Crossed (2 page)

The rest of my squad didn’t have the warning I did, and a few cry out in horror. But no one stops riding. After a shocked pause, there’s a roar as everyone guns their engines, as if the few extra seconds the acceleration buys us will somehow change everything. Change anything. There’s a spray of gravel when we break, some riders twisting their bikes sharply to stop.

“Somehow they managed to block the emergency signal,” the Sarge says, the words snapping out, her rage contained only by her determined efficiency. There are mutterings of discontent. The last thing we need is for the demons to have learned a new trick. “The Crusader who alerted us had to escape on foot in order to get the message out. Spread out. Look for survivors.”

She turns to me, and I know what she wants. I reach for the amulet that hangs under my shirt and pull it off. Armand gave me the necklace to conceal my demon energy, energy that my kind sense when they are nearby. Even though I don’t particularly want any souvenirs of Armand (he betrayed me and I chained him up to die—not exactly an amicable break up), the amulet is too useful to get rid of.

My (Almost) Boyfriend Tried to Sell My Soul to the Devil and All I Got Was This Lousy Amulet—they should put that on a T-shirt.

The instant the amulet leaves my neck, a buzz of power flares to life under my skin. I answer her unasked question with a nod.

“There are demons still here.” The Sarge’s blue laser beam of an eye cuts over the destruction. “Find them.”

Chi, Jo and I creep toward the largest, central building. It looks like an oversized log cabin—or did—with a porch off the side protecting picnic tables from the weather. It served as the kitchen when last we were here, but now it looks like a pile of discarded Lincoln logs, the porch completely collapsed. The table where I ate my lunch last week has been obliterated.

A low moan comes from what was once the porch and Chi’s eyes fly to mine. It’s impossible to tell whether the moaner is Crusader or demon. By unspoken agreement, he peels off, cautiously poking through the wreckage with Jo following to watch his back.

I move forward into what was once the kitchen, kicking the broken door out of the way. I step inside and pause, listening. Everything is silent, so I creep forward, peering under the long work tables and opening cabinet doors where a terrified child might hide.

My blood pumps, but not in fear. The destruction, the scent of blood, the wispy grey of souls escaping their broken shells, all call to the Hunger. It lifts its leopard’s head; its predator’s eyes gleam through mine. It, too, watches, but not for survivors.

At least, not for survivors from
our
side.

I pull open what I expect to be a pantry, but instead see stairs heading down, a heavy-duty steel door at the bottom.

I suspect I just found Shady Glen’s safe room. That it’s still standing, the door still intact, gives me no cause to rejoice. I’ve already seen the ghosts. Still, when I reach out and place my hand on the doorknob, I hope it’s locked.

It turns easily under my hand and I wrench it open in anger.

My eyes take a moment to adjust to the dim emergency lights. The cement room is long and lined with shelves, some of them knocked over, containing supplies. Canned goods, medical supplies, and broken water jugs are scattered amongst the bodies and stackable cots.

A bewildered ghost, probably two years old, stands in the center of the room. I didn’t notice her at first, as she’s translucent and grey as the walls behind her. She sucks her fingers, four of them jammed into her mouth to the knuckle. She looks up when she senses me and pulls her damp hand from her mouth to lift up her arms.

“Up,” she mouths wordlessly. Ghosts can’t speak. “Up.”

A banging noise from the back corner of the room saves me from having to try to explain to a two-year-old that she no longer has a body for me to lift. Live children are hard enough to rationalize with; dead ones have never proved to be any better. Instead I prowl around her, pursuing the noise. The little ghost turns as I go by, still with her arms outstretched and the silent, plaintive cry on her lips.

Something scrapes against cement and then there’s a crash. A metal shelf falls over and lands against another one. Before I can reach the shelf, it rocks and tumbles to the floor, revealing a pudgy middle-aged demon in a grey suit and pink blouse. She hasn’t seen me yet and leans back against the cinderblock wall to pant in obvious pain. The second shelving unit, the one that the first shelves had fallen against, pins the demon by her leg.

That will be the very, very least of her many problems.

The child drifts to my side. At the sight of the demon, fat tears roll down her chubby cheeks and she jerks with hiccup-like motions. I’m not the hugging sort and providing comfort has never been one of my many skills, so I ignore her.

