Psyched (21 page)

Malus grinned. “Watching you crumble is pitiful, and yet oh so satisfying. You have nothing now. Nothing! My way forward is clear. I have never found it necessary to use those pathetic gestures you humans call manners, but in this case, I simply must.
Thank you
for making this so very easy, Sunshine.”

She glanced at the blocked entrance, mad she couldn’t do anything about it. “You’re pathetic!” she yelled at him. She tried to stand but found herself exhausted and paralyzed with anger. “You will never have a body like I do. You will never know how to feel or how to love. You’re jealous of—”

“Jealous?” Malus laughed. “I do have a body, thanks to your sister. I have grown strong with a body of my own, from a steady diet of fear and despair which she supplies in such abundance. And now that you are here, I will only become stronger. You do look simply delicious, and your little boyfriend over there will make a tasty midnight snack.” He licked his chops. “As for love, you are such a fool. Your love is what drove you to me. Love is your great weakness. Your love for your sister has made you my slave.”

Aisi wanted to scream. Call him a liar. Vanquish him as easily as the other demons before him. Scratch out those smug red eyes…something! All she could manage was a muffled sob. Aisi managed to look away and over at Vance. “I’m so sorry.”

“No!” Vance yelled, shaking his head. “This isn’t all. This isn’t how I go out. There has to be something in the book, something you already know. You vanquish these things every day, Aisi. Don’t give up! You said it yourself, before we came down here. Hope is all we have.” He shoved the small black book she had dropped back into her hand. “Something in here will help. Why else would you have it?”

Aisi glanced at Nakia, who watched her from the other side of the cavern, still in the demon’s firm clutches. Her mind wandered back to when she felt hope even though Vance lost his. She hated not having control, but she couldn’t control this. She could only hope…and try. She flipped the book open to chapter thirteen, just like Rita told her, shaking her head like it was wasted effort.

The words on the aged yellow pages hardly registered in her mind as she read. A few notes scribbled in the margins in neat cursive caught her eye, and she squinted to see what they said. Just as she started to focus on them, the voice of the old miner echoed faintly in her head.

I’m still here, sis. Don’t give up
.
Use my book…that’s why I gave it to you
.

She touched her fingertips to the handwriting on the page and the miner’s image flashed in her mind. She saw him in younger years, tormented by glowing red eyes that followed him, taunted him, eyes that grew brighter and stronger with every one of his youthful misdeeds. Like Aisi, he had nothing but the determination to conquer it.

But how? Just as that thought entered her mind, she saw the word scrawled in big, loopy letters, written in the frustration he must have felt when trapped by a force he didn’t understand:
how
?

Beside that one word he scribbled more, the words messy and cramped on the page, as if he rushed to write them in a moment of inspiration. She squinted at his notes in the cavern’s eerie light, trying to make sense of his moment of clarity:
the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness can never extinguish it.

Chapter 22 Leap of Faith

Aisi pored over the pages of the little black book with Vance next to her, a despondent expression covering his face as he rubbed his stubbled chin. His gray eyes no longer sparkled. He looked defeated, like he was losing hope with each passing moment, accepting their fate. “Aisi, I don’t think we—”

Aisi cut him off. Her eyes gleamed as understanding flooded her. “You were right. We have something Malus will never understand. Since he doesn’t get it, he can’t use it against us. We are the light because we can love. We defy the dark. It’s just like I told Leo this morning. Even the tiniest spark of light will pierce through darkness.”

He closed his eyes and shook his head. “I have no idea what you just said.”

She jumped up excitedly, filled with confidence that she could get her sister and somehow escape despite the rocks in their way. “If we want to get out of here…” She looked up again at Nakia, who watched her with a conflicted expression. Malus held the girl back, glaring at Aisi.

She tried to remember something, anything, she and her sister shared back when they climbed into the same double bed every night, a bed covered in a girly bedspread and a mountain of stuffed animals. Something special only they would know. Something they loved together, something that was theirs. Big Billy faithfully read them bedtime stories until the night Nakia disappeared, but she couldn’t remember any of the stories he told. What else? What other special thing had been theirs?

