Daughters Unto Devils

by Amy Lukavics

  No.

  “Come and give your ma a kiss,” it snarls, and lunges for Emily. She screams.

  Before I know what I’m doing, I’ve run up to the thing and sunk the hunting blade deep into its temple. It blinks, blabbering nonsense, and stumbles backward. The ants stop moving, stop biting, start receding through the cracks and holes on the ground they came from.

  Emily makes a dash for the front door with the children. “Come on, sister!” she cries. “Come on!”

  The demon snarls and throws Ma’s hand at me, weakly. “Sinner,” it says, and lets out a grated giggle. “You’ll always...be...a...”

  With a guttural cry, I lower my shoulder and charge the abomination. We collide, and I shove it backward into the mouth of the roaring fireplace.

  The demon is still screaming by the time we harness Blackjack up to the wagon and load the children inside. The smoky smell of roasting meat fills the air, and I become sick into the grass. By the time we are heading steadily away from the cabin by the light of the late afternoon sun, the children sleeping on top of one another and Emily at my side on the bench, the screams have finally died away like a dissolving nightmare.

  “Elmwood is so far away,” Emily says in a low voice as the wagon bumps through the prairie. The sun is falling lower and lower with every minute, and neither of us have any idea of what we should do. “I don’t quite know how I feel about going there instead of back to the mountain. It’s getting late, and the light of the moon is going to be blocked by those clouds. We’d have to camp.”

  “We will have to camp anyway, for Blackjack.” I throw a glance behind my shoulder into the back of the wagon. Joanna and Charles are sleeping, their arms wrapped around each other, their faces set in frowns even in slumber. At least they are alive. “But either way, sister, we are going to need supplies. The only thing we have is the barrel of water that Pa filled the afternoon before Hannah got attacked.”

  Without all the added weight of the family’s belongings, the mostly empty wagon is able to glide through the tall grasses much more quickly than on the way here. I’d like to get as far away as possible before we are forced to stop to let the horse rest. The closer we can get to Elmwood, to other people and supplies and help, the better, but I know from Pa’s experience that the trip could potentially take us a full day’s worth of time since we aren’t completely sure where it is.

  “I’ve just thought of something,” Emily says, and straightens her back. “Do you remember that cabin we passed on the way in to the Kensington place, with the children waving to us from the fence?

  I can’t believe I’d forgotten. There had been a cabin on the way here, somewhere far away from the tree line, and at the time we’d all been so upset to discover that it was occupied.

  “Perhaps we could make our way there to get help!” I say. “Do you think they’d give us supplies?”

  “It’s worth a try,” Emily says. “At the very least, it’s on the way to the mountain.”

  And so we have a plan. We ride for a long time in silence, and I wonder if Emily’s mind is having just as hard of a time digesting all of this as mine is. I am plagued by flashbacks of the earlier days on the prairie, of discovering the ruined cabin, of hearing an infant crying in the night, of feeling the hand on my wrist.

  Of losing my baby.

  That wasn’t me who collected your baby’s slime into my earth. The demon’s words repeat in my head, just as unwaveringly cruel as they were the first time I heard them back at the cabin. Oh, no, deary, that was God.

  I prayed for no more baby.

  Sinner.

  I prayed for no more Hannah.

  You already have a devil in you, girl.

  “Stop the wagon,” I say, suddenly unable to sit still. “You need to leave me here, you need to go on without me...”

  “What?” Emily looks at me in shock, the corners of her mouth beginning to pull back in panic. “What are you talking about, sister?”

  “I’m evil,” I say, and I break out into a cold sweat. “The demon in the woods has been inside of me all along. Don’t you remember what that thing inside of Ma said to me? It couldn’t get in, Emily!”

  “It couldn’t get in because you wouldn’t let it in,” Emily emphasizes, refusing to slow Blackjack down. “Because you’re an especially strong person.”

  “If you only knew how weak I am!” I burst, and Joanna startles awake for a moment before falling back into uneasy snores. “If you only knew what thoughts have run through my head, Emily, if you only knew how despicable, how disgusting, how positively—”

  “What are you saying?” Emily cuts me off. “It doesn’t matter what you think, sister. It matters what you do. If we were to be damned for every thought that ran through our minds, we’d all be Hell-bound. What matters is who you are.”

  “And who am I, Emily?” I have no more tears to shed; I only feel dead inside.

  “You are stronger than you think you are,” Emily says. “You are not your thoughts. The only devil inside of you is the one you created yourself.”

  I say nothing. Is it possible that she’s right?

  “I refuse to leave you behind,” she continues. “I refuse to let you give up on yourself again. Have you forgotten about what you did just now? You stabbed the demon. You pushed it into the fire, even though you knew you could have died doing so.”

  “I had to, though.” I shudder at the memory of Ma’s face as it twisted in pain in reaction to the knife and the flames. “I had to protect you, and the children...”

