The Devil's Dreamcatcher (19 page)

“What do you mean, Owen?” I press. The breaking tide is dragging the four of us into the sea. Mitchell is now half submerged. I pull him back to me and whip my head left and right, scanning our surroundings to see if there is another shadowy outline coming closer. But there is nothing, and neither of the Skin-Walkers show any sign of moving.

“Think about it, Melissa,” says Owen, and for a split second I think I see a red flare around his irises. “What caused Mitchell to react like this? It was obviously Mitchell who set off that explosion back in my grandmother's street. Septimus said something to you both, didn't he? Something that made Mitchell so angry his rage became fire.”

“But why don't more devils in Hell immolate, then? Everyone is angry there,” I say as another wave crashes around us.

“Down There, and even in Heaven, the anger we feel at being dead is diluted by other emotions. Worry, fear and sadness are just three off the top of my head,” explains Owen. “Mitchell must have experienced pure, absolute rage, and without the confines of Hell to smother it, he unleashed it.”

I can no longer hear the crying of the child. It's being suppressed, either by the sound of the rain and sea, or by the residual
ringing in my eardrums from the aftermath of Mitchell and Septimus's explosive fight.

The fight. Owen is right. Worry about his little brother caused Mitchell to self-immolate. His rage created a moving wall of fire.

“Can you see the Unspeakable?” I call out to anyone who can hear, but no one replies. He's gone. Why? Was Rory freaked out by what happened with Mitchell? Or did he not expect to see Skin-Walkers here? I know he was out there, somewhere in the darkness.

But instead of being scared, or even disappointed that I couldn't end this here, I'm exhilarated. Septimus trusted me to come up with a plan, and I think I have. The tools to turn this mess around were with us all along; we just needed to find them. Finally, I know how we can defeat Rory Hunter. And it starts with me. I have to stop assuming he has the advantage. I did that in life, and I ended up dead. Now I may not be able to take back my life, but Rory Hunter isn't going to have the advantage over me in death. He won't control me, ever again. He won't control any of us.

I feel powerful all of a sudden, as if I'm meeting a part of myself that I never knew existed. I fall to my knees and sink into the sand as another frothing wave crashes over us. I am submerged for a split second before I rise from the water in triumph.

We aren't just devils anymore. We're weapons.

I run through the surf toward the beach. The sand gives way beneath my sneakers. I can't locate Elinor or Jeanne in the green glow cast by the Pacific, but I do see Angela and Johnny pass me on their way out to the water. They splash out to where Alfarin and Owen are standing, and together, they each grab a limb and haul a disoriented Mitchell from the cold water.

“Melissa, are you okay?” calls Owen.

“My name is Medusa.”

“What?”

“Don't call me Melissa anymore, Owen.” I turn to look at the dripping-wet soldier. “The Unspeakable knows me as Melissa, but he doesn't know
me
. The me I am now. He thinks he's baiting the sixteen-year-old girl he tormented forty years ago. He said I have something he wants. He said he'd give up the Dreamcatcher when he gets his life back. I don't know how those things are connected yet, but I do know we have an advantage in that he doesn't know who he's dealing with.”

Owen is watching me carefully, and I feel an intensity building in my chest. The powerful feeling that came over me moments ago in the water is coming into sharp focus, and with it comes a strange sensation of relief. It's time to finally shed myself of Melissa, once and for all. Melissa was scared and unprotected. She was friendless and untrusting. When she died, the Grim Reapers at the HalfWay
House inadvertently gave her a clean slate with a new name. Since then I've learned to think on my feet, and to stand up for myself against hurtful people, like misogynistic bosses and mean girls with a pack mentality. It hasn't been easy, and it hasn't been fun. I carried Melissa with me the whole way, and all the self-doubt that came with her. But I did learn how to keep people from taking advantage of me. I learned to control my emotions. And finally, after going it alone for so long, I have friends, real friends, in Mitchell, Alfarin and Elinor.

It's time to let Melissa go. And I need to let something else go, too. From now on, I won't think of my stepfather as anything other than an Unspeakable. Rory Hunter, the man who lived, the monster who destroyed my life and has haunted my nightmares in death, will not be allowed to ruin my new existence as well.

