Was there time to cross back into the human world before the approaching fiends pounced? Because I was suddenly certain that's what they were planning.
"They smell yummy," the third said, followed by a peal of high, maniacal laughter. "Do they kiss hellions?" His teeth clanged like hollow metal when he closed his mouth, and my pulse lurched again. "Do they breathe Demon's Breath?"
"No," the first one said, as Nash, Tod, and I slowly backed farther from the small monsters now clearly stalking us. I wasn't sure if they could hurt Tod, but he obviously wasn't taking any chances. "They are clean."
"Pity…" the second high-pitched voice sang. Then the two fiends in back turned on their small, bare heels and twitch-bounced back to the group scaling the walls of the stadium.
My pulse slowed just a bit, with the threat decreased by two-thirds. But the first fiend still eyed us. Eyed me. He sniffed, tiny, flat nostrils flaring. "Foreign." His left arm twitched violently, as if it were trying to fight free from the rest of his body. Then his right foot jiggled, like he was trying to wake it up. Only, I was sure he hadn't done it on purpose. He was in desperate need of a hit, and his body wouldn't work properly until he got it.
"You don't belong here, humans." He stepped forward as one corner of his mouth began to jump. The fiend eyed me boldly, assessing me, and I realized that though he was clearly in the grip of some sort of withdrawal, he was still thinking and speaking somewhat coherently. At least, more so than his friends. "Stay, and something bigger will surely eat you…."
"We're not—" I started, but Nash squeezed my hand ruthlessly, stopping me from denying our humanity. "We're looking for a hellion," I said instead, and Nash groaned audibly. Evidently that wasn't a good conversation-starter in the Netherworld.
Who knew?
But the fiend surprised me. "As are we all," he said wistfully, and I felt my brows arch almost off of my head. Yet that made sense. They were desperate for a hit of Demon's Breath. Of course they were looking for a demon.
"Um, I mean we're looking for a particular hellion." This time, Tod squeezed my other hand, but I ignored him. If the fiend wanted to bite us, he could already have done it several times over. "Do you know a hellion of avarice?"
The fiend's flashing yellow eyes gleamed brighter, and they may have moistened just a bit, as if with a fond memory. "Ah, avarice…" he breathed, squeaky voice piercing right to the center of my brain. "My favorite flavor."
Excitement traced my veins, chasing out those last, healthy jolts of fear. He knew the hellion of avarice. Or at least, he knew a hellion of avarice.
I dared one step forward, fighting the urge to squat and look him in the eye, and Nash held tightly to my hand so I couldn't go any farther. "Can you tell us where to find this hellion?"
"I can." The creature nodded his bulbous, bald head, and in the reddish moonlight, I got a good look at the dark veins snaking over the top of it, bulging like a serious weight lifter's. "But there is a price."
I frowned. "I don't have much money. Not quite fifty—"
"Kaylee…" Nash refused to relinquish my hand when I tried to dig in my pocket.
"I have no use for your worthless paper currency," the fiend spat, gray lips turning down around razor-sharp teeth. "I will tell you where to find your hellion—for a portion of his breath. Payable in advance…"
"What?" Anger burned in my cheeks. The fiend's nostrils flared again, as if my ire scented the air, and for all I know, it did.
"Let's go…." Tod tugged on my other arm.
"No!" I turned back to the fiend, trying to get my voice under control. My anger clearly pleased him, and that wouldn't help my case. "If we knew where to get a dose of his breath, we wouldn't have to ask you where to find him!"
But the fiend only blinked up at me, tiny hands twitching, clearly unconcerned with how I came up with the payment. Did logic have no place in the Netherworld? How was I supposed to…
I stood straight as a sudden possibility occurred to me. "Is an hour soon enough?" My lips curled up into what felt like a sly smile.
The fiend nodded slowly. Eagerly. "I will wait here. One hour. My time," he said, as if in afterthought.
"Deal." My smile widened.
Nash and Tod frowned at me, but instead of explaining, I dismissed the creepy little monster and rushed across the lot with both guys on my heels, my focus on the ground ahead, on the lookout for anything that could poison, grab, or eat me.
