A Darker Past (Entangled Teen) (The Darker Agency) (18 page)

Chapter Twenty-Three

I wasn’t sure how we’d make Cassidy talk if she didn’t want to. She was my best friend’s mother, and bitch-of-the-year attitude aside, how far could I really go to make her tell me the truth? Kendra’s life was at stake, so…

Pretty damn far.

“You ready for this?” Mom said as she killed the engine. We were outside the Belfair house, and I was feeling twitchy. Time was running out, and every second we wasted here was another second Kendra might not have. If Cassidy wasted our time…

I took a deep breath and unfastened my seat belt. “Ready to resort to methods à la the Godfather if that’s what we need.”

Mom swung open her car door. “Cass wants Kendra back as much as we do, Jessie.”

“I’m glad one of us is confident about that,” I muttered as we started up the walk. It was unfair, and I knew that, but Cassidy Belfair had never been June Cleaver. She’d always been hard on Kendra, and cold, and there were times when I wondered why the hell she’d had a kid in the first place. But she loved her daughter, right? They might not have the relationship Mom and I had, but she was still Kendra’s mother.

Mom took my hand and squeezed once before letting go and knocking. It took Cassidy forever, but just as I was about to suggest breaking down the door, she appeared and begrudgingly pushed it open and ushered us inside.

“Before you start with the interrogation, I don’t have the prison,” Cassidy stated coolly. She’d obviously gotten over her shell shock and had reverted to queen
witch
. Leading us down the hall and into the living room, she added, “But just so we’re clear, if I had possessed it, I wouldn’t need your guidance over what to do with it.”

“That,” Mom said coolly. She sank onto the couch, and I took the spot next to her. “Is beside the point at the moment. You need to be straight with us. Tell us the truth. Has the Belfair magic faded?”

Usually the very definition of restraint, Mom was losing her patience with Cassidy already. A new record for her.

Cassidy faltered, and for a second, I was sure she’d deny it. Her face went from pale to bright red before settling someplace in the middle. She sighed. “It’s true that the Belfair magic isn’t what it once was. My ancestors have gotten by, passing on the illusion of complete control, only because our mettle has never been tested. Should the coven find out…”

She was seriously worried about a power struggle right now? “Um, in case you missed it, half your coven is dead.”

She glared at me, but didn’t respond. Instead, she turned back to Mom and continued. “Our sad state can be blamed on Lorna Belfair. She did this to us.”

“How?” Mom asked.

Cassidy sank onto the chair across from us. The house felt so empty with Kendra gone. Like all the light and life and love had been sucked from the air, leaving her mom’s hostility and darkness to engulf what was left. “As you know, Lorna helped Charles Darker trap him in the mirror. What you don’t know, is that to do it, she had to imbue the mirror with a large portion of her magic. She sacrificed our
family’s
magic.”

Understanding bloomed in Mom’s expression. She almost looked sympathetic. “That’s why the line was weakened.”

“Yes,” Cassidy said with bite. “I’m sure you’ll now understand why it is that I despise you people. You’ve taken everything from my family.”

I could actually see the words push Mom over the edge. Her jaw tightened, and her eyes got all squinty. “Do you even hear yourself when you speak? Lorna was a good, honorable woman. An honorable witch. What she sacrificed saved, I imagine, millions of lives. No one asked her to do it. That’s what sacrifice is, Cass. It’s a choice. One that’s hard and has a lasting effect. I’m guessing she put a bit too much faith in her line. Faith that they’d understand and continue to follow her example to do the right thing.”

“You sanctimonious bitch,” Cassidy spat. “This is easy for you to preach because you haven’t lost anything. The only reason I am tolerating your presence is because I fear I can’t find my daughter without you. Beyond that, I suggest you watch your back.”

Mom stood and took a step forward, and as much as I would have loved to see them go at it—my mom would totally kick Kendra’s mom’s ass—we had other things to deal with.

“Could we cool the girl-fight for just a few minutes and focus on
Kendra
?”

For a second I thought they’d both ignore me and lunge for each other, but Cassidy backed down first. “I suggest we find the prison.”

“What?” Mom and I exclaimed at the same time. What we needed was to find Kendra.