Then it hit her. Before their great-grandma passed away, she would visit once a month and sing them a song when she tucked them in. Nana was the only relative their mom had left before she died, and she loved to croon old Broadway songs to them in a deep, gravelly voice. Aisi wracked her brain to recall the words to the one Nakia had begged Nana to sing every time. In a cracked and ragged voice, Aisi started to sing.

“
I love you a bushel and a peck
…”

Malus scowled, a deep, low warning growl mounting in his throat. He tightened his hold on Nakia, who stumbled toward the demon with a whimper but never took her eyes from her twin.

As she sang, Aisi found the strength to stand. With the cross clutched firmly in her hand, her voice grew loud and clear. Malus’s solid form started to blur around the edges.

“
I love you…”
She repeated the simple song as she took a step closer. Malus snarled, but he grew fuzzier with each word. Vance started belting it out, too, singing off key but enthusiastically, as loud as he could, stumbling over the words as he tried to pick up the tune and lyrics. From behind the stalagmites, a hoarse whisper joined when Aisi started to sing it a third time. She shifted her gaze long enough to see Monica’s gaunt mom walking toward them. Charlee joined them, hunched over and clutching the wall beside Vance for support. As they started on the fourth round, Aisi closed her eyes and hoped Nakia could hear her thoughts.
We will always love you. We miss you. Come home.

Malus’s enraged howl again pounded through their heads when Nakia shrieked and fought to break free of his grip. He roared as if in agony as his ram’s head vanished, shrinking down to a shapeless haze with angry red eyes covered by a black fedora. His dim form cloaked itself in a long black trench once more as he fought to keep hold of the girl.

“
Succuro mihi
!”

Aisi felt tingles rush down her spine—he was asking his minions for help. They obediently rushed down and surrounded Nakia, who screamed, “I want my sister!” Aisi rushed at them again and was instantly engulfed by an army of demons. Claws and teeth ripped at her arms as she tried to shove her way through. She didn’t care how bad it stung, that they were drawing blood. “Nakia!”

“Aisi!”

It wasn’t her sister’s voice. Vance had run after her into the sea of black shadows, peppered with devilish red eyes. He yanked her back by her hood. “Aisi, you can’t get to her. There’s no way.”

“I have to—”

“Forget it!” he yelled.

Charlee lurched toward them even though she looked too weak and skinny to move. She grabbed their hands and pulled them toward the back of the cavern. “Hurry! We can get out while they go after her!”

“I can’t leave my sister!” Aisi cried, trying to break free. She freed herself from Charlee, but Vance held firm and dragged her behind the stalagmites as he followed the woman.

Charlee led them down a passageway which narrowed as the ceiling sloped lower. The dim light of a new dawn breaking through the mist lit the end of the tunnel. They had to stoop but kept running. Vance held Aisi’s wrist determinedly, pulling her behind him as she struggled to turn back, screaming for him to let her go. They ran until they broke through the opening and found themselves on a narrow ledge of a rim rock cliff over the roaring Allegheny River, swollen and churning with spring runoff.

“This was your brilliant idea?” Aisi howled in outrage. “Drag me away from my sister so we can jump to our deaths from here?”

Charlee ignored her, staring down as if mesmerized by the roiling water fifty feet below them. “I’ve made it this far before, but they always bring me back. I couldn’t escape. They are too strong, but they want her more than they want me. I can do this while they’re distracted. If I have to choose to die this way or spend the rest of my life feeding that beast while I waste away…” She took a deep breath and jumped.

Vance yelled in surprise and Aisi gasped as Charlee disappeared into the river. Her head popped up far downstream in the racing water. She bobbed up and down before the river turned a bend and pulled her out of their view.

Vance turned back to Aisi. “She’s right. This is the only way. We have to do this, and we have to do it now.” He turned to peer down the tunnel. Aisi glanced back as well, seeing an army of red-eyed shadows racing toward them.

