I pulled open drawers, more to satisfy Xavier than to look through things. "We can't linger on this," I said. "She's going to come back up here and I don't know if I can handle her again."

  Several vials filled with black liquid rolled in the drawer.

  Demon blood.

  The vials were glass, each one capped off with a cork. The blood inside was fresh and sealed tight. It looked like ink. The vials gave off no scent--this blood was probably dead--but it was liquid. If it wasn't usable, Beatrix wouldn't have kept it stored.

  I snatched all five of the vials and stuffed them into my pocket, gross as the thought was. Xavier and George stood there, unable to see in the pure dark. "I've got some useful stuff," I said. "Let's go."

  We made our way back to the storage room and closed the door behind us. By now, Bathory's footsteps were slowly coming up the stairs, barely audible to even me. We had to move. A foe like her wasn't a risk I was about to take. I wanted to return Janine's cousin to her in one piece.

  The blood smell was slightly less in here, but I didn't stop. I let George climb up the ladder first. He scrambled around until he found it in the dark. Xavier went next and I came up in the back.

  "Alyssa," Bathory called from the direction of the bar. She was calm. Confident.

  I scrambled up the ladder, sure she would yank open the door and drag me back down. Xavier wouldn't leave me. He'd come down, too, and then she would try to make me bite him. With those vile eyes of hers, she might be able to. Would her hypnotic powers work on me, too?

  But she didn't open the door. I didn't understand it. She had to know how we were escaping. A being that ancient couldn't be stupid if she had lived for so long.

  At last, George climbed into the dying light above and into the produce market. Xavier and I followed and the three of us went to work pushing Beatrix's checkout counter over the trapdoor, which was no easy feat as Beatrix had it bolted to the floor. It took George and I everything we had to move it over. At last, we had the door covered, but Xavier shifted leg to leg.

  "She might come up the other way," he pointed out. "Alyssa, grab your coat."

  I glanced outside, remembering that I'd left it in the apple room. The sun was setting and the sky was just beginning to turn purple.

  "I don't need to," I said. I had thrown it down somewhere in the apple room. Besides, it would take precious seconds to grab it. I pushed open the front door and bells rang as I did. The air was cooling and the sun didn't bother at me at this point in the day. "Come on."

  Xavier and George and I didn't stop until we made it down the corner. Even here, I felt too close to the market where Bathory was hiding. She was loose in Cumberland. The ATC had actually been right to go after her. Despite my hatred for them, I didn't wish for any more of them to be killed.

  I hadn't even killed any ATC people.

  George leaned against a building and faced the sky, checking for what was no doubt the moon phase. The moon wasn't even visible yet, but George showed no signs of changing. I eyed the produce market for any signs of movement, inside the building or the alley.

  All was silent.

  I thought she was letting us get away too easily.

  "What was that?" George asked, lifting his shirt to look at his side. It was healed, with smooth brown skin over his ribs.

  If we hadn't had access to water, he wouldn't be.

  "I'm sorry," I said. "I know I say that a lot, but Bathory was going to kill you if I hadn't thrown my sword. You see, I make some Abnormals burn from the inside out. I'm still working out who it works against. Thankfully, it doesn't work on Normals or any type of human."

  "But your death magic does," Xavier said. "Soon, you might have a type of magic for every monster out there, Normal or otherwise."

  "Don't talk like that," I said. "I don't want to get any more magic. No offense."

  A look of hurt came over Xavier's face but I didn't have time to deal with that. He'd made it clear that we had to keep this professional, anyway. There would be no more kissing, no more hand holding and skipping through the mall, no more anything. It had to be that way so long as Thoreau lived.

  Which made me want to kill him more than ever.

  George peeled himself from the building when his phone rang. He pulled it out of his pocket and showed it to me. It was Janine's number.

  I breathed a sigh of relief. I took the phone as we walked further and further away from the produce market. I wanted to hear from her more than ever. But when I answered, it was Liliana on the phone.

