No Rest for the Wicked

by Krystal Jane Ruin

  I pump the stones full of all of the combustion energy that they’ll hold. And then I open my eyes and wait.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  A couple of hours pass and still no sign of Gage. I tell Gretchen everything I know about what’s going on. And everything I’ve done. We also try the door once because three weaker devourers are preferable to one Gage, but it’s locked from the outside.

  There’s no other way out; the windows are too high up. There’s nothing left to do but wait. But the stones are active, and Gretchen is ready to run for her life. Literally.

  “It’s so scary.” Gretchen hugs her arms close to her chest. “How they just suck your life right out of your body…who thought that was a good idea? To make something like that? I mean, really. There is no use for that.”

  My back hurts from sitting on the floor for too long, but it beats sitting on that couch or the mattress or leaning against a wall that has I don’t even want to know what crawling all over it. I smile. “I like to think of them as the byproduct of some kind of unnatural union in the spirit realm. The same kind of thing that made me what I am, probably.”

  “Yeah, but you’re not going around killing people.”

  I pinch my lips together.

  “Tatum, no,” she says, seeing my face. “Not technically.”

  “How then?”

  “It wasn’t you. It was that rock thing. That doesn’t count.”

  “Of course it counts. I felt their lives in my hand. I made a choice. I didn’t have to.”

  “You can’t beat yourself up over it. If you didn’t do it, they would have killed them anyway.”

  “I know.”

  Her eyes drop down to her lap. “I’m sorry. I can’t imagine.” She goes quiet.

  “Well, don’t try too hard,” I say lightly.

  She looks up and tries to smile, but it slips away. “I want you to be happy.”

  I pick at my nails. “Everyone can’t be happy.”

  “I still want you to be happy. And get married.” Now she does smile. “Have you ever thought about getting married?”

  A scowl paints across my face. “No. Why?”

  “Never?”

  I almost laugh. “No. I can’t even picture it. It’s so…” I shake my head. “Normal.”

  “It’s okay to do something normal.” A sad light tints the corners of her eyes. “Let’s make a deal. If we survive, we’ll do one normal thing before the year is up.” She holds out her pinkie. “And I get to pick your normal thing.”

  “Then I get to pick yours.”

  She holds her pinky back for a beat and narrows her eyes. She stares hard into mine like she’s trying to read my thoughts. “Okay fine. Deal?” She holds her pinky back out. I roll my eyes and swear.

  “Don’t make me regret this,” I say with a laugh.

  “I’m picking first,” she says.

  “Fine. Then I’ll know how bad I’ll need to punish you when it’s my turn.”

  She laughs. “I trust you.”

  The door slams open down the hall. Her eyes widen with panic, and she scrambles to her feet.

  “I don’t care!” Gage shouts at someone outside. “Grow a damn spine, and get back out there and find him! I swear on your life that if you try to cower somewhere, I will find you and put an end to your existence myself.”

  Gretchen hurries back over to the filthy couch, and I lock my hands together behind my back. The stones rest warm against my palm.

  Gage strolls into the room, dragging the college student from earlier today behind him. The guy hangs limp and unconscious in his grasp. He dumps the boy on the moldy mattress and turns sharp eyes to my face. Then he smiles.

  “This day was almost perfect,” he says. “But the one bright spot…” He kneels down in front of me and takes my face in his hands. “You’re the bright spot.” He lets me go, strolls over to the college kid, and rolls him over onto his back.

  Poor guy. He just keeps getting knocked out today.

  “The stone is everything I was hoping it would be.” He looks up from the boy and flashes his teeth at me again. “Together, you and I.” He lets out a short bark of laughter. “No one will be able to stop us. I’ll build a new empire with a legion of followers, and you and I will be at the helm, controlling them all. Devourers. Shifters. Nightcrawlers. All of them. When you stop pitching a fit, that is.” He shuts his eyes and lifts his face to the ceiling, like there is sunlight beaming down instead of dust-covered mildew. “Can’t you see it? Dream with me.”

