Catching Temptation (In Darkness She Fades (Book 1) (14 page)

I cross the street. My silk dress
bellows in the breeze, creating a romantic wave as I pop in and out of the
light. At the building, I hide, and peak around the corner. A group of adults,
dressed in multiple hues of red-violet, stride toward the entrance to the old
theater. The strange costumes remind me of the painting in my room. I grip the
bone mask and pull it over my head. Body quivering, I capture my mouth to keep
myself from screaming. Their faces are terrifying and hideous. They remind me
of zombies in B-rated movies. A few of the women are wearing masks decorated
with raven feathers to hide their faces. It is time to find my cousins. Whelan
is also new to Rosewood. I will not abandon him to the zombie demons.

I sprint down the jack-a-lantern
lit road, stuffing the crystal in my pocket as I run.
           

The carnival lights
from the town square light up the night sky.

“Breathe,” I chant. “Act normal.”

At the side of the square, the
carnival rides shake. No doubt, Daniel and Nathaniel are probably on the
scariest ride. Sure enough, the boys both climb out of the Spider-Leg Twirl.

“Aw, hey, Temptation! What took
ya so long?” Nathaniel asks, while dashing in my direction. “And what happened
to your shoes?”

“Let me guess,” Daniel saunters
over in his pirate costume, “you’re hoping a handsome prince would–”

“There’s no time for jokes, come
on!” I yank the boys away from the carnival.

“Hey! What gives?” Daniel asks.

“Let go, Temptation. I want to go
play the games before–”

“Quiet!” To my surprise, my
cousins obey, and stare at me as if I suddenly sprouted an extra eye. “Listen
to me you two; we’ve got to get out of here. There are demons capturing
everyone who’s new in town and they’re searching for us.”

Daniel, unimpressed, curls his
nose in distain at my declaration of danger. “Duh, there are demons around,
it’s Halloween! They’re probably playing a prank. They can’t really kidnap
people–”

“No, it’s not.” I glance at the
courthouse clock. Crap, only thirty minutes left. Yanking my cousins by their
wrists, I drag them down the street, and into the flickering darkness.

“Let go of my hand, you’re
hurting me!” Nathaniel tries to wrench back his arm and scream.

“QUIET!”

“Dammit, Temptation, why do you
have to ruin everything? School sucked for the first month because of you and
now I can’t even enjoy Halloween. Can’t you get over yourself?” Daniel asks.

Shouts of protests and screams
that can awaken the ghosts of a graveyard come from the end of the street. I
stop. Daniel and Nathaniel bump into me. Rounding on my cousins to silence them
becomes unnecessary when I note the astonishment on their faces. The three
creep over to the edge of the brick building and peer around the corner.

“Wait, it’s Jerald and Her–”

“Shh!” I spy on them as they drag
one of the new freshmen students toward Mrs. Peters’ house. It seems Remorse
knows Jerald better than me. “Shut up and look at the twins’ faces!”

“It’ll be fun.” Herald leers at
the kid.

“Yeah, you’ll be one of us.”
Jerald turns his head so the light from the lamppost catches his face.

Daniel jerks back and yells.
Lucky for us, the captured boy screams at the same time, leaving the twins
oblivious to our presence. The Jenkins twins drag the struggling boy through
the theater’s brilliant door and slam it shut.

“Screw this; I’m getting out of
here.” Daniel grabs Nathaniel and I by our sleeves, sprints across Main Street,
and onto Weeping Willow Road. Before I can protest, the biker gang materializes
in a cloud of silvery dust, cutting off our chance of escape. We jog to the
rundown gas station. Boarded windows and doors offer little help. The bricks exhibit
graffiti writing in multiple colors, displaying different words and phrases.
The gang surrounds us. I grasp my cousins’ wrists and jerk them back. I square
my posture in defiance at Craven. “What do you want? Are you trying to take us
to the Jenkins twins?”

The bikers’ steady their
motorcycles and Craven leans in over the handlebars, staring directly into my
lime-green eyes. “We don’t work for anyone. So, Temptation...thinking of trying
to escape?”