  “And there it is,” Emily says. “That is who you are. You are someone who would risk your life to protect the people that you love. You are someone who makes mistakes, just like everybody else.”

  The sky deepens to a soft purple-red as the sun finally sinks into the horizon. Ever since the mountain I have felt an unspoken gap between Emily and me, a total lack of understanding, a loss of sisterhood that I feared could never be regained. And now as I look into the face of my younger sister who should have been my older sister, I realize that it was I, once again, who has misunderstood.

  She will always be here for me, and I for her. That’s the most important thing, now that our ma and pa and Hannah have been taken away from us. The pain of it all is deeper than I could have ever imagined, but we are not alone. We must take care of each other now, always, and the children, as well.

  “Thank you, Emily,” I say, and move over enough to wrap her in a hug. Despite all we’ve been through and how truly exhausted she looks, my sister smiles at the embrace and leans into it. “I love you.”

  “And I you.”

  That’s when we see it at the same time: the cabin we passed on the way to finding our new homestead. It lies just ahead in a spot that is miles from the tree line.

  “That’s it!” Emily says. “I’m sure of it. Oh, I hope they’ll give us supplies. I’m not sure if our foraging skills from the mountains will be of much use here, at least until we get farther away from the flatlands.”

  She quickly flicks the reins up, then down, and Blackjack speeds up a little at the sight of a sure destination.

  “Let’s not wake the children,” I say when we’re close. “They need all the rest they can possibly get.”

  “Are we going to tell the owners of the cabin what happened?” Emily asks as the wagon draws nearer. Her mouth pulls to the side. “If we do, there’s a very good chance they’ll turn us away out of fright.”

  “Agreed,” I say. “All we need to reveal is that we’ve lost our ma and pa and need any help they can offer. If they ask, say it was a sickness.”

  Emily’s eyes grow misty. “It was sick, all right.”

  As we get closer to the cabin, we are greeted with a strange sight. Just as there were when we passed by the first time, there are three small children sitti
ng on the fence outside of the house, waving to us. Even after we return the gesture, the waving doesn’t stop.

  “Is this striking you as peculiar?” Emily asks as she leans forward and squints at the children. “Kind of an odd time to be playing outside, in the beginnings of the night. And why won’t they stop waving?”

  My stomach sinks more with every rotation of the wagon wheel. The children still have not stopped waving. The outlines of their bodies look increasingly funny as we draw nearer—out of proportion, strangely tall but with tiny heads. “Don’t stop the horse when we’re near,” I instruct. “Let me try to call out to them from the wagon first.”

  But as soon as we’re close enough to make out the truth, Emily jolts the reins and makes Blackjack speed away from the cabin. For each of the three children, who sat waving to us from atop the fence with such enthusiasm, aren’t actually children at all, nor are they sitting on the fence, like we thought.

  They’re scarecrows, posted behind the fence, all three in a perfectly straight row. Henry told me about these once, I realize as I stifle the urge to vomit. Did he know they were real when he told me the story? Did he know exactly where he was sending us that day he recommended the prairie to Pa? I vow to ask him myself one day.

  For instead of having straw-filled burlap sacks for heads, these scarecrows have been given real heads, sewn on at the neck with thick black cord, heads that once belonged to children. They don’t stop waving, their gloved hands floating back and forth in hurried excitement. In their free hands are pieces of someone; an arm, a foot, a shining length of intestine.

  Their mouths are completely smeared with red.

  * * *

  We don’t try to find Elmwood.

  As far as we know, it sits right on the prairie and probably isn’t safe anymore, if it ever was. So we go to the only place we know, the only place that could possibly hold a future for us.

  We go home.

  The journey is much shorter than the one we took to get here, but the lack of supplies makes it twice as difficult to survive. We all do, but by the time we make it to the foot of the mountain, our clothes are much bigger on us than before, and we can hardly walk on our own.

  But we do. We abandon the wagon, and the children ride on Blackjack as Emily and I lead him up, up, up the path that goes to the clouds, to our cabin, to our home. We gorge on wild strawberries and water from the creeks. We refuse to give up. And when our cabin finally comes into view, just as tiny as when we left it but now with more than enough space to hold our entire family, we all burst into tears.

  The air is frigid, and the first flakes of winter begin to fall as we huddle together inside the empty cabin. I tell the children that tomorrow we will make the last stretch, to the settlement on the other side of the mountain, and then all of this will finally be over. They shiver as they fall asleep.

  I wonder if Henry will be there tomorrow. I wonder if he’ll ask about our baby. I wonder if I’ll be able to resist killing him for suggesting the prairie to my pa. Emily’s breathing becomes rhythmic, and my eyelids flutter down, heavy and sleepy. I yawn.

  But then there is a sound that makes me snap more awake than I’ve ever been in my life. Something outside the cabin, growing louder as it approaches, and my heart feels as though it may collapse.

