The Marked Girl (23 page)

“So why not go tell him now? The words will come. Just try to get it all out there before the making-out part starts up again, okay? It confuses the brain.”

Liv grinned. “Thanks, Shan. I know you'll probably be grounded till graduation, but I'm really glad you're here.”

“Me too.”

Liv stepped out into the kitchen. She could talk to Cedric about her feelings. How hard could it be?

But when Liv looked through the glass kitchen door, she could no longer see Cedric on the porch. She turned to rejoin the others, but the monitors on the wall caught her eye.

On the screens, Liv could see various parts of Daisy's yard, now lit up with greenish lights. One screen showed the tennis courts, another highlighted the front of a four-car garage. But it was the middle screen that drew Liv's attention. She moved closer to it, her eyes scanning it over. With each step, she hoped that what she was seeing was a mistake. A trick of the light.

On the middle screen was the guard hut. And at the entrance to the hut was a small, indistinct mass. A grayish, unmoving blob. Liv moved to stand right in front of the screen, her nose inches from it. The blob had arms, and legs in dark pants. It was one of the security guards, knocked out—or maybe, Liv thought, stomach dropping, maybe worse—on the ground.

“Shannon!” Liv called, her voice tight. After a moment, Shannon's head popped back into the kitchen, her face falling when she saw Liv.

“Someone's here.”

C
edric sat at the top of a large staircase inside Daisy's home, lightly spinning the ring around the chain on his neck. He knew he should go and check on the others, make sure Merek was staying put, see if Liv—

Liv.

He couldn't afford to think about her right now, because once he started, he wouldn't stop. And that was really the whole problem. He didn't want to think about facing her again, and he had no idea what he might say if he did. His fingers pulled tighter and tighter on the chain, until the hard metal ate into the skin on the back of his neck.

Cedric heard a yell coming from behind him. Torn from his thoughts, he jumped up and immediately moved through the confusing hallways of the house toward the sound of the noise.

He found Liv and Shannon in the kitchen, looking at the wall. Or no, they weren't looking at the wall, but at a series of rectangles placed there—
teevees
, he remembered they were called.

“What is it?”

Liv looked to him, and her eyes were huge. “Someone took out the guards.”

“Took out?”

Liv shook her head, flustered, and just pointed to the screen. On one, Cedric could see the small image of a man lying on the ground.

Merek and Daisy burst into the kitchen at that moment.

“What's going on?” Daisy asked.

“We have to lock all the doors. And call . . .” Liv looked to Cedric. “Who should we call?”

Cedric immediately went to the giant glass door in the kitchen and looked out into the night. He could see nothing but shadows and trees.

“Wait. What's happening?” Daisy asked again, her voice pitched higher. Then she looked at the screen, and her hand flew to her mouth. “Is that . . . Andre?”

“We need to secure the yard,” Cedric said, his hand on the door handle.

Liv stepped toward him. “Wait! We don't even know if we're facing wraths or Knights! And what if they're just waiting for us to come outside, so they can attack?”

“Or,” Shannon said, voice shaky, “what if they're already inside?”

Everyone fell silent. Unconsciously, their heads moved up, down, and all around, as if they could see through the walls and ceiling. Merek moved to the doorway opposite and peered into the hallway. A creaking noise sounded out from the room to the
right, and everyone jumped.

Cedric went quickly to where his sword was still resting by a chair. He ripped off the plastic covering and held the hilt close.

“Daisy, were any doors unlocked?” Liv asked. “Daisy?”

But Daisy's eyes were glued to the screen, to the image of the unmoving guard. Suddenly, she whirled on Liv.

“What did you do?”

Liv took a step back, surprised by Daisy's ferocity. “Wh-what?”

“What do you want with me? Why are you doing this?”

Liv shook her head, at a loss for words. Cedric moved cautiously toward Daisy, who jumped back from him as though he were brandishing fire. “We do not want to harm you,” he said, trying to keep his voice calm. “But we are all in danger—”

Daisy's eyes drifted down toward his sword.

“Oh God,” she murmured. “Oh God, oh God.” She backed up until her shoulders hit the wall.

“Daisy,” Liv said, shaking herself into action. “We weren't the ones who hurt the guard. We've been here the whole time.”

