Wicked Hungry (24 page)

Andres, though, is staring at the Whelans’ house.

“Some bad vibes coming from that building,” Andres says.

“It’s just covered with sigils,” Carver says. “Those are good vibes, actually.”

“If you say so, Carver. You’re the expert.”

“What’s the plan?” Enrique asks me.

“We’ve got to save Meredith and Carolina,” I say. “They’re somehow trapped on the other side of the gateway, and we need to get them out. And the demon will help us if we help it go back through the gateway.”

“Where is this gateway?” Andres asks.

“It’s in the pit for the new mall,” Blaine says. “The digging disturbed things that should have been left alone. Look, can we go?”

“What’s the hurry?” Andres asks.

“Meredith,” I say. “And Carolina. The gateway is closing. We’ve got to find them.”

“Go ahead,” Andres says. “We’ve got your back.”

“Thanks,” I say, but I’m terrified, really. Terrified of what we’ll find. Or not find. But that’s crazy thinking. We have
to
find them.

“Rewsin,” Blaine bellows. “We run. Can you follow us?

The demon rushes up to us. “I’m ready to kick some butt. Just tell me what it is: zombie, ghoul, or vampire? Where we going, chief?”

It takes me a moment to realize he’s talking to me.

“To the gateway,” I say.

“All right,” the demon says. “Faerie butt, then, maybe? They’re even tougher than vampires, but I’m ready. Follow me.”

And he’s off running, tearing through the trees, breaking branches and flattening shrubbery. There’s no chance of losing his scent trail, either, with his winning combo of dead dog stink and demonic sulfurous reek.

Blaine, Enrique, Jonathan, and Connor run with me as we follow the demon through the woods. There is a buzzing in the air that resonates in my teeth, and it grows as we go on.

“Can you feel it?” Blaine growls to me as he matches me stride for stride. “That’s gateway energy. Backing up. There must be a tremendous blockage.”

We arrive at a chain link fence, which is about ten feet tall with razor wire around the top. I’m running so quickly that the fence seems to rush up to my face and crash into it. Rewsin must have already jumped across; I can’t see or hear him.

“Hold on,” Blaine says, and he pulls out this big silver key out of his pocket. He waves it in front of us, and suddenly there’s a huge opening in the fence.

“
Sick
,” Jonathan says.

“
Sweet
,” Enrique says.

Then we’re walking through the opening. There’s a big pit on the other side. I look down into darkness. All I can see is a faint green glow.

Now there are several of us standing on the ledge.

“Where’s the gateway, Blaine?” I ask, and he points straight down.

“Dude,” Jonathan says. “How are we going to get down there? Fly?”

I just look at him. He can fly, the idiot. But the rest of us?

“There’s a road that leads down. Turn off your lights and follow me closely.”

Our flashlights off, my night vision adjusts, and I can see Blaine, ahead of me. We follow him down a narrow path and we come to the main road, where we find a locked gate. But this isn’t the gate we’re looking for.

I pull out my phone and look at the time. If the text message can be trusted, we have less than fifteen minutes.

Blaine glances back at me and sees me looking at my phone. “We have to hurry now,” he says, and starts to run down the dirt road, taking great leaps and strides. Connor, Jonathan, Enrique, and I follow him, Nye right behind us. I’m afraid we’ve lost the brothers, but we don’t have time to go back and check.

Where is Meredith?

I can smell her scent trail here, and it’s fresh. I can only hope we get to this gateway in time.

I hear a cry of rage from ahead of us. Rewsin.

“Still blocked!” he shouts. “Hurry or I will be locked in this dogskin forever!”

We’re all rushing forward now because we can see where we’re headed: a great green circle on the ground, a great opening in the rock.

“Something smells
wrong
,” Blaine says, sniffing.

There are lots of conflicting smells, but I can smell Meredith strongly, even over Rewsin’s stink. Her scent trail goes all the way up to this gateway, and then it...stops.

“
Home
,” Rewsin growls. “I want to go
home
.”

“That’s just where we’re going to send you,” Blaine says, raising the big silver key in his hand. He moves it against the green gateway, and the gateway pulses.

“There,” Blaine says, putting the key away. “It’s open.”

Rewsin jumps forward, crashes into the gateway, and screams with rage. “Closed! You think I’m an idiot?”

