Before I Wake (30 page)

“She killed him,” the hellion whispered. “Kaylee stabbed Alec,
and it wasn’t an accident, like the scratch she just gave you, which smells so
deliciously painful.” The Jayson-thing pushed Emma’s hand aside and pressed his
fingers into her wound. She gasped in pain. He lifted his hand and licked a
smear of blood from it, his hungry gaze holding mine the whole time. “She
stabbed him on purpose. It’s true. I can’t lie.”

Em looked at me through tear-filled eyes, asking me for the
truth without actually asking for anything.

“That’s not how it happened,” Tod insisted when I made no
attempt to defend myself. “He was possessed, but we thought Alec was already
dead. We thought Avari was wearing his soul.”

“Let her go,” I demanded.

Jayson laughed and licked another smear of blood from his hand,
his other arm tight around Emma’s waist. “Drop the knife, or I’ll take a real
bite out of her, right here. I do
love
a picnic at
the lake.”

Emma’s breathing sped up and her face paled even more. My fist
tightened around the hilt of the knife. I glanced at Tod, and he nodded. I
blinked, sure I’d seen wrong. But he was still nodding, telling me to drop the
knife.

“Drop it and distract him,” Tod said, his lip barely moving,
and I knew from Em’s lack of reaction that I was the only one who could hear
him.

I held up the knife, blade down, to catch Jayson’s attention.
Then I dropped it. The knife speared the sand in front of my feet, stuck hilt
up. “Now let her go. You said you would, when I put the knife down.”

Jayson’s head cocked to the side, like he was thinking back
over everything he’d said. “True…” He let her go, and Emma stumbled toward me,
one hand clutching her bloodied side, relief and fear mixing in her features
only to be overshadowed by pain. I reached for her, but the second her hand
touched mine, the hellion snatched her back.

Emma screamed, and he laughed. “I never said I wouldn’t take
her back.”

I looked around for Tod, but he was gone. I glanced toward the
pavilion and saw several human shapes, but we were too far away for me to tell
who I was looking at. Had they heard her scream? Why was no one running to
help?

“Distract him and move away from the knife,” Tod said from
behind me and I realized no one else could see or hear him now.

Distract him? How? What would distract a hellion who already
had what he wanted? But then, he’d had what he wanted the whole time. So why
were he and Em still there? Unless he
didn’t
have
what he wanted…

“Take me instead,” I said, stepping to my left. “You need me to
go willingly, don’t you?” Because I was already dead, stealing my soul wasn’t as
simple as just killing me for it.

The hellion shrugged. “Willing, or unconscious. Similar to
mating rituals here on the human plane, isn’t it?” He laughed at his joke, and
my stomach churned.

“Keep moving…” Tod said, and I stepped to my left again. This
time the hellion had to turn Emma to keep me in sight. But in turning, he
stepped closer to the dagger.

“Fine. I’m willing. Let her go.”

“Prove it.” The Jayson-monster lifted one foot and deliberately
stomped on the hellion-forged dagger. The hilt broke off with less than two
inches of blade, and a scream of despair rose up inside me, like a mockery of my
bean sidhe
wail. “Cross over.”

“Shit!” Tod swore.

“What?” I’d heard Jayson, but I couldn’t make sense of what he
was saying. I couldn’t drag my gaze from the ruined dagger, and the loss it
represented.

“Cross into the Netherworld, and I will let her go,” Jayson
said. “You have my word.”

“No!” Tod said, and I glanced at him. The hellion followed my
gaze, but he couldn’t focus on what he couldn’t see. “Kaylee, do
not
cross over.”

“Cross. Now. Or I’ll chew her throat out, slurp up her blood,
and keep her soul.”

“Kaylee…” Emma was terrified.

“Kaylee…”
Tod was terrified.

In the Netherworld, I wouldn’t have any of my undead
advantages, except for the ability to cross back into the human world. But if I
didn’t go, he’d kill Emma, and I’d have to chase him into the Netherworld to
retrieve her soul, anyway—there was no way I’d let Em’s soul be tortured or worn
like a costume.

“I cross, and you let Emma go? Alive?”

Jayson nodded. “That’s the deal.”

