Wilder The Chosen Ones

by Christina Dodd

  Pain crashed through her, overwhelming her.

  She tried to scream. Tried to move. Got her breath. Screamed, except . . . it sounded like a whimper.

  Oh, God. Oh, please. Please, God . . .

  No, don’t pray. They’ll notice you. Down here the mouth of hell lurked too close and yawned too wide.

  She rested there, gasping, getting control, subduing the agony, praying—not praying—wanting to be well and whole. And knowing that, even if she escaped alive, she would never be whole again.

  Without moving, she tried to look behind her.

  Where was behind? The dark was . . . blacker than anything she had ever seen.

  Except for the eyes, glowing eyes, dozens of eyes, that followed her, moving, shifting, circling.

  She needed to get up. Get moving. Find her way out. Now.

  But . . . agony. Pain everywhere. Agony . . . her collarbone was broken.

  She breathed again, in through her nose, out through her mouth, as her yoga teacher had taught her, controlling her mind, soothing her nerves. . . .

  Every time she broke a bone in her battles alongside the Chosen Ones, the pain blistered her. Usually, though, she got hurt during a fight, and adrenaline kept her going. This time . . . she had nothing except a warm, flat stone surface under her body, a darkness so thick it smothered her, and fear. So much fear.

  She tried to remain still, to allow the agony to subside. But it didn’t, and she could no longer stay still.

  She groaned.

  How could she have been so unwary? She knew the treacherous passages down here. In the last three days—or was it five days?—she’d been all over, looking for the way out. But she was as lost as she had been the first day in these underground tunnels.

  There was no way out.

  Just as there was no end to the pain. Or the fear.

  So dark.

  So hungry. So thirsty.

  That was why she’d fallen. She’d been down here for days. Three days. No, more, because she’d been without food for at least four days, had drained the last of her water more than forty hours ago.

  Five days. Probably. Maybe. Her phone was dead—not that it did her any good, so far underground.

  The stones in her bracelet hummed softly, warning her.

  She wanted to snap at them. Which made no sense. They were stones. Although they spoke to her, they did not live.

  They warned her that danger lurked, but what good did that do? She knew she was in trouble. She was dying of hunger and thirst, her body was broken and bleeding, she was half-insane with the need to sleep, and she kept thinking she would gladly die of any of those causes . . . because when she looked behind her, or in front of her, she saw those eyes, glowing eyes, in the dark.

  She had to find the wall, to get her back against it, to prepare her weapons for a fight to the death. The wall . . . was not too far. A few feet, perhaps. She could move a few feet.

  Cradling her useless arm, she sat up.

  Her head swam. Her face was swelling. The darkness had already blinded her. She hoped . . . she hoped her eyes didn’t swell shut before she had taken out some of those eyes.

  With her free hand, she reached, groped, found a wall. A stone wall. Yes! Triumph!

  “Yes, Samuel, it’s a crappy triumph, but I take what I can, you asshole. All right?” She didn’t think she’d actually said the words out loud. She thought that, with her swollen lips and dry mouth, she only mumbled.

  But for a moment, the gibbering quieted, and she felt the intense stares as she inched her way to the wall and propped herself up. There. Now all she had to do was stand up. Easy. Nothing to it. Soon.

  New York City was one of the world’s great cities. It bustled. It roared. It created fashion. It made money. It sold knockoffs.

  It covered one of hell’s doors to the world.

  Like their kin, the rats, the demons would wait until she was unconscious, near death, and then they would take her, bite by bite, tearing her flesh, consuming her while she still lived. . . .

  The demons had appeared in the world about four years ago.

  Charisma had seen them first. She had been patrolling, and she got the itchy feeling of being watched. She saw glowing lights out of the corners of her eyes, swung and faced them. The lights blinked out. She told herself she was imagining things.

  In her business, it was easy to imagine things.

  In her business, sometimes she would rather go crazy than have to face the truth.

