Unmarked (18 page)

I
awoke to darkness and a damp cold seeping into my bones.

Where?

Images flashed through my mind like pictures in a flipbook.

Iron chains—

Raw, burned skin—

Metal cuffs—

The scar above Jared’s eye—

The sound of my screams—

Swearing to kill Dimitri and Gabriel—

Calling out for Jared—

My eyes adjusted to the darkness slowly.

Jared pulled me against his shoulder. “You’re okay. Everything’s gonna be okay.”

I breathed into his shirt. It smelled earthy and rich, like a campfire. Nothing like the combination of copper and salt that always lingered on Jared’s skin.

The last few hours came flooding back, and I realized Lukas was the one reassuring me. Alara, Priest, and Elle were huddled around us, in the tunnel outside Jared’s cell. Elle was scrunched under Lukas’ other arm like she was freezing, and Priest and Alara were propped up against the wall, dead asleep.

Where were Dimitri and Gabriel?

“Jared.” I shot up.

If they’d hurt him—

“He’s all right.” Lukas caught my arm. “I mean… he’s not all right. But no one’s been in the cell, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“Are you sure?”

Lukas nodded, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. “We’ve been here the whole time. Don’t you remember?”

“Bits and pieces.”

The horrible ones.

“You lost it.” Lukas picked up his jacket and draped it over my shoulders. “You were threatening Andras, and begging Gabriel and Dimitri to get him out of Jared’s body. Then you did a one-eighty and refused to leave Jared in there alone, because you thought Dimitri and Gabriel were going to kill him. Which is the reason for our fancy accommodations tonight.”

“I’m sorry.” I’d said it so many times now, but what else could I say? How do you apologize for destroying someone’s life? Destroying their family? What can you say when words aren’t enough?

“Don’t be.” Lukas nudged me with his shoulder. “You scared the crap out of Dimitri and Gabriel. They agreed to let us all sleep out here.”

“That’s a lot of trust for those two.”

“Not really.” Lukas smiled. “They took the keys to the cell.”

The cell.

Were they burning Jared with holy water?

“We can’t let them hurt him.” I hadn’t meant to yell.

Bear sprang to his feet, and Priest bolted upright, knocking off his headphones. “What happened?” The Smashing Pumpkins’ “Bullet with Butterfly Wings” echoed through the tunnel.

Alara’s eyes flew open. She yanked the paintball gun from her tool belt. “Is something in here?”

“Just us.” Lukas put his hand on the barrel of the weapon, guiding her arm back down.

Elle rubbed her eyes and stretched. The way she unfolded her long limbs in the small space reminded me of the night she’d slept in the bathroom with me while I puked my guts out from drinking too many wine coolers.

Why didn’t I send her home? What if something happened to her, too?

Elle ran her hands through her red hair. “What did I miss?” When she noticed I was awake, she dove over Lukas’ lap and threw her arms around my neck. “Oh my god. I thought we were going to have to lock you up in a padded room or something.”

“Not yet.”

“That was some serious mother lion behavior in there.” She gestured at the bars at the end of the tunnel. “I thought you were going to tear those two Freemasons apart.”

“Illuminati,” I said, returning the hug.

“Whatever.” Elle pulled away and dismissed the mistake with a flick of her wrist. “The one with the baby demon whip needs to learn some manners.”

We all stared at the floor. None of us wanted to look at the bars.

Priest looped his headphones around his neck. “What are we gonna do?”

“Dimitri says the only way to get Andras out of Jared’s body is to find someone else for him to possess,” Lukas said. “And there’s still no guarantee the demon will leave.”

Elle frowned. “I don’t think I could do that to anyone.”

Alara holstered her paintball gun and pointed at the text on her T-shirt:
BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY
. “This isn’t a fashion statement. No one I care about gets hurt on my watch.”

Lukas stared down the tunnel. “I don’t know how much time we have.”

“Then let’s stop wasting it.” Alara turned to me. “What’s the plan?”

With Jared’s life on the line, the margin for error was zero—the same number of viable ideas I had right now.

I walked to the end of the tunnel and forced myself to look through the bars, where the boy I cared about was chained to the wall like an animal. “We save him.”

Alara and I waited in the hallway at the top of the stairs leading down to Jared’s cell. Priest, Lukas, and Elle had taken off in search of Dimitri and Gabriel.

We were sitting on the floor with Bear stretched out in front of us. Alara hadn’t said a word since we left the containment area, and without Elle’s chatter, the silence between us had turned awkward.

“You never suspected anything?” she asked suddenly.

“What?” I glanced over at her.

Alara pulled at a loose thread on her cargo pants. “About your mom.”

It felt like an accusation, not a question.

That my mom kept so many secrets it feels like she lied to me every day? That those secrets and lies were the reason my dad left?

I remembered every detail, every conversation, and every smile. The idea that all those memories were some kind of performance destroyed me.

