Eat Your Heart Out (Descendants) (6 page)

Blotches of red splattered across Kendra’s neck and cheeks. “I am not just a demon,” she hissed. “And the sooner you realize that, the better this will be for you.”

Kendra slapped her hand through the piles of papers stacked on the table before her. They kicked into the air with a snap and rustle and floated to the ground in a mess. Then she spun on her heel and stalked from the dining room.

Rachel ran after her, grabbed at her best friend’s arm, but Kendra wrenched away. “That man,” she hissed through clenched teeth. Kendra shuddered and pulled the front door open. Rain swept into the open door and pelted them. “There is something
wrong
with him.”

“Come back inside. I’ll make him see, make him apologize.”

She batted a clump of hair out of her eyes. “Sorry, Rach. I’m not spending another minute with him.” Kendra pulled away when Rachel reached for her and ran out into the storm.

Rachel clicked the door shut and leaned heavily against it. Shouts from the dining room raised her eyes from the floor. She pressed her teeth against her top lip and walked back into the dining room, where Sid was chest to chest with Bruno, yelling at him in French. Bruno shouted something back that made Daphne’s mouth drop open,
then she joined in. She even poked Bruno in the arm for good measure.

Rachel dropped to her knees in the pile of papers Kendra had slapped to the floor. The pages were scrawled in longhand, a slanted, spikey script that made Rachel squint to read.

And then she saw the words: Vessel and Vale. Rachel sat back and grabbed the paper close to her face.

“With the blood oath of the villagers, the coven forged a weapon from metal mined only in the enchanted Vale. The vessel and weapon were born of the same material. Brothers joined in composition and magic. With this weapon, the first Descendants were able to capture the great beast and drag it into the vessel, where the demon will remain trapped for all of eternity.”

“Uh, guys?” Her voice was a mouse amid the lion roars of Sid and Bruno. Rachel scrambled to her feet, the paper still clutched in her hands. “Guys!” She shouted, and three heads turned her way. The room went absolutely silent.

“I think you want to look at this.”

CHAPTER 8

Bruno and Daphne paced opposite each other, wearing two lines in the living room carpet. They were like a nervous double pendulum, only exchanging new ideas about this whole “connected weapon and vessel” angle when they met in the middle. It made Rachel dizzy.

Sid too, apparently.
“Can someone sit down, please,” he sighed. He slid his glasses off his face and pinched the bridge of his nose.

Outside the dining room windows, the night had gone black and still. If Rachel didn’t see a dim light filtering through the trees from the houses nearer the coast, she’d fear the
entire
world
had dropped away. The air was clear, silent, cocooning them in night.

The tang of metal from the lightning strike had disappeared, and the birds too.
The five that’d plummeted from the sky had been cleared away by Bruno. Poor things. Rachel shivered at the memory and then winced at the ache in her neck from sitting hunched over research for so long.

It’d been a long night, and she was afraid it wasn’t nearly over. A clock over the living room fireplace ticked loudly in the silence, agreeing with her. There were still a few hours until morning. And Bruno didn’t seem ready to retire. She wanted to defy him, on Kendra’s behalf, but couldn’t quite make herself.

Sid slid a glance Rachel’s way. “Anything new?”

Rachel picked up the pile of papers before her and ruffled the edges. “Not a damned thing. But I could barely recognize my own name at this point, so I’m kind of an unreliable narrator.”

Sid groaned and stretched in his chair. His blue T-shirt pulled across his stomach and exposed a strip of skin. Rachel tried to look away, but her eyes were mutinous. She stared at the vee of muscle at his hipbone that disappeared beneath the band of his jeans. Heat prickled her cheeks. God, what was wrong with her? This was Sid, for chrissakes. Sid … who’d pressed his forehead to hers. Who’d entwined his fingers with hers and seemed like he wanted more.

Sid caught her staring and raised an eyebrow, then hitched the hem of his T-shirt up a bit. “Yes, it’s another scar.”

Rachel’s eyes went wide, then she noticed what he was talking about. Three long, thin marks raked over his side. “Right, yeah. I noticed that,” she lied. She totally
hadn’t
noticed that.

“Don’t believe what you read about leprechauns. They’re crafty little things.” He grimaced at some unknown memory. “And they have claws.”

Rachel didn’t know if it was the image of an attacking leprechaun, or the time, or the fact that only a few hours ago she’d been pummeled by dead birds and come
thisclose
to being struck by lightning, but she started laughing. She doubled over and heaved with it. Her eyes teared up, and she sucked in a breath through the chortles. And then Sid joined in with a guffaw. They sat cackling at the dining room table, heads shaking, shoulders jumping, laughing at nothing and everything in particular. They definitely sounded crazy.