“No, you weren't!” Daisy yelled. She looked between Liv and Cedric. “You left, you went outside and . . .” She looked to the screen again.

“I promise we didn't do this,” Liv said. “Remember, I explained everything earlier? Remember what I said, about the wraths and the Knights—”

“But none of that is real!” Daisy screamed. “I didn't
actually
believe you!”

“But . . . Joe, he told you I was telling the truth, didn't he? Don't you believe him?”

For a moment, Daisy wavered. Then her eyes landed again on Cedric's sword. “You lied. You said that was a camera stand and . . . oh. Oh God.”

“Wait . . .” Liv reached for Daisy then, but Daisy dodged her outstretched hand, pushed off against the wall, and sailed past Merek, down the hallway. In seconds, she was streaming out the front door of the house.

“No!” Liv yelled. She turned to Cedric. “We don't know what's out there!”

Cedric nodded once, briefly, before setting off after Daisy. Liv followed, though he outpaced her easily. When he reached the front door, he saw Daisy's small frame move across the lawn, arms pumping, running toward the body of the guard near the gate.

“Daisy, wait!” he yelled, then immediately cursed himself for giving away his position to whoever had “taken out” the guards.

But it didn't matter anyway. They were already waiting.

Just as Daisy bent down to the motionless guard, a hulking figure stepped out of the dense bushes near the guard hut. A wrath, with a shock of gray-white hair and thick shoulders that looked like someone had just attached slabs of rock to each side of his neck. Cedric recognized him from the alley—Chath. The white-haired wrath lifted Daisy off the ground in a single swift movement.

Daisy gave a small scream—more a yelp of surprise—before the wrath turned and ran with her toward the edge of the yard, into a thicket of bushes and trees.

Cedric shot off toward the pair. He could barely feel the
ground and could only make out the blurred edges of trees as he passed. Ahead of him, he saw the wrath pull Daisy up and over a fence. Cedric followed and pitched himself over the fence, landing in the center of still more trees. They seemed to be part of a private garden that wove in and around itself.

“Daisy?” he yelled out. He was surrounded by trees and shadows and blackness.

“If you want her, come and take her,” a low voice said from just to his right.

Cedric turned toward the direction of the voice and spotted Chath and Daisy, the wrath with one hand over her mouth, underneath a tree with gnarled, twisting branches.

A knot of uncertainty tightened in Cedric's stomach. How had the wraths known to find them here? How could they have been following all this time? Cedric held his sword out in front of him, prepared to use it. The wrath didn't even flinch, but instead let out a long, low whistle.

“Let her go,” Cedric said.

Chath threw his head back and laughed toward the night sky. “Threatening me? The little warrior prince with his pointy play toy. All alone in the woods, threatening me.”

Cedric tightened his grip on the sword hilt and took a step toward the wrath.

“Put her down, or I'll show you what a toy can do.”

It was then that Cedric noticed the shadows around the edges of the clearing start to move. Dark shapes morphed into arms and legs and heads as they came into the light of the clearing. The blacks of the wraths' sunken eyes were lost in the shadows but low growls escaped from their throats. Three extra
wraths emerged from the trees, two at Cedric's sides and one more cutting off the exit at his back. He was surrounded.

“Why don't you show them first?” Chath said.

“How did you find us?” Cedric asked, trying to buy himself time to think. He hoped that Merek had stayed in the house with Shannon and Liv. He hoped they'd found a way to hide.

Chath cocked his head. “Does Your Highness not like his first taste of betrayal?”

Cedric narrowed his eyes. “You lie. No one has betrayed me.”

Chath's grin split wider—impossibly wide. He looked less human with every second. “If you say so, Highness.”

He's trying to confuse you
, Cedric thought, gritting his teeth. But something in the back of his mind caught on that word—betrayal—and didn't let go. His thoughts kept snagging there, like cloth on a tree branch.

The wrath on his right shifted forward, and Cedric lashed out, turning on the ball of his foot and swinging his sword. It connected with the creature, who let out a howl of pain and gripped his shoulder, falling to the ground.

The other two wraths advanced on Cedric at once. He whirled around and struck out at the female wrath approaching from behind. She dodged at the last second, twirling away from the edge of the sword as it sliced down.