  The feel of his cold fingers lingers against my skin. I free a hand from behind my back and try to scrape his prints off my face.

  I can see the future all right. And he’s right. If I’m honest with myself, I’d rather take the path of least resistance. I’d rather take the path that will lead people to fear me and run from me. And I would love it more when they run. Because no matter how far and how fast they go, I will always find them. That power is tempting.

  But for my sister…he’ll have to kill me. Because I will never do anything for him. I stash my hand back behind my back. It’s only a matter of time before he checks my wrists. I need to act now.

  He opens his eyes and rolls them over to Gretchen. “You look scared,” he says to her. She sinks down against the tattered cushions. He turns back to me. “Perhaps we should show dear Gretchen what you can do.” He nudges the unconscious boy with his foot. “I’ll be right back.”

  The moment he’s out the door, Gretchen is by the boy’s side, checking for a pulse.

  “He’s alive,” I say.

  She lifts her eyes to mine. “How are we going to get him out of here?”

  “The same way we get ourselves out of here.” My shoulders are starting to cramp up again, so I stretch my arms out and roll up to my knees.

  “I can’t believe you’re not scared.” She throws a paranoid glance over her shoulder. “I wish I was more like you.”

  “No, you don’t.” I follow her gaze out into the darkened hallway and push myself onto my feet. “Besides, it’s not that I’m not scared. I just can’t afford to entertain it right now.” I start picking my way to the back of the room. “Get back to the couch.”

  She leaves the boy’s side without hesitation and returns to the broken springs.

  Gage returns seconds later with another one of those soul-sucking stones in hand. He tosses it up and catches it again, and he’s halfway into the room before he realizes I’ve moved. His body freezes, and his eyes search the neglected space. When he finds me hanging out in the shadows, he frowns.

  “Get over here.”

  I shake my head. My heart hammers in my chest.

  “That’s fine. I’ll come to you.” He strolls towards me, keeping his eyes locked on my face. “Your arms are free, I see. I knew I should have picked up some handcuffs.” He holds the stone out. “Take it.”

  I take it with my free hand.

  “Go,” he says, like he’s commanding a dog to get into its pen.

  “Here.” I toss him a garnet stone and slide past him without an explanation.

  “What is this?”

  I glance over my shoulder but keep walking. He squints down at the small red stone and rolls it between his fingers.

  Gretchen shoots off the couch and towards the college guy just as a loud pop echoes around the large, dusty space.

  Without further warning, flames shoot up Gage’s arm and swallow his face.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Agonized bellows shake the warehouse. Gage beats at his arm with a flat, open hand but only succeeds in spreading the fire to the other half of his body.

  I tear my eyes away and throw one of the boy’s arms over my shoulder. Gretchen takes his other side, and we hobble from the room as fast as we can.

  Two devourers burst into the hallway. I toss a stone to the one in front. He catches it instinctively, and before he can figure out what it is, he’s on fire.

  “What the hell?” The other one b
eats at the flames, and they spread to him at once.

  We stumble through the front door, drag the boy a safe distance away, and set him down in the weeds.

  Another devourer shouts at us from the parking lot. I throw the last stone in his direction, and Gretchen and I take off across the street to the hijacked SUV, running faster than either of us have ever run in our lives.

  High-pitched screams fill the air, mingling with the others, and a look back shows one more flaming body flailing through the overgrown lot.

  I start the car the moment I reach the keys and pull the SUV around as fast as I can manage before swerving along the road and speeding away.

  I take a peek back in the rearview mirror. Thick, dark gray smoke spills out of the cracks in the windows and billows out the front door.

  Short bursts of hysterical laughter escape Gretchen’s throat. “Oh my god. What do you think that will do to them?”