“Hear me out,” Cassidy said. “To get my daughter back unharmed, we need to give him the prison. I doubt we’ll be able to pass off a fake, so we’ll need the real thing.”

“Because giving him the real one is such a great option?” I said. I wanted Kendra back, but there had to be a way to do it that wouldn’t obliterate the rest of the world. I glanced over at Mom. Her expression was neutral.

“We’re not going to give it to him,” Cassidy snapped. “Not really.”

I was confused. “But you just said—”

“You’re suggesting a sort of fake out, then? Use the real deal to lure him out, then take it, and Kendra? And how do we prevent him from simply taking it from us?” Mom was all work-mode. I could see the wheels turning. She didn’t think this was a great idea, but she was trying to figure out a way to make it work. Better her than me. I had nothing.

“Leave that to me. Belfair magic might be weaker than it used to be, but it’s not tapped. And I have other resources. If you find the prison, I’m confident that I can keep it from him long enough to get Kendra back and retrap him.”

“Oh, so now you wanna help us trap him?” I snapped. “A little late for—”

“Fine,” Mom said. She grabbed the back of my jacket and hauled me off the couch. “We’ll find the prison, but you must find a way to keep it safe. It cannot fall into his hands. There’s too much at stake.”

Cassidy glared at us. “I’m aware of the stakes, Klaire. Very aware.”

…

“So, since when do you go around promising the impossible?”

Mom was on her knees in front of her closet, stuffing assorted items and weaponry into one of our duffle bags. She looked like she was loading up for war. Three vials of quartz powder, quartz-tipped arrows, and enough metal to down an entire nest of harpies.

I hated to be the voice of reason—like,
really
hated—but we didn’t have a clue as to where to start looking. “How are we supposed to find Asmodeus’s prison? I mean, if it were that easy, wouldn’t we have done it already?”

She looked up from the bag. “I know where it is.”

The air stilled. “I—you—how did you not tell me?”

“I just did,” she said, zipping the bag. She stood and slung Grandpa’s crossbow over her shoulder.

“You just did,” I repeated. “Nice. Way to include me,
partner
.”

She rolled her eyes. “We
are
partners, Jessie.” She brought her hand to the top of my head and proceeded to muss my hair. “You’re also my kid. That means I have free license to withhold dangerous information. Besides, I only found out this morning.” She pointed to the door. “Hurry up. Go pack a bag.”

“Pack a bag for what, exactly?”

She grinned, and Dad and Lukas appeared in the doorway. “You girls ready?”

“Ready for what?”

Mom handed the bag to Dad and rose onto her toes. Placing a quick peck on his cheek, she said, “We’re going on a little family outing.”

…

This was crazy. But sometimes crazy was the only thing you had. We were teeth deep in an impossible situation. The only way out was to get our hands dirty.

Really dirty.

It was going on one in the morning. Dad had called in a favor from a fellow demon in the House of Pride. Someone that, while not under him, he trusted. He gave us a crystal that would cloak Mom’s presence in the Shadow Realm for three hours. That’s where the prison was. Made sense, I supposed. It was Lucifer that trapped his brothers, and Lucifer that wanted to keep control over hell. He’d want it stashed in a place not many people could tread.

I pointed to the deep blue rock Dad hung around Mom’s neck. It was the size of ping-pong ball, though not as perfectly round, and dangled on a long leather cord. Simstone, he’d called it. Apparently it was extremely rare. “I get that it’s against the rules to bring a live human into the Shadow Realm, and that thing will cloak her presence, but what about us? You don’t think Lucifer will know what we’re up to? It’s kind of the opposite of what he told Lukas and me to do. Not to mention you were ordered to stay out of it. This is pretty much breaking all the rules.”

“If all goes according to plan,” Dad said, zipping up his bag, “then it won’t matter. We have no intention of giving the prison to the demon. It’s merely a tool to lure him in and get your friend back. When we’re finished, Lucifer gets the prison back and our uninvited friend is retrapped.”

“That’s one issue, but what about the you not helping part?”

“I have that covered,” he said with a grin.

Mom matched his smile with her own. “Lucifer told everyone that you and Lukas could have no help from the Shadow Realm in retrapping the demon. That’s not what your father is doing. He’s helping us rescue Kendra. If the two should be mutually beneficial, then it is what it is, but it breaks no specific rule.”

