The Sacrifice of Sunshine Girl

by Paige McKenzie

  Aidan grabs its neck with lightning speed. Startled, it loosens its grip on Victoria just long enough for her to wriggle away and hurl herself to the ground.

  The creature and Aidan wrestle. Out of the corner of my eye I see that the red serpent-demon and the black serpent-demon have cleared the chasm. The red one speed-slithers toward Helena and Lucio and me. The black one speed-slithers off in the direction of the street.

  Nolan and Mom and Ashley!

  Panic grips my chest. They’re human—they can’t defend themselves. I have to do something, anything, now.

  My luiseach knife. I reach into the back pocket of my jeans, but of course, it’s not there. Ack!

  “Sunshine! By the fountain!” I hear Nolan shout from the street, pointing me to the knife.

  Nolan to the rescue again. I send him a mental “thank you” surrounded by hearts and X’s and O’s. I notice that Ashley is trying to open the driver’s side of her little blue hybrid car but keeps dropping the keys. Clumsiness is my thing, but terror can have the same effect, I guess. Nolan is attempting to steer Mom around to the passenger side, but to no avail; she keeps pointing to me and arguing with him. Listen to Nolan, Mom!

  Aidan is still wrestling with the serpent-demon. Lucio is lifting Victoria to her feet. I check out the other two serpent-demons… if I run fast enough, I might be able to get to the knife just before the closest one, the red one, reaches striking distance.

  I break into a sprint.

  “Sunshine, what are you doing?” Lucio yells.

  The red serpent-demon pivots and speed-slithers in my direction. I combat-roll onto the ground and reach for the handle of the knife.

  My fingers close around it just as the creature catches up to me and prepares to strike. I can feel its hot, rancid breath on my face as it flicks its tongue at me.

  I jump to my feet and step back. The knife burns and twitches in my grip. Its blade bears the faint echoes of its past incarnations: a torch, a storm, the epic instrument that split the earth open…

  Now!

  I fling the knife—or rather, the knife flings itself—toward the charged gray sky. It swoops and arcs like a bird and nose-dives down, down, down.

  The blade hits the earth and pierces it. It creates a swirling cloud of dirt and smoke and pine.

  The cloud funnels up, up, up and explodes… and a gigantic eagle rises up from the chaos. It flaps its massive wings—they must span at least twelve feet—with a sound as deafening as helicopter blades.

  Helena abruptly stops chanting. She glances at the monster eagle and then at me, her brown eyes wide with shock.

  Yup, that’s right, I did that, I want to say to her smugly. But this is not the time for teen-daughter attitude. Not that I’m her daughter in any way that matters.

  The eagle fixes its laser gaze on the red serpent-demon at my side and swoops in for the kill. The creature screams and screams as the eagle sinks its razor talons into its throat. Ochre-colored blood sprays everywhere. Gross. The creature flops to the ground and sizzles, dissolves into nothingness.

  Then the eagle directs its attention to the serpent-demon that is—was—wrestling with Aidan. The creature is now trying to speed-slither into the nearest chasm. But the chasm is almost closed up—all the chasms are almost closed up—and the eagle seizes the creature by its neck and proceeds to shake it to death. Old school but effective.

  The eagle dispenses with the third serpent-demon in the same way. I feel a huge whoosh of relief. Nolan and Mom and Ashley are safe. We are all safe.

  At least for now.

  Victoria is shivering and crying. Lucio has stripped down to his cargo shorts and is using his T-shirt to wipe blood and dirt and tears from her face. The earth tremors shudder to a complete stop. The chasms have all disappeared, and things are back to normal again.

  Well, maybe “normal” isn’t the right word. Nothing has been normal since I turned sixteen and came into my luiseach powers and the invisible world became visible to me. Stuff no one should ever have to see or experience.

  Aidan appears at my side. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine, D—… Aidan. Ai-dan.”

  His milky green cat eyes, identical to my own, flash with surprise. Did I seriously almost call him “Dad”? Maybe I did suffer a head injury, after all.

  Aidan starts to say something but then turns to Helena. “Do you finally—finally—understand why we have to keep her alive?” he says gruffly.