  "Hey," I said, checking the produce market again to find no movement.

  "Hey," Liliana said with caution. I searched her voice for distress. It wasn't quite there, but she spoke with care.

  "So have you been looking for the ATC place where they took our people?" I asked.

  "Duh," Liliana said. "We've been looking for hours. Janine's better at this computer stuff than I am. But you might want to come back. She thinks she might have found something on the satellite maps."

  "Really?" I asked. This could be good or bad.

  "You need to see it," Liliana said.

  "What are you skirting around?" I asked. I had the sense Liliana had something else to tell me and was putting it off.

  "Nothing," she said, lowering her voice.

  "There's something. Spit it out. Did Mack stop by George's house again? I swear, if I see that guy one more time--"

  "Okay. Janine's not feeling well. I'm sure it's no big deal but you might want to know."

  Chapter Nine

  "Alyssa, I'm sure it's fine," Xavier said, walking down the street beside me.

  I looked back to make sure Bathory wasn't following. Check. I wasn't sure what to do about her. Sure, I'd injured her, but she would be expecting that same attack next time, and wouldn't fall for Xavier's diversion again.

  "I don't know," I said. "She could have lost too much blood."

  "If she had, she would have felt terrible right away," Xavier said. "It could be as simple as some dehydration making her feel like crap. Maybe Janine drank too much coffee after you, well..."

  "Bit her," I said. "Just say it. I screwed up."

  George walked beside us. He kept looking at me in a way I was used to people looking at me: with dread. I knew what he was worried about but I didn't want to wrap my mind around it.

  I ran every word Liliana told me through my head. Janine was complaining about her limbs tingling. She felt sick to her stomach and weak.

  That could mean a lot of things.

  Plenty.

  It didn't have to mean--

  "You didn't screw up," Xavier said. "There you go, beating yourself up again."

  "I so did," I said. Biting the guy behind the counter at the movie theater would have been easier. At least I didn't know him and wouldn't have to see the repercussions of it later. I should have done that. The only worse thing I could have done was bite Xavier.

  What if--

  The walk back to George's house didn't take as long as I'd hoped. I checked behind me to make sure Bathory wasn't following. If she was, she was being very stealthy and quiet, which I couldn't put past her. But I hadn't heard those doors to The Pit open and I hadn't heard a desk sliding across the floor in the produce market. I still didn't get why she had let us go so easily.

  Liliana peeked out of George's curtains and opened the door for us. I found Janine sitting up on the couch, scrolling through a laptop and squinting at a picture on it. She was sitting at an angle so I was able to see a satellite map. Thankfully, she had turned down the brightness so it wasn't painful to look at. Other than a bit of sweat around her forehead, Janine looked fine. She smelled like scrambled eggs. Liliana had cooked her a high-protein meal, which she needed.

  Janine managed a smile at me. "Hey. I think I found something interesting."

  "I thought you were sick," I said.

  "Well, I do feel a bit crappy," she said. "I think it's just because I've been looking at this screen for hours on end. Really, Liliana is freaking out over nothing."

  "How, exactly, do you feel crappy?" I asked.

  Janine looked at the screen again. "My stomach's a little upset after I ate and I feel tired, but other than that, it's nothing."

  "You said your feet and hands were tingling," Liliana said. It was clear Janine was trying to downplay whatever this was. Liliana was more worried than she was. Either that, or Janine didn't realize the possible danger.

  I had felt the way she described fourteen years ago.

  The sickness came right after Russell Fox bit me. I remembered waking up in the hospital with my parents over me, worried sick and horrified at what the doctors said was happening to me. It had stayed with me for my whole life. I still remembered the weakness. The lights that were getting too bright. The sickness that slowly morphed into a new hunger over the next few nights as Mom and Dad drove me across the country to hide.

  My Turning had taken only three or four days. Five, at the most.

  What if Janine--

  No.