I return Owen's gaze and give him a small, reassuring smile.

“I'm Medusa now, Owen. The girl who fell from the bridge forty years ago is gone. She's dead. The Unspeakable doesn't understand that yet, but he's about to. We're going to learn how to immolate. And then we will rescue that child. When we do, the Skin-Walkers can take the Unspeakable back to Hell, where he will rot.”

I try to retain my confidence as Cupidore sidles up next to me. “Septimus knew what he was doing, trusting in you,” he sneers. “Yet I smell duplicity in your future. You are not what you seem, child.”

“Leave her alone,” commands Angela bravely as the Skin-Walker turns to face her.

“Cancer has its own special smell and taste, does it not, Visolentiae?” Cupidore remarks to his partner. His large nostrils sniff the air. “This one is still rank with it.”

“Every soul is unique,” replies Visolentiae. His black eyes are boring into mine; they're large and round, like the eyes of a dog. The wolf-man doesn't blink once. Then he turns to Elinor and Jeanne. “The two that scream, why, they smell of burning flesh and wood. And the Viking's stench is salt and cold rain and blood.”

“You're only here for the Unspeakable!” I shout. “How we smell is no concern of yours.”

The Skin-Walkers throw back their heads and howl. For a terrible moment, their perverse laughter obliterates the noise of the wind.

“We cannot help but smell you,” growls Cupidore. “But it is true, I am here to track the Unspeakable's stench. It's only fitting, as my quarry is the lustful.”

I immediately take several steps back, but the sand is treacherous and I stumble as my heels sink.

“So that legend is also true,” whispers Owen. “One Skin-Walker for each mythical circle of Hell.”

The circles of Hell . . . the circles of Hell. I wrack my brains, trying to think back to my literature classes. Dante's poem was called
The Divine Comedy
. I never saw anything divine or comedic in Hell when I was alive, or since, but I know that the poem was split into sections: the circles of Hell, Purgatory and Paradise. The first circle was limbo—everyone remembers that one—and lust was the second one. I can't remember the order of the next three, but gluttony was definitely in there, because my old teacher was obese in the extreme, and we all thought he was heading straight for it when he died. Heresy was next, then violence, then . . . violence . . . Visolentiae is the other Skin-Walker's name.

“
Violentiae
is Latin for ‘violence,' ” I say aloud.

“Clever girl,” says Visolentiae. “I knew from the fire in your eyes that you had already worked it out.” He takes a step toward me. “So you do not need me to tell you how
I
deal with the Unspeakables that exist in
our
inferno.”

I should be sickened, but I'm not. According to Dante, the damned who are trapped in the seventh circle of Hell—the one that represents violence—are continually boiled in blood and fire.

“Dante must have been a time-traveler,” I say. “A dead time-traveler. He used a Viciseometer to come back to the land of the living to write that poem. There's no way he could have guessed all of that.”

“There are clues to the Afterlife spread throughout the ages and pages of this wretched little world,” replies Cupidore. “Only the living are too blind to see what is in front of them.”

“Will you give me your word that you will only take the Unspeakable?” I ask. “You won't take anyone else, alive or dead?”

The two Skin-Walkers swap black looks. The edges of their elongated mouths rise just a fraction.

“Perfidious has ordered it so,” replies Visolentiae.

He and Cupidore slink away into the shadows. Their stench is diluted slightly by the smell of seawater.

“What was your Septimus thinking, letting them come with us?” asks Angela. “They're evil. I don't feel safe around either of them.”

“We aren't safe, Angela,” I reply. “And I think that's Septimus's point. We still have no idea how the Unspeakable will use the Dreamcatcher if he doesn't get what he wants. I think we should be thankful that it's only two Skin-Walkers now, instead of nine.”

Owen leans into me and whispers in my ear.

“You took Latin in school?”

I nod.

“Perfidious.”

“I know,” I whisper back. “Tell your team. I'll tell mine.”

Perfidia
is Latin for ‘treachery,' and the treacherous occupy the ninth circle of Hell: there they are encased in ice, and a three-headed Satan bites down on Brutus, Cassius and Judas Iscariot for the rest of eternity.