My pose slackens. I cross my
arms, draw my eyebrows together, and roll my eyes as dramatically as I can.
“Oh, no – I enjoy running around in the dark.”

White hair bristling; he displays
a mouthful of canines. His eyes never blink while he tilts his head in
contemplation. “Temptation...we,” he motions to the other bikers, “are here to
help the Goblin King.”

I do not understand. “But you’re
demons. I thought you’re feuding with the goblins?”

“Crap! Those things are real?”
Daniel punches me on the arm. “This is all your fault–”

“Don’t hit her,” the other bikers
say in unison. Their eyes glint with murderous intentions toward Daniel, who
cowers behind me.

“We are not made by Jenkins. The
people turned by a demon end up becoming more like demon zombies. They’ll never
be true demons. We are true demons. We died human and escaped Hell. When we
came back, we returned as demons. There’s a small group of us who don’t like
Jenkins and his ways. We would rather the Goblin King be in charge of
Rosewood.”

“If you don’t like the way
Jenkins runs Rosewood, why didn’t you leave?”

Craven runs a claw over the
handle of his bike. “The goblins warned us about Jenkins when we were still
human, but when we tried to escape, we had a small accident. We died. We became
demons here in Rosewood. This is our home. It is where we were born demon, but
we also feel a responsibility to save Rosewood from Jenkins, as well as to the
king and his goblins for trying to help us.”

“Then why haven’t you helped the
Goblin King? You’re real demons. Why not force the Jenkins twins to leave or
release the goblins yourselves?”

The bikers shift on their
motorcycles. Their eyes convey shame. Craven sits up straight on his bike.
“Because Jenkins is a Nephilim demon. The only one of his kind. You’ve never
seen his true form.”

“Yes, I have.”

“Are you serious? Crap, crap,
cr–”

“Daniel, shut it!” I elbow him in
the ribs.

“You haven’t, Temptation. He can
only be in his true form on a night when other worlds are thin. Halloween.
Tonight.”

“What makes you so certain the
Goblin King can stop him?” I snatch my dress and lift up the hem. I have been
standing on part of it and almost tripped a couple times when I ran from the
bikers.

“You can help. If you find the
real crimson crystal and give it to the king, he’ll have his old power back.
Remorse told me Jenkins gave you a crystal filled with his blood.”

I nod and reveal the glowing
crystal. Daniel crinkles his nose and backs away from it.

“A century and a half later and
Jenkins really isn’t much smarter.” Craven’s eyes fill with greed.

“Apparently he was smart enough
to trap a powerful king.” I stash the crystal back in my dress pocket.

“If you give the false crystal to
the king, along with the real one, he’ll be able to absorb Jenkins’ blood. This
will make him become something more than what he is. Trust us, Temptation.
We’ve been waiting a long time for someone like you.”

I frown. Fingers seek out the
edges of my hair, but I resist when I think of Remorse’s teasing. “But I
thought demons believed goblins to be beneath them.”

“Partially true, but you see, the
King is not only goblin. But be warned, Temptation, no one ever escaped from
Jenkins. If you try to run and are caught, you won’t have the chance to release
the goblins. You’ll end up like Victoria and everyone else in Rosewood. A
slave.”

The laughter of children fills
the air, but this time it comes from the remaining townspeople entering the old
theater house. The bikers speed out in a cloud of dust and retreat down into
the unlit street. They are ridiculously dramatic.

“Daniel. Nathaniel. I want you to
head toward the highway. You might be able to find some bicycles to ride–”

“Hey! What about my parents?”
Daniel clenches his fists and furrows his eyebrows in determination.

“I am going to try and get Aunt
Sally and Uncle Jack–”

“If you’re going, then so are
we!”

“No–”

“They’re
our
parents, not
yours.”

I notice my cousins shaking. I
think of my own parents. “All right, all right, but you have to listen to me.
Promise?”

“Promise. Let’s hurry up before
we’re too late.”

Mrs. Peters’ shrieks of terror
arise from within her mansion. We surge across the street and hurry to the
entrance of the Gothic manor.

