Demon High (21 page)

His statement should have repulsed me. It was horrible to feel nothing when you knew someone else might be suffering. It should have been unforgivable, but I not only forgave him, I felt for him.

He said he didn’t care, but he had to. Somewhere inside he had to care, or why would he be standing here with me at all?

I squeezed his fingers. “You don’t have to care. You just have to help.”

His hand tightened around mine and my heart fluttered.

We stood in the semi-darkness doing nothing, just holding hands and breathing. It felt normal. No, not normal, special. Being with Oscar, made me feel special.

“Did you go to the other floors? Did you sense people there?” I asked, my words soft. I didn’t want to break the cocoon of quiet that had wrapped around us.

He nodded. The fingers of his free hand trailed down my arm. It was no more than a whisper of a touch, innocent, but also intimate and seductive, a dangerous combination considering where we were and what he was.

The next logical question to ask was obvious. If he sensed people, why didn’t he free them? But I knew what his answer would be. There was no reason to, he didn’t care.

I didn’t want to hear that.

So I concentrated on practicalities, questions that would help get Angie, the two boys, Brittany and myself out of this building. I asked Oscar as many detailed questions as I could.

He thought Holmes was gone right now. Oscar had found the other demon’s office and it was empty, but he knew where three people were stashed in the building. Three
live
people. He couldn’t tell me their condition, but he knew they were alive, for now.

“Where would Holmes go?” I asked. He was a demon. I assumed he didn’t need to hit the grocery store or anything.

“To get more victims.” Oscar’s answer was blunt. Probably accurate, but hard to hear.

He squeezed my hand. Glad of the reminder I wasn’t totally alone, I squeezed back. Then it hit me. He had squeezed my hand. He was trying to reassure me, that didn’t come without caring.

“Why’d you do that?” I asked.

“What?”

“My hand. You squeezed it. Why?”

“Because.” I could hear confusion in his voice.

“You—” I stopped myself from continuing. Now wasn’t the time to tell Oscar I didn’t think he was as non-caring as he claimed. It was a big discovery if true, and if I was wrong…. Well, better to be right. Instead, I pulled his hand closer and said. “You’ve been a big help. Thanks.”

He nodded, and I realized he was staring at our entwined fingers. I didn’t move for a second. My emotions were running rampant, fed by adrenaline maybe, but I felt something, a connection. I wanted him to feel it too, badly.

But we didn’t have time. Not now.

I pulled my fingers free and pulled out my walkie talkie. “If you’re sure Holmes isn’t here, I’m calling Brittany. It will be safer for her to be with us, than alone down here.” Yes, Nellie was with her, but I didn’t count her as any kind of plus.

As I pushed the button, I heard a responding squawk. I turned. The secret door was lifting, and on the other side stood Brittany and Nellie.

“You knew I couldn’t just stay there, right?” Brittany, her flash light illuminating the space around her, smiled. I didn’t bother being angry. We didn’t have time. I just motioned toward the stairs.

And with Oscar taking the lead position, the four of us started climbing. As I stared at Oscar’s back, saw the way he’d pause every so often as if checking for some new sound, I felt like we might just get out of this alive, that we might just be able to fix the giant mess we’d made.

Then I prayed to God that I wasn’t wrong.

There were two floors above the one we’d been on. According to Oscar, Holmes’ office was on the middle floor. The people he had sensed were on the top.

I was horribly tempted to leave the staircase at the first door, to check and see if Holmes was there. It was a sick need, kind of like wanting to pick at a scab to see when it would bleed. But I was at least enough under control to know my curiosity was insane. We had to get Angie, Joshua and the other boy out. After that was done, I’d
have
to come back and face Holmes. For now I would hope that Oscar was right, that Holmes was not in the building.

“Keep going,” I said when Nellie cast a glance at the door. She’d been uncharacteristically quiet since she and Brittany had joined us in the stairwell. I hoped it was because Brittany had told her to back off, and not that the succubus was plotting her next move.

At the top the staircase dead-ended into a door; we paused. “Oscar will lead us to where he sensed people. They are all on this floor, but in separate rooms.”

“We should split up.” The sprayer filled with holy water dangled from Brittany’s finger. Her face was pale, but determined. “We can get them out faster that way.”

“It’s another maze. Oscar has to lead us,” I replied.

“
Please
. Oscar the great is not the only one who can find them.” Nellie flipped her hand toward the door.

I paused. “Splitting up won’t save us that much time.” Especially since I didn’t trust Nellie.

“Once we find them, we still have to get out.” Brittany’s gaze was steady. She was back under control.

I nodded. Brittany reached for the door. “But you go with Oscar. I’ll take Nellie,” I added.

Nellie, in the process of following Brittany, froze. Then she turned. “Kitten, I’m touched.”

I ignored her.

The area beyond the stairwell door was odd. Like being inside someone’s brain. Someone’s brain I didn’t want to visit. Huge pieces of machinery had been connected together forming stark metal scenery. Trees, wagons, people. Everything you would expect to see on an average city street in the late 1800’s.

Holmes had rebuilt his world, or the world as he had last known it anyway. The door opened onto a street that split into two separate paths after only a few feet. Faux buildings blocked our view. We couldn’t see where any of the choices lead, but I sensed they were connected, that there was only one destination from here.

I turned to the demons. “Where to?” I asked.

Oscar moved so he was facing sideways. The city was a nightscape, lit with gas streetlights. The flame inside them was a strange blue. It added another layer of bizarre to the surroundings.

Oscar didn’t seem to notice.

“They’re in the hotel,” he said. “This way.” He moved to the right, past odd miniature representations of buildings with signs labeling them theatres, taverns and dentist offices. Across from the pharmacy stood the hotel. It was huge. So huge, I knew Holmes had drawn on some kind of demon power to create it, or to give it the illusion of size.

