Twisted Sister of Mine (Overworld Chronicles) (29 page)

I was sorely tempted to chime in with my thoughts on elitism, spoiled blueblood kids, and maybe even give Billy a token punch in the nose, but decided placing myself between Lina's anger and Billy's obstinacy might be a bad thing.

"C'mon, babe, I'm just joking. You know how I am."

Lina's eyes flared. She opened her mouth to speak. And then she dropped to the ground like a lead weight.

Everyone stood stunned as she lay on the ground like a broken doll. I bent down and pressed a hand to her neck. Her pulse felt fine, but, damn it, I was an incubus, not a doctor.

"What did you do to her, you filthy techie?" Billy said.

Someone clamped preternaturally strong hands on my shoulders and jerked me away from Lina. Before I could react, my feet left the ground. I plowed through a group of nearby students and rolled to a painful stop atop the brick road in front of the restaurant. As I climbed to my feet, I saw Porky the porcupine hair guy charging at me much faster than his stocky frame should have allowed. Billy produced an ebony rod about the size and shape of a magic marker, and gave a flick of his wrist. It sprang out lengthwise, and thickened into a staff that shined and glittered like polished coal.

I strafed right just as Porky blew past me like a locomotive. He hit the side of the Copper Swan, ringing it like a giant gong. He had to be seeing cartoon birds and stars circling his head after a hit like that. A flash of azure blue caught my peripheral vision. A bolt of heat seared into my ribs, slamming me hard against the side of the huge copper bird. The breath blasted from my lungs. Jagged bolts of energy pouring from the end of Billy's staff pressed me tight against the side of the restaurant. I couldn't move. Couldn't breathe. Heat from the magical energy washed over me, the temperature just barely beneath my pain threshold. Lina's boyfriend, his lips peeled back with rage, walked toward me.

"Let's see if your technology"—he spat the word like a curse—"can save you, bloomer."

I flailed with my free hands, trying to grab my phone, my practice staff, anything, but the miniature electrical storm washing over my torso prevented my hands from getting close to my pockets. "Lina needs help!" I shouted. "Why the hell are you attacking me?"

"You insulted me," Billy said. "Besides, you're a filthy spawn who attacked my girlfriend."

By now a crowd was gathering. People murmured, pointing. I could make out some individual conversations.

"Did that boy hurt the girl?"

"He started a fight with Billy Vanderbilt?"

"Dude is toast."

I had no choice. I'd have to spawn like Vallaena taught me
. It might be my only chance of breaking free.
I delved deep inside, and began to lower the barriers. Frost dug bone deep into my left leg, frost so cold it felt white hot. Boiling rage and helplessness churned like acid against the barrier holding back my demonic side. Shadows stretched from every unlit corner around me in the shapes of skulls and robed phantoms, their bony claws reaching for me.

Devour. Eat. Drain.

The voices rasped the same words in my head, a constant susurrus of ravenous need.

"Stop it!" I shouted, pressing my hands to the sides of my head. "Go away!"

The demon inside me surged for the crack in its barrier, rising like bile in my throat. I clenched my teeth and fought back. If I spawned now with the vampling curse raging in my blood, I would lose control. Fighting the curse and my demonic counterpart was a battle I'd nearly lost in the forest. I definitely couldn't lose it now.

"Buddy, you'd better let him go," said a familiar voice. "Or so help me god, I will turn you into a pile of rotten cow testicles."

Someone yelped like wounded dog, and the force holding me to the side of the building vanished. I dropped to the ground, landing hard on my knees. Hands pressed to head, and eyes squeezed shut, I rocked back and forth, fighting the tide of nauseating insanity. Fighting the voices as they demanded blood, death, and destruction.

The numbing cold receded bit by bit like ice under lukewarm water until only the usual chill of the curse drifted in my veins like permafrost. It was accelerating. I could feel it. Physical trauma, or magical trauma, or maybe some combination of the two was giving the curse new life despite the potion.

"Get the hell out of here!" someone roared, and I heard more cries of pain and yelps receding into the distance. "Holy farting fairies, kid. You okay?"

I looked up into Harry Shelton's eyes. He looked pissed and mildly confused. "Lina?" I said.