  It is the sound of Pa’s fiddle, warped and thin and drastically out of tune, somewhere out there in the dark woods.

  Emily and the children sleep as soundly as ever.

  The fiddle is playing “Come, Holy Ghost.”

  * * * * *

  The gratitude I feel for those who have supported me in my dream of becoming a published author is limitless:

  Joanna Volpe, my incomparable literary agent who stuck by my side, tirelessly, for over four years before I finally got my foot in the door with a book deal. JoJo Baggins, words cannot describe how grateful I am for your patience and never-ending encouragement. I won’t forget about that surprise bacon pizza feast for as long as I live! Besides being an excellent businesswoman, you are also one of the kindest, most thoughtful people I’ve ever met. I’m proud to be able to call myself your client and your friend.

  TS Ferguson, my kick-ass editor, as well as my incredible team at Harlequin Teen—in marketing, Mary Sheldon, Melissa Anthony and Amy Jones. In publicity, Jennifer Abbots. The awesome design team that created my creepy cover, Kathleen Oudit, Tara Scarcello, and Bora Tekoqul. Second-reads wizard Natashya Wilson. And to TS again: thank you for loving horror as much as you do. The first time we spoke on the phone I knew that you were someone I’d be insanely lucky to work with. I look so forward to whatever comes next for us as a spook-tacular duo!

  Roxie Blackwood, longtime reader of everything I’ve ever written (including my Harry Potter fan fiction in high school) and fairy godmother extraordinaire. I am so lucky to have you in my life, sister-friend! Love you forever.

  Kody Keplinger, the very first writer friend I ever made online and someone who has never stopped believing in me from the time she read the first chapter of my first book. I can’t thank you enough for everything you’ve done to help me throughout this crazy experience, my dear!

  My girls over at YA Highway: thank you for your friendships, wisdom, and awesome company at writing retreats over the years: Steph, Kir, KFH, K Botts 5000, V. Roth, Kris, Sumy, Sarah, Leila, Lee Bross the Baus, Kaits, Deb, and Emilia. You all rock my socks. Meese love forever!

  Early reader Dawn Kurtagich, for her enthusiasm and kindness no matter what.

  Everybody at New Leaf, but especially Danielle Barthel and Jaida Temperly, aka the best agency assistants ever!

  Stephen King and R. L. Stine, for writing stories that made me fall head-over-heels in love with horror.

  My endlessly wonderful cheerleaders-from-the-sidelines: Nick, Izzle, Jamie (PonP), Tyler, Tonni, Jay, Madison, Megan, Jen, David (PonP), Chels, Emmy, Travis, Jason, Nonny, Mama. I cherish you all with my whole heart.

  Last and the opposite of least, my love, Edmund, and our two beautiful squidlings, Lily and Jude. Eddie, thank you for supporting me while I took a stab at this writing thing for over six years without implying, even a little bit, that it was a hassle or that you were tired (even though I know that it was, and that you were). Your unconditional love blows me away, and I can’t wait to achieve the rest of our dreams together. Lily and Jude, when you’re old enough to read this, know that anything your hearts desire is possible through passion, perseverance and little touches of luck here and there. (And pizza, of course. Always pizza.)

  Looking for your next paranormal read? Check out the New York Times bestselling series The White Rabbit Chronicles by Gena Showalter!

  Inspired by the classic Alice in Wonderland, The White Rabbit Chronicles series features romance, high-action zombie slaying and shocking twists that will leave readers gasping for more.

  Read them all now!

  Alice in Zombieland

  Through the Zombie Glass

  The Queen of Zombie Hearts

  A Mad Zombie Party

  Connect with us on HarlequinTeen.com for info on our new releases, access to exclusive offers, free online reads and much more!

  Other ways to keep in touch:

  Facebook.com/HarlequinTeen

  Twitter.com/HarlequinTeen

  Looking for your next paranormal read? Check out Sisters of Blood and Spirit by USA TODAY bestselling author Kady Cross!

  Wren Noble is dead but craves those rare moments when her twin sister allows her to step inside her body to experience the world. Lark Noble is alive but known as the crazy girl who talks to her dead sister...she doesn’t exactly fit in with the living. Now a friend of Lark’s has been marked for death, and the twins—who should know better than to mess with the dead—may be his only hope of staying alive.

  Read it now!

  Sisters of
Blood and Spirit

  Connect with us on HarlequinTeen.com for info on our new releases, access to exclusive offers, free online reads and much more!

  Other ways to keep in touch:

  Facebook.com/HarlequinTeen

  Twitter.com/HarlequinTeen

  ISBN-13: 9781460390955

  Daughters Unto Devils

  Copyright © 2015 by Amy Lukavics

  All rights reserved. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental. This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

  ® and ™ are trademarks of the publisher. Trademarks indicated with ® are registered are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the Canadian Intellectual Property Office and in other countries.

  www.Harlequin.com