“It’s a castle,” Nellie murmured.

“It’s his castle,” I corrected her. “He’s rebuilt his hotel from Chicago here, from scraps.”

Brittany glanced at me. We’d both read what he’d done in that hotel.

There wasn’t a door, just an opening. We walked through. The entryway was tiny. I guessed to leave space for more rooms. Hallways split off in three directions.

“There are two down there,” Oscar gestured to the right. “And one down here.” He nodded to the left.

“We’ll take right.” I started walking. Nellie followed, but slowly. I turned a corner and waited. Finally, I retraced my steps. She was leaning against the wall, staring at her fingernails.

“I wondered if you would come back,” she said.

“I don’t have time for your games, Nellie. This is serious.”

She looked at me, her eyes flashing the same strange blue as the gas lights outside the hotel. “I’m not playing games, kitten. Did it ever occur to you I might not like what Holmes is doing either? I’m a succubus. I love humans.”

“There’s a difference between love and lust,” I replied.

She rolled her eyes. “Save me the greeting card.”

I turned and started walking back down the hall. If Nellie wasn’t going to help me, I’d just have to find the two people Oscar sensed on my own.

“Lucinda!”

I stopped. Nellie was facing me, her legs braced and her hands on her hips.

“Don’t let your prejudice kill someone. There’s a human in here.” She tapped on the wall beside her.

Oxygen escaped my lungs like air from an untied balloon.

“Get over it,” Nellie muttered. She stepped back so she was facing the wall in question. I retraced my steps and stared at the white plastered space too.

I didn’t see a door, but Holmes was a big fan of hidden rooms. Apparently, this was one of them. I started running my palms over the wall. I’d covered half of it when it occurred to me to ask Nellie. “Do you know how to open it?” I tried to keep my tone neutral, but it was hard. I didn’t want to like her, and I didn’t want to feel like we were on the same team. But then she’d gone and helped me, and I’d almost ignored her. It was humiliating.

Her arms crossed over her chest, she angled her head back and forth studying the wall. Finally, she looked at me. “Not a clue.”

It was a relief to be annoyed again. I went back to my inspection. On my third pass, just as I was beginning to think Nellie hadn’t helped me, that she had actually just been playing a cruel joke or worse, my finger brushed over something rough—a tear in the wallpaper. I grabbed a hold of it and jerked.

Nellie shook her head. “Remind me not to invite you to my house.”

I kept tearing. Under the paper was a hole about the size of a man’s finger. I held my breath and shoved my finger inside. A small bar of metal lay perpendicular across the space inside, like a latch or a trigger. I only allowed myself to consider that for a second, then I pushed down.

There was a pop and the wall swung out. I stepped around it and into a closet of a room. The smell of urine and feces hit me like a punch to the face. My leg bumped into a metal frame. A twin bed, the kind you’d see in old movies about insane asylums, filled the space. Angie lay on the mattress face down. Her hands were tethered to the headboard; her feet to the foot board. She was wearing some kind of white uniform that left her legs bare. I crawled over the end of the bed and onto the mattress.

She squeaked, a pathetic terrified sound that caused my eyes to fill. I started talking to her. I don’t know what I said, words tumbled from my lips. I just wanted her to hear my voice and know I was a friend, not the monster who had left her here.

I used my cross-handled knife to cut her hands free first. They fell onto the mattress beside her head, useless. As I was rubbing them, trying to bring life back into them, I noticed some kind of mouthpiece was shoved between her lips. Plastic tubing protruded from it.

I searched frantically through her hair until I found the cord knotted there. It was so tight I was afraid to use my blade, afraid I’d cut her in the process, but after struggling with it until I my fingers chafed, I gave up.

“Don’t move, Angie. Please don’t move.”

She stiffened for a second and then lowered her head. I slid the blade under the cord and sliced it through. A length of blonde hair came with it, but no blood.

Still murmuring, I crawled back to the foot of the bed and cut through the straps that held her ankles. Then I shoved the blade into my pack and waited for Angie to fight her way to her hands and knees. She was shaking as she moved. So hard I thought she’d fall, but she didn’t. Slowly she turned and faced me.

Her hair was knotted and jagged where I’d chopped through the cord. And she was filthy. She had obviously been laying in her own body waste for days. But it was her eyes that got me. They were crazed.

I held out my hand, expecting her to race toward me, but she glanced around the room instead, shoved her hands up into her hair and screamed.

And I stood there like an idiot with no idea how to stop her or to help her.

Someone grabbed me by the shoulders and shoved me to the ground. I jumped up, my backpack swinging forward and my hand digging inside it. I wasn’t sure what weapon I was searching for, but I needed something. My fingers hit my spray bottle first, I pulled it out and squeezed the trigger.

Water hissed, something sizzled and I focused in on what I’d hit. Nellie.

She was standing in the door to Angie’s closet. The side of her face and neck were a mass of bubbling red tissue, but she didn’t seem to notice. Her hands were held out in front of her, and she was murmuring or chanting.

I stepped forward, the bottle ready.

“Nellie,” I warned. Then I heard what she was saying.

“Angie. Come to me. Everything will be okay with me, better than okay. You’ll be happy. Happier than you have ever imagined.”

My stomach turned. She was seducing Angie. A girl who had been held captive for days. It was sick and unforgivable. Any good thought I’d had for the succubus disappeared.

Then Angie moved. My gaze jerked toward her. Her eyes were closed and she was smiling. Her body swayed in a sing-song kind of way, and her knees were sliding inch by inch closer to the end of the bed. When she reached the foot, Nellie grabbed her hand and helped her out into the hall.