Revenge, on the other hand, is a different story.

The Hunger seethes under my skin, and my chest swells with joy—no, more than joy. It’s a fierce, violent desire that obliterates the other, weaker, emotions. My world focuses to a needle-sharp point: her. Ending her.

As if she senses the sudden shift in her fate, the demon’s eyes open. She starts when she sees me then cocks her head slightly in confusion. She can feel the swell of power caused by my demon-ness but can’t miss the malevolence in my manner.

Maybe the blonde hair is a good disguise after all.

“Well,” she demands in the face of my silent regard. “Help me.” She waves at the shelf pinning her leg.

I smile. The slow, creeping smile of the Hunger. Her brow furrows in consternation.

“I’m not here to help,” I coo. My words slide around her as gentle as a lover’s hands, as inescapable as a noose. A movement at my side calls her attention and I follow her gaze to the toddler. The little girl paws at my hand, her eyes sparkling with tears, unable to understand why her hand merely passes through mine. I turn away from her wet face and back to the demon. The Hunger flares furiously. “At least, I’m not here to help
you
.”

And she knows. I see the instant she realizes who I am. What I am about to do. The way her chin pulls back and she swallows, the sudden quickness in her breath, the lunge of blood in her veins as her heart pumps furiously in her panic.

“Meda.” The word is more air than word. A gasp. Of awe. Of terror.

I have a bit of a reputation.

She surges forward, terror giving her strength she didn’t have a moment before, and heaves the shelving unit off her leg. She scrambles to her feet and I let her. I want her to panic and run and flail and feel me breathing down her neck. I want her to struggle in my grasp, to fight, to think she can win. I want her to have hope then I want to rip that hope from her chest along with her black demon’s heart.

She presses her back against the wall. The way she holds her leg awkwardly in front of her suggests her knee isn’t working properly. She braces herself with trembling hands and licks her lips nervously. Her eyes dart looking for exits, for help.

Without warning, she shoves away from the wall, flinging herself over the shelves. Her knee can’t support her weight, but she’s expecting it, so she tucks, rolling as she lands. I lunge, releasing the animalistic Hunger from its cage. The world turns red, pulsing like the hot blood that will pour from her veins.

She leaps to her feet and lets out a scream as she puts weight on her injured leg. Still, she’s able to stay upright, her leg bearing her weight enough for her to keep going. She casts a terrified look over her shoulder. She’s fast, faster than I expected.

“But not fast enough,” I sing.

Still I don’t catch her, not right away. I let her have that hope. I let it linger and grow until I can feel it pulse in the air. She’s almost at the door. Almost. So close, she kicks off again so she can dive through. That’s when I catch her. I bring her down in the way of predators, drawing her, screaming, to the dirty floor. Down among the bodies she broke just hours before. Cans of beans and corn skitter and roll away from where we flail and thrash.

“Please! Please!” Her hands grab at mine, which is wrapped around her throat.

“Please, what?”

She’s seems confused, obviously not expecting my calm and reasonable tone. “Please…don’t kill me?” I don’t think she intended it as a question, but it comes out that way. I feel the little hum of optimism start in her chest. Her eyes wide in her fleshy face.

“Why not?” I ask politely, as if we were in a boardroom and not on a blood-soaked floor, my hand wrapped around her neck.

“Because…because I had to. I didn’t have a choice.” Her eyes dart to the little dead girl, who now clutches a fuzzy book bag in front of her as if it were a teddy bear.

I lean in even further, pushing down until I’m crushing her windpipe. “Oh, well, see, there’s always a choice.” I ease the pressure so I can hear her beg.

“But—no wait!”

I don’t.

She screams, garbled words coming from a damaged throat. Her cries for mercy land on ears that wouldn’t listen even if they didn’t have the silent sobbing of a ghost-toddler ringing in them.

Then there’s silence.

The blackened soul of the demon seeps from her broken body in a billowing cloud. I reach out with my magic and pull the soul into me, stripping away the false life demons are granted when their human bodies die and they enter hell’s service. She will never be reborn into a new body.

As much as I’d love to kill her over and over again, it’s just not practical.