“That’s splitting hairs,” Lukas said. He was wearing the same leather jacket that he’d first walked into our office in, with black jeans and a T-shirt. Simple, but incredibly hot. Even hotter was his expression. All business and totally badass. There was a gleam in his eyes. A spark not human. It was dangerous and demonic, and I found myself comforted by that. A normal guy would have never hacked it in my world. Lukas fit in perfectly. Like the universe had stashed him away for a hundred plus years to get him ready and plop him right into the Darker puzzle. The missing piece of a puzzle I’d been itching to solve my entire life.

“That’s dealing with a demon,” Dad said, slapping a hand down on his shoulder. “It’s all about the wording.”

He made a good point, and I’ll admit it, a sick, and badly timed, part of me was kind of geeking out at the thought of taking our first family vacation. The fact that we were Monster Mashing to the last place on earth any sane person would want to go was only a huge plus in my book. This was what I’d dreamed about my entire life: Dad, Mom, and me. Mashing together. Add in a sinfully hot ex-incarnation of Wrath and take away the bff danger, and I would have been in heaven.

“We ready?” Dad asked.

Mom took a deep breath. She was tapping the thumb on her right hand and fiddling with the strap on her duffle. “I suppose so,” she said finally.

Dad stepped in close and took her face into his hands. “Do not worry, Klaire. I will always keep you safe.”

“I know,” Mom whispered in response.

Dad nodded and wrapped her tight in his arms. She looked into his eyes, and I knew in that moment, there was no one in the room but them. The look in their eyes—that’s what I wanted. The feeling that I’d do anything, give anything,
be anything
, for someone. I hadn’t said
I love you
since the day we’d boxed up the Sins. Neither had Lukas. I think he knew better. Even if the feelings were there, this was something I needed time to ease into. But I wanted it. After meeting him, and really seeing my parents together, I wanted it.

Turning to Lukas, Dad said, “Meet us at the cliffs. It’s far enough out of the way that no one should see us, and close enough to the caves to make it in less than an hour walk.”

Lukas nodded, and my parents stepped into the shadow of the hallway and disappeared, leaving us alone.

Chapter Twenty-Four

“The cliffs?” I asked, watching the spot my parents had just been standing in.

Lukas took my hand. “Damien showed me this morning. It’s a place on the outer edges of the Shadow Realm. Very dangerous.”

I snickered. “Woohoo! Danger is my middle name.”

“This is serious, Jessie. This place we’re going? Where the prison is hidden? It’s like nowhere you’ve ever been.”

“Aww. Lukas Scott, are you trying to say you’re worried about me?”

He wasn’t smiling. “If anything were to happen to you…”

“I’m good. Promise.” I squeezed his hand and winked. “I’m so good I make your job easier.”

I started to move away to grab my bag from the floor, but Lukas held tight, pulling me back. He released his grip and brought both hands to my face, fingertips brushing my temple on either side. “Protecting you isn’t my job. It’s my life. You’re not an assignment, Jessie. You make me crazy, but at the same time, keep me anchored. You’re my reason.”

A lump formed in my throat. I tried to swallow it down, but it wouldn’t go away. “Reason for what?”

“For everything,” he whispered, closing the distance between us. I felt the kiss from my lips down to the tips of my toes. Every inch of me caught fire, and as I wrapped my arms tight around his neck, the words slipped to the tip of my tongue. You’d think it’d be easy. Three silly, simple little words. But even in that moment, an instance where I felt them so completely, I couldn’t push them past my lips.

Lukas pulled away and waited a moment, eyes on me. He clasped his hand over mine, and without a word, I focused on Dad and shadowed us across. I’d never been to this part of the Shadow Realm before. The sky was lighter, a stormy gray rather than the inky black of the main drag, and there were no buildings. In the distance, what looked like an ocean, bordered by a pale, sandy beach, dotted the horizon. It would have been beautiful if I didn’t know what kind of danger hid around every corner.

We popped in right beside Mom and Dad. “Okay, now,” I said, rubbing my hands together. “I’m here. The party can officially start.”

“Everyone okay? What took so long?” Dad asked. Mom looked a little pale, but otherwise fine. I was betting she’d never shadowed with Dad before.