“No.” The admission made the truth feel even more painful. “The day my father left, he wrote my mom a note. It mentioned me.” I couldn’t bring myself to tell her what it said.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know.” Alara’s voice softened, and she sounded like the girl who had given me the protective medal around my neck.

“I may not be a member of the Legion, but I’m not Illuminati, Alara. I’m still the same person I was a few days ago.”

Just miserable and broken and totally alone.

Alara didn’t respond right away. “When my grandmother told stories about the Illuminati, they were always the bad guys. And the Legion was formed to stop them.” She hesitated. “Now Dimitri is telling us the Order of the Enlightened is responsible for all the shady incidents since Priest’s granddad was at Yale, and it turns out your mom was one of them. I’m just trying to get my head around this.”

If Alara—the most confident member of the Legion—didn’t know how she felt, how were Lukas and Priest feeling? I couldn’t think of anything to say that didn’t lead back to the fact that my mom was a member of the Illuminati and the Order—and a spy.

Dimitri lit one of his black cigarettes and shook out the match.

Elle pretended to cough. “Are you aware secondhand smoke is almost as dangerous as actually smoking?”

We weren’t in the cell anymore. Gabriel and Dimitri had given us a brief tour of the safe house, a huge sci-fi compound of gleaming metal walls and white ceilings, hidden behind the warehouse’s dilapidated exterior.

Now we were sitting in a room surrounded by glass dry-erase boards, covered in symbols and math equations, as if Dimitri and Gabriel were developing an Illuminati theory of relativity.

Dimitri took a drag and stubbed the cigarette out. “Everyone has a vice.”

“I’m sure he has more than one,” Alara muttered under her breath.

“Let’s go over the rules again.” Dimitri paced in front of us, while Gabriel sat at one of the black tables, cleaning his whip.

“Don’t you mean for the tenth time?” Priest asked.

“If you’re going to stay at the safe house until we figure out how to resolve the current situation, your safety is our responsibility,” Dimitri said.

After our tour, Dimitri invited us to stay in two identical, sterile-looking rooms, which could’ve passed for
sleeping chambers on the starship
Enterprise
. To his credit, he realized we weren’t going to leave Jared alone with them.

“Never go downstairs alone.” Elle was stretched across the table, with her head resting on her arm, as if she were listening to a lecture in class.

“Or without wearing your glasses.” Lukas flicked the plastic sunglasses on the table in front of him, sounding bored.

Gabriel looked up. “This isn’t a joke. If you make eye contact with Andras, he can jump out of your brother’s body and into yours. Or he can mark your soul.”

Elle rubbed her arms like she had goose bumps. “What does that mean?”

“If a demon marks your soul, he’ll always be able to find you, no matter where you go,” Gabriel said.

Priest held up his protective glasses, examining them. “There’s gotta be a more effective way to keep him from making direct eye contact.”

Him.

They were talking about Jared.

“Letting them stay here is a bad idea, Dimitri.” Gabriel stopped cleaning the ivory bones. “They’re untrained—”

Priest pushed his chair away from the table, the legs screeching across the floor. “I can make a weapon out of a soda can, or whatever you’ve got in that black bag
of yours. So do your homework before you start talking about who’s untrained.”

Dimitri shot Gabriel a warning glance. If Gabriel was the storm, Dimitri was the eye. “I think Gabriel was referring to experience with demonic possession and containment.”

Containment.

Jared soaked in holy water, probably freezing. Charred and covered in burns. That’s what he meant.

Dimitri continued. “Our apologies, Owen.”

Priest stood up, shoving his chair back. “Don’t ever call me that again.” He pointed at Dimitri. “No one called me that except my granddad.”

Alara stopped sifting the powders in the bowl in front of her and smiled.

“I’m sorry,
Priest
.” Dimitri emphasized his name.

Priest grabbed his hoodie off the back of the chair. “I’m outta here. You wanna show me where I can do some work? Otherwise, I’m going to my room, or whatever you call those cryogenic chambers where you have us sleeping.”

Elle stifled a laugh.

“Gabriel can take you to the mech room down the hall. You should find everything you need there. We might even have a soda can or two.” Dimitri kept his voice light, as if making a stupid joke would win Priest over.

Alara stood up, adjusting her tool belt on the hips of her olive cargo pants. “I’m going with him.”

Gabriel stormed out of the room and led them down the hall. Bear lifted his head and trotted after Alara.

Dimitri sighed. “This isn’t going well.”

Lukas flipped his coin over his knuckles a few times before he responded. “What did you expect?”

Dimitri rose and walked toward us. Even his black tactical gear couldn’t offset the dark shadows under his eyes, like he hadn’t slept in days.

“We locked Jared up to protect him from himself. Right now, he’s the blade in the hand of a killer. How do you think he’d feel if he hurt someone—or one of you?”

“All I want to know is how we’re going to get Andras out of my brother’s body.” Lukas looked Dimitri in the eye. “Find a way to do that, and I’ll trust you.”

Dimitri lit one of his black cigarettes, letting the match burn down to his fingertips. “I don’t know if I can.”