"The healers are here. They're airlifting her to the university." Shelton gripped me under an arm and hauled me to my feet. "The curse almost got you again, didn't it?"

I nodded. "Yeah."

"Well, you haven't done a good job avoiding trauma, that's for sure," he said in a gruff tone.

I raised an eyebrow, and considered him for a moment. "You're back."

He nodded. "Yeah. Don't get all sentimental about it, though."

"What made you change your mind?" I had to fight back a smile.

"I got bored sitting around Meghan's house, okay? The way she and Adam coo all over each other makes me sick. I figured I'd rather face certain death than hang around that love fest. One day was more than enough." He blew out a disgusted breath. "So, besides brawling in the streets and knocking out Colombian girls, what the hell else have you been up to?"

Pushing aside the dread I felt about the curse, I laughed and slapped him on the back. "It's good to have you back."

He scowled. "Like I said, no big deal."

Shelton and I took the lift back to the university, and I showed him the house. Bella came running from her room the moment she heard his voice.

She looked at him, her eyes soft. "I'm glad to see you, Harry."

"Don't even start with the Scrabble," he warned, looking around the cavernous den. "I used to come here for parties back in the day." He shivered. "But I heard this place was haunted."

"Is the mighty Harry Shelton scared?" Bella said, her eyes twinkling.

"Pssht. No, I just think this place has seen better days."

"What made you decide to come back?" she asked.

He shrugged. "Got bored."

"Bored, huh?" Bella blurred down the stairs at supernatural speed and thudded into Shelton, nearly picking him up off the floor with an enthusiastic hug. "You're so adorable when you try to act macho and cool."

He struggled, but was no match for the petite woman and her dhampyric strength. "Woman, put me down."

She giggled and set him back on the floor. "I knew you were a good man." She winked. "Even if you are terrible at Scrabble."

"I hate to break up the good mood," I said, "but Lina collapsed when we were out, Bella." "Oh, goodness, we have to go see her," she said.

It was all piling up in my head. Nightliss, Mom, and now Lina. Despite having Shelton back, the weight on my shoulders felt heavier than ever. How long did Nightliss have? How the hell could I find Ivy?

The three of us visited Lina.

Healer Hutchins, the same woman who'd treated me and MacLean was checking on another patient when we walked in. She saw me and quirked an eyebrow.

Shelton's eyes went a little wide, and he turned to grab a copy of
Arcane Daily
from the scroll rack, unrolling the yellowed parchment as if the juicy centerfold of a cute female Arcane waited somewhere on the page.

The healer approached us, her eyes glancing between me and Bella. "You again. Find anymore unconscious professors in the hallway?"

"Uh, no, actually one of my friends collapsed." I nodded my head at Lina's bed where she lay asleep. "She was looking really tired. I thought it was just from studying too hard."

"I see you've moved to rescuing girls now." An amused smile flickered across her lips. "You're either a knight in shining armor, or you get your kicks from knocking people out and bringing them to me."

I offered her an uneasy smile because I couldn't tell if she was serious or not. "She's been practicing her magic too hard. Is it possible she has magic poisoning?"

Hutchins shook her head. "You remember these children you saw the last time you were in here?" She looked at the beds where the same kids lay, their faces waxen, eyes surrounded by dark bruises.

I looked at Lina and immediately noticed the similarities. "Wait, are you saying Lina has the same thing?" I asked.

"It's possible." The healer crossed an arm over her stomach. "Her cells are absolutely saturated with magic. Unlike magic poisoning which occurs from within, this has happened from an outside source."

Bella pressed a kiss to Lina's forehead. "Poor sweet girl."

Shelton glanced back from his magazine and sighed. He walked to Bella, and put an arm around her shoulders. "I'm sure the kid just overdid it. Heck, I remember a time or two I passed out—"

Healer Hutchins's head snapped toward Shelton. "Well, well, well, if it isn't the incorrigible Harry Shelton."

"You know him?" I asked, realizing that with Shelton's apparent notoriety at the university, it was probably a stupid question.

"Oh, Harry was a regular here in the infirmary." Her eyes narrowed. "And that's not including his victims."

"Victims?" Bella turned a shocked look to Shelton.