I had a horrible feeling I was blushing. “I had to tie my shoe. So, um, where are we, exactly?”

Dad adjusted his pack. “This is the Outer Reaches. It’s the physical border between realms. The prison, if the information I uncovered is correct, is down the beach a ways, in the back of the Blackland Caves.”

I stared out at the water. Every once in a while a massive wave crashed into the shore, and I couldn’t see from here what it was, but something black spilled from the water. “There’s a physical border?”

“When this is over, you are going to sit down and learn these things. Your mother is right. Your lack of knowledge is a dangerous thing,” Dad said.

Mom clapped him across the back and let out a hoot. “And he finally steps up to the parenting bat. Welcome aboard, sweetie.”

He gave her a wry smile, then nodded to the beach. “Let’s get moving. Our time is limited, and Lucifer will already know what we’re doing.”

Dad started forward, but Lukas grabbed him. “Won’t he try to stop us?”

“He will
try
,” Dad said over his shoulder.

Like everything else in the Shadow Realm, nothing was as it appeared. The semi long walk to the beach seemed to take forever. By the time we reached the oddly glimmering sand, it felt like hours had passed.

The closer we got, the darker the sky grew, and when we reached the mouth of the cave, it was back to the starless, inky cover I’d grown so used to seeing. There was an odd smell coming from inside. A cross between rotting flesh and sulfur. And every few minutes something that resembled a scream drifted out to meet us. More violent than the screams that came from the souls in the river, but less agonized. These were angry, not anguished. “It’s not gonna be as easy as waltzing in and snatching this thing up, is it?”

Mom and Dad both looked at me like I had three heads, and Lukas actually snorted.

“Hey, ya never know,” I said in my own defense.

“No,” Dad said. “It’s not going to be that easy. I’ve never heard of anyone other than one of the Seven Princes, or their direct offspring, surviving the Blackland Cave.”

“Well, I don’t know about everyone else, but that makes me eager to jump right in.” Sarcasm aside, I added, “If no one else has made it out alive, what makes you think we can do it?”

“No one else had the Darker girls on their side.”

Mom laughed. She threw an arm around his shoulders. “Suck up.”

Grabbing her hand, he pulled her forward. “You know it, babe.” He stopped at the entrance. “The most important thing to remember going forward is that once we step across, we are all as good as human.”

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“Any and all demonic abilities are gone. Once we’re out again, things will be as they should, but while inside, it becomes about brains rather than supernatural brawn. Everything is gone. Powers, reflexes, you will be one hundred percent normal. Only the denizens of the cave retain their natural abilities.”

Normal. My least favorite word in seven languages. “Awesome.” I slipped my hand into Lukas’s and nodded to the cave. “Shall we?”

The moment we stepped across the threshold, the temperature changed. It went from a balmy seventy-fiveish, to a somewhere around a crisp forty. With each move I made, the ground beneath my feet seemed to shudder. Every few steps, I’d get a flash of clarity, showing that the floor, a mass of shuddering, pale, tendon-like fibers, was in fact moving. The only way I could keep from screaming was to focus on the walls. Not that they were much better. Black and shiny, and in some places dripped thick liquid, red like blood.

I extended my finger toward the stuff, but Dad slapped it away. “It’s Vile Root blood. Don’t touch it.”

“What’s it do?” Lukas asked. He leaned in close without touching the stuff and crinkled up his nose. “It smells awful.”

“It’s how Vile Root spreads. It’s a seed of sorts. If it touches your skin, it will erase your memory.”

“An hour in this place and that might be a welcome thing,” I mumbled, stepping around a puddle of the stuff.

Dad, taking a page from Mom’s book, sighed. “Just don’t touch anything.”

Mom snorted. “That’s like telling a fish not to swim…”

“Hey,” I said. “Have some faith in me, will ya?”

“It has nothing to do with faith,” Lukas remarked. “We all simply know you.”

Wow. I was in hostile territory, getting ready to take a header due to friendly fire. How was that for harsh? “Can we play gang up on Jessie later? We kind of have something important to do.”

“This way,” Dad said. He was trying to hide a laugh, but I saw it. The guy had serious work to do on his poker face.