* * *

“Wait, so there’s some sort of weapon involved in this too?” Kendra’s eyes were wide behind her sunglasses.

Rachel rolled over onto back and dug her toes into the sand until they found coolness. The lightning storm last week was nothing but a memory, and the Georgia sky was jewel blue above them. “Yeah, there’s a weapon. Though we have zero
clue what it could be. But it’s somehow connected to the vessel and traps Abbadon.”

Kendra poked at her gills. She hadn’t stepped foot in Rachel’s house since the incident with Bruno five nights ago. Rachel missed her best friend, but kind of couldn’t blame her.
Kendra kept poking, her lips pursed together. “But you still don’t know what sort of metal it needs to be. You said that was important, right?”

“I guess,” Rachel said with a sigh. She really didn’t want to talk about it. Not with soft sand underneath her and a salted breeze off the ocean playing in her hair. The crash of waves on the shore lulled her.

“You guess,” Kendra pressed.

Rachel sighed again. “Bruno and my mom have been looking into it basically non-stop for the past week. It’s the first big lead that is actually telling us something new. But—”

“But we needed a break,” Sid said from Rachel’s other side. Sid was stretched out on his stomach with a book propped in his hands. Rachel glanced over at him but quickly looked away. That little vee of muscle had made her cheeks red, and this was a whole new scale of nakedness from Sidney Martin. He was shirtless and wearing short swim trunks that were so painfully European. The American guys at the beach had stared at him when they’d arrived. The American girls too. He kept talking, face still buried in his book. “We had to track a
third
wendigo a couple days ago. And then a colony of scavenger harpies living over off I-95 went nuts after that freak earthquake yesterday. Rachel called this a mental health day.”

Sid moved his shoulders back and forth, plowing his elbows into the white sand, and muscles rippled along the inside of his shoulder blades. For someone who looked so thin in his clothes, Sid was hiding some serious muscle tone. Rachel coughed. Of course he was muscular. He was a demon hunter, it kind of came with the territory. Rachel had just never actually
pictured
that muscle tone before. She coughed again.

Kendra reached over and clapped Rachel’s shoulders, peering over her sunglasses with a look that made Rachel squirm. Kendra one-hundred-percent could tell what was going through Rachel’s mind at that second. And if she knew so easily, that meant Sid …

Rachel flopped face-first onto the beach towel with a groan. Maybe her brilliant beach day idea was not so smart after all.

Out at sea, there was a growl of agreement. Rachel flipped onto her side and peered across the beach. All around her, people did the same.

The wind tugged at Rachel’s hair, harder now. The ocean had flattened to a steel gray, and it darkened against the horizon. Above, a tower of angry clouds churned and built, piling high and eerie green into the sky. Rachel frowned and pushed herself up to her elbows. The sky was still clear and blue just over their heads, but the storm out to sea was building and growing. And moving fast.

Nearby, a young mom wrestled with a giant red beach umbrella that was trying to fly away on the wind. Sid jumped to his feet and chased down the runaway umbrella. Other beachgoers were jumping up too, packing away towels and gathering kids. A shrill whistle wavered over the wind, calling any stragglers from the ocean.

Sid returned to their spot. Though the storm out to sea was becoming a behemoth, the sun was still out and shined around his body, throwing his face into shadow. “Is this normal?” He said, gesturing at the storm.

Kendra sat up and crossed her legs. “Not
abnormal
,” she said with a shrug. “Storms can blow up quick on the water.”

Rachel shaded her eyes and squinted again out to the horizon. The wind whipping across the beach raised
goosebumps all along her arms and legs. “That’s not normal.” She pointed at the storm, eyes growing wide.

Twin
water spouts broke from the storm and raced across the ocean surface, twining around each other in some terrible, ethereal dance. The storm growled again, and lighting blazed from within the clouds, making the storm flare blue for a moment. People were running now, coolers and beach towels hugged in arms.

“Yeah,” Sid said. He dropped to his knees and yanked a shirt over his head. “I agree with Rachel here. The only thing we’re missing is a plague of locusts.”

Rachel followed suit, slipping her head through a soft shirtdress and shaking out her towel. The wind changed direction, and Rachel got a face full of sand for her effort. She shook out her hair and shoved the towel in her bag.

“You guys,” Kendra said. “I kind of think you’re freaking out over nothing.” Still, she pushed to her feet and pulled a skirt over her bikini bottoms.

In answer, a crack of lightning split the sky. Rachel wrenched her head out toward sea. A third water spout spun away from the storm and shimmied across the water.

