling.
Ow ow ow. Pain exploded, white stars and yellow bolts of pain. She doubled over and her face splashed in the water. She could not breathe. Panicked, she sputtered, gulped, gasped. She was pressed between the low hard ceiling and the cold flat water. Trapped. She flattened her palms against the rock face, reading the passage like a blind woman learning Braille. The tunnel dropped. The ceiling touched the water. She was trapped.
She went a little crazy then, beating the walls and the water with her hands, croaking and crying out. She wanted out. Oh, God, she needed to get out of here.
Breathing hard, she stood shuddering, chest deep in the freezing water. Her face was wet, her hair was wet, her clothes glued to her body. She bit her lip, tasting blood and salt and defeat.
Tasting salt.
She brought her trembling hand to her lips, sucked on her fingers. The salt taste was definitely stronger. Or was she simply thirstier? She held herself still, listening to the echoes bounce and fade, and felt the surge moving between her legs. Her heart pounded. In or out? She could not tell. When the tide dropped, would the passage open? Had she found a way out?
Shaking with cold and a desperate hope, Regina fumbled her way back to the black chamber in the rock to wait for the tide to turn.
* * *
Dylan waited outside the yellow tape stretched along the sidewalk in front of Antonia’s, his hands in his pockets and every muscle tensed. Through the plate glass window he could see busy humans with brushes, bags, and bits of tape moving systematically through the dining room. They were wasting their time. They had no idea what they were looking for. What they were up against. Fingerprints and carpet fibers would not get Regina back.
Caleb had mobilized volunteers to search the ten square miles of island in a carefully coordinated grid, concentrating first on the areas around the restaurant and the homeless encampment. Dylan wanted to plunge after them, to run around screaming her name. Futile human activity, he told himself. Useless human emotion.
But at least they were doing something.
His hands clenched into fists. Conn had directed him to observe, not to act.
His inactivity was killing him. Regina was gone. Missing. And Dylan was desperately aware that his inactivity could be killing her, too.
He wanted to take his fists to Jericho, to beat him bloody until the man confessed what he had done with her. Jericho, however, was under guard at the clinic, awaiting medevac to
a hospital on the mainland to have his burn treated. Even if the unconscious man were here and in his right mind, he could not tell Dylan anything the selkie didn’t already know.
Regina was gone. Dylan had to find her.
She was only human, and yet he felt . . . connected to her. They had a sexual bond. If his power were stronger, if their connection were stronger, he might have used it to trace her.
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