Elegy (12 page)

Ruth nodded—in approval or farewell, I couldn’t tell. She turned away and navigated back to the entrance of High Bridge. When she reached the top edge of the embankment, she paused, and I thought for one strange second that she might look back at me. Give me a salute for luck, maybe.

Instead, she began to move deftly down the side of the steep hill. As her head ducked below road level and out of my sight, I heard her call out to her Seer circles.

“It’s time.”

Chapter
SIXTEEN

T
he Seers hadn’t been chanting for very long, but the sound had already started to freak me out. There’s nothing like fifty or so voices speaking Latin in unison to make one’s skin crawl. I almost would have welcomed the netherworld, if only to get them to stop.

Almost.

Trying not to listen to the chants, I started to play with the hilt of my new knife, using it to slap the flat side of the blade against my jeans in a kind of rhythmic beat. Since that little sound didn’t really do much to help me drown out the noises below, I began to hum and then outright sing, as I tried unsuccessfully to summon my glow.

“Glow,” I sang, intentionally too loud and off-key. “Glow, glow, glow. Gloooooowwwww. . . .”

Catchy
.

My blood seemed to freeze the instant I heard that word echo off the girders around me. I froze too, holding very still with my hand on the hilt of the knife. I listened intently, but after a few minutes of nothing but that damn chanting below me, I felt foolish.

It’s nothing
, I told myself.
Just the Seers’ voices, carried by the wind.

Still, it took me more than a few seconds to ease out of my rigid stance and shake my head. “Idiot,” I chided myself, laughing quietly.

“Only because you’re still here.”

That time, I knew I didn’t imagine the voice. It echoed so loudly, I had no choice but to admit that something had finally joined me on this bridge. Again, my hand flew to the hilt of the knife and I spun around, searching for the speaker. I wasn’t surprised that I didn’t find anything: it wasn’t that kind of night, and it was
never
that kind of place.

“What do you want?” I addressed the air itself, since I technically had no one to confront.

“To save you, Amelia.”

By now I could tell that the speaker was male, although his voice sounded distorted, like it came through some busted-up old microphone.

“Save me?” I asked, pacing nervously around my spot on the bridge, still looking this way and that for some sign of presence. “Save me, how?”

“By telling you . . . to run. Now.”

It was the pause—the slight, struggling gasp for breath—that made me realize who spoke to me.

“Eli? Eli, where are you?”

Now my pacing became urgent. If Eli was here, maybe I could find him, maybe I could get him to take me to my father and Gaby when the netherworld opened, before it was too late.

But my heart sank before he could even reply. Just as that little hitch in breath told me that the voice belonged to Eli, it also told me that Eli wasn’t here in the living world. Worse, he wasn’t any place where he could help himself, much less me.

“You’re projecting, aren’t you?” I said, answering my own question on his behalf.

“Yes.”

He hissed the word, but I could tell that he made the sound more from exertion than ferocity. Afterward he panted, as though that one word, projected from his dimension to this one, might break him.

“Eli, I can’t leave.” I grimaced and glanced around the empty bridge. “I have to stay here and do this, or they’re going to start—”

Eli’s interrupting scream was so piercing that I reflexively hunched my shoulders and clenched my hands into fists. The shriek ended almost as quickly as it began, fading with a strangled gargle. Like he’d
actually
been strangled.

“Eli?” I yelled, spinning around frantically. “Eli?”

“Eli is now otherwise engaged,” another voice re-sponded. I searched for this new speaker, but of course, the bridge remained empty.

For a petrified minute, nothing else happened. Then tendrils of black smoke appeared a few feet from me. They began swirling around one another, writhing like a den of snakes until they coalesced and started to form a human figure. Initially, the person’s features were indistinct, as shifting and difficult to determine as shapes in dark water. When they finally solidified, a young man in a well-cut gray suit and wire-rimmed glasses faced me. His smile seemed benign, even gracious. But I clutched the hilt of my knife more tightly.

Alexander Etienne, or Kade LaLaurie, depending on the situation. As if anyone in their right mind would want to meet this
thing
, in any situation.

“Hello, Amelia sweetheart,” he purred, like we were old friends.

“Go to hell, Kade.”

I spat the words without forethought, and instantly regretted them when Kade started laughing as if I’d just told the most hilarious joke. Which, considering his new home, I probably had.

Kade raised both eyebrows, just above the rims of his wire-frame glasses.

“So, Amelia, how’s life?” he asked. Then he affected a bashful frown. “Oops, I forgot: how’s half-life?”

“Where is she, you insane piece of trash?” I demanded, completely ignoring his taunts.

Kade’s frown grew even more exaggerated, until he resembled an innocent little boy who didn’t understand the question. “Where’s
who
, Amelia? To whom could you possibly be referring?”

“You know
exactly
who I’m talking about.”

“Your good friend?”

“Yes,” I growled. “My good friend.”

Kade chuckled. “Well, why didn’t you say so right away? That’s an easy question to answer.”

He slipped his hands into his pockets, rocked onto the balls of his feet, and let loose one low whistle. A second writhing set of smoke-snakes appeared, roiling together beside Kade. Slowly, another person materialized . . . just not the one I expected.

Now Serena Taylor stood next to Kade, wearing the same wrinkled suit and corpse grin that she had in our cemetery. She didn’t say anything but instead released a small, delicate sigh. Instantly, the rotten-egg smell of sulfur washed over me. It curdled my stomach, as did the sight of her grin.

Yet the longer I stared at her, the more I realized that she really was an empty shell. A puppet, just like I’d thought.

“Is this who you were talking about?” Kade asked, wrapping his arm around Serena’s shoulder.