The demon’s tainted soul roils through me, sour and poisonous. I can taste her rage and her resentment, but it’s all overshadowed with the sugar-sweet taste of terror—whether it lingers from our encounter or is in anticipation of the fate awaiting her in hell, I can’t say.

Nor do I care.

A demon’s soul doesn’t satisfy me the way a human’s does. It’s sweet-and-low to a living human’s sugar. Still, a creeping satisfaction bubbles under my skin, the soul-drunk buzz that always accompanies the devouring of a soul.

I turn, softly, gently, to the ghost toddler. She no longer sobs, though the tear tracks are still evident on her round cheeks. She stares up, entranced by something I can’t see. Her expression is uplifted, her eyes wide. Her face splits into a smile revealing tiny milk teeth she’ll never be old enough to lose. She throws her hands towards whatever so captivates her.

“Up,” she mouths and suddenly her image freezes and pixelates, then rockets upwards like glitter caught in a sudden updraft.

TWO

We gather our dead and bury them in a short, bitter service, and then Crusader Henries casts a spell to make their remains undiscoverable. The only rule obeyed by both sides in this cosmic war is that it must be kept entirely secret. The other Crusaders pour holy water over the dead demons, dissolving them where they lay. I had one encounter with the stuff the day I first met the Chi and Jo, and just the sight of it is enough to make my shoulder burn in memory.

We round up the pathetically small number of survivors—eight children who managed to hide during the carnage and one adult who is in such bad shape the demons must have assumed she was already dead—and bring them with us to Maine, our destination before the emergency signal changed our plans. It’s a grim and quiet group that rolls out of what was once Shady Glen.

Crusaders and demons travel using a teleportation spell that creates what we call a “rabbit hole.” Basically, a pair of linked magical hot spots, one at the origin point and the other at the destination. They take a great deal of magic to create and so are semi-permanent. Demons can use our rabbit holes, just as we can use theirs, so we’re always careful not to have the destination point directly inside a camp. Thanks to the rabbit holes our weary group makes it to Maine from California just before dusk.

We drive through a small community with the overly-moneyed, overly-manicured feel of a college town. The sort of place with granite curbs and ordinances that require every building to be unique in exactly the same way. I bet they have a farmers’ market.

Our destination is a small campus of a dozen or so buildings perched on a cliff overlooking the sea. It’s enclosed in a brick wall with an elegantly-scrolled wrought-iron gate. The bricks of the wall are arranged in an airy lattice pattern, creating a perfect ladder should anyone wish to invade. It creates only the air of exclusivity rather than the reality of it; a fence for a place that wants you to know what you’re missing.

The meager visible defenses are not the only protections. An army of Crusaders dressed innocuously as groundskeepers and workmen prowl the perimeter, and when we draw up at the gates, we stop. Crusader Henries mutters an incantation, and a web of royal blue flares into existence. It overlays the useless lattice fencing and veins the circular drive that leads up to the school. Brilliant blue patches, like puddles, dot the yard in magical landmines. The glowing blue webbing is packed so tightly that its sudden visibility makes me squint.

I have never seen so much magic expended in one place. Whatever they’re protecting is serious.

Crusader Henries lifts his hands. “
Allabutesque es que talla,
” he cries. A slash of light cuts down the center of the drive and the royal blue strands separate and crawl away from the road as if a living thing. I recognize the spell as basically the magical version of “undo.” The Sarge pounded into my head after…er…suffice to say, mistakes were made. Crusader magic was never intended to be used against each other, so any Crusader can cast the “undo” spell on any other. It’s handy in situations like this; it allows the Crusaders to cast protections without having to worry about blowing each other up.

Alerted to our arrival by the sentries, a dozen Crusaders wait at the entrance and burst into motion. The traumatized children and the wounded woman are swept off to be patched back together, and the Sarge and Henries are dragged urgently into a meeting before they have a chance to even unstrap their gear. It’s a sudden wave of Crusaders and activity, and then it recedes, leaving just a few of us standing in its wake.

Curious stares of Crusaders I haven’t yet met follow me and all around me are litanies of names followed by short responses as old friends meet again.

“Joan?”

“In Florida, last I heard.”

“Aimes?”

“I just saw her last week.”

“Adam?”

“….haven’t heard otherwise”

And sometimes the short, silent pause that indicates a shaking of the head. I do my best to tune them out, to bury my head in the sand. Unfortunately sand is porous stuff.