  “Besides make them angry?” I look in the mirror again, and Gretchen turns around in her seat. A bright orange haze sits in our wake, and so far, no cars.

  I press harder on the gas, and Gretchen fastens her seat belt.

  “It’s not going to kill them, is it?”

  “No,” I say with confidence.

  She swallows hard. “What happens to people when they die?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I like to think they float around in a field of lavender.”

  The store front looms up ahead, and I can see Renali’s shiny black car parked haphazardly in front of the building.

  He found them!

  But the knots don’t loosen in my stomach.

  I pull the SUV alongside it and cut the engine.

  The lights in Renali’s office are on. Gretchen jumps out of the car and races for the office.

  “Mom!”

  I get out and check both ways down the street. A set of headlights comes this way, and everything in my body tenses. But the car doesn’t slow, and seconds later, an old green sedan rumbles by.

  I breathe out and inspect Renali’s car. The front is smashed in, and the passenger side door has been ripped off the hinges. The door to the office opens, and Emmerick waves me inside. His eyes trail down the street before he steps back in.

  Tessandra lies motionless, but breathing, on the waiting room couch, her head underneath the sappy lily-pond painting. Gretchen holds onto her tight and cries on her stomach.

  “I found her unconscious in the back seat of her car,” Emmerick says. He nods to Renali, who’s posted against the wall by the door, grimy and shaking and holding onto the tattered sleeves of her ruined blouse. “They were over an hour away.”

  “Where were you going?” I stand in front of her.

  Tears and dark makeup blot her face. Her head hangs in defeat. “Gage wanted me to take her to his cabin.” She sniffs and shudders. “He said you needed more motivation.” Her bottom lip quivers as she brings her eyes to my face. “I’m so sorry.”

  God, she’s a mess. I’ve never seen her like this. I didn’t even think it was possible. Under normal circumstances, I would feel sorry for her, but now, a rather solid sense of satisfaction fills me at the sight.

  “I thought you cared about her.”

  Renali hiccups. “I do! You have no idea how hard this has been on me.”

  “Oh, save it.”

  She starts crying. “I didn’t know what to do. I was just driving around in circles. I didn’t know if I should just come back and risk his wrath or if I should just take her and hate myself forever.” She shivers.

  “Emmerick is a shadow man,” I say.

  “I know that. Now.” She squeezes her eyes shut.

  “Do you know where the rest of them are?”

  She shakes her head.

  “She’s lying,” Emmerick says, his upper lip curved in a half snarl. “I know she’s lying.”

  “I don’t! I swear!”

  I reach inside her mind. It’s a jumbled mess. Memories and thoughts flap by in quick succession, a fractured montage of the past and present.

  I push through the chaos and latch onto a memory.

  She watches Gage from some distance away while he sucks up shadows like a vacuum cleaner. Around her neck is a little bronze key. A distant voice, her voice, sometime before this scene or later, whispers, “I can keep them safe for you.”

  The scene cracks in half and is replaced by an image of her making coffee five days ago.

  “I think he did something to her,” I say. “She definitely knows something though.”

  She cries harder. “I don’t know…I can’t—I can’t remember.”

  “Is that key important?” I look into her eyes.

  “A key?”

  The urge to shake her and rattle her brain around is strong, but I know it won’t help.

  “There’s a key, Renali. Is it important?”

  Her eyes dart to the lily-pond painting, wide and panicked. “The door…” Her eyes shoot back to my face. “The door is locked.” Her voice grows increasingly more erratic and loud. “The door has to stay locked. No one can go inside. The door doesn’t belong here!”

  I smack her across the face. I can’t help myself.

  She drops her head again as another wave of tears shake her body.

  “What did he do to her?” Gretchen asks. She pulls herself off the floor and sits down on the edge of the couch.

  “He’s trying to keep me out of her head.” I grip Renali’s shoulders. “He’s underestimating me.”

  “It’s in the water,” Renali wails. “They can’t get out of the water!”

