by Jenny McKane
There were four lines on the doorframe as she sat and examined them.
Four days since she’d been taken.
Sunny rolled backwards, flat onto her back and stared up at the ceiling. The insanity that Ammon promised her was a slow burn. She retained details aplenty, but they were mixed around with the irrational images that the house provided.
Headless people wandering from room to room. Animals with human faces. Talking furniture. All speaking in riddles. The food in her room was safe, but if Sunny made the mistake of trying to take a bite of something in one of the never-ending hallways, it always morphed into something horrifying.
The rules of her imprisonment were simple.
Inside her little room, she was safe. She was mostly sane; she knew who she was. She knew what had happened to her. She remembered her life on the other side. Food was brought to her, food that didn’t turn into insects halfway to her mouth. Food that didn’t start talking to her about how her mother had screamed when she died.
She should stay in her room. She told herself that each morning when her eyes opened and her torment began anew. But the house, and the owner of it, were smart. They knew what sounds would draw Sunny from her the safety of her four walls eventually.
One once she was out of her room? The house never let her find her way back until it was done with her.
On the fifth morning, Sunny replayed Ammon’s words in her head with hope that she’d retain them longer when the house called her out later.
“I’m softening you up for Seumat,” the trickster had said. “Easier to drain that way, less guards up and restrictions slowing the transfer.”
Was that what she had planned for Gideon? No. Ammon had said something about punishment. He was going to be punished for escaping. When her mind allowed her to, she clung to her thoughts of Gideon like an anchor in the madness.
The music was what rankled her sanity the most. It sounded like circus pipes that were either incredibly rusty or underwater. Both? And it was nonstop the moment she wandered out of her door, knowing that she was making a huge mistake and her body not caring.
On this morning, she looked at all the notes she’d been leaving herself the previous days.
Seumat coming.
It’s not real.
The house is creating the nightmares.
Ammon is messing with your head.
Sunshine Eleni Bonnard.
Friend of Plaxo.
Protect Gideon Lafayette.
Ammon is annoying.
Liam is not human.
Ammon is seriously annoying.
Michael is hiding a secret.
She frowned at that last one. When had she written that? She looked down at her hand, as if it might speak up and give her a straight answer. Had she written it herself or had she been persuaded to write it by Ammon? Had she come to the conclusion that her archangel handler wasn’t being honest?
The pull to leave the room was growing, she could feel it. In the halls today, she heard the sounds of children. They were laughing. They were singing to each other. They were playing games. Suddenly, Sunny felt like she had to play with them. She had to go.
So she did.
Moving past the door, she felt her head grow lighter in an instant, and all she could think about was finding a ball and rolling it down the hallway. She moved up a flight of stairs and followed the voices.
For the first time since arriving months and months ago (she’d been in the house for years already, hadn’t she? Hadn’t she been born in this house?), she noticed paintings on the walls.
Beautiful paintings of people. Beautiful people. Smiling, beautiful people.
She stopped in front of one painting, the face eerily similar to hers and familiar. It was a young man though. Certainly, she knew him, didn’t she?
As if the painting heard her thoughts, it blinked to life and looked at her. A smile spread across the features of her painting brother and long, sharp teeth spread from his over-large mouth. A hand reached through the painting and grasped Sunny by the neck, choking the air from her. She clasped at the hands around her throat and felt nails score her skin as they dug in.
Her eyes opened, and she was staring up at the ceiling of her room in Ammon’s demented funhouse.
She had survived another round. Crawling forward on her hands and knees, she scratched another line in the doorframe.
Six.
*****
When there were nine lines on the doorframe, Sunny believed she had completely lost her mind.
“Lady Hunter,” a familiar voice whispered next to her ear. “Lady Hunter, you need to listen to Plaxo.”
Plaxo.
Her mind filtered through the overload of images, stimuli, and trauma it had endured over the past days until it came to a picture of a small, cat-like face. The color of concrete.
She remembered Plaxo.
“You’re not real,” Sunny said miserably. “Go away.”
A snort puffed in her ear.
“Plaxo is very real, and Lady Hunter must do what Plaxo says,” he continued. “Do not leave the room the next morning. Do not.”
She laughed at that.
“I don’t have a choice,” she said, pushing herself to sit up. “The house makes me leave. I don’t get to not leave.”
“Lady Hunter has a choice,” Plaxo said earnestly. “Always a choice. Remember. Lady Hunter cannot go into the house. Stay in the room and Plaxo and Nino will get Lady Hunter out.”
She closed her eyes and blinked before staring back up the ceiling again. This time, tears flowed out of her eyes.
“This is a dream, isn’t it? A mean method of torture to push me further away from sanity,” she murmured, her voice cracking.
She felt the sensation of a cold little hand awkwardly stroking her hair. Was Plaxo comforting her?
“We need Lady Hunter back soon,” he said. “Things are bad without her and Half Breed won’t last much longer. Stay strong. We will be there soon.”
“Right,” she said, closing her eyes again. She’d been dreaming the entire time, she realized as she felt the pull of the dawn waking her.