No one’s asked about Mags in weeks.

“What is this place?” I whisper, as if in a church. I take a few steps to peer down a wood paneled hallway. The carpet is luxuriously thick, the kind upon which you could sneak up on a person without even trying, the kind that would muffle the thud of a body, the kind that would cost thousands to get blood stains out of. It swallows the sound of my footsteps.

“A boarding school,” Chi says, barely glancing around. He dumps his gear on a chair that once probably cradled the ass of a seventeenth-century king.

“If this is where the Corps’ kids get to go while I’ve been in that shithole trailer park, someone is getting punched in the balls.” I pause, then amend, “Or throat, gender-depending.”

Jo looks about, as if she just noticed we’re in a palace. “No. The Crusaders work with organizations on the outside. Powerful organizations. I bet they own this, or run it, or have blackmail material on the people who do.”

I wonder if I should be disturbed at the regularity with which I have to remind myself that I work for the good guys.

Just then, a couple of students show up. A guy, a couple years younger than us, wearing pressed pants and an air of servility. Next to him is the opposite—a tall, dark-skinned girl in sweats who grins when she sees us. I recognize her despite her newly shaved head and crutches.

Chi beats me to it. “Zee!”

She grins and releases a crutch long enough to do some complicated handshake with Chi. She tosses a “hi” to Jo who can’t seem to take her eyes off the crutches.

“What happened?” I ask and Jo’s eyes flick to Zee’s face for the answer.

Zee looks at Jo when she answers. “Ah, well, you know I always wanted to be more like you.” Zee taps her wrapped leg with one of her crutches.

Jo forces a smile. “Doesn’t everyone?”

“Sadly it’s only temporary.”

“Oh.” Jo tries to hide her relief.

“Um, I was asking about the hair,” I say.

Zee rubs her shaved head. “Jealous?”

I am. Very.

“Don't even think about it, Meda,” Jo snaps, sounding more like herself.

Zee looks at my newly-golden locks and makes a face. “Yeah, I could ask you the same question.”

I’m too busy pouting to answer. “The blonde hair is a disguise,” Jo explains.

“Oh. Bummer,” Zee says and spares me a pitying glance before turning back to Chi. “Anyway, I’m just here patching up. We’ve got this place for two weeks—they can only keep it closed so long mid-semester. Nice digs, though, eh?” She leans forward on to her crutches. “I’m in the dorm to the left, I gotta take them.” She swings out a crutch to point to the rest of the Reavers still waiting in the hall. “You’re here, upstairs. Follow—” She looks at the guy we’d all been ignoring but doesn’t come up with a name. “—him,” she finishes.

He smiles in a way that asks that I please don’t eat him. His chances are better when I notice the greasy takeout bag he’s holding. I lick my lips and he takes a couple of shuffling steps back and clears his throat. “This way.”

We’re taken up to the top floor of the west wing. I don’t bother to ask why Jo, Chi and I are up here while everyone else is somewhere else because the answer would only piss me off and I’m trying to be a team player. The kid pushes open the door into a common room fit only for kids with “III” or “IV” after their names. The walls are lined with glass-doored shelves containing the kind of old books no one actually reads, and a slim flat-screen the size of Bubba is mounted just above a stone fireplace. The upholstered wooden chairs scream “antique,” though surely even the most absurdly rich wouldn’t put priceless heirlooms in a dorm room.

Inset into the walls of the oblong room are a half-dozen or so doors. Most are wood paneled, but one is steel plated with a heavy bolt, and I slow down and give the kid a warning glare should he think to tell me that one’s mine. To his relief, he walks past it without a pause, and pushes open the next door. “Your room.”

Three times as big as my motel room, it has three tall, narrow, multi-paned windows overlooking the park behind the school, then the ocean beyond that. Low wooden shelves stretch across the wall beneath the windows, and a desk sits on the left wall. A big, plush reading chair and ottoman sit cattycorner next to it. A door on the other side of the desk leads into a tiled bathroom.

But the pièce de résistance is pressed to the wall in front of me and I react as everyone must when confronted with an enormous puffy bed—I leap, arms spread wide, and land in its cloudy goodness with a tiny “phhhhht” of released air. I don’t move for several minutes, and the boy takes Jo and Chi off to their rooms.