I looked straight at Tod. “Take her to the hospital. I’ll be
right back.” Then I crossed over.

* * *

In the Netherworld, I stood alone next to the lake.
Except I wasn’t really alone. I couldn’t be.

Everything looked the same, only different. The sand was too
pale. White. More like salt than like sand. The trees were skeletal, as if they
were caught out of season, and the few leaves still hanging had shapes I didn’t
recognize.

The lake was…not made of water. I don’t know what the
Netherworld version of our lake was filled with, but it was thick, and dark, and
it stank to high hell. Things slithered just beneath the surface, leaving
ripples in the thin, foul membrane that had formed on top. I gagged just from
looking at it, and without the ability to teleport, I couldn’t get far enough
from the stagnant body of…fluid to avoid the smell.

I’d done my part. I’d crossed over. I closed my eyes, preparing
to cross back into the human world to make sure Em had been released, when
someone shouted my name.

I spun around to find Emma limping toward me from only feet
away, leaving small drops of bright red blood on the sand. Behind her, long,
black, multilegged creatures—carnivorous caterpillars?—crawled out of the sand
and gathered around each new drop, fighting over her blood, scratching, clawing,
and devouring until each stained grain was gone.

Invidia stood at Emma’s back, stuck in her own form now that
the Jayson-costume had expired with her trip back into the Netherworld. The
hellion of envy looked just like I remembered. Thin hands sticking out of the
long sleeves of her black dress. Gaunt cheeks. Dark circles beneath featureless
black-orb eyes staring out at everything. Or at nothing.

With a hellion you never could tell.

Invidia’s long, ever-flowing rivulets of black hair dripped
down her back and over one shoulder, shining with a green tint in the anemic
light of the Netherworld sun. Each drop sizzled on the sand at her feet, but
instead of gathering for a bite, the caterpillars scurried away from the noxious
fluid. Except for one unlucky creature, who suffered a direct hit and was
consumed alive by the acidic drop of liquid hair.

“Em…” I threw my arm around her waist while hers went around my
neck, and in the process, I stepped on several of the creepy little bugs still
following the source of Em’s human blood. “You were supposed to let her go in
the human plane!” I snapped at Invidia, then flinched over my own volume.
Shouting in the Netherworld was like ringing a dinner bell in the Old West.

“I don’t recall saying
where
I
would release her,” Invidia said, and her cackle of laughter grated against my
bones like nails on a chalkboard. “You should take her home while you still have
a chance. They’ve had a taste of her, and they’ll want more.” Her grand,
skinny-handed gesture took in the army of tiny cater-creatures marching around
the threat of Invidia’s toxic hair drops on a steady path toward me and Em.
“I’ve seen them strip slabs of meat twice your size to the bone in under a
single of your human minutes.”

I frowned in confusion, carefully backing Emma and myself away
from the growing mass of bugs crawling over one another to get to us. “You’re
letting us go?” It was a trick. It had to be.

“If she is still here in ten seconds, I won’t leave enough
scraps of that pretty little body to feed a single one of the bugs… .”

She didn’t have to tell me twice—er, three times. I grabbed
Em’s hand and closed my eyes. A second later, we stood on the lakeshore in the
human world, where the sand was brown and nothing crawled out of it ready to
devour us.

Emma sagged against me, her breathing ragged, her grip on my
shoulder weakening with every second. “Is that it? She just let us go?”

“That’s what it looks like…” But my nerve endings were on fire,
and every hair on my arms was standing straight up. Why would she let us cross
over? It was almost like Invidia
wanted
us in the
human world. “Something’s wrong. That was too easy.”

“Speak for yourself.”

“Oh, Em…” I lowered her to the ground carefully and she removed
her hand from the wound long enough for me to take a look. But I couldn’t even
tell what I was looking at, much less how bad it was. I only saw blood. “We’re
going to get you to a hospital. They’ll fix you up.”

“It’s going to be okay, though, right?” she asked, staring up
into my eyes, her entire face lined in pain and fear. “I can’t die if I’m not on
the list, right? And Tod would have told us if I were on the list?”

“Yeah, if he saw your name, he’d definitely tell us. But…”
Damn,
I didn’t want to have to tell her this.
“That knife—it’s actually a dagger made of hellion-forged steel.”