Because the guys were right: If I wasn't careful, I had no doubt this monstrous wonderland would swallow Alice whole…
17
"WHERE ARE WE GOING?" Nash asked from the driver's seat as I propped my right foot on the dashboard, glad to be back on my own side of the looking glass, even if only temporarily.
"I don't know yet. Here." I twisted to toss my phone over the backseat to Tod. Unfortunately, he was no longer fully with us—non-corporeal due to stress, maybe?—and the phone dropped through his body to land on the seat, like it had fallen through a hologram. His rear and my phone now occupied the same space at the same time.
Wasn't an event like that supposed to make the world explode, or something?
The reaper glanced down in surprise, then reached through himself to grab my phone from the seat—which had to be one of the weirdest things I'd ever seen. Even weirder than killer plants and little bald fiends with tails and needle-teeth.
Tod's body solidified, and he stared at me blankly. "What's this for?"
"Well, most people use it as a form of communication, but it would probably work as a projectile, in a pinch."
Tod frowned. "Funny. Who am I supposed to call?"
"Addy. Find out where she is. I have an idea." While he dialed, I turned my attention to the thorny coil of vine still wrapped tightly around my ankle. Nash had cut it close to the ground to get me loose, but there was still enough of the weed left to encircle my leg twice, long, thin thorns piercing both the denim and my skin. At two-inch intervals, thin four-leaf clusters dangled, dark green at the centers, bleeding to red on the serrated edges.
"Be careful with that," Nash warned, glancing from the road to my ankle, then back. "I think that's crimson creeper, and if it is, the thorns are poisonous."
Of course they were. Was anything in the Netherworld nontoxic?
"It's a little late for that. The stupid thorns went all the way through my jeans." I pinched the end of the creeper vine between my thumb and forefinger, completely horrified when thin red liquid dribbled from the severed tip, and gingerly pulled it away from my leg. Fortunately, now that the weird red vine was dead, it uncoiled easily. But each time a thorn pulled free from my skin, a fresh jolt of blazing pain shot through my ankle, as if I were being struck by tiny bolts of lightning. By the time I dropped the plant on the floorboard—the vine had to be eight inches long—a hot ache had settled into my ankle joint, throbbing with each beat of my heart.
I bit my bottom lip as I carefully rolled up the cuff of my jeans. Then I gasped in shock. My ankle was already swollen. Each of the dozen or so tiny holes was raised and puckered, and the wounds were almost as red as the vine itself.
"Shit!" Nash whistled through his teeth. "Definitely crimson creeper. My mom will know what to do for that, but if we tell her, she'll call your dad." Nash's eyes found mine, and I wondered if I looked as conflicted as he did. "Do you think you can wait a couple of hours, or do we need to go now?"
To the hospital, of course. Where Harmony worked as a third-shift RN on the orthopedic ward, where the patients were least likely to die.
I pressed my foot against the dashboard experimentally. The pain was constant, and did not increase with pressure, which meant I could probably walk on it. "I can wait." I closed my eyes briefly and exhaled, mourning the last of my hope that my dad might never discover what we were up to. Now that I was injured, full disclosure was unavoidable—hopefully after we'd reclaimed Addy's and Regan's souls.
When this was all over, I'd probably be spending a lot of t
ime alone in my room.
"Hello, Addy?" Tod said from the backseat, and I loosened the chest strap of my seat belt so I could twist around to watch him, studying his face for any clue about Addison's half of their conversation. "Did I wake you up?"
She laughed bitterly over the line, but I couldn't make out her actual words.
"Yeah, I probably couldn't, either." Tod plucked a frayed thread from the thin layer of denim over his right knee. "Listen, where are you? I think we need to drop by for a minute…." He glanced at me to confirm, and I nodded while Addison said something else I couldn't understand. "Good. Can you arrange for a few minutes of privacy?" Another pause. "We'll be there in ten minutes."
"Twenty," I corrected him. "We have to make a stop first."
Tod relayed the correction to Addison, then said goodbye, hung up, and tossed my phone back to me. "She's at her mom's house. It's the only place she can avoid most of her entourage."