  “Sentimental nonsense,” Helena mutters. She busies herself with a loose strand of hair and shoves it back into her bun. She and I have the same curly brown hair, except that hers is perfect and mine is a perpetual, freaky frizzball (and thanks to a little encounter I had with a fire demon recently, it’s now a short, fried frizzball).

  “No, it’s not that. Her powers… we were wrong about… Helena, you need to speak to the other luiseach and convince them!”

  At Aidan’s mention of the “other luiseach” Lucio visibly tenses. I reach over and squeeze his hand. I notice Nolan noticing my hand from across the lawn, and I remove it hastily. Not that he has any reason to be jealous of me comforting a cute half-naked guy—Lucio and I are just friends, 99.9 percent just friends.

  Plus, Nolan doesn’t know everything I’ve learned recently, including what Helena did to Lucio’s mom and dad.

  Helena gazes at Aidan and then at me. She seems to be considering something. To kill me or not to kill me? What method to use, maybe? Earlier today she tried to choke me. When I was a baby she tried to suffocate me while pretending to nurse me. I’m pretty sure a therapist would have a field day with our relationship.

  Helena slants her cold, eagle gaze back at Aidan. “I need to take this up with my luiseach council,” she says finally.

  Aidan arches an eyebrow. “Your luiseach council? What on earth is that?”

  “A lot has changed since we went our separate ways, dearest.”

  CHAPTER 3

  Blood and More Blood

  White walls, beeping machines, the smells of iodine and disinfectant. I wanted to go straight home after the demon smack-down at Victoria’s, but Mom wouldn’t hear of it. So now I’m stuck at Ridgemont Hospital, where she works as the head of the neonatal nursing unit, and I’m getting poked and prodded for no good reason.

  Leads and wires cover my body. A nurse I don’t recognize—her nametag says “Beverly”—hovers over me with a clipboard. She jots down notes as she glances over her shoulder at the blinking numbers on a monitor.

  A second nurse walks into the room, pulling on a pair of latex gloves with a brisk snap, snap. She is carrying a basket full of empty collection tubes.

  “Afternoon, ladies,” she calls out in a friendly voice.

  Beverly gives her a chin nod. “Our patient’s all ready for you, Latoya.”

  “Great. The lab needs these samples ASAP. Kat’s down there now to make certain they put a rush on everything,” says Latoya.

  “If anyone can light a fire under their butts, it’s our Kat,” Beverly says, chuckling.

  “May I please go home now?” I ask, shifting carefully so I don’t unplug myself. “I’m fine. Really.”

  Beverly pats my shoulder. “I’m sure you are, hon. Your mom just wants to be a hundred percent that everything’s A-okay. We’re just gonna run a couple of tests and have Dr. Kothari give the results a look-see.”

  “Are you right or left-handed, sweetheart?” Latoya asks me.

  “Right.”

  “Allrighty, then.” Latoya takes a piece of rubber tubing out and ties it securely around my left bicep. “Make a fist for me?”

  I obey, trying to ignore the pinchy pressure of the rubber tubing. If I know anything from living with Mom for sixteen years, it’s that nurses don’t take no for an answer. Latoya presses several points on my forearm, finds a bumpy blue vein, and swabs it with iodine. “Sharp sting, okay?”

  “Um, okay.”

  I wince as she pierces my skin with the long, thin h
ypodermic needle. The collection tube attached to the needle quickly begins to fill with dark red blood. When the tube is full, Latoya switches it out for another.

  The sight of my own blood has always made me feel queasy, so I look away and try to think happy thoughts.

  Happy thoughts, happy thoughts, happy thoughts. Vanilla ice cream from Scoops ’N Smiles. Taking pictures with my Nikon F5, my sweet-sixteen present from Mom, on a slightly cloudy, perfect-light day. My dog Oscar wearing a sequiny, powder-blue tutu. (Second-grade me used to like dressing him up.) Pizza and movie nights with Mom. The day we brought my cat, Lex Luthor, home from the SPCA. Sleepovers with Ashley back when Mom and I used to live in Austin. Antique stores and flea markets. Anything Jane Austen.