Arcing his sword arm back up, Cedric repositioned himself against the wiry wrath whose black eyes bulged out of his small-sized head. The wrath carried his own sword, one that was at least twice as long as Cedric's. He grinned as he lunged with it toward Cedric's midsection.

Cedric swung his sword to meet the wrath's. When they hit, reverberations moved up Cedric's arm, and he gritted his teeth. The wrath with the sword was stronger than he appeared.

A small, strangled sound came from the edge of the cluster of trees, and Cedric looked up to see Daisy struggling against Chath. The wrath moved calmly away, carrying Daisy with him.

“Stop!” Without looking behind him at Chath's friends, Cedric ran toward Daisy across the lawn. The wrath stopped when he reached a row of tall, sparse bushes that stood in a line. Through them, Cedric could see what appeared to be a street. How far had they run? Daisy's green eyes, so much like Liv's, looked around in terror. Chath smiled as Cedric approached, sword out.

The wrath tightened his grip on Daisy, and she let out a panicked, choking noise. Cedric advanced with his sword pointed out, inches from the wrath's face. Chath didn't even flinch.

“As long as I am alive, you will never take her,” Cedric said, breathing heavy. “And a handful of wraths will not be able to kill me.”

Chath's black eyes suddenly lit up with color, first reflecting bright red, then bright blue. Flashing lights, getting bigger and bigger, brighter and brighter, until they caught on the surrounding tree trunks and bushes as well. Looking down, Cedric saw the colored flashes on his own skin, lighting it up first blue, then red, then blue again.

The wrath grinned. “Who said anything about killing you?”

B
y the time Liv got outside, both Daisy and Cedric were nowhere to be seen. She scanned the front yard fruitlessly for a few moments with Shannon, while Merek went to search the back.

Liv felt more and more panicked as she searched through the shadowy spaces of the front lawn. She knelt down to check on the fallen guard. His left arm was twisted underneath him at an odd angle, and a trickle of blood ran from a cut somewhere above his hairline. She reached a shaking hand over to check his pulse, and found a slow beat.

She exhaled in relief. But where was the other guard? And Daisy? As Liv looked around in the dark, her eyes were caught on the approaching red and blue lights of a police cruiser. The car stopped a few hundred yards down the road from Daisy's property, and Liv's first thought was,
Thank God, the police
.

She ignored her second thought, which was,
Who called them?

Shannon joined Liv, and without a word, the two ran past
the guard hut and the now-open front gate and continued quickly toward the police car. With the headlights still shining in her eyes, Liv couldn't make out the expressions of the officers behind the windshield.

The two cops didn't seem to be focused on her, though. Instead, they both got out of the car and headed toward the line of shrubbery that guarded the property of one of Daisy's wealthy neighbors. Before they reached the edge of the road, though, a figure came flying through the bushes, as if it had been thrown. In the flashing lights from the top of the police car, Liv saw the figure was Daisy. Someone else came crashing after her with almost as much force. Cedric.

Daisy hit the pavement, and Cedric knelt over her, head bent down.

“Son,” a voice boomed out across the night. Liv jumped as one of the officers, a mustached man who looked slightly too large for his snug uniform, approached Cedric with his arm outstretched. He held something small and dark in his hand. “Step away from the girl, now.”

Cedric looked up, confused. He blinked rapidly in the lights. Tears streamed down Daisy's face.

“Step. Away. From the girl,” the cop repeated.

The harshness in the cop's voice threw Liv for a moment, until she saw the metal in Cedric's gripped hand. His sword hung down like an extension of his arm, and Liv could see even from several feet away how sharp its edges were as they glinted in the headlights.

Cedric slowly stood up. In an instant, Liv saw how the
situation must look to the cops—a boy with a weapon chasing a girl through a quiet, dark, and superwealthy neighborhood. And even she had to admit that beneath Cedric's confusion, his face was all anger. His eyes blazed in the swirling blue and red lights.

He looked frightening.

“Put the weapon down,” the mustached cop repeated. “This is your only warning.”

Belatedly, Cedric looked down at the sword in his hand. His grip loosened, and Liv felt sure he was going to release it. But then his head swiveled rapidly to the woods behind him, as though he had suddenly heard a noise there. His eyes searched through the darkness, his chest heaved, and his grip tightened on his sword hilt once again.