"I'm all grown up now," Shelton said with a groan. "Don't we have more important things to discuss?"

Hutchins waved a hand and turned to a filing cabinet. "Of course. I'm not sure there's enough time in one life to discuss everything you've done anyway." She pulled open a drawer on the cabinet. It extended further and further, every inch packed tight with manila folders. She continued to pull the drawer open until it stretched nearly across the room. It seemed the otherwise ordinary-looking filing cabinet should topple over from the weight at any moment, though it never did. Once I finally found a home again, as opposed to living in Shelton's secret hideouts, I decided I could definitely use a sock drawer with an enchantment like that.

Hutchins finally stopped pulling, fingers flicking through the folders. "Ah, here it is." She withdrew a green folder. "I remembered it being color coded because it was so odd." She licked a finger and flipped through the pages until she reached the picture of a boy about middle-school age. His closed eyes were sunken, and he looked as if he hadn't slept for days.

I sucked in a breath. "Holy crap. It looks like the same thing. Did they figure out what was wrong with him?"

She glanced over the pages. Shook her head. "No. They found him in the Burrows after he'd gone missing for two days. His case is why they barred access to those tunnels."

"They used to be dungeons, right?" I asked, remembering what Lina had told me.

Hutchins nodded. "Even though they never found the cause, the administration determined some form of dark magic used for torturing prisoners might still linger there, and decided it was safer to close the place off rather than risk any further harm to students."

I picked up the picture of the boy. Behind it lay the portrait of how he had been before the incident, young, smiling, his rosy cheeks slightly plump. My eyes flicked to Lina. She looked like someone who hadn't slept for two days. The kid in the picture looked like he hadn't slept or eaten for a week. Was this what lay in store for Lina? I was just about to ask the fate of the boy in the picture when I saw the next page. The boy's name was Toby Peterson. Someone else, perhaps a doctor or more likely an uncaring bureaucrat had stamped a big red word across the page beneath Toby's name.

DECEASED.

Chapter 31

After badgering Healer Hutchins with more medical questions, she made it clear Lina might recover. Toby had lain for two days in the Burrows before receiving medical care while Lina had received almost immediate attention. The healer also made something else clear—she didn't know how to treat the condition. And then she kicked us out.

"The girl needs her rest, and I need all my concentration," she said before shutting the door behind us with a sense of finality.

I took a few steps down the hall before dropping onto a bench. I felt at a complete loss for what to do next. "Nightliss is dying, Lina and those kids might be dying, Daelissa is hell-bent on finding the Cyrinthian Rune and reopening the Alabaster Arch, my sister wants to convert me to the dark side and—and..." I gave Shelton and Bella a hopeless look. "I'm so confused. What do I do? Who do I help first?"

"Why, there's no question," Bella said, her eyes full of concern. "We should find out what happened to Lina."

"We can't do anything for Nightliss," Shelton said. "Unless your mom decides to play hero again."

"The Conroys are holding her in an astral prison," I told him.

Shelton gave me a surprised look. "When did you find that out?"

"Ivy told us," Bella said.

"That little bi—brat," Shelton said with some difficulty. "We've got to take her out of the equation."

"Do you suggest killing a little girl?" Bella asked, raising an eyebrow.

"That's exactly what I'm suggesting," Shelton replied, sarcasm heavy in his voice. "Because killing kids is how I roll."

Ivy had nothing to do with Mom's imprisonment, but would she know how or be willing to help me free her? Would I have a better shot at convincing her to save Nightliss?
No chance in hell. She thinks Darklings are evil.
If I couldn't count on Mom or Ivy, I had to concentrate on finding the angel inside of me. Then I could cure Nightliss and hopefully myself.

Bella looked around the empty hall. "Perhaps we shouldn't discuss such things here."

I was about to comment on how empty the place was and how unlikely it was anyone would overhear us, then remembered Billy and his gang, not to mention Bigglesworth. "What's to keep our stalkers from listening to us at our new digs?" I asked.

"We ward the ever-lovin' crap out of it," Shelton said.

Once home, Bella and Shelton chose a large, empty room off the east hallway of the first floor, and plastered protective wards against eavesdropping and intrusion around it. According to Bella, it was a lot easier than warding the entire house.