Although it pained me to do so—made me feel like I was writing Serena off—I gulped thickly and replied, “No, not that friend. You
know
the one I’m talking about.”

“My mistake.” Kade dropped his arm from Serena’s shoulder and grinned again, looking as though he’d been caught playing a practical joke. As soon as Kade stopped touching her, Serena vanished. It made me suspect that she’d never really been there at all.

“You mean Gabrielle Callioux,” Kade said.
“Gaby.”

He said her nickname with such obvious contempt that I couldn’t help but make a guttural sound—one that bordered on a snarl.

“Bring her here, Kade. Now.”

To my surprise, he answered, “Gladly, Amelia! Gladly.”

Still flashing that bright smile, he snapped his fingers twice, the way a jerk might order a waitress over to his table. Immediately something began to shimmer above the concrete near his feet. Just a faint, swirling mist at first. Then it took a human, if transparent, shape. But it didn’t take the same upright stance that Kade and Serena had. Instead, this form stayed crouched, huddled close to the ground like a dog afraid of a sharp kick.

Which was exactly what Kade delivered into the translucent figure’s side. It whimpered softly, and Kade turned a satisfied smile back on me.

“Amelia, meet the new Gaby,” he said pleasantly. “Gaby, show some respect to your old friend.”

The form on the ground glanced up at me with wide, unnaturally blue eyes—the same kind of burning, neon eyes that Eli had, the night he projected his body here to warn me about the demons. But even though this creature’s eyes were blue, I saw nothing of Gaby in them—no spark to let me know that the creature knew me, or that it even
was
Gaby.

“I don’t believe you,” I said, my voice shaking. “That’s not her. It can’t be.”

Kade cocked his head to one side and delivered another brutal kick to the creature’s side. This time it screamed, and I almost crumpled to my knees. There was no question that the voice behind the scream belonged to Gaby.

I cried out her name, just once, and she looked away. In terror, or in shame, I don’t know. Tears welled up in my eyes, and I shook my head wildly, as if that could stop them.

“Let her go,” I shrieked at Kade. “Let her go now.”

Kade pretended to consider it, but after a moment, he scrunched up his face and shook his head.

“Nah. Don’t think I will.”

Once more, he snapped his fingers. Like Serena had done only minutes ago, Gaby vanished like a puff of smoke, leaving nothing behind but the cracked road. I stared at the empty spot she’d just occupied, tempor-arily stunned. Then something hot and acidic began to burn inside me.

It built so quickly and fiercely, I almost didn’t realize that my glow had finally erupted—not until I caught its bright orange reflection in Kade’s eyes, which had suddenly lost an ounce of their maniacal gleam. Faced with my glow again, he didn’t look quite so confident; in fact, he now looked a little scared.

At that moment, I didn’t think. I just flashed him a smile—one that bared as many of my teeth as possible—and lunged for his throat.

I’d almost reached him when the bridge began to sway violently. My foot caught on a ridge of churned-up asphalt, and I dropped to the road with a hard smack. The second I hit the pavement, my glow extinguished and my shoulder made a sickening pop. The sound was so loud, I almost mistook it for the powerful crack that rang throughout the river valley.

But the echo from my fall couldn’t possibly reverberate like that off the metal girders of the bridge.

“What the—,” I began, but a chorus of frenzied screeches interrupted me.

At first I thought that the cries came from the riverbank, where the Seers were still gathered. But when I looked up, I saw the swooping black shapes, diving like enormous birds toward the shoreline.

Wraiths or demons, I couldn’t yet tell.

I didn’t spare a single glance for Kade, to see whether he was cowering or rejoicing—I pushed myself up off the road and ran for the railing. The second I reached it, I gripped the metal edge and leaned over so that I could get a better view of what was happening on the bank.

Below me, the Seers had broken their circles and were running in all directions. Probably because the diving shapes had landed and were now worming their way throughout the crowd, inciting them to frenzy. They were wraiths, then—a fact that was simultaneously relieving and disturbing. Especially since I couldn’t find Joshua in the stampede.

I was still gripping the guardrail, debating whether or not to abandon my post and try to find Joshua, when my fingers suddenly began to ache. I looked down and saw that a thick layer of ice had formed upon the rail, which had shifted in color from muted gray to a mottled mess of red, purple, and black.

Those changes could only mean one thing: the netherworld was descending.

Biting my lip so that I wouldn’t scream, I yanked my hands off the frozen guardrail and tried not to think about how much skin I’d left stuck to the ice. I rubbed my palms against my jeans to warm them and then started to run toward the entrance of the bridge. But before I could reach the edge, another black shape swooped down and landed in front of me.

I shut my eyes, praying that my glow would return and blast the wraith off the bridge. When I opened them, however, I found a nasty surprise waiting for me. The black shape hadn’t formed a wraith at all. Instead, a female demon stared back at me.

“Little lamb,” she whispered. “Are you here for your slaughter?”

My mind went blank with terror. I spun away from the demon, running blindly in the other direction. Which was unfortunate, really, since I barreled right into Kade.

The instant I collided with him, he wrapped his arms around me like a straitjacket, loosening them only to twist me around so that I faced the bridge again. From that vantage point, I could see a small group of demons, moving toward us at a maddeningly unhurried pace. They stopped at the same time, making a sort of flock formation a few feet from us.

The female demon stood at the center of one flank, while a male demon stood at the head of the V. Although I hadn’t seen him in a long time, I recognized him immediately. He was one of the first demons I’d met, the night his companion dragged Eli into the hellpit below the bridge. This male was also the first demon to suggest that I join them—the first demon to
covet
me.