“Vance, I can’t leave her,” Aisi bellowed, trying to yank free of his grasp. “I wasn’t about to take death lying down before we found her, but she’s been in there for years. I could stay with her and figure out how we—”

“Aisi, are you crazy?” he exploded. “Isn’t that the whole idea? I know he showed you what he plans to do,” Vance insisted, holding her hand tighter and drawing her close to keep her from running back down the tunnel. “You’re seriously going to walk back in there and give him exactly what he wants? He stole your sister! The only hope you have of getting her back is coming with me.”

“Vance, she’s alone,” Aisi cried, shivering with more than the predawn cold. “She’s been by herself down here for years, believing his lies, thinking we didn’t love her. I—”

“Aisi, think a little!” he yelled. “He turned her into a scared little zombie he can feed off. He will tell you the same lies and use you to get strong enough to….who knows what? The Aisi I know is too strong to give him what he wants.”

“You haven’t even known me twelve hours,” she spat, trying again to jerk her hands free. “You don’t know me at all. I owe my sister.”

“You owe it to your sister to fight him and get her back, not run back to the demon who stole her. You’ll only make him stronger! I’m going for it, and you’re coming with me.”

“No!”

With one last glance at the torrents foaming below them, Vance tightened his grip on her hand and jumped. Aisi tumbled unwillingly behind him, her feet slipping off the pebbly edge before falling off the thin lip of gray rock. He never let go until they smacked the water feet first and the force of impact wrenched her from his grasp.

The icy cold water pushed her down repeatedly, only thrusting her up long enough to gulp a quick, deep lungful of air before it shoved her down and held her captive again. She held her breath as long as she could, lights popping before her eyes and the pressure of oxygen-starved lungs making her nearly pass out. She hit the surface again just in time and gasped, desperately paddling and reaching for anything that might keep her head above water.

“Aisi!” she heard a voice yell. She turned the best she could and saw Vance dragging himself onto a large rock mid-river just downstream. She kicked against the powerful current and struggled to keep her head above water as she fought to get to him.

Vance grabbed a long branch rushing past, holding it out to her. Aisi was too far from the rock and too weak to swim in his direction. She almost missed him. With her last bit of strength, her head dipping again underwater, she stretched her hand out and reached blindly for the branch. Somehow her fingers found it and she grabbed as hard as she could. The black, mossy branch nearly slipped out of her fingers, but she dug in her nails and snagged a smaller branch extending out from the long stick that the water hadn’t yet stripped away. The river kept pulling at her but she heaved her other arm from the water, head still submerged, clinging with everything she had left in her while Vance tried to haul her out.

After what felt like hours, Aisi sat panting on the rock next to Vance. They had to crowd together, but the rock had enough room for the two of them to sit a few inches above the highest waves the bloated river tossed at them. They weren’t too far from the shore, but with the raging current she knew she’d be swept away if she tried to reach the bank.

She pulled her knees to her chin and rocked back and forth, trying to warm herself as the morning light broke through the mist. What little warmth the rising sun offered did nothing to burn off the chill settling in her soul. She’d left her sister, frightened and alone. Losing her once had been horrible. Losing her again was nearly unbearable. Why couldn’t she have stayed? Malus underestimated her. She would have proven Vance wrong, found a way out…wouldn’t she?

She sighed and rested her chin on her knees as she admitted she was lying to herself. Staying with Nakia wouldn’t have saved her. Staying would have meant the downfall of her family. She’d be another trophy, like the old man said.

The rock was just far enough from the gray cliffs and forest that the sun peeked mercifully at their little stone haven in the middle of a whitewater prison. She shuddered violently as water dripped from her hoodie. Vance wrapped his arms around her shoulder, rubbing her back to keep her warm, but his hands were nearly blue and she could feel him shaking next to her, too.

She put her hands into her pocket, trying to get warm, when she felt something. She pulled out the necklace and the little black book she didn’t realize she’d put in there. She must have shoved them back in there as they ran. They hadn’t really used the book and necklace at all, really…or had they? Maybe the real weapon was knowing people cared and she didn’t have to do it all by herself. She looked sideways at Vance, who held the head lamp and looked over at her with a crooked smile.