Blaine shakes his head, frowning. He holds up his hand. “It was open a moment ago — I don’t understand.”

“Hold the gate open, Blaine, and we’ll go in,” I say.

Nye nods, but Enrique grabs my shoulder. “You can’t go in there.”

Jonathan is shaking his head. “Dude, no way.”

“There’s no time to argue,” I say. “I can’t leave Meredith in there.”

I see a flash of red in my peripheral vision. Karen.

“Wait a moment,” I say, and move aside. Then she’s next to me.

“The Seelie queen is in there,” she says.

“You’re sure about that?” I ask.

“Be careful what you do, Stanley,” she says. “You could come out again and find we’re all eighty years old.”

“I have to do what I have to do,” I say.

Karen spits at my feet. “You’re a fool and I’m a fool to follow you. You’re going to risk your life, and for what? I bet Carolina has turned her by now anyway.”

“No,” I say, shaking my head. But she’s already gone. Has she even been here? She moves so fast.

I take a step toward the gateway. Blaine looks at me. “Are you sure about this, Stanley?”

I nod. “Who’s with me?”

Nye and Connor raise their hands, and Rewsin raises a rotting dog paw. And then Karen is next to me again, raising her hand, too.

“What’s this?” Blaine asks. “But you’re a—”

“Vampire. Like your wife,” Karen says, nodding. “Come on. There are only minutes left.”

Rewsin is staring at Karen.

“What?” she asks him.

“Could you scratch me a little?” asks Rewsin. “I itch something terrible. I just want to go home and get out of this itchy dog skin.”

Jonathan and Enrique are raising their hands, too, but I shake my head.

“You can’t go,” I tell them. “Your brothers would kill me.”

“You can’t tell us what to do,” Jonathan says. “We’re coming.”

“Sorry to interrupt,” Blaine says. “But if I don’t let you in soon, I’m not sure I’ll be able to let you in at all.”

“It’s fine. It’s decided. They’re not going.”

“Dude,” Jonathan says. “You’re crazy if you think I’m letting you go in there alone.”

I stop and stare at him and Enrique. I shake my head. “You told me I was the boss.”

“You are,” Jonathan says. “But—”

I growl low, and feel the change in me. “This is not the time to challenge me. I don’t want to fight you, Jonathan.”

“Fight me?” he says, incredulous, but then he looks me straight in the eyes. I don’t blink, and maybe he finally realizes how serious I am. How much is at stake.

“I need you to do this, Jonathan. You and Enrique. Watch after our families, and be there for my brother and my parents if I don’t make it back.”

Jonathan turns away, but Enrique grabs his shoulder and nods at me once, quickly. They’ll do as I ask. Enrique will make sure; I can feel it.

Blaine clears his throat. “You may only have a few moments,” he says. “Once you’re in, try to get the gate to stay open.”

“Understood,” says Nye, and Connor nods, and then Blaine moves the big silver key and we jump.

E
verything goes dark and then explodes with a bright green light, and then we’re standing in the midst of nothingness, on a great green disk.

In the middle of the nothingness, there is a little table. On top of the table is a piece of paper.

“This isn’t right,” Nye says.

“I want to go home,” says Rewsin. “Why am I still in this dog skin? Where are we?”

“Yeah, where are we?” I ask.

Karen walks forward and grabs the paper. She reads it, then hands it to me. “They’ve put us in a trap,” says Karen.

The letter is short: “Welcome to our trap! I’m sorry it had to end this way, but you’re better off here than out there — at least once the ceremony starts, which should be any moment now. (I can hardly wait — soon we’ll start over with a clean slate!) All the best, Zach.”

“Zach,” I say. “It figures.”

Nye nods. “It appears we are stuck inside the gateway, instead of having gone through it.”

“Like a fly in amber,” Karen says. “We could stay here a million years.”

“Wouldn’t we starve?” I ask.

Nye shakes his head, sadly. “We’re stuck in a moment in time inside the gateway.”

“What’s that mean?” I ask.

“That means it’s 11:52 forever,” Karen says. “Until we get out of here.”

“Which could be never, I’m afraid,” says Nye.

“There must be
some
way out,” Connor growls.

I just close my eyes. I’ll never see Meredith again, or Carolina. Or my family. Or Enrique’s family. It’s all this Seelie queen’s fault. Or is all my fault?