We walked for a while. For the most part it was uneventful. Once, something skittered across the floor behind us, but when we turned, there was nothing there. Truthfully, I found the whole thing a little disappointing.

Our footsteps, along with the red Vile Root muck dripping onto the ground, echoed through the cave.
Plink. Clop, clop, clop. Plink. Clop, clop, clop.
The deeper into the cave we got, the more plentiful the Vile Root became. There was so much that it gave off an eerie red glow, adding to the creep factor of the whole scene. Once in a while we’d come across a puddle on the main path and have to carefully inch around it, but thankfully most of it was along the edges, dripping from the walls.

The odd screaming had stopped, and I couldn’t help feeling like that was a bad sign. The calm before the storm. The farther in we went, the more suspicious the whole thing felt. This was too easy. If Lucifer stored all his baddest toys here, why wasn’t it better guarded?

“So how far in do we have to go?” The sooner we got out of the creepy cave, the better.

“All the way,” Dad said. He took another step and froze. “No one move.”

I looked around, but didn’t see anything. “Why? What’s—”

He covered my mouth with his hand. “That includes your lips, kid.”

Mom leaned in close. “What is it?” she whispered.

I debated pointing out how it wasn’t fair that she got to talk, but someone interrupted me. Well, more like
something
. A tremor rose from the ground, followed by a bone-rattling roar. The kind of noise you could have heard even if you were deaf. Hell, legions of dead probably had to cover their ears. Mom jumped and Dad’s mouth fell open.

Oh. Yeah. Not good at all…

Dad grabbed a handful of Lukas’s and my shirts and propelled us forward. We both stumbled, using each other to keep from going down. “Run!”

Debris, as well as larger chunks from the ceiling, rained down on our heads, and the sporadic roar increased to a menacing bellow. Our footsteps pounded the cave floor as the quaking grew louder. It almost sounded like we were running toward the noise rather than away until I realized it was all around us. Not coming from a single source, but multiple ones.

Lukas realized it, too, because he called, “What are they?” He huffed, dodging a nice sized piece of rubble and pulling me with him.

“Lesser Chimera,” Dad said. He was right behind me, urging us forward.

“Lesser?” Lukas stumbled once, but Dad caught him. We stopped in the middle of a four-way split. “That’s good, right?”

“Not a chance,” Mom said. “Lessers are erratic. Unpredictable and feral.”

Dad chuckled. He ducked a chunk of the ceiling, doing a cool-looking spin and a shimmy to the left. “All Chimera are feral, dear.”

“Which way?” I asked, glancing to my right and then to the left. All four paths looked the same. Dark.

Dad never got the chance to answer me because one of the beasts jumped into the path ahead of us.

I’d never seen a chimera before. Mom made sure I knew the lore, including them in my early studies, but seeing one in person? Yeah. Not at all what I’d expected. The creature blocking our path had the body of a lion, with thick, golden fur. Its legs were spindly. Like a chicken, or turkey, which was unsettling to say the least. The worst part, though? At the end of those legs, tipped with razor claws, were three extremely humanlike fingers. It had the head of a horse, and when it opened its mouth to roar, there was row after row of deadly, jagged black teeth.

We started backing up into the tunnel behind us, but another, this one slightly bigger, bounced into the path. Seconds later, two more came, each blocking the remaining two escape routes. I braced myself for attack, but none of them made a move. Instead, they stood, blocking our path and roaring.

“Why don’t they attack?” I covered my ears and yelled over the noise. It was like the damn things were singing a chorus of ick.

Dad grabbed my arm and yanked me hard as a piece of the wall crashed down on the spot I’d been standing. Good thing, too. It was covered in Vile Root muck. “They
are
attacking,” he screamed.

“We need to—” The rest of what Mom was about to say was lost when a chunk of rock winged her left shoulder. It was small enough to not do serious damage, but large enough to send her off balance. She went down on one knee, wobbling slightly, then hit the ground when another piece, this one slightly bigger, crashed across her back.

Dad dived for her, but with the chimera still screaming like banshees on crack, the entire place was coming down around us. Lukas hollered—I couldn’t hear what—and in an instant I was zooming backward and the ceiling, instead of being above our heads, was on the ground.