  Her mother had been fine after getting bitten by one of the mayor's servants. It was obvious that her mother wasn't descended from anyone who had been given Bathory's blood. But I knew nothing about Janine's father. In fact, I had never met the man. Janine had told me once that her parents had divorced back when she was five and her father lived on the other side of the country with a new wife. It was a setup a lot like my family, except that her father actually came out to visit her once in a while.

  "It's probably from using the computer all day," Janine said. "I've also been on this couch and it's pinching my nerves." She shifted.

  Xavier looked at me.

  She might just be dehydrated and she had turned the screen brightness down to avoid a growing headache. Any Normal would feel like that after looking at it for so long. It was the same with the tingling. Carpal tunnel was a thing and sitting all day made anyone feel weak and tired. I might be over blowing this after all.

  The dread curled into my stomach. I felt like it would never go away.

  "So," I said, stepping closer. I sniffed, keeping it quiet. Janine smelled Normal--like food, and it made my stomach rumble again so I held my breath. "Where do you think this complex is?"

  Janine had zoomed in on a low, gray building that was surrounded by a thin border that must be a fence. She switched the map to a 3D view and the map tilted, showing us the front of the bunker complete with its steel doors and the tall, barbed wire fence that surrounded it. It looked just like the place from the news broadcast, just minus the ATC vans and the agents forcing prisoners inside. Around the building, there was nothing but an open field and no tree cover, even though there was forest next to the complex. She zoomed out to reveal that the bunker was on a rectangular piece of land that was well outside of Cumberland, maybe ten miles outside the line that marked the city limits. The closest subdivision, the same one Trish and I had entered to save my mother, was maybe five miles away from the bunker. That opening to Death's underworld wasn't too far from the place.

  "That wasn't hard to find," Xavier said. "This is another obvious trap."

  "I think so, too," Janine said. "Thoreau made sure to make the media show that image of Thorne and Trish and all the others getting taken into that bunker for a reason. He wants us to know where the prisoners are. What kind of place is inside of there?"

  "I have a few ideas," Xavier said. "It's either prison cells or there's another portal to the Infernal Dimension in there. I know there's no real ATC treatment center at the headquarters like they say there is. There's just Thoreau's portal. I'm wondering if it's like that in all of the centers and only a few people know the truth."

  "Even a lot of the ATC people don't realize the truth," I said, thinking of the ones back at the airport who honestly thought the treatment centers were nice utopias for people like me to get cured. "Only the inside people know what it really is. I just realized that we've never really found out what actually happens to the people that get taken there."

  A dark look came over Xavier's face. "If we're lucky, Thoreau put them all in a magic sleep until he's ready to force them into slavery when he merges the worlds. That means they're unhurt."

  It was the best case scenario. Anything else would be too horrible to imagine. Elsina and Trish and Thorne might all be in the Infernal Dimension if the portal theory was right.

  But that made it so much harder to rescue them.

  I pulled out a small vial of black blood from my pocket. "We have something to open any portal we find," I said.

  "What's that?" Janine asked.

  "Demon blood. Of some sort." My stomach turned just looking at it. It was disgusting stuff. "It's what we need to open up portals. Where's your mom, by the way?"

  "Out looking at apartments," Janine said. "She found another one about an hour ago that she's wanting to check out. Why?"

  "I just want to make sure she's okay," I said. "Thoreau likes to go after everyone." I studied Janine's eyes, but they were the same color they normally were: brown. I couldn't remember how long it had taken for my eyes to change color when I turned.

  My mother had slipped contact lenses into mine when I was two. I asked why. She had told me that she wanted to keep my eyes pretty.

  I turned away and shook my head. Janine was fine. I was overreacting.

  "She's going to be careful after what happened," Janine said. "She still has nightmares about the bite."

  "Well, we know where to go," Xavier said. "We just have to get in there. That's the problem. They're going to expect us. Alyssa, you might want to stay behind."