"Good." I slid my phone into my pocket and glanced out the windshield to read the passing highway signs. "Nash, we need an all-night Walmart, or grocery store. Or maybe a drugstore."
He nodded and slid smoothly into the right-hand lane, barely pausing to flick on Emma's blinker. "There's a twenty-four-hour Walgreens a couple of miles from Addy's house. Will that work?"
"With any luck. Do you think I should get something for this, while we're there?" I raised my cuff to show him my ankle, and Tod sucked in a sharp breath from the backseat, then leaned forward, gripping my headrest.
"Damn, Kaylee, is that from the weed?"
"Yeah." I poked gently at one of the swollen puncture marks, then hissed when a fresh jolt of pain shot through my tender flesh and into the core of the joint. A small bead of clear fluid oozed from the hole, and I dabbed at it with a tissue from the box on Emma's center console. "Nash thinks it's crimson creeper."
"He's right. Thank goodness it was a little one. Of course, if it was fully grown, you never would have stepped on it."
"Fully grown? How big do they get?"
Tod raised both brows, surprised by my cluelessness. Though, he shouldn't have been, considering that a couple of months ago I didn't even know my own species. "Fifty feet or better. And a puncture from one that size will kill you in a couple of hours, if it doesn't break your spine first. They're like giant pythons with roots."
"And thorns," I added bitterly.
Tod looked like he wanted to say something else, but whatever he was thinking was lost when Nash spoke up.
"You're gonna need something for that ankle." Nash glanced at it again, until I pulled my cuff down and set my foot on the floor. "But I have no idea whether or not human-world medicine will work on Netherworld toxin." He paused and flicked the right blinker on again, when he spied our exit. "So what else do we need at Walgreens?"
"Balloons." I smiled at Nash's perplexed expression, enjoying understanding more than he did for once.
Tod stuck his head between the front seats, looking just as confused as his brother. "We're taking Addy balloons? Should we stop for a cake and a present, too?"
My smile widened. "The balloons aren't for Addison. They're for the fiend. Addy's just going to…blow one up for us."
For a moment, Tod's eyes narrowed even further. Then his expression smoothed as comprehension settled in, and one half of his mouth quirked up.
"Clever…" Nash nodded at me in obvious respect. "I like it."
"Let's just hope it works."
At Walgreens, Tod found a bag of multicolored latex party balloons while Nash and I hunted down a tube of antibiotic cream. When we met at the cash register, the reaper also snagged three bars of chocolate. I paid—I knew my "paper currency" would come in handy!—then we rushed to Addison's house, beyond grateful for the light, middle-of-the-night traffic, because we had to be back at the stadium in half an hour.
We parked next to a shiny Lexus in Addison's driveway, and she must have heard the engine, because she pulled the front door open as we climbed the steps, then ushered us into the empty living room.
Addy closed the door behind us and stood in the entry with her hands deep in the pockets of a pair of snug, faded jeans. She was still fully dressed. She hadn't even tried to go to sleep. Not that I could blame her.
"Where's your mom?" Tod asked from the middle of the room. No one sat.
"She's passed out in her room." Addy's ironic smile said that for once, she was grateful for her mother's "issues."
"What about Regan?" I rubbed my left shoe against my right ankle, barely resisting the urge to bend over and scratch because that would have exposed my Netherworldly injury and led to questions we didn't have time to answer. And because I was pretty sure scratching would make more clear liquid run from my puncture wounds, rather than easing the fierce, burning itch that had settled in.
"She's sleeping off a couple of Mom's painkillers." Addison glanced at me, then down at her unpainted toenails. "I had to give them to her. She was freaking out, and I just wanted her go to sleep and shut up. I tried to warn her, but she didn't listen. She never listens…."
My heart ached for Addy, and her splintered relationship with her sister. They reminded me of me and Sophie, and that thought left a bitter taste in my mouth, as if I'd swallowed one of Addy's mother's pills.
"It's fine." Tod clearly didn't care what happened to Regan. He had eyes—and concern—only for Addison. "We're a step away from finding the hellion, but first we need you to blow up one of these."
