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?”
THE PANIC AND THE TERROR
By 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 n
ow,” 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.”
THE LAIR
Liv couldn’t move.
She floated in and out of consciousness, switching from disturbing dreams to an even more disturbing reality. For chunks of time, she didn’t know which was which.
When she awoke fully it was with a jolt, her body hitting hard against the ground beneath her. Except it wasn’t ground, not exactly. Liv felt the surface she rested on rattle slightly as it moved, then stopped, then started again. In her bleary state, she recognized the motion of a car moving over road. She tried to stretch out her cramped legs, but they knocked against a solid wall. Her arms were twisted awkwardly behind her back, the skin of her bound wrists chafing against what felt like cheap carpeting. Her confused mind cleared enough to piece together where she was—in a car trunk.
Liv’s mind immediately jumped to the countless school assemblies and movies-of-the-week she’d seen that warned about abduction. She thought of the victimized female characters, usually past-their-prime TV stars slumming it on cable. They’d be bound and gagged and stuffed in trunks, and Liv remembered the grim lessons that followed: Never walk home alone. Never go to a second location. Liv had always secretly scoffed at these trusting, soft-looking actresses, knowing she was too smart to ever wind up like them.
So much for that theory.
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Except she hadn’t been tricked by a creep in a tan overcoat, she’d been . . . what? Liv tried to think. She’d been in her car with Daisy and Shannon. Daisy and Shannon! Liv twisted around, sending a shock of pain up her arms and across her shoulders. The trunk was too small to move much, but she was able to shift onto her back enough, twist her neck enough, to see behind her. The space was empty. She was alone.
The car suddenly picked up speed, rolling Liv toward the tail end of the trunk. She let out an involuntary gasp as she rolled back onto her side, then felt something hard cut into her thigh. Her phone. It was in her left pants pocket.
Liv struggled at the ties on her wrists, hoping she could maneuver one hand free to retrieve the phone. But they were bound tight with what felt like a cord. The more she struggled, the more the cord cut into her skin. She wanted to scream in frustration, especially as more memories flashed through her mind. Daisy’s fingernails scraping against the fabric of the backseat as the wraths pulled her out of the car . . . Shannon’s heels hitting the pavement as she tried to get away . . . the single punch she’d thrown at a large, boulder-fisted wrath who’d eventually forced a sweet-smelling white cloth over her mouth . . .
She could feel the car slowing down, making a turn. Then stopping altogether. A car door slammed, reverberating through the walls of the trunk. After a few sickeningly long moments, she heard a metallic click, and then the lid to the trunk opened slowly.
Twisting her head, Liv could see two wraths standing behind the trunk. The gray-haired one, Chath, and another who was a bit smaller, with a blunted nose.
“Where are my friends?” Liv asked.
“I told you we should gag her,” the short one said.
Chath merely shrugged. “Doesn’t matter if she screams now. No one will hear her.”
Liv looked past the wraths to the giant space behind them. The car was parked indoors, but she couldn’t tell how large the room was. Was it a garage? A warehouse? Far above, large fluorescent bulbs hung from steel beams.
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