I don’t know how long I lie there, but eventually the boy announces his return with a tentative clearing of his throat. I climb out of heaven to sit on its edge, giving the mounds of poof a friendly pat.

The boy holds out the greasy bag. “This is for you.” When I don’t get up, he comes just close enough to I can reach it. Just to be perverse, I snatch it out of his hands, making him jump. I stick my nose in the bag and inhale. Sugar Burger. “And I’m supposed to let you know that your . . .er, other kind of food is being prepared in the stables.” Apparently he finds the fact that I eat people to be difficult to
swallow
.

I still, fistful of burger shoved halfway down my throat. My bullshit-o-meter starts to jangle a warning.

“Two . . .” he searches for a tactful word, “
courses
if I’m not mistaken.”

And that’s when the dream dies. I swallow and toss the bag to the side, jumping to my feet. My sudden movement startles the kid again. “Where’s Jo?” I demand.

“I-I’m sorry?”

I shove passed him and into the common room. “Jo!” I yell, and bang on the door next to mine, then move on to the next. “Jo!”

“What are you—’ he stammers.

“Jo!” I bellow again. The guy reaches out but stops himself from touching me. I blast him with my glare. “Let me tell you something, kid, about things being too good to be true—especially when those things come from the Crusaders. Two people to eat,” I mutter, shaking my head. “Do they think I’m stupid? Jo!” I bark again.

She pops her head out of a room at the end of the hall. “What?” She checks me briefly for bodily harm—then checks the kid next to me. She’s wrapped in a towel, obviously about to take advantage of the en suite bathroom. With a tub. One that probably wasn’t last used to pack ice around an involuntary kidney donor. Now that she’s assured there’s no blood, she doesn’t look happy to be interrupted. “What is it, Meda?”

“Fast food. Comfy bed. Time to nap.”

“Is that a problem?”

“People to eat, Jo. Two.” I hold up my fingers.

“Oh, hell,” she says. “Let me get my pants.” She ducks back into her room.

I turn to the boy next to me. “Where are they meeting?”

“I don’t underst—’

I grab him by the throat. “Understand now?”

He points. “Dean’s suite,” he croaks. I raise my eyebrows and he hurriedly elaborates. “F-fourth floor, east wing.” I bare my teeth in a smile. I mean it in thanks, but it only makes him cringe.

Jo limps back into the hallway, trying to tug her pants to lay smooth over her leg brace. I let the boy go. “Where’s Chi?”

“Shower,” she says, and starts in the direction the boy had pointed.

We’re walking down a hallway lined with portraits of disapproving old white men when we hear them. Arguing.

“Then how do you suggest we convince her?” someone demands.

“We can’t,” another voice says, and I have to bite back a snarl. Sergeant Graff. I should have guessed that if something bad were about to happen to me, he’d be involved. We had a run-in last year that resulted in him possessing me against my will and then, later, trying to kill me. Granted, it was because he thought I had betrayed the Crusaders to the demons (I hadn’t, we’d both been caught in a ploy by Armand) and we ended up working together to save the day, but still, the sound of his voice is enough to make me want to punch something—like his face. “It doesn’t matter how we ask, she’s going to say no . . . if you let her.” The room erupts into angry chatter, overlapping and too indistinct for me to make out.

“You’ve spent the last several months with her, Lizzy,” a cultured feminine voice cuts into the babble. Lizzy, improbable though it seems, is the Sarge’s first name. “What do you think?”

There's a brief pause as she considers. When she speaks I can barely hear her through the door. “I don't know,” she finally answers, her voice weary and strained. “I think she will do it, but I don’t . . . I don't think we should ask her.”

“See. Even Liz says it’s pointless—” Graff says and the room breaks into argument once more.

I lift my leg to kick open the doors, but Jo’s raised hand stops me.

I nod knowingly. “Ah, keep eavesdropping. Good thinking.” I tap my temple.

“What? No.” She points. “I want you to use the handles. No one’s locking you out anymore.”

“Oh.” I shrug. “I know. I just like to make an entrance.”

She rolls her eyes, which I choose not to interpret as a “no,” and kick the doors open before she can actually say the word.