I don't trust any of the Skin-Walkers, and Perfidious least of all.

We're not safe from them, and neither are the living.

We need to start training, but Mitchell is still so out of it, I'm not sure his soul is even conscious right now.

At least I know
how
he self-immolated, though. That's a start.

We can't practice here, that much is obvious. The weather is getting worse. The rain is lashing down even harder, and the wind is approaching gale force. Pockets of fog stretch out in the darkness, lingering like gray blankets, waiting to smother anyone who strays too far out of sight.

I call to Elinor, who, along with Jeanne, has wandered off into one misty patch. Watching Mitchell burn up has clearly resurrected old memories of their deaths for both of them, but neither wants to discuss it—at least with me. Elinor comes over and huddles against Alfarin; Jeanne stands alone with her arms folded tightly across her chest.

“I'm changing the plan,” I say, pulling the Viciseometer out of my pocket. “We're not going to let the Unspeakable dictate where and when we meet. I have something he wants, and if it's valuable enough to him, we'll stay ahead of him and let him come to us—to me. We also need to train ourselves to fight, but we need to go somewhere in time where we won't be disturbed. Does anyone have any ideas about where we could go?”

“Definitely not Washington,” says Alfarin. “Everything always goes wrong in Washington.”

“Not Los Angeles, either,” says Angela. “There's so much plastic in that city, we'll melt every actor in Hollywood.”

“I also suggest we do not go to New York,” says Alfarin. “Indeed, perhaps we should get as far away from North America as possible.”

“I cannot do this,” whispers Elinor. “I am a failure. Ye should send me back to Hell, M. I can't burn, not again.”

“You're going nowhere other than with us,” I reply firmly. “We'll need someone to hang back with the Viciseometers. We can't all become raging fireballs. And there's no one I would trust more with our timepiece, Elinor, than you.”

She smiles at me gratefully. Why can't all friendships be this easy and natural? Even in the midst of this crazy, Hellish mission, I don't have to work at this. It's so . . . normal.

“I want to be a raging fireball,” says Johnny. “It looks . . . Angela?”

“Way cool,” she prompts.

“Way cool,” repeats Johnny. “When do we start?”

“To feel your flesh fall from your body, to endure the most agonizing pain you will ever experience, is not fun or
cool
,” says Jeanne. There is no anger in her voice; she sounds terrified.

“I—I d-didn't mean—” stammers Johnny.

“I don't think you'll be able to self-immolate anyway, Johnny,” I interrupt as Elinor's brother continues to stutter. “You're an angel. You won't have the same heat inside you that we do. Did you know our bodies build up so much fire in Hell that our eyes change color? Mine and Mitchell's are usually pink, but you should see how red Alfarin and Elinor's eyes are after hundreds of years there. They're ferocious. We're used to fire and heat, we absorb it. You don't.”

“Are you saying we won't be able to become weapons in order to fight?” asks Angela.

“We won't know until we try, but you angels have speed. I've seen Jeanne streak across the earth twice now. Once to kick Alfarin's ass—”

“I slipped!”

“—and once to move Owen out of the line of sight of the paradox
Mitchell,” I continue. “I don't think your weapon is fire. I think it's the air—wind.”

Owen looks thoughtful. He bites down on his thumbnail.

“Fire and wind,” he says. “They could be pretty formidable weapons to take on the Unspeakable and rescue the Dreamcatcher.”

“
Not my brother!
” roars Mitchell. “
I won't let them!
”

Not again. Just when he starts coming to, Mitchell begins to smoke. This time, instead of dragging him into the surf, I place my hands on either side of his face.

“Look at me, Mitchell!” I shout. “Concentrate on my voice. We will not let anyone hurt your brother.”

“I won't let them take him,” he groans. I can feel the heat burning through him. His entire body is vibrating under my hands, but I keep hold of him, even though my fingers are starting to blister.

“Listen to me, Mitchell.” Instead of shouting even louder, I decide to go the opposite way. If I'm calm, maybe Mitchell will refocus. “Concentrate on my voice. Trust me. We will not let them take M.J.”