“What does that mean?”

“Supernatural events trump the list. Which means…”

“I could die,” she finished for me, and her gaze dropped in
shock. “Again.”

“Yeah.” Of a wound I’d inflicted. “But we’re not going to let
that happen. We’re going to get you to the hospital.” I couldn’t take her that
far in one jump, but maybe Tod could.

Where
was
Tod? Why hadn’t he
crossed into the Netherworld with us? He was gone, and so was the broken
dagger.

“Shit. Give me your hand.” I reached down, and Em placed her
bloody left hand in mine, still clutching her wound with the other. I closed my
eyes and blinked us to the pavilion my father had rented, then helped Em onto
one of the picnic table benches.

“Where is everyone?” she asked, and I glanced around, wondering
the same thing.

“Harmony took my dad and Sabine to the hospital. Nash and Luca
went to find Sophie, but I don’t see any of them.”

“What about Tod?”

“I don’t know.” The chill bumps on my arms grew even
fatter.

The fire was still going in the grill, burning the burgers and
charring the already-burned hot dogs. My dad’s spatula lay on the grass a few
feet away. The soda cans he and Harmony had been drinking from still sat on the
table nearest the grill. Nash hadn’t packed anything up yet, which meant they’d
been gone since I went to confront Jayson/Invidia.

“Kaylee!” Nash shouted, and I looked up to see him and Luca
running around the curve of the lake toward us, from the shore opposite where Em
had been taken hostage. I exhaled in relief—until I realized they were
alone.

“Hey, Emma’s hurt!” I said as they stopped beneath the
pavilion, winded from their run. “Where are Tod and Sophie?”

“We couldn’t find Sophie,” Nash said. “There were several sets
of footprints in the sand—some of them ours—and hers seemed to head into the
woods. But we couldn’t tell for sure.”

“Didn’t know we were supposed to be looking for Tod,” Luca
added, still trying to catch his breath from the sprint.

“What happened?” Nash dropped to his knees in front of Em
before I could pull another word out of him. She moved her hand so he could look
at her wound, and her nose and forehead wrinkled in pain.

“I accidentally cut her. I was aiming for Jayson, who turned
out to be Invidia.”

“Invidia?” Luca said.

“The hellion of envy who turned Sabine and Kaylee against each
other,” Em explained.

“It wasn’t just us!” I insisted. “The whole school went crazy
because of her!”

“Emma needs a hospital,” Nash said.

“I know, but I can’t blink her that far, and we can’t leave
Sophie and Tod.” I dug my keys from my pocket. “Why don’t you take Em to the
hospital, and Luca and I will stay here and find them.”

Nash shook his head and refused the keys when I tried to hand
them to him. “I’m not leaving you here.”

“But, Em…”

“I’m fine for a little while,” she insisted, but I found that
hard to believe. “Besides, if you find Tod, he can get me there faster than
driving, right?”

I nodded. “In theory.”

Em’s gaze focused on something behind me, and her frown
deepened. “Shit. We have company.” She grabbed my hand and squeezed it before I
could turn and look. “I don’t know what’s going on, but you guys have to make it
stop,” she said, glancing from Nash to Luca, then back to me. “Before someone
else gets caught in this like Jayson did.”

And like Emma had. And Sophie. And Brant. And Scott. And
countless others.

She was right.

I turned to follow her line of sight and froze, blinking in
disbelief. A thin woman in designer jeans was rounding the corner of the jogging
trail, where it disappeared into a thickly wooded area of the park. I knew that
blond hair, perfectly cut and styled, and I knew that her eyes were blue, though
I wasn’t close enough to see that for myself.

“Oh, no…” I whispered, not surprised to hear the hollow,
shocked quality of my own voice. “Aunt Val.”

21

“OH, SHIT,”
NASH
breathed, and Emma stiffened in my peripheral vision.

“That’s Sophie’s mom?” Luca said.

“Yeah. She traded her life for Sophie’s last September,” Nash
said, and I have to admit, I bristled.

“But it was Val’s fault Sophie died in the first place.” I
didn’t want my aunt’s last-minute attempt to abort her own evil scheme to be
confused with my mother’s genuine sacrifice on my behalf. They were two
entirely
different women. “And, no, that’s not
Sophie’s mom. That’s a demon wearing her soul.”