“Freaking out,” Sid said.

Rachel didn’t want to admit it, but she kind of was too. They’d walked, which meant there was only one way home, and that carried them along the beach and over the grass-covered dunes. It wasn’t exactly shelter. But maybe that wasn’t the only option.

“Town’s close,” she said, hitching a thumb in the opposite direction. They’d still have to hurry over the dunes and then cut across the boardwalks over the vast marshlands, but it was better than hiking nearly a mile along the coast.

“Ooh! And we can get lunch!” Kendra grinned. “Great idea, Rach.”

Food was absolutely the last thing from Rachel’s mind at the moment. “Yeah, sure,” she said absently.

The beach was nearly empty by the time they trooped through the deep sand toward the dunes. White caps raced over the steel water, and the sky had closed in on them, low and gray. A couple lifeguards were shoving red flags into the sand, and another was closing shutters over the guard station perched on stilts. Rachel scraped her hair into a bun, but the wind tugged strands away in an instant and whipped them across her face. Her hair was heavy and sticky with salt, and it stung her eyes.

Beyond the dunes, the air went still. It was heavy with the promise of rain and smelled of salt marsh and rot. None of them had bothered with shoes, but the boardwalk had been worn smooth by feet and sand over the years. It echoed under their footsteps, but it was a dull, flat sound, muffled by the channels of dark water tunneling between the tall green reeds. The marsh spread out on all sides, protected by dunes behind them and a thick line of gnarled oaks in front of them hiding the edges of town. They were in the middle of the marsh when Rachel felt the first bite. She hissed and twisted for her ankle, scratching at the tender spot. It flared red, a little white bump in the center from the bite.

Rachel frowned. She’d put bug spray on this morning. No one left home without it in the summers.

But there wasn’t bug spray for this. A winged creature buzzed out of the reeds and flew into her face. It was the size of a large moth, with brown wings and a pale body suspended between them. Except where a moth had a furry bug body, this had delicate arms and legs, a short torso, and a pointed face half-filled with black, almond-shaped eyes. The tiny beast dipped close again, but jerked away with a hiss when it got too close to Rachel’s protective locket. It snapped a row of sharpened teeth at Rachel, but it was the creature’s backside that really worried her. Their backs ended in a bulbous stinger, like a wasp, that glowed yellow in the night. Now, they pulsed pale and creamy in the stale gray light.

“Marsh lights,” Kendra breathed. Her mouth had dropped open, but she snapped it shut when another of the winged creatures tried to dive-bomb her teeth.

Rachel swatted at another creature. The reeds buzzed with them, nearly vibrating with hundreds of the tiny beasts swooping and diving above the marsh. “You can see them?” Even though Kendra was a half-
mer, she had never been able to see other demons before unless they showed themselves. Marsh lights were a local legend, but Rachel had always thought they were just oversized lightning bugs.

Kendra met Rachel’s questioning eyes and nodded. “They must be in a frenzy because of the storm.” She held a finger out like she wanted to touch one, but the creatures darted out of reach. “They’re awesome.”

One of the awesome creatures plunged a stinger into the tender skin between Rachel’s toes. She yelped and jumped, but the creature was already flying away on a furious flap of moth wings and an angry buzz.

“How do we get rid of them?” Sid flapped his hands in front of his face and twisted one leg around the other, rubbing his foot over his calf. A bright red welt bulged on the side of his leg.

Rachel danced back and forth, trying not to give the creatures anywhere still on her body to land and sting. She knew she’d read about the marsh lights—also called swamp pixies—in the Corpus, but her mind remained stubbornly blank. She could picture their particular page in the demon lexicon, but the words surfaced in her mind all in squiggles and symbols, not discernible words. Probably because she was facing a swarm of them buzzing in her face and three water spouts baring down on her back. So no pressure of anything.

“Pest!” She shouted it. “So try not to kill any of them.”

“And?” Sid growled and hopped around her, batting at the winged monsters.

“You’re a Descendant too, you know,” Rachel snapped back. The creatures were buzzing so loud she had to nearly shout to be heard. They were a brown cloud swarming around them.
Death by a thousand stings. That’d be a lovely way to go. “Kendra?” Her friend, Rachel was grumpy to realize, still looked sting-free. Brat.

Kendra screwed up her face, thinking. “They like to chase, so we probably shouldn’t run.”

“Wonderful,” Sid said. He slapped his face, but missed the marsh light that had just stung him.

Sid dropped his backpack and grabbed two short knives from a side pocket. He swung his arms out, slicing the knives through the air.

“What the hell is that going to do?” Rachel shouted.