"Maybe two or three of them," I interjected, tossing Tod the bag of party balloons. "I'm not sure what dose the fiend is looking for, or what the concentration is…inside her. So it might take more than one."
Tod ripped open the bag while Addison glanced from one of us to the other like we'd lost our minds.
"It's in your breath," I explained, while Tod pulled a cherry-red balloon from the bag and stretched it to make it easier to inflate. "The Demon's Breath. It rests in your core. And in your lungs, and I think that every time you exhale, you breathe a little bit of it into the air."
I'd gotten the idea from the fiends, who'd wanted to know if we exhaled Demon's Breath. We didn't, of course. But Addy might.
I wasn't sure how it worked. If she lost a little bit of the force keeping her alive with each exhale, or if the Demon's Breath replaced itself as each little bit was lost. But I was virtually certain—based on the fiends' odd dialogue—that Addy carried within herself the very currency we needed.
She took the balloon from Tod and stared at it for a second as if it might grow teeth and bite her. Then Addy put the latex to her mouth as we watched from a loosely formed semicircle on the beige carpet.
"Wait." I shrugged, my arms still crossed over my chest. "It seemed to me when Eden died that Demon's Breath is heavier than air, so it's probably at the bottom of your lungs. You'll have to empty them to exhale what we really need. So blow out as much as you can on each breath, okay?"
Addison nodded hesitantly, then put the red balloon to her lips again as Tod pulled a yellow one from the bag. She began to blow, and the balloon grew slowly, becoming more translucent with each millimeter it gained in circumference. She blew without inhaling, forcing more air from her lungs than I'd have thought possible, until her face was nearly as flushed as the balloon.
Singers must have very good lungs.
When she could exhale no more, the balloon was half-filled. She pinched it closed between her thumb and forefinger, and I took it from her to tie off the opening. When I let it go, the balloon sank quickly, as if it were tethered to some small weight.
Tod handed her the yellow balloon and she repeated the process without a word or a glance at any of us. When the second balloon had joined the red one on the floor, I couldn't help but smile as I stared at them, the room silent but for Addy's forceful exhaling into a third, purple, one.
The balloons on the floor looked festive, in a cheesy, child's-birthday-party kind of way. They seemed to mock their own dangerous content. But then,
maybe that was appropriate, considering the origins of that content: a world where the residents would gladly eat us alive. If the plant life didn't get us first.
When Addy had finished the third balloon, Nash decided we had enough. Not because we were sure we actually did have enough, but because we were running out of time. Why hadn't I asked for two hours?
Not that it mattered. Addy's life-clock was ticking toward its last tock even without the fiend's deadline. According to the digital numbers on her DVD player, it was just after one o'clock on Thursday morning. Addy would die sometime in the next twenty-three hours—probably sooner, rather than later—and every moment we wasted brought that unknown time closer.
"We'll come back for you as soon as we can," Tod said as I gathered the filled balloons. "Get Regan up and moving." If she'd already been conscious, we could have just taken both Page sisters with us. "We'll call when we're on the way, but I can't promise much notice."
Because we had no idea where this hellion was going to be, or how long it would take to get there. And to find him.
"I'll try." Addy frowned, glancing toward the kitchen. "She won't touch coffee, but I think we have some Jolt in the fridge."
"Good. I'll call you when we know more," Tod promised, and left a kiss on her cheek on his way out the door.
Addison watched us from the front porch as we backed down the dark driveway, her arms crossed over the front of a thin, long-sleeved T-shirt, apparently oblivious to the middle-of-the-night November cold. My guess was that it was nothing compared to the chill inside her.
Nash drove again, and I spent the first part of the ride to the stadium applying antibiotic cream to my ankle, and the second part desperately wishing I hadn't. I'd barely wiped the thick white cream from my fingers when the puncture wounds began to bubble and hiss softly, as if I'd poured on hydrogen peroxide instead. The annoying ache/burn I'd been trying to ignore for the past forty minutes roared into a full-blown bonfire in my ankle.
My Soul to Save Page 19