I open my eyes to see my companions pacing around aimlessly. Everyone except Karen, who’s just standing there.

“I’m sorry, Karen,” I say. “I should have listened to you.”

She shakes her head. “You did listen, Stanley. There’s no way you could have imagined all this. And I never could have imagined what happened to me. I still don’t understand.”

“There has to be some way out,” I say to myself, but maybe she hears me, because suddenly Karen is right next to me. I can feel her pale, cold skin close to mine; her blood red lips whisper into my ear: “Maybe there is, Stanley. Let’s close our eyes and concentrate, and maybe we’ll see something besides this green nothingness.”

“Together, then, Karen?”

“Together, then, Stanley, now and forever,” she says with a cold little laugh, and she grabs my hand.

My body is wracked with cold pain and pleasure, my senses overwhelmed with the taste, the color, the fragrance — everything is blood red rose. There’s no way to overpower it, so I ride it, floating on waves of sensation. I need to focus on something else. What are we doing? I want to pull Karen to me, but no, that’s going about it all wrong. Should I knock her away from me? No, not that, either. We’re trapped, and I need her help. We need to get out of here.

Meredith. I need to get to Meredith. But most of all we need to get out of here. There has to be some way out, for emergencies like this. I mean, if people get stuck on an elevator, there’s a way out; if you get stuck in a tunnel, there’s a way out; and if you get stuck on a bridge, you can walk off too.

When I open my eyes there’s a really thin string hanging in front of our faces. At the end of the string there’s a tiny tag. I let go of Karen’s hand, reach out and grab it, and hold it close to my face.

PULL ONLY IN CASE OF EMERGENCY.

“Watch out, Stanley,” Karen says. “It could be—”

“We’re already in a trap,” I say. “And we’ve got to get out of here.”

The tiny tag dangles in front of my face. Is it even real? I’m going to pull it before it disappears.

I reach out and pull.

What was I expecting? A wailing siren? A rush of color and sound? Nothing of the sort happens. Nothing appears to have changed. But then Karen gasps beside me.

“What?” I ask.

“Stanley, can’t you see it? There’s a
door
,” she whispers to me.

I look where she’s pointing. There’s a door, all right, rusty brownish red in the middle of this big green disk. I walk over to it. There’s a handle. My outreached hand grabs the handle and turns it, and the door opens, revealing a stairway.

Nye is behind me now. “Go on, enter, before it vanishes,” he says.

I look back at Karen to see if she’s telling me this could be trap, too, but she just looks impatient. So I climb in. Karen, Connor, and Nye follow, followed by the demon, who shuts the door behind us.

We’re in a huge spiral staircase, made out of very old stone. How can I tell the staircase is so old? Because it’s worn underneath our feet, so worn that the steps aren’t quite at right angles, and there’s a big dip in the middle.

“Where are we?” I ask, looking back at the others.

“I’ve heard rumors of a place like this,” Connor says. “But Whelan is new, and I’m not sure he’s worked out all the secrets of his job.”

“Wasn’t he trained?” I ask.

Connor shakes his head. “The last gatekeeper died unexpectedly, before imparting much of what he knew. I know Whelan has been looking for these stairs for years.”

“I myself thought they were destroyed when the gateway was still outside Salem,” Nye says.

“Where are we, then?” Karen asks.

“You see those marks on the walls?” Connor asks.

There’s this circle with an eye in the middle.

“Yeah,” I say. “What is that?”

“That’s the mark of the gatekeeper,” Connor says. “These are his private stairs, used only by him, or in the case of an emergency by those qualified to use them. At least that is how it was supposed to work.”

“But where do they lead?” I ask.

“Nowhere?” Connor says. “Everywhere? Wherever you need to go? Whelan told me the little he knew, but he’s never used them.”

“Will they take us to the Seelie queen?” I ask.

“If that’s where you need to go,” Connor says. “That’s how I understood it, anyhow.”

Karen whispers in my ear, “Is that where you really want to go?”

“I need to see Meredith,” I say. “I need to find her and Carolina.”

“I’ll follow you, Stanley,” Karen whispers. “Wherever you go.”

“You don’t have to,” I say.

“I’ve gone this far,” she says. “I’ll go as far as it takes.”

“Where do the rest of you want to go?” I ask them.

“I want to go home,” Rewsin says from behind us.

“And you, Connor?” I ask.