  I search through her mind for anything related to the key. I see her locking a door, the key in hand. A familiar door. The one down the hall.

  “You can’t touch the water,” she babbles. “It will kill you.” She suddenly lifts her head and looks right into my eyes. “It will burn the skin off your bones.” Her gaze shifts to the lily-pond painting again. “Don’t trust anything,” she whispers. “Nothing is real.”

  I push her back against the wall and release her shoulders. The painting…I move across the room and tear the painting off the wall. A small bronze key is taped to the back. Adrenaline and hope race through my veins.

  Someone is talking to me, Gretchen, I think, but I’m not listening to the words. I pull the key free and drop the painting to the floor.

  Gretchen’s panicked voice shouts something in my direction. When I turn around, she’s on her feet and trying to pull Tessandra from the couch.

  “What are you—”

  The glass door to Renali’s office shatters, and a crispy-fried Gage climbs into the room and skewers Renali through the midsection with his bare hand.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Gretchen screams. Emmerick dissolves into a shadow and slithers across the ceiling. I hold onto the key like our lives depend on it, because they do, and help Gretchen pull the couch out from the wall and stash Tessandra behind it.

  Gage, blackened from the flames, aims his hand at shadow Emmerick. That violet ball of light bubbles out of his palm and expands. Emmerick dodges sharply across the ceiling, missing it by inches.

  “Go!” Gretchen cries from behind the couch.

  My feet unglue from the floor, and I run down the hall to the locked room. I don’t hesitate. I don’t wonder what’s behind the door. There’s no time. Emmerick can only distract him for so long.

  With a shaky hand, I shove the key into the little lock and stumble into the room.

  Except it’s not a room. I’m outside.

  I twist around and look behind me. The door stands open with the hallway stretching out behind it. Yet on either side of the door from this side, there are just trees and vibrant green grass and warm air.

  What is this? I step away from the door. Rushing water sounds from nearby, like a waterfall. Dark blue sky and moonlight are up ahead, shining light down on my surroundings.

  Dew drips off the leaves, and the scent of rain is in the air.


  What was it that Renali said?

  The thought of her, what he did to her, sends waves of nausea over me.

  No. Focus. I take a deep breath. What did she say? Something about water?

  I peer through the trees. Their trunks reach up high, several feet, and the leaves and branches hang down low. The waterfall sounds from every direction. Which way? I lift my hands to my temples. Come on, which way?

  Left.

  Maybe I’m reaching. I’m sure I am. But the lily-pond painting was on the left side of the room. Kind of. I start left and then stop. But the door was on the right. And technically the painting would be on the right. I shake my head. Left.

  I pick through the soft, cushy grass.

  “You’re alive,” a cold voice says, stopping me in my tracks.

  I spin around. My mother stands behind me, wrapped in a long and flashy, funeral-black dress.

  My heart freezes. “You’re dead.”

  She smiles, and her eyes flash red. “And soon you’ll join me.” A red halo bleeds out of her skin, and the ground ripples beneath my feet.

  Hot, fiery pain lights through my veins, setting my insides on fire.

  Crying out in pain, I stumble back and grab hold of the nearest branch to steady myself. “What are you?”

  “I’m your mother.” Her voice sounds strange. Distorted. It has an almost digital quality to it. Like something found on a computer chip. She walks towards me, gliding, her feet barely touching the grass. She stops and hold her arms open. “Come to me.”

  Disparaging laughter spills from my lips. “You’ve got to be joking.”

  Her skin glows red again, and more hot pain seizes my veins.

  I grip the branch tight and grit my teeth against the searing heat before crying out again. This isn’t real. This can’t be real.

  “Is this any way to treat someone who died for you?”

  I don’t have time for this. I squeeze my eyes shut and try to reconcile with the fire blooming throughout my body. She isn’t here. I know she isn’t here. I can see her dead in my head just as clearly as the day it happened.