The mustached officer raised his other arm to meet the extended one. He wrapped both fists around the small black object Liv had noticed before. This time, Liv realized what it was.

“Cedric, please. Drop the sw—”

But she was too late. Liv didn't see the cop pull the trigger, and she didn't see the current of electricity as it left the stun gun and traveled across the few feet of pavement and into Cedric's chest. She could only see Cedric stiffen all over as his head snapped backward. The sword finally dropped from his fingers as he fell to his knees, then continued to pitch forward. He landed face-first on the street with a crack.

Liv screamed with a force that frightened even her.

The mustached cop made his way toward Cedric's still jerking figure on the ground, while the second officer came and
put a strong hand on Liv's shoulder.

“You're okay now,” he said in an oddly soft voice. Looking up into the officer's face, Liv saw that he was only a few years older than she was. Tufts of baby-fine hair stuck out from beneath his cap.

“Don't hurt him,” Liv said, her words coming out in a tumble. “He's not dangerous, he's my friend. He's . . .”

The mustached officer said something into his walkie-talkie that Liv couldn't quite catch, though she caught the word “apprehended.” A squawking voice replied, “Copy.”

The officer hooked the walkie-talkie back into his belt and bent toward Cedric. He picked up Cedric's limp arms and put handcuffs around his wrists before lifting him up off the ground. Cedric's legs and arms drooped down out of the officer's grip, and his head flopped back as he was lifted.

“What are you doing? Where are you taking him?” Liv took a few steps toward Cedric, but was pulled back by a pair of arms. One arm belonged to the young officer who had just tried to calm her, the other to Shannon.

“He'll be fine, miss,” the young officer said. “The effects of the Taser are temporary. He'll probably be awake before we get to the station.”

“The station? But, but . . . he has rights . . .” Liv tried to think of the perfect words to say, the single line of
Law & Order
dialogue that would somehow get them all out of this . . . but her mind was blank.

The mustached cop pulled open the backseat of the police cruiser and lowered Cedric inside, then slammed the door. Liv
could no longer see Cedric's face through the tinted glass.

Daisy made her way slowly to where Liv and Shannon were standing. In the flashing police lights, her movements looked jerky and off-kilter, like one of her video game zombies.

The mustached cop approached. “I'm Officer Bartley, this is Officer Cooper,” he said, pointing to the young cop. He pulled out a small pad of paper and a pen from his pocket. “Can you tell me what happened here tonight?”

Before Liv could respond, Daisy mumbled something, low.

“What was that?” Officer Bartley asked.

But Daisy didn't look to the officer. Instead, she turned to Liv. “The man came after me . . . he had . . . he had all-black eyes, just like you said . . . I couldn't get away.”

Liv's breath caught. Not Knights, then. Wraths.

“You're okay now,” the officer said. “We've got him.”

“No you don't,” Daisy said, her voice bordering on a yell. Liv moved toward her, instinctively.

“You have the wrong person,” Liv said. “A . . . man attacked my sister—”

“More than one,” Daisy put in. Her words sent a chill up Liv's spine, and she peered into the shadows of the surrounding yard.

The young cop, Cooper, turned to his partner. “I'll go check the area.”

“Wait!” Liv yelled. Officer Cooper stopped and looked at her. She thought again of the officer in the alley outside of the museum. The one who'd been thrown against a brick wall by a wrath, as easily as a child might throw a toy.

“They're dangerous,” Liv said. She wanted to stop him, but how could she tell the cop he was surrounded by monsters without getting locked up in a psych ward for the night?

Officer Cooper only paused a moment before heading through the shrubs.

Bartley ushered the girls to stand in front of the car, near the side of the road. If Liv couldn't stop the cops, she at least had to try and get Cedric out of that car. Then they could all get in the house, lock the doors, and . . . what? Her mind whirled.

“You have to let Cedric go,” Liv repeated. “He didn't do anything wrong.”

Bartley looked at her, impassive. “The young man in the car, how well do you know him?”

“Very,” Liv said, without hesitation.

“Do you know that he's wanted for questioning in connection to an assault on a police officer? And you saw that he was armed?”

“But that's . . .” Liv started. But how could she explain? “He was protecting my sister.”

“With an eighteen-inch blade?”

“He had to! That man had claws!” Daisy yelled.