“Speaking of…” Em said, and I glanced up again to see Sophie
round the corner of the trail, calling after her mother.

“Sophie,
no!
” I glanced at Nash.
“Stay with Em. Please.” Then I took off with Luca, headed for my cousin.
“Sophie, that’s not your mom!” I yelled again, and Sophie stopped, startled,
wiping tears from her shell-shocked, tear-reddened face.

“I know, but…”

Aunt Val crossed her arms over her chest and studied me without
even looking back at Sophie. “You must be Kaylee.”

I slowed to a stop ten feet away, but Luca ran past the hellion
and hugged Sophie so tight he actually lifted her from the ground as he pulled
her away from the hellion.

“And you would be…?” I couldn’t tear my gaze from my aunt’s
imposter. She wasn’t Sophie’s mom. Intellectually, I knew that. But there was
something about the way she moved Aunt Val’s body, like she
knew
it. Like she truly identified with the soul she wore. And
suddenly I understood. “Belphegore.” The hellion of vanity who’d offered my aunt
eternal youth and beauty.

“Who else?” Aunt Val’s mouth smiled, not too wide, not too much
teeth. Just like she’d smiled in real life, to maximize the illusion of kindness
and minimize wrinkles.

“She has my mom’s soul,” Sophie sobbed, clinging to Luca’s hand
when he finally let her go. “Don’t let her cross over.”

I frowned at the hellion in confusion.

“The younger Miss Cavanaugh has just been informed that when I
cross back into the Netherworld, her mother’s soul will dissipate into the
ether, scattered throughout both worlds for as long as it takes the soul to pull
itself back together again. And that could take centuries.”

“What does that mean?”

“It’s like purgatory,” Tod said, and I whirled around to find
him standing on my left. I started to reach for him, then stopped when I saw who
stood next to him, her arm linked possessively through his.

Addison Page. She looked just like she had the day she’d died.
Beautiful long blond hair and bright blue eyes. She had everything my aunt had
ever wanted and gave it all up for fame and fortune in exchange for eternity at
Avari’s mercy.

Whatever your weakness, there’s a hellion to exploit it.

“Is that…?” I said, and Tod nodded stiffly, his jaw clenched in
fury. He was angrier than I’d ever seen him. “Avari,” I said, but my greeting
felt more like a curse.

“Always a pleasure, Miss Cavanaugh,” the hellion said with
Addy’s voice, and seeing him wear Addison bothered me more than any other form
he’d ever taken—except for Alec’s. Avari glanced around at the rest of us
through Addy’s wide blue eyes. “We appear to be missing a couple of guests…
.”

“Guests?” I asked, but instead of answering, Avari disappeared.
“What the hell is going on?” I demanded, but the only one who could have
answered—Val/Belphegore—only smiled.

“Kaylee, I am so sorry,” Tod said as I stepped into the embrace
he offered. “She—
he
—showed up the second you, Em,
and Jayson crossed over, and he said you’d be fine. He gave his word.” And
hellions couldn’t lie. “But he said if I went after you, he’d cross over, too,
and Addy’s soul would…dissipate.”

Before I could ask what the hell that meant, or what the
somehow-unified hoard of demons wanted, Emma shrieked behind us, and Nash’s
shout of outrage echoed hers. I turned toward the pavilion just in time to see
Addison grab Emma’s arm and disappear with her. Before I could even think to run
toward them—not that that would have helped—Addison/Avari reappeared next to
Val/Belphegore, Emma’s arm gripped tightly in her fist.

Em was crying, one hand pressed to her still-bleeding stomach.
“What—?” she started, begging me with her gaze to explain.

A second later, Sophie squealed as Belphegore jerked her out of
Luca’s grip with a single brutal tug. Then she shoved Luca closer to me and Tod.
“You three stay put,” she said with my aunt’s voice. “One move from any of you
while we’re waiting for the last player in this little game, and the humans will
die in a great deal of pain.”

Sophie whimpered and Emma moaned, in both pain and fear, as
behind us, Nash’s footsteps thumped to a stop next to Tod. “What the
hell?
” he demanded, but I was just as confused and
horrified as he was by the parade of demons wearing faces from our past.

