Breed of Havoc (The Breed Chronicles #3) (11 page)

Hurt? Only my ego. “No, I’m fine.”

“Claustrophobic?”

I sighed. “Only idiotic.”

Another chuckle. “It might be a few minutes before we get to you. Power’s out, and we think lightning might’ve hit the South Tower.”

“Oh. Is anyone hurt?”

“Don’t think so, but it’s being looked into. You sit tight, and we’ll get you out soon as we can.”

“Thanks.” Sighing again, I pulled out my music player and sat down. I leaned my head against the wall and prepared to wait.

‘Soon as we can’ turned out to be close to an hour. I jumped up, anxiously awaiting my release, and all but ran through the doors before my rescuers had them fully open. I wasn’t—thankfully—claustrophobic, but an hour in a ten-by-ten space was enough to have my nerves frazzled.

My rescuers ended up being two agents I didn’t really know. One of them—the younger of the two—gave me a slow smile. “Sorry it took so long. We’ve, ah, got some trouble.”

The older guy shot him a stern look that had me frowning. “Director Greene wants you to go back to your room until he announces otherwise. Understand?” the older guy said.

Before I could respond or nod, he turned away. I ran in front of him to stop him. “What’s going on?”

The two agents glanced at each other. Older guy shrugged and the younger one said, “A demon got loose. Director Greene wants everyone in their rooms until it’s found—especially you, Miss Hall. I’ll walk you back to your room if you’re worried.”

I shook my head. “No, I’m fine. It’s not in here, is it?”

“We’re, ah, not exactly sure where it is.” His cheeks pinkened. “Probably not in here, but be careful, okay? If you hear or see anything strange, you might want to head in the opposite direction and call for help.”

They waved and walked away. I stayed and frowned. How the heck had a demon gotten loose in the first place? More importantly, how was it avoiding recapture? Granted, the South Tower had a lot of rooms—well over a hundred—but the doors had locks on them, didn’t they? I knew the ones that held demons did. I’d discovered that during my first phase when Felecia and I had snuck in.

To my thinking, that didn’t leave a lot of hiding places. Of course, that was assuming the demon escape was what had kept them from rescuing me sooner. But really, how many things could go wrong in one day, in the same freaking hour? A lightning strike causing some unknown problem, my elevator-trapping, a demon escape. I wasn’t sure what I thought about coincidences, but I was pretty sure Greene and Peter, and hell, probably even Linc, would say that was one coincidence too many.

And it doesn’t concern me
, I thought. If Greene wanted me in my room, that’s where I’d go.

Halfway down the stairs, the hair on my arms stood on end. The strangest feeling washed over me, like someone covered me with a heavy silk sheet. My eyes clouded over and sounds dimmed until I couldn’t hear anything. By the time I paused, everything went back to normal.

Rolling my shoulders, I started down again. “Weirdest non-dizzy dizzy spell ever,” I muttered quietly, trying to laugh off the weird feeling that settled in my stomach.

As I pulled open the stairwell door on my floor, I let out a groan.

I’d found the escaped demon. It was scratching at my door like a dog.

I would’ve laughed, because it was just my luck that I would, yet again, prove the whole demon magnet thing true. A demon escapes, so of course it had to find its way to the North Tower and show up at
my freaking door
. How was I supposed to convince everyone else I wasn’t a demon when, at times like this, I wasn’t that sure they were wrong? I closed my eyes and sighed. How else could this have gone? It couldn’t have stayed in the South Tower (which raised a good question, like how it got
out
of there in the first place). No. It couldn’t have stayed there or gone to any other floor in the North Tower. It had to find—

The scratching sound stopped.

My eyes popped open and I found the demon’s gaze locked on mine.

“Uh uh. Not again.” I took a step back and hit the door.

It took a step forward.

“C’mon. You’re a good little demon. You don’t want to attack the stupid demon magnet!” For all I knew it did want to attack the stupid demon magnet, but I didn’t know for sure. It was a Burrower. They liked to dig and, though they were destructive, they were mostly benign around humans. But not always. So was it a demon that liked my DNA because it thought I was a friend, or was it one that wanted to eat me? Or was it an equal opportunity Prospect-eater?

The demon blinked at me.