  I balked. "Excuse me?" I asked. "I have fire magic and death magic, plus War Magic, plus my fast healing and my fast speed, and you want to leave me behind?"

  There was a look of real worry on Xavier's face. Did he still like me as more than a friend? The circumstances might not have changed his feelings for me--just his ability to express them. "It's obvious Thoreau wants you to go," he said. "And there is always the risk that he could force you to bite me. If we're apart, at least that can't happen. Thoreau won't kill me because as long as he needs you, he needs me as well. I think George and I should go. That is, if George is ready for another fight."

  Xavier looked at Janine's cousin. The poor guy had been backed into a corner. I knew a man wouldn't want to wimp out in front of another guy, even if the other guy was younger. He also wouldn't want to send a kid out to do this on his own. George shifted and winced as if I had stabbed him again. "I wasn't much good in the other fight," he admitted.

  "You did fine," Xavier said. "We were up against Elizabeth Bathory of all people. I should have known someone like her would be in the Dark Council. I bet she and Thoreau dated at one point."

  I gagged as Janine sat up all the way on the couch.

  "You were up against who?" she asked.

  I told her what happened back at The Pit. "I swear, I never want to go back there again," I said. "There was more blood than I'd ever seen in my life and it was making even me sick."

  "That's saying something," Xavier said.

  "Hey," I said, facing him. "You know I hate what I have to do. I'm nothing like what she was."

  "Well, the woman used to bathe in blood," Janine said. "At least, according to history."

  "She's older than what you think," I said. "And worse than what you think." It was gross to think that she had given one of my ancestors on my dad's side of the family her blood, where it waited, generation after generation, to be awakened by Russell Fox. I wanted to kill her. Already my muscles tensed again, wanting another fight. I wanted to do it for everyone who had ever gone through what Dad and I had to endure.

  And all this time, people thought it was a gene. At least I wasn't related to her. That was a relief.

  I had met four of five Dark Council members. There was one more.

  "Anyway, the bunker," Xavier said, getting us back to business. "I really think only George and I should go if there could be an Infernal portal there."

  "But what if something happens to you?" I asked. "As you may have noticed, the supply of fighting Abnormals is getting lower and lower around here."

  "I can fight," Liliana said. "Remember the police?"

  "I know you can," Xavier said to her in a voice that said that she couldn't. I expected him to pat her on the head next. "But this is going to be extremely dangerous and I'm your older brother. I have to make sure I do my older brother job of protecting you."

  "I'm almost fourteen."

  "Exactly," Xavier said.

  "You're not exactly an adult, either," Liliana said. "Alyssa's right. We don't have a lot of fighters left. And you don't know how you're going to get inside."

  "I went with you to the last place that had a portal," I pointed out.

  "I didn't want you to," Xavier said. "Anyway, we'll find a way. They're not expecting George. Thoreau hasn't even seen the guy before. He might be a help."

  George took a step back. He was getting really cornered into saving people he didn't even know. If Xavier kept pushing, he was going to back out. He had been ready for battle before The Pit, but Bathory had brought the grim reality of war to him and he wanted no part in it now.

  I wondered if he would have nightmares.

  I would.

  "Look, it's obvious that George shouldn't have to go," I said. "I'm going. I have the best advantage here. Going by yourself is just going to get you captured, and then Thoreau's going to dangle you over a lake of fire until I come and get you."

  Xavier paled. He was thinking. "You might be right," he said. "All right, Alyssa. You come with me but I don't want you going into the Infernal Dimension."

  "Why are you so obsessed with me not going in there?" I asked. "I'm fire proof. I'm the best one to go in."

  "Because Thoreau obviously wants it. I bet your father's still in there, sleeping."

  "I hope." My chest ached just thinking of him. "Wait. Your parents are in there, too. It's obvious he wants you to go in as well."

  "But I'm not the Dark Pentagram," he said.

 

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