  She hadn’t said anything to the other Chosen. After all, she’d never really seen anything. But finally the Chosen Ones’ seer, Jacqueline Vargha, had pronounced, “Hell is bubbling like a cauldron, and creatures are escaping, with scaly skin and teeth and claws and ravenous appetite and little glowing eyes. . . .”

  Then every one of the Chosen Ones admitted to glimpsing at least one flash of a demon in the dark. Even Samuel said he’d seen something peering at him from beneath a grate in the street. Of course, being Samuel, he jabbed it with the sharp cane he now carried. The thing had screamed and slithered away.

  Being Samuel, and a mind controller, he also said the things had no minds of their own. They were simply eternally hungry creatures that hunted and ate and hated everything that lived in the world.

  Most of the time, Charisma could barely tolerate Samuel. He was a boor, and only his wife, Isabelle, could keep him in check.

  But now Charisma wished Samuel and his stupid cane were here, because the eyes had moved closer, and for the first time she could hear the demons’ low gibbering.

  They were excited. They smelled blood. They were salivating over the idea of fresh meat.

  Charisma shuddered. She always carried a gun, a small pistol. It was loaded. Full of bullets. She needed to get it in her hand and take aim, and shoot them one by one. . . .

  No, wait. She’d lost her pistol somewhere. Where had she lost it?

  Oh. She remembered. She’d fallen down before, on the very first day, before she’d been lost . . . or before she had admitted to herself she was lost. She’d heard something, something that sounded like a child wailing. She’d been running, trying to catch up. She’d turned a corner, saw a demon, squat and scaly, loping along ahead of her, its head thrown back, its lipless mouth open and imitating a human baby’s cry. Furious, exhausted, ready to kill, she had pulled her handgun, tripped on a loose stone, landed on her hands and knees.

  The pistol fell, skidded toward one of the cracks that yawned so unexpectedly in the ground. She’d flung herself after it. Missed.

  The demon cackled and kept running.

  The pistol fell off into the void. Charisma waited, listening for it to land, thinking that perhaps she could go and get it. At last, long moments later, she heard a faint, far-distant thump.

  She didn’t want to go down that far.

  Here in the tunnels she was too close to hell.

  She hadn’t come down here to look for hell. She’d come down because . . .

  Because she’d witnessed a kidnapping. A human child snatched from its parents and carried below the city. She had fought the demons, rescued the baby, returned it to its parents, and realized that somewhere during the battle, she’d lost her crystal bracelet.

  But she couldn’t give up that bracelet. She’d made it for herself, back when the earth’s stones had first started to speak to her, drilling the stones and threading them on a sturdy chain. She never took them off. This bracelet contained the first crystals that had spoken to her, and she had worn it always. . . .

  She was Charisma Fangorn, one of the Chosen Ones, and her gift was that she could hear the earth song.

  For almost all of her life, Charisma had been aware of the earth, speaking through the stones at her wrist, crooning like a mother to her beloved child.

  As a child, Charisma had reveled in those loving tones, and, believing everyone heard the same song, she had spoken to her mother about the pleasure she felt in hearing it.

  Two things
.

  One—that mother wasn’t her biological mother, and she was an altogether pretty poor excuse for a human being.

  Two—that woman whom Charisma thought of as her mother started farming her out as a healer at markets and street fairs across the western United States. Charisma hated it, hated the nomad lifestyle, where she . . .

  Not important now.

  Eventually, there on the site of the demon battle, she had found her bracelet, and now the stones urged her, Wake up. Wake up! That more than anything proved her situation was desperate, for her gift was fading as hope failed in the world, and the voices of her stones had almost vanished.

  Charisma’s eyes popped open.

  The darkness pressed in on her.

  The glowing eyes were closer. A lot closer.

  Charisma pulled her shoulder in. In a slow, desperately painful movement she pressed her back against the wall and staggered to her feet.

  The glowing eyes surrounded her, but they hung back.

  Yes. She tried to smile. They were afraid. Because . . . she was one of the Chosen Ones. She would make them suffer. She would die fighting.