  And Nolan. Always Nolan. The way his hair falls across his forehead. His goofy, crooked smile. His amazing mind. His warm lips…

  Where is he, anyway? When we got to the hospital Mom insisted he get examined too—and also Victoria, although she had to sign in under an alias, as she did technically die here in the ICU on New Year’s. (No one knows how she managed to resuscitate herself—is it because she had just enough leftover luiseach in her to undo that demon’s mortal attack?)

  I’m not sure where Aidan and Lucio went off to. I think Ashley is downstairs at the hospital gift shop buying me trashy magazines and jelly beans and other get-well presents.

  As for Helena, I hope she went back to where she came from, wherever that is. I have a better chance of staying alive that way. The thing is, she didn’t always have homicidal feelings toward me. When she was pregnant with me, she was your typical joyful, expectant mom. But on the other hand she was extremely not typical—ditto Aidan—because they were too busy conducting scientific experiments on the unborn me to try to create some kind of mutant super-luiseach. Then, at the exact moment of my birth, at the Llevar la Luz luiseach training compound in Mexico, a massive shockwave of energy apparently blasted out into the universe. Several pregnant luiseach women at the compound spontaneously miscarried, as did other pregnant luiseach women around the world. Some of them even died.

  And so Helena came to believe—and still believes—that the luiseach race is doomed as long as I am alive.

  “Hello, hello!” Mom—my real mom, my only mom—sweeps into the room wearing ladybug and sunflower scrubs. “Sunshine, how are you feeling? Beverly, how are her vitals? Latoya, the lab is standing by for those samples,” she says all in one breath.

  “Aye, aye, captain,” Latoya says with a mock salute. She gathers the neatly labeled dark red tubes, winks at me, and takes off.

  Beverly hands her clipboard to Mom. “Her vitals are all within range, Kat… except that her temp is running a bit high.”

  “That’s okay. She’s, uh, getting over a bad cold.”

  Mom knows by now that as a luiseach, my base body temperature runs high. But she can’t let anyone know my true, nonhuman identity.

  She takes the clipboard from Beverly and scans the information. She nods to herself and regards me with anxious eyes.

  “No dizziness?” she asks me.

  “Nope.”

  “How about nausea?”

  “No nausea. Mom, can’t we just—”

  Mom’s pager beeps. She pulls it out of her pocket and reads the message on the screen. “Oh! My goodness. Beverly, did you know about the situation in the ER?”

  “You mean the arson incident in the shopping mall? The ER’s backed up six ways to Sunday.”

  I sit up slightly. “Wait. What arson incident at the mall?”

  “They’ve just admitted one of the victims. She’s thirty-two weeks, and she went into premature labor. They’re prepping her for a C-section now. Come with me,” Mom says to Beverly.

  “Seriously, Mom. What’s happening?” I demand.

  “Nothing for you to worry about, sweetie. Just stay put. Dr. Kothari will be by soon to check on you. You remember him, right? He’s the funny one with the tattoo of a…” Mom’s words drift away as she sweeps out of the room, Beverly at her heels.

  Arson incident at the mall?

  Ridgemont isn’t exactly a sleepy little town, but it’s not a violent-crime kind of place either. The worst crime I know of was when Anna’s dad murdered her while he was possessed, and that was over a year ago, before Mom and I moved here from Texas.

  My gaze lands on the small TV screen hanging from the ceiling. I wonder if this mall situation has made the news yet? I find the remote control and click on.

  A blond newscaster named Traci is saying something about a tragedy. I crank up the volume.

  “—again, one person is dead and a dozen people were hospitalized as a result of the arson at the Ridgemont Mall. Police have a suspect in custody at this time. Her name is Mabel Ostricher…”

  A photo of Mabel Ostricher pops up on the screen. White hair, blue eyes, rosy cheeks… holy crackers, I know her! She is the nice lady who volunteers at the Salvation Army where I shop sometimes. Last October when I was there she showed me a picture of her new grandson. Luke… no, Liam. She was planning to fly to San Diego to meet him and help out around the house while her daughter recovered from her labor.

  “The police have told us that the eighty-year-old retired schoolteacher put perfume-soaked clothes into a number of trash containers throughout the mall and lit them with matches…”

  Sweet old Mrs. Ostricher tried to burn down the mall? That can’t be true. There has to be a mistake.