Officer Bartley looked from Daisy to Liv. “Have you kids been drinking tonight?”

“No,” Liv responded.

Daisy scoffed. She crossed her arms and looked at the officer with contempt. “Are you calling me a liar? Do you even know who my parents are?”

The officer was unfazed. “No, but I think it's a good idea to
get them involved. Do you live here?”

“There,” Daisy said, pointing at her mansion next door. “But my parents are out of the country.”

Liv inwardly groaned. There was no way the cop was just going to leave them here by themselves. Would he take them to the station, with Cedric? Maybe that was the best plan. . . .

“Is there any adult home that I can talk to?” Bartley asked.

Daisy's eyes widened, as if she'd just remembered something. “Andre! You have to help Andre. He's my guard, and he's hurt . . .”

Daisy started pulling on Bartley's arm then, leading him over to her front gate. Liv looked once more at the cop car, but still couldn't see Cedric through the all-black windows. She turned and followed Daisy and the officer, with Shannon just behind. But when they reached the section of street before the open front gate, Daisy came to an abrupt stop. The injured guard was nowhere to be seen.

“He was . . . he was right here,” Liv said, looking to the officer. For a moment, she wondered if the guard had managed to pull himself away.

Officer Bartley's eyebrows rose up. “Why don't we get inside? I'll call the station—”

A figure emerged suddenly from behind the hut, but it wasn't the guard. Liv's body pulsed with fear. She reached for Daisy and gripped her arm.

Chath moved slowly closer to the group of them, a smile stretched across the bottom of his face. Even from this distance, in the dark, Liv could see the wrongness of his mouth, with its too many, too sharp teeth.

Officer Bartley didn't seem to see those teeth. Or if he did, he didn't let on. He moved to block Liv, Shannon, and Daisy, and put one hand out toward the advancing wrath.

“Sir, do you live here?” Bartley said.

“I am here for the girls,” Chath responded, his grin spreading farther.

Bartley reached for his two-way. “Stop where you are—”

In an instant, Chath raised his hand high and brought it down in a slashing motion toward the officer's chest. Daisy screamed as Bartley stumbled back. Whether or not he could see Chath's thick, clawlike fingernails in the darkness, he could certainly feel them. Before he could reach for his weapon, Chath slashed out again.

And Bartley fell.

“Run,” Liv choked out. She managed to get her feet in motion, pulling Daisy and Shannon behind her. Only, she didn't know where to go. Chath was blocking the entrance to the house, and the street was long and dark—they wouldn't make it far before Chath caught up to them. And wherever Officer Cooper was, he wouldn't be able to help them any more than Bartley had.

Then Liv remembered her car, still parked near the hedge that bordered the lawn. She broke into a sprint, pulling the keys from her pocket as she moved. For a moment, she thought of Merek. Was he still in the house, or had the wraths found him? There wasn't time to look.

“Get in, get in!” she yelled, pushing the Unlock button on her key ring. She didn't hear a click over her frantic breathing, but the door opened anyway, and after she jumped inside,
she slammed the door behind her. Shannon did the same on the passenger side, and Daisy threw herself into the back. Liv jammed the key into the ignition.

She turned the key. Nothing happened.

“No,” she whispered, turning the key again.

“Liv? Now would be a time to get out of here.” Shannon's voice was at full screeching capacity.

Chath strode past Liv's side of the car then, his pace deliberate, slow. He stopped right in front of her bumper, looked in through the windshield, and smiled his hideous smile.

Liv turned the key again, and again, her hands shaking. In the backseat, Daisy let out a low, keeling moan. On her fifth try, Liv dropped the keys. When she cast an arm down to pick them up, she felt the wires. Thin, plastic-coated, jagged-edge wires, hanging down below her steering wheel where they should not be. They'd been cut.

“No. No, no, no.”

Liv looked up and saw that Chath was not alone. He was flanked on each side by another wrath. And more were coming.

Within seconds, the wraths had surrounded the car. They were close enough for Liv to see their grins as they circled slowly.

The wrath closest to Liv bent down, looked through her window, and smiled.

“We're going to be fine,” Liv said, then reached out to grab Shannon's hand. “Everything's going to be fine.”

The wrath scratched against the window with a long, dark object—a crowbar.

Shannon squeezed Liv's hand back, but shook her head.

“Liar.”