  A few levels up, the walls were slimy and cold. Down here, the heat from hell’s fires radiated up Charisma’s back and fought off the chill of death.

  Charisma bent, inch by painful inch, down to her boot and pulled her knife. She grasped the handle in her sweaty palm. She wished she could say the blade felt familiar, but no. She lost her knives in fights every day, every week, until Irving bought them by the case and kept them in the hall closet for the Chosen so they would never be without.

  God bless Irving. Almost a hundred years old . . . she had never thought he would outlive her.

  No, Charisma would fight to her last breath. . . .

  She breathed in and out, the sound rasping in her ears.

  The gibbering got louder, more excited.

  She lifted the knife. Narrowed her eyes. Braced herself.

  And staggered when something heavy, cold and slick and silent, fell on her from above.

  She screamed, the pain in her injured shoulder agonizing, then screamed again as that thing sank its teeth into the muscle above her collarbone. She stabbed, impaling it, and heard it squeal and struggle. She lost her grip on her knife. She grabbed, dug her fingers into some body part. A nose. An eye. She didn’t care; she knew only that she suddenly had a handle with which to throw it, and she did, flung it as hard as she could, the way a person threw a cockroach or slug or spider or snake.

  A thump. A squawk. Four pairs of eyes went out. She’d knocked them over like bowling pins, and that made her happy. But when she lost the knife, she’d lost her last weapon.

  The chattering grew guttural, angry, intent. The eyes slid closer. Closer. Glowed hotter, red and blue.

  Her shoulder throbbed. The bite spread cold down her arm and up her neck. Venom. She’d been poisoned. The world wavered. She was going to die. . . .

  She heard an unexpected rush of movement from the side.

  Driven by instinct, she crouched and turned to fight.

  Loud and deep and animal, something roared and threw an object that clattered and rolled toward the demons.

  And right before her eyes, a bomb exploded.

  The demons screamed.

  Light flashed scalding white, showing her the silhouette of a creature that stood between her and the demons. Tall, hairy, misshapen, a creature from a child’s nightmares, with long arms outstretched—toward her.

  She tried to cover her light-blinded eyes. The ragged edges of her collarbone scraped together.

  The demons scattered.

  The beast roared again, closer this time; then like a vengeful god it grabbed her, lifted her, flung her over a broad shoulder, and bounded like a lion up the stairs.

  Her arm hung uselessly down the beast’s back.

  The pain was excruciating.

  She welcomed unconsciousness.

  She was going to die.

  Chapter 4

  Charisma drifted toward consciousness.

  The first thing she heard was the sound of water rippling over stones, like a delicate brook down a mountain slope. She heard birds tweeting, too, and realized she was warm and comfortable, snuggled into her bed listening to her sound machine.

  She usually set the machine to play the ocean shore, not the babbling brook, but this was nice. Relaxing. Soothing. Although some memory niggled at the corner of her mind. . . .

  Then she moved.

  Wrong!

  Every joint ached and burned.

  Instinctively, she reached for the bracelet on her wrist.

  It was there, her crystals strung on a wire and held close against her skin. The stones whispered a faint reassurance, so faint she could scarcely hear it, but even so . . . she knew she was safe.

  She opened her eyes to darkness. Total darkness.

  Her night-light had burned out.

  She moved again. And groaned. What had she done to herself this time? She couldn’t quite remember. . . .

  Then, in a rush, she did.

  Lost. Hurt. Attacked. Saved by . . . something.

  Where was she?

  It wasn’t just dark.

  She couldn’t see.

  She couldn’t see!

  She sat straight up, groped for her eyes. She was blindfolded!

  From the side, she heard someone move. Her wrists were caught and held. “Don’t.” A man’s voice, deep, rough, and scratchy. “Your eyes were injured in the blast.”

  Blind. She was blind. And imprisoned.

  Panicked, she struggled.

  “Don’t,” he said again. “You’ll hurt yourself. The doctor said to leave the bandages on as long as possible.”

  “The doctor?” Her mouth was dry. Her voice was shrill. “What doctor? Who are you?”