Belphegore ignored him and focused on Luca. “I can see what
you’re thinking, necromancer. You think you can bring them back if they die, but
they won’t be the same, will they? Do you really think either of them would
appreciate your particular talents?”

Luca shook his head slowly, eyes narrowed in anger while most
of the rest of us looked on in confusion.

“What’s up with all the dead people?” Nash stage-whispered.

“Aunt Val is Belphegore and Addison is Avari,” I said. “And
when they cross over, the stolen souls will dissipate, doomed to wander both
worlds for centuries, trying to coalesce. Or something like that.”

My explanation didn’t seem to help. “I’m assuming Kaylee didn’t
invite the hellions to her birthday party, so the object of this little
gathering would be…?”

“We’re still waiting for the big reveal,” Tod said. And as much
as I hated waiting in ignorance, the alternative—
suffering
in ignorance—seemed infinitely worse.

“Sorry I’m late,” Thane said as he appeared in our midst,
sunglasses sliding down the end of his nose. Before I could yell at him for what
was obviously a betrayal of the deal we’d struck, he tugged on the hand he held
and a waif of a girl with stringy blond hair stumbled forward.

“Lydia?”

“Kaylee?” Lydia’s eyes were wide and scared. Her clothes were
dirty and her skin was pale. Where had Thane found her? Had she been living on
the street?

“What the hell does this have to do with Lydia?” I demanded,
but instead of answering, Avari looked around through Addison’s eyes at the
group he’d assembled, then nodded his approval.

“If you want answers, you know how to get them,” he said with
Addy’s voice. At her nod, Thane disappeared with Lydia in tow, and Belphegore
disappeared with Sophie. And just like that, Aunt Val’s soul was gone,
disintegrated and distributed across both worlds like dust scattered in an
explosion for however long it would take all the bits to coalesce so she could
be given a final rest. Or doomed to torture once again.

“Wait!” Tod shouted, and Avari turned to him with Addison’s
wide-eyed look of expectance. “You said you wouldn’t cross if I didn’t go after
Kaylee! You can’t go back on your word!” That no-lie rule was to hellions in the
Netherworld what physics was to humans in our world—a law that could not be
broken.

“No, what I said was that if you went after Kaylee, I
would
cross over. And that was no lie.” With that, the
Addison-monster disappeared with Emma, and Em’s scream echoed even after her
body was gone.

Tod shouted, a wordless expression of rage and despair. Addison
was gone. We’d failed to save her. Again.

Then, for a single, tense second, Tod, Nash, Luca, and I stared
at one another in shocked silence. Luca was the first to break it. “We’re going
after them, right? We have to go after them!” But he couldn’t cross on his own,
and neither could Nash.

“Yes, of course,” I said, closing my eyes. Trying to think.
“But rushing in would be suicidal.”

“It’s not like we have any choice!” Luca cried. “They have
Sophie and Emma. And…that other girl.”

“It’s a trap,” Nash said, running one hand through his mussed
brown hair. He looked like he wanted to hit something, but all the bad guys had
disappeared.

“How do you know?” Luca demanded.

“Because
everything
Avari does is a
trap, and I’ve been caught in a couple of them.”

“They took our friends so we’d follow them into the
Netherworld. Right where they want us,” Tod explained. “They’re looking for
resurrected souls, like me and Kaylee.”

“You don’t know that,” Nash said. “Maybe this time they want
Sophie and Emma and…”

“Lydia,” I supplied.

“Right,” he said. “Why would they bring Lydia here, when Sophie
and Emma would have been plenty of bait on their own? The hellions brought them
here for more than that.”

Tod and Nash started to argue, but I cut them off, beyond
grateful that Nash was clean and sober. I’d almost forgotten how smart he could
be. “Nash has a point,” I said. “Any one of them would have been enough bait.
And if the hellions just wanted us in the Netherworld, Invidia would have kept
me there earlier, and Avari would have let you cross after me.”

Tod nodded, grudgingly conceding the point.