Dream demons. She’d been talking to Plaxo? Surely it was just the house messing with her?
Get up. Get up. Time to visit your friends in the halls. They need you.
Sunny pushed herself up to a seated position and rubbed her face. She could feel a layer of grime on her and her hair was knotted beyond repair, most likely.
She remembered her dream. Plaxo. He’d told her something. Something important.
Sunny looked to the door where she kept notes to herself.
Stay in room, Lady Hunter.
Her breath caught in her throat. He’d been here? Or had he made Sunny leave the note for herself? Either way, it didn’t matter. He’d given her hope and it was the first sliver of it that she’d felt since arriving.
To make sure she didn’t attempt to leave the room, she pushed a large wingback chair that was in the corner of the room against the door.
Soon enough, the house was calling to her.
First, it was Michael’s voice. Demanding obedience.
Answer me when I’m calling to you, Hunter!
It’d made her antsy, but she kept reading the reminder written on the door over and over. It wasn’t real.
Next, the house tried to coerce her out with Gideon. How it knew her weakest points, Sunny couldn’t begin to fathom.
I need your help, Sunshine. Please. I can’t do this without you.
Just what she’d always wanted to hear from him. It had been tempting, and she was pacing the floor, repeating in her head over and over again that none of what she was hearing was real. Fake. Fake. Fake.
Sunshine? Baby? Are you here? Please, Sunny. I need you. I’m hurting everywhere, and I can’t move. Sunny…
Her mother’s voice brought Sunny to her knees, and she shoved her fists at her ears as the tears formed.
Why aren’t you helping me, bab
y? Your daddy and I, we’re so cold. Daddy can’t breathe. We need you, baby…
She was insane with the need to see her mother just one more time, even if it was fake. She needed to see them. To touch them. To remind herself that they were real.
Sunshine…
Her mother’s voice ground to a halt abruptly, the entire house falling into silence.
What was this?
The house. It wasn’t calling to her. It wasn’t imploring her to do anything. To follow anything.
She heard footsteps. Lots of them. They were getting closer and louder, and she pushed herself against the back of the room up against the wall, looking for some sort of weapon. There wasn’t much. Just the pencil she used to mark time and keep notes to herself.
Something was pushing against the door, running into the barrier she’d put up. It didn’t take long for them to succeed in moving the chair.
This was it.
She stood and braced to face whatever was coming for her and nearly cried again, overwhelmed, when she saw Plaxo and Nino leading a miniature squad of dream demons. Like a jumble of small little GI Joes with various weapons and war paint.
“You came,” she said, wiping at her face. “How did you find me? How did you get past Ammon?”
Plaxo ran to her and handed her a bundle. She took it and looked down, unwrapping the bloody fabric and revealing her obsidian blade.
“You found my knife,” she breathed.
“Nino killed Ammon with it,” he said, pointing to his compatriot.
“Thank you,” she said, feeling unsteady on her feet.
“Hurry, Plaxo,” Nino said, jumping into action. “Lady Hunter is weak, and we need to get her back.”
Without another word, Plaxo began weaving a bit of demon magic in the air and produced a small portal, which the majority of dream demons jumped through.
“I’m not a demon,” she said, frowning. Plaxo made a quick motion in her direction but averted his eyes at her torn shirt.
“The mark, Lady Hunter,” he said. “You were branded when they brought you here. It will not fade. You can use demon portal to go home.”
She didn’t understand the full implications of it all yet, but she wasn’t going to stand around asking questions. With Plaxo’s direction, she crawled through the demon portal and tumbled into blackness.
Chapter 34
She was crawling on her hands and knees through darkness. At first, Sunny had assumed she’d fainted again, but it was really that she was having a hard time seeing in the darkness. This portal was more like a tunnel, and she didn’t have the greatest vision in the tunnel.
“Keep moving, Lady Hunter,” the voice beside her was Nino. He was keeping pace with her as she crawled along, hunched down in the small tunnel. “The faster we get out of the portal, the better Lady Hunter will feel.”
She was claustrophobic and felt a small well of panic, as it seemed like the walls were squeezing in around her. But she was out of the house, as far as she could tell. And that was enough to keep her moving and to keep her head clear.
She could hardly believe that the dream demons had found a way to defeat Ammon, but they were brave enough to come in after her and they had risked themselves with everything that they were dealing with right now.
Almost there, she heard Plaxo behind her. She pressed forward, feeling small bits of sticky residue on her knees and fingertips, and not pausing long enough to wonder what it was. It didn’t matter. None of it mattered. She was getting out of the demon realm, before Seumat could get her hands on her.
It felt like she was passing through some sort of strange magic membrane when she hit the other side of the portal. It resisted her at first, and just when she thought it was not going to let her through, she slid across. She hit the ground in a tangle of limbs and laid there for a moment, breathing in the fresh air.
“Keep moving, Lady Hunter,” Plaxo said.
She felt his little hands pulling her, imploring her to get to her feet.
“Aren’t we free from it? From the portal?”