  “Dr. King. He saved your life.”

  This guy didn’t tell her who he was. Like she wouldn’t notice that. “I’m not stupid, you know. I remember what happened. I fell down the stairs. I broke my collarbone.” Although it felt better. For a new break, surprisingly better. “So what are you claiming could have killed me?”

  The voice didn’t answer.

  She started to struggle again.

  He shook her wrists. “Do you remember the bite?”

  She froze.

  The demon. The bite.

  “Yes.” On her shoulder. The cold had radiated down her arms, her legs.

  “Some of the demons are venomous. That one was, and the venom worked on you. By the time I got you here, you were delirious, with a high fever. I sent my people to find Dr. King, but he’s busy. He came as soon as he could—”

  ”You have a specialist who makes house calls?” She poured scorn into every syllable.

  “He knows I can’t come to him. And he works down here a lot.”

  “So I’m still below the city?”

  “About three levels under Central Park.”

  “Why so far down? Why Central Park?”

  “I’m safe here. And I like Central Park.” The man sounded almost whimsical. As if he didn’t get much company and was enjoying her visit.

  “Safe from what? Who are you?”

  He sighed. He loosened his grip. “If I let you go, will you listen to the story before you tear off the bandage?”

  “Yes.” Because his hands like manacles around her wrists made her panic even more.

  Cautiously he released her.

  She could feel him hovering, waiting to make a grab if she made the wrong move.

  “Water,” he said, and put a bottle in her hands.

  She should sniff the contents. She should make sure this wasn’t drugged. But she was so thirsty, she couldn’t wait. Lifting the bottle, she drank, and drank, and when he pried the bottle away, she fought him.

  He won, of course, for she was abominably weak. “Stop! You’ve been on an IV. Your stomach’s not ready to be inundated!”

  She lowered her hands to her sides,
gripped the blanket that covered her legs, and realized—“I need to go to the bathroom.” She wished she didn’t. She couldn’t imagine where she was, what kind of primitive facilities there were, whether he was a leering pervert who would watch her . . . or whether he was a demon who faked being human to trick her into revealing secrets of the Chosen Ones.

  Why else would he blindfold her except to conceal his disgusting, eerie, reptilian face?

  She heard a rustle of material. His voice came from close beside her, at almost the same level as her head. “I’m going to help you get up.” He put his hands under her arms and lifted her to her feet.

  And she realized she’d been resting on the ground.

  As if he knew what she was thinking, he said, “You were delirious, dying. You kept flinging yourself off the bed onto the floor and burrowing into the dirt.”

  Her mind seized on the oddest detail. “Your floor is dirt?”

  “You’re in a cave, okay?” He guided her with his hand under her arm. “Finally I realized you were special. Different. You get your strength from the earth, and you needed the earth to heal.”

  Kudos to this guy for figuring it out.

  The voice continued. “So we put you on the ground and covered you with blankets, and you got better. It was a close thing.”

  “I feel a little achy now. That’s all.” She rotated her shoulder. “Even my collarbone is better.”

  “That’s because you’ve been unconscious for eleven days.”

  “What?” She jerked her head toward him as if she could see him.

  “Eleven days,” he repeated. Taking her wrist in his grip, he placed her hand on a doorframe. “Here’s the bathroom. I took out the lightbulb. You’ll have to grope around, but it’s small, with a sink and commode. There’s a lock on the door. You’ll be okay.”

  “Why would you take out the lightbulb?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe because you seem to be the kind of person who doubts me when I say your eyes are injured and would hit the switch to prove me wrong.”

  “Sarcasm.” She rather appreciated that. Made him seem more human.

  Not that she’d ever had a conversation with a demon, but she didn’t think they had the wit or intelligence for sarcasm.

  As promised, the room was blessedly tiny, the door had a lock, and she didn’t need her sight to do what she needed to do. She washed her hands at the sink—by the shape and heft of the fixtures, she would guess they dated from early twentieth century—and stood there, trying to understand her situation, to figure out what to do next.