  “The Ridgemont Mall has been closed until further notice. Anyone with information about this crime is urged to call the number that you see on your screen.”

  This isn’t possible. Mrs. Ostricher and I have exchanged stories about our pets. I told her all about Oscar and Lex Luthor. She told me all about her morkie—Princess?—and her two cats—Fluffles and Snowflake? Something like that.

  “And in other news… the International Center for Climate Research in Helsinki has issued a report. According to their findings, the global warming trend has been mysteriously shifting in the other direction over the past six months, with temperatures dropping to below-record levels across all seven continents…”

  I click off the TV and shake my head incredulously. None of this makes any sense. Maybe Mrs. Ostricher was drugged? Or suffering from serious dementia? Or somebody forced her?

  And then an awful, terrible, horrible realization dawns on me.

  Could Mrs. Ostricher be possessed? Like Mr. Wilde was when he murdered his beloved ten-year-old daughter?

  Oh my gosh.

  The newscaster said Mrs. Ostricher was in police custody. This means that she is likely down at the station right now with a building full of people—all potential victims.

  I have to get down there immediately.

  I start to peel one of the leads off my body… and stop. Not smart. I’ve practically grown up in hospitals, doodling and doing homework at the nurses’ station while Mom finished up her shift. When a lead comes off, things start beeping like crazy and nurses hurry to your room. There’s no way for them or for the machines to tell the difference between a loose lead and no heartbeat.

  If I try to escape, a horde of nurses will descend on me, and I can’t exactly explain to them that I have to skedaddle out of here and over to the police station to exorcise a demon…

  But there’s someone else who can. Aidan.

  I reach for my phone, which thankfully is sitting on my little bed tray table next to my Styrofoam cup of water and a stack of hospital pamphlets. I pick up the phone and type a message.

  Mall arson lady is at the police station. She could be possessed? I’m stuck at the hospital.

  Aidan writes back immediately:

  Helena and I are already on it.

  Helena and I are already on it. I get a weird ping in my stomach because, well, Helena. But right now she and Aidan have to work together to exorcise the demon that is probably inside Mrs. Ostricher—because, really, what else can we do here?

  Another message pops up fr
om Aidan.

  How are you feeling? What did the doctors say?

  I reply:

  I’m totally fine. Just waiting to be discharged.

  “Sunshine Griffith?”

  I glance up from my phone. Latoya is standing in the doorway holding a big syringe. Argh, another shot? Behind her a random man passes by with a bouquet of colorful GET WELL balloons.

  “Hi, Sunshine. I’m Latoya, one of the nurses,” she says.

  “Um… I know. Hi again.”

  “I need to draw your blood for your labs, okay, sweetheart?”

  I blink. “But… you just did that. Like five minutes ago.”

  “It’ll be over very quickly. You won’t feel a thing, I promise.”

  Latoya shuts the door behind her and begins walking toward me slowly. Her mouth twists into a strange grin as she holds up the syringe and pushes lightly at it. Clear droplets squirt out of the needle and cascade to the floor.

  A sizzling sound. A burnt chemical smell. The liquid has left a scorch mark in the linoleum.

  My heart pounds violently in my chest.

  This is not Latoya. Or not entirely Latoya, anyway. There is a demon inside of her. Although why isn’t the temperature dropping, like it usually does when a dark or light spirit is close by?

  I lift my right hand crossing-guard style. “Stop!” I shout. With my other hand I send a frantic text to Aidan.

  DEMON IN ROOM

  Latoya continues walking toward me… slowly, slowly. Closing my eyes, I visualize shooting a wave of extreme pain in her direction. I have no idea what made me think to do that; it just came to me.

  My eyelids fly open as Latoya shrieks and drops the syringe. It breaks, and the liquid spills. More sizzling, more burnt chemical smells… and the liquid leaves a wake of black scorch marks across the floor.

  I watch, practically hypnotized as the blackness seeps and spreads. That could have been me, that could have been me, that could have been me…

  Focus! I tell myself.

  I take a deep, centering breath and shoot more pain at Latoya. She shrieks again and doubles over.