“I don’t suppose you’d want to take a few steps back? You know, give me time to sneak into my room and call someone to come capture you?”

It made an undecipherable sound at me.

“Okay, I’ll take that as a no then.” I’d taken the stairs nearest to the gym, so Linc’s door was closer than mine. If I tiptoed… “Look,” I said, holding my hands up, “I’m gonna move forward a little, and you’re going to let me. I’m gonna knock on that door.” For all the good it did me, I pointed to Linc’s door. “Just…stay there, demon dude, until someone comes and gets you.”

With my heart racing, I crept one step forward, and when the demon didn’t seem to move, I took another step. I made it to Linc’s door without the demon moving much. It shifted around, like it was trying to keep me centered in its vision, but that was it. “Go back to digging,” I murmured as I tapped—lightly—on Linc’s door. Training and fear kept my gaze locked on the demon’s.

The longest seconds passed while I waited for Linc to answer. Was he even in there? For all I knew, he could’ve been in the gym still. Hell, he could’ve been anywhere when the demon escaped and been sent somewhere else—an office, someone else’s room.

But he opened a second later. “Hey. You know we’re in lock-down, right?” he said, and I could hear the frown in his voice.

“Call Security. Or Greene. Someone!”

“Why? What’s going—” I felt him brush against me, his chest to my back, so I knew down to the second when he saw the demon. “What the hell? Did you lure it here or something?”

I risked a quick glance over my shoulder, just long enough to send him a scathing get-real look. “Yes, I
lured
the demon here, Linc.” I bit the words out, part in frustration, part in unnecessary sarcasm. But really. He thought I lured it? “Idiot! Just call someone!”

I felt him a move. A few seconds later, he muttered a few words, including something that sounded suspiciously like “Jade found the demon”. I growled at that, but then I frowned because I realized it was kind of true. I had, however unintentionally, found the demon.

“Get in here,” Linc hissed behind me.

The demon was still watching me, but I nodded once.
Don’t come after me,
I prayed silently as I started moving backward. On the bright side, the Burrower didn’t seem all that unhappy with my decision to move.

But on the downside, it started to move closer, like it realized I was getting further away now.

I was, for the most part, entirely in Linc’s room. The Burrower was standing right outside the doorway, staring in.

Linc slammed the door shut. There was a full ten seconds of silence, so I closed my eyes and sighed. “Well. That was a little too close—” The demon started the scratching thing again on Linc’s door. “—for comfort,” I finished lamely.

Linc pulled his desk in front of the door. He paused for half a second and tilted his head to the side. “Had to say it, Hall, didn’t you?”

I glared, but I helped him move the desk. Once we finished, we moved away from the door and stood in front of his window. Over the scratching sound, the wind and rain battled against the glass.

“Wonder if there’s a demon-finding fee.”

“Seriously? We’ve got a demon after us and you’re worried about money?” I said.

He shrugged. “It’s not after me. It’s after
you
. I’m an unlucky bystander.”

“Thanks, Stone. Appreciate that,” I muttered, which made him laugh.

“The cavalry will be here in a few minutes, so I’m not worried.”

Within a second of the words leaving his mouth, light from the hall shone through the scratches. I slapped his arm. Hard.

“Walked into that one, didn’t I?”

The scratches in the door got bigger and bigger. Within a minute, we could actually see a small portion of the Burrower through the splintered wood. Another minute or two, and the darn demon would likely be
through
the door. Burrowers dug fast. They dug quick and deep, burrowing themselves into the ground or in the walls of (mostly) abandoned houses when the weather was warmer.

“I don’t think it’s after you,” Linc said conversationally, fumbling in the dark to find my hand. When he managed to find it, he held onto it. “At least not in the bad way. Otherwise…”

“Otherwise, I probably wouldn’t have made it into the room.” He had a point. But regardless of the demon’s intentions, it was still after
me
. Good, bad, neutral, that didn’t matter. Before we bunked down for the night, probably every Prospect would know a demon had escaped and went to
my freaking room
. They didn’t quite understand why demons liked or hated me, because I wasn’t in any hurry to tell them, but they didn’t like it.
I
didn’t like it, but outside my small circle of friends, no one seemed to notice that point. Or if they did, they just didn’t care.