“It doesn’t matter whether they want us here, or there, or in
the next damn galaxy.
They. Have. Sophie.
Take me,
or I’ll find my own way to cross,” Luca said, brown eyes blazing in fury and
fear. I had no idea how he’d get himself there, but I didn’t doubt he could do
it.

And his determination to save my spoiled, bitchy cousin was
so
damn sweet I almost wondered if I’d judged
her too harshly all my life. Almost.

I glanced at Tod, and he nodded. Then Nash nodded. We were in
agreement.

“Okay,” I said. “But we can’t cross here—this is where they’ll
be expecting us. And don’t forget that Tod and I don’t have any undead abilities
in the Netherworld. We can cross back over, and I assume we can function as
bean sidhes,
but no invisibility, inaudibility,
or blinking from one place to the next. Understand? No shortcuts.” That thought
terrified me beyond reason, especially considering that I’d been to the
Netherworld a dozen times before I even
had
any
undead abilities.

“I don’t care.” Luca glanced around the clearing. “Where should
we cross?”

I looked around, thinking of my brief visit to the Nether
minutes earlier. “Away from the water and out of the sand. Um… Over there.
Beneath the trees.”

“You guys meet us there,” Tod said, one hand on my arm to catch
my attention. Nash scowled, but when I didn’t object, he led Luca out of
earshot. Tod stared down at me, his eyes swirling with nerves. “Kaylee, this
isn’t going to end well. It could be worse than what happened with Alec, and I
need you to promise me that if this goes bad, you’ll run. Just get the hell out
of the Netherworld. I’ll be right behind you with Nash and anyone else I can
reach to cross over with.”

“No. This is all or nothing, Tod. I’m not coming back without
everyone.” What good would my afterlife be if I had to live it knowing I’d let
my best friends die?

Tod exhaled slowly, obviously frustrated. “Fine. But I had to
try.”

“And I love you for it.” I took his hand, and we blinked over
to the trees just as Nash and Luca got there. “Ready?” Tod asked, and everyone
nodded.

I sucked in one last deep lungful of human-world air and took
Luca’s hand while Tod took Nash’s forearm. Then we crossed.

The Netherworld version of the tree limbs we stood beneath were
heavily laden with fat, knobby purple fruit and long, thin leaves with serrated
edges. Luca reached up like he’d touch one, then thought better of it. He was
smarter than I’d been during my first trip to the Netherworld. Then I remembered
that he’d been there before, with Sophie. Which was good. Experience counts for
a lot in the Netherworld.

Uncommon sense counts for even more.

“Over there,” Tod said, and I followed his gaze to see Sophie,
Lydia, and Emma, obviously terrified and in tears, sitting in a row on a
concrete picnic bench that had bled through intact from the human world. Nothing
else from the human park still stood in the Netherworld, except for the
pavilion, its canvas covering ripped and flapping in a breeze that smelled
faintly of the rot from the lake. The park wasn’t frequently or highly populated
enough to bleed through in much detail.

In front of the bench, the three hellions stood arguing. I
couldn’t make out every word, but the gist was clear. They were arguing over
which hellion would get which girl. Belphegore wanted the pretty one—not sure if
she meant Emma or Sophie—Invidia was jealous of whichever one Belphegore wanted,
and Avari insisted that he would get the first choice, because he’d pulled the
entire plan together.

But that was bullshit. He wanted first choice because he was a
hellion of greed, and if he could possibly get away with taking all three of
them, he would.

They argued like cartoon bad guys, but the hellions were
omnipotent, damn near omnipresent, and immortal, as far as we could tell. Their
only weaknesses were the character flaws they embodied and fed from. They
couldn’t be hurt with anything originating from our world, and as far as I knew,
they were impervious to most of the dangers the Netherworld had to offer.

We were in
way
over our heads.

I’d never seen Belphegore in her own skin before, but I wasn’t
surprised to see that she was unspeakably beautiful, as a hellion of vanity
ought to be. What
did
surprise me was that the
moment I turned away from her, I couldn’t remember what she looked like. Not
because she wasn’t beautiful—she was—but because she was so generically flawless
that no one feature stood out enough to be remembered. She was average height,
with skin that could have belonged to any human ethnicity. Her hair was neither
short nor long, and neither light nor dark, but seemed to change slightly every
time my gaze returned to her.