I place the mask over my eyes and
race into the house with my frightened cousins tailing behind me. “Mrs.
Peters?” I shout, entering the pitch-black living room.

“Marie!”

A tiny flash illuminates the
kitchen with dim lighting. I spy the figure of Mr. Peters crouching low to the
ground in the shadowy kitchen. My cousins remain silent at my side. As we enter
the wrecked kitchen, I gasp as I locate Mrs. Peters on the floor with a large
cut on the side of her pale face. Her gray hair fans out like a classic
depiction of a witch with frayed hair. Fat spiders flee from the cobweb
cabinets and scurry out of sight.

“I’m all right, Dearies.
Charles...can you help me up, please?” Mrs. Peters extends a frail arm. It
resembles a corpse at the beginning stage of decay. The Peters are zombie
demons too.

Mr. Peters cradles his wife’s
head and helps lift her into a standing position. Mrs. Peters reaches over to
the counter and tugs a washrag out of one of the drawers. Soaking it in the
sink, she begins dabbing at her bloody face. “Oh, Temptation! I’d hoped you
would’ve figured everything out before it was too late!”

My posture drops and my arms hang
at my side. I gape at Mrs. Peters. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Mrs. Peters chuckles. She winces
and touches her wounded cheek. “Would you have believed me if I’d told you? I
don’t think so.”

“Marie’s right,” Mr. Peters says.
“But you still have a chance to escape and you must get out of town or stay
hidden until after the stroke of midnight.”

“Why midnight?” Daniel looks to
everyone for an answer.

“Because,” I say, “it won’t be
Halloween anymore. It’ll be November the first, and they won’t be able to do
their ritual on us until next year. Unless they decide they don’t want to wait,
then they could kill us.”

“True,” Mr. Peters says. “But
it’s too late to make it out of town. You should hide.”

“Oh, sick,” Nathaniel says.
“There’s a huge rat in your kitchen!”

Everyone stares at the
stone-tiled floor where Nathaniel is pointing. Sure enough, a rat the size of a
small house cat scuttles about my feet. Suddenly, the rat bolts at Mr. Peters.
Within a matter of seconds, the rat claws and bites at his body. Mr. Peters’
painful screams echo throughout the kitchen. I rip the rat off his chest. I
rotate the writhing hairball. My stomach lurches and twists into a tight knot.
The rat has one eye! Just like…I think back to Remorse’s instructions. I give
the rat its’ freedom. It scurries over to the opening of the darkened hallway
leading into the theater house. I gaze into the depths of the gaping mouth and
cannot help a sense of curiosity for seeing the strange world.

“Rats attacked us because we’re
helping you. Jenkins will soon know we betrayed him. Hide at your home! The
rats will inform Jenkins you’re here and you’ll be dragged into the theater.”
Mr. Peters scratches a hand through his hair. The decay of his body from living
far past his time only enhances the guilt and shame in his eyes. He survived
too many tragedies.

“I think it would be wise for you
two to head home and stay there. I’ll go and follow the Cyclops rats. I think
the only way to end this is to free the goblins.”

“But, Temptation,” Nathaniel
says. “What if the goblins are badder than the demons?”

“We can’t go home until we save
our parents,” Daniel states. He balls his hands into fists.

Mr. Peters lays a comforting hand
on Daniel’s shoulder. “I think Temptation has the right idea, but we do need to
try and get your parents out of there. Go ahead and head back home. I can get
to your parents better than you can. I’ll try to lure them away without getting
caught.”

Daniel and I glance at each
other. Daniel’s body registers defeat. He nods at me and takes Nathaniel’s
shaky palm.

“Right then,” Mr. Peters says.
“My wife will walk you boys home and I’ll retrieve your parents. Good luck,
Temptation.” Mr. Peters kisses his wife on the cheek and exits into the living
room. A few seconds later the front door shuts behind him.

“Right, Dearies, let’s head off.
We can’t waste any more time.” Mrs. Peters sweeps up her hair into a messy gray
bun and takes hold of Daniel and Nathaniel’s hands, before whispering a quick
word of encouragement to me. She marches the boys out of the kitchen. The door
shuts a few seconds later.