I didn’t like being different from the other P3s. Not by this much. I didn’t like having demon DNA or having demons come after me for no reason.

Just wait until next Phase
, I thought to myself. I just needed to make it until then, because the Prospects who signed up for the treatments would be more like me. When they were, they’d understand me better. Wouldn’t they?

I blinked when I saw Linc’s hand waving in front of my face. I swatted it away. “What?”

“You zoned out.”

“I did not zone out.” Lie. “I’m just concentrating really hard on the demon that’s currently scratching its way through
your
door.”

He shrugged again. “They’ll replace it.”

“And if it gets through
before
help gets here? Then what?”

“Then…you can do your demon whispering thing and tell it to sit patiently until help arrives.” Even in the dark, I could see his grin.

I almost admitted to doing that before but decided against it. “If that darn thing gets through before someone catches it, I’ll sic it on you as a distraction and escape.” That would teach him, wouldn’t it?

“Yeah, you probably would.”

“Damn straight.”

The hole doubled in size and we could see the demon’s head through it. One of its hands reached through and waved around. It wasn’t a frantic waving like I’d seen in the movies when a creature was after someone and desperately tried grabbing them. It was more…gentle. Almost like it was reaching for something (or someone) but worried it’d hurt them.

The Burrower pulled its hand back and peeked through the hole. Its eye darted left, right, up, and then down.

Slowly, I took a step forward and knelt down until I was eye level with it. The thing hadn’t tried attacking me, and really, after it’d seen me, it’d stopped moving altogether until I’d moved. Maybe it just wanted to keep me in sight for…whatever reason it had. Maybe it’d keep it calm and not door-scratchy if it saw me.

“It’s okay,” I murmured quietly. “You can see me now. Just stay there, okay? I’m okay, you’re okay. Everything will be okay, demon dude.”

“Demon dude?” was Linc’s comment.

I shot him a quick glance. “I don’t know. I had to call it something.”

He knelt down beside me. “What if it’s a girl?”

“Then it’d be demon dudette.”

“Okay. Works for me.”

I shook my head. “You’re so…you.”

“Why does that sound like an insult?”

“Because it partly is one, you crazy person. We’ve got a demon at the door—literally—and you’re joking about it.”

“And you’re talking to it, so I’d say I’m in good company.”

My mouth opened, then closed. “Damn you and your valid point.” I didn’t have to look at him to know he was smirking, but I checked just in case. And yup, full blown smirk. “I hate it when you do that.”

“What? When I’m right?”

“Yes,” I muttered angrily. Well, I tried for angrily, but it mostly came out as a pathetic sounding laugh.

Here we were, trapped in his room, in the dark, with a demon trying to scratch its way in, and he was making jokes and I was laughing. Linc was right. He was in good company, because we had to be slightly neurotic to find this situation funny.

“You guys okay?” a voice said.

Linc jumped to his feet and ran to the security panel. “Yeah. We’re fine. Jade demon-whispered the demon into a staring contest. I think she’s winning.” When I gasped, he shrugged. “What? It’s true.”

The person on the other end coughed. “Can you repeat that?”

Linc winked at me, then repeated what he’d said.

“I’m not sure, uh, staring at it is the best move,” the voice said, slowly, almost like he was questioning his own words. “Stay away from the door and stay out of sight.”

“Where’s the cavalry?”

“They should be there any second.”

I glanced up at Linc. “I’m not moving. It’s calmer now, so I’m not going to try something that’ll piss it off. I don’t know
why
it’s calmer, but it is.”

Maybe my so-called staring contest with it was the cause. Or maybe it was some other crazy reason I didn’t know. Either way, it was working or something else was, so until I had a better reason than it not being ‘the best move’, I wasn’t changing a thing.

I wouldn’t have had time to, anyway, as I heard voices in the hall a few seconds later. There were a few loud words, then a familiar voice said, “What’s it staring at?” in a baffled tone. A second later, the demon was gone and a human face appeared in its place. “Should’ve known,” Adam said. The door opened and he looked down at me as he shook his head. “It’s always you, isn’t it?”

I glared and stood up, then I tossed my hands to my hips. “Someone had to do your job for you while you were sitting around somewhere, doing whatever you were doing.”