“Yes,” Plaxo answered. “But we may not have been able to fully seal the portal, and it could still be used for a few moments. We need to be out of the area in case demons followed us.”
“Do you have any control of where we land?”
Sunny was suddenly nervous that they would land somewhere near Antarctica or Timbuktu and getting back would be even wilder than it already had been.
“The return portal always opens within a certain distance of the original,” Nino said. He was ahead of her, urging her on. “That way, dream demons can’t get too lost when traveling between the realms.”
It was a comforting thought. Sunny was half staggering now, a combination of the exhaustion, the stress, and the fact of how little she had to eat or drink in the past week and a half she had been gone. She felt half dead.
She saw a parking lot up ahead.
“Where are we? None of this looks familiar.”
“We got out of the city to use the portal,” Plaxo explained. “We were worried that if we set up a portal within the city, every demon that was after us could easily trace us. We are in a small town to the south.”
It was late afternoon, and Sunny looked around for some sort of mode of transportation back.
“Are we going to have to take a bus of some sort?” she asked. She wasn’t even certain that a city bus would allow her to board looking like she did right now. She must have smelled even worse than she looked, because even the demons were giving her a wide berth.
“Lady Hunter has a ride,” Nino said and indicated an approaching car. She knew that car. She’d ridden to nearly every sex club in the greater Seattle area next to Gideon in that car. Her stomach roiled in protest at the sudden surge of emotion.
The car squealed to a stop on the road next to them, and Gideon sprang from it without turning it off or even closing the driver’s side door. He was running straight for her.
As he neared, Sunny was suddenly incredibly aware of how disgusting she had to look and smell.
“Wait, Gideon,” she said as he got closer. “I’m really gross. You might want to wait—”
He didn’t wait. Gideon yanked her into the embrace of his big arms and crushed her to his chest. She heard the rapid beat of his heart, nearly matching her own, and she awkwardly wrapped her arms around his waist.
“I thought I’d lost you,” he said, his voice breaking. “I thought you were gone forever, Sunny.”
She started at the emotion in his voice, but she couldn’t bring herself to break the contact yet. She pushed her forehead against his shirt and breathed him in, gripping his shirt in her grubby hands and holding on to him as tightly as she could.
*****
Gideon hardly spoke on the ride home. His hands were trembling, and he seemed to be at war with his emotions. When they arrived at his house nearly an hour and a half later, he was still mostly quiet as he led her upstairs. He told her to wait by the counter while he disappeared into his room.
She heard water running in his bathroom, and she wondered if he needed a shower after that hug. She sniffed herself and grimaced.
Noodle was beyond himself at seeing Sunny and rubbed against her legs repeatedly.
Gideon emerged quickly and ushered her back towards his room.
“What’s this?”
“You stink,” he said. “You look like you’re going to collapse, too, and my room has the only tub.”
Gideon’s room was in a bit of disarray and looked like it hadn’t been picked up in days. It was Spartan for sure, but she could see glimpses of his personality around it. Sketchbooks. Sculptures. Books. Sunny knew there was more to him than he let on, but all of this proved it.
“I swear I’m not just trying to see you naked, Sunshine,” he said. “And there’s a bit of medicine in the bath, but bubbles would have just burned your skin. It looks raw in a lot of places.”
He gently moved her into the bathroom and t
he smell of lavender, eucalyptus, and another herb she couldn’t quite place wafted around her.
“Steel leaf,” he said, reading her face. “A plant from the demon realm that will help heal your skin.”
His eyes raked over her again, and he took her face between his hands and leaned close.
“I was so scared,” he whispered. His voice was cracking with emotion. He stared at her for a few moments longer. “I’d kiss you senseless right now, but you stink, love.”
Love. The word nearly melted her and pulled at her deep down. Why had he said that? Before she could dig in and examine it and overthink, he moved out of the bathroom.
“Get in the water,” he said. “I’ll be back in to help you.”
Her cheeks burned at the thought of being naked in front of him in any condition, least of all this one. But the smell of the bath lured her in, and as she tentatively stepped into the warm water, she lost all inhibition and sank fully in until she was submerged.
*****
It had taken Gideon three rounds of shampoo and conditioner to get the tangles and mats out of her hair, and he’d complained the entire time about how she’d been so foolish to leave the safety of the shop. How he’d despaired at finding her missing and how the dream demons hadn’t contacted him with any news at all for three days.
“Seventy-two hours, Sunshine,” he said as his fingers massaged her temples. “You don’t know what that did to me.”
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, her voice hoarse. “But for what it’s worth, I had a hell of a time, too.”
Gideon leaned over her and placed a kiss on her temple, she shifted under the water to cover herself, and he chuckled against her skin.
“I’ve already seen everything,” he teased. “And it was more than I imagined.”
She burned, body and soul, at his words.
*****
Sunny was having a hell of a time adjusting to life out of Ammon’s house of horrors. Her first night back, she’d attempted to sleep in her own bed and had gone running for Gideon at her first nightmare. He was sitting up in his bed, rubbing his eyes when she appeared at his door, uncertain.
