I felt the air being squeezed from my lungs as Jake closed in on me. The black fog overwhelmed me, and I slid to the ground, hitting my head hard on the corner of the stone angel’s plinth. I must have cut myself because I felt a warm trickle of blood on my brow. I tried to get up, but my body refused to comply. It was as if every drop of energy had leaked out of me. I opened my eyes and saw Jake standing above me.
“My brother and sister will never let you get away with this,” I murmured.
“I believe I already have,” Jake snarled. “I gave you the choice to join me, and like a fool, you declined.”
“You’re evil,” I said. “I’d never join you.”
“But naughty can be oh so nice.” Jake laughed.
“I’d rather die.”
“And so you will.”
“Get away from her,” Xavier yelled, his voice thick with pain. He was still crippled on the ground and unable to move. “Don’t you dare touch her!”
“Oh, shut up,” Jake snapped. “Your pretty face can’t save her now.”
The last thing I remembered before everything went dark was the greedy glint in Jake’s snake-green eyes and Xavier’s voice calling out to me.
31
Deliverance
I woke up in the backseat of a long car. When I tried to move, I realized some invisible force was pinning me down. Jake Thorn was in the driver’s seat and on either side of me were Alicia and Alexandra from my literature class. They watched me with chalky, expressionless faces as if I were a specimen in a laboratory. They kept their gloved hands folded in their laps. I struggled to move and almost succeeded, my elbow hitting Alexandra in the ribs.
“She’s being difficult,” she complained, and Jake tossed her a small package wrapped in foil.
“One of these should do the trick,” he said.
Alicia forced open my mouth with her gloved hand while Alexandra dropped a pale green pill down my throat, washing it down with liquid from a silver flask. The liquid burned as it coursed down my throat and spilled out my mouth. It choked me until I had no choice but to swallow. I gagged and spluttered, and the two girls exchanged a satisfied smirk. Their white faces and hollow eyes started to blur into a haze of misty blue, and a ringing began in my ears that drowned out all other sound. The last thing I was aware of was my heart beating much faster than normal, before I sank down into their bony laps and everything went black.
When I opened my eyes again, I was sitting on a faded rug on the floor with my back propped against a cold plaster wall. I knew I must have been slumped there for a while because the cold of the room had seeped through my clothes and into my skin. My hands were bound, and my fingers tingled when I wriggled them. My arms were aching from being in the same position for too long. Someone had wound a rope tightly around my waist and gagged me with a dirty rag, making it difficult to breathe. I thought I could smell gasoline.
I peered around the dim surroundings, trying to make out where Jake had taken me. It wasn’t a dungeon as I had first imagined. Instead I appeared to be in the formal sitting room of a Victorian house. The room was large and airy and had high ceilings and light fixtures in the shape of twisted rosebuds. The rich tones of the carpet suggested it was Persian, but it smelled musty. The stale odor of cigar smoke also hung in the air. Two wide chesterfield couches, which had seen better days, sat opposite each other, with marble-topped side tables nearby. A deep mahogany sideboard held decanters so dusty you could barely make out the amber and plum liquids inside. In the middle of the room stood a long, polished cedar dining table with elaborately carved legs. The high-backed chairs positioned around it were upholstered in burgundy velvet, and in the center of the table sat an immense silver candelabra, its lighted candles casting elongated shadows across the room. Strange markings and symbols were scrawled on the walls, which were covered in peeling striped wallpaper. Portraits in heavy gilt frames hung above the marble mantelpiece, and their faces watched me archly as if they were in on a secret I had yet to discover. There was one of a Renaissance-looking gentleman in a ruffled collar, and another of a woman surrounded by five nymphlike daughters, all with Pre-Raphaelite hair and swirling dresses.
A film of dust lay over everything, including the paintings. I wondered how long it had been since anyone had lived in the house. It seemed to be frozen in time. A giant spider’s web swooped gracefully across the width of the ceiling like a sheet of muslin. When I looked more closely, I saw that everything reeked of decay. The dining chairs looked moth-eaten, the picture frames were lopsided, the leather sofas sagged, and there were patches of damp on the ceiling where water had seeped through. Everything was still in place, as though the owners of the house had left in a hurry and never come back. The windows were boarded up so that only a few bars of natural light filtered into the room to fall in random beams across the carpet.
My whole body ached, and my head felt leaden and foggy. I could hear distant voices coming from somewhere, but no one appeared. I sat there for what felt like hours and started to realize what Gabriel had meant about the human body having certain requirements. I was feeling faint with hunger, my throat was dry and parched from lack of hydration, and I desperately needed to use the bathroom. I drifted into a semiconscious state, until eventually I was aware of someone coming into the room.
When I focused my eyes and sat up, I saw Jake Thorn seated at the head of the dining table. He was wearing a smoking jacket of all things and had his arms crossed. On his face he wore his trademark sneer.
“I’m sorry it had to end like this, Bethany,” he said. He glided over to untie the gag from around my mouth. His voice was like honey. “I did try to offer you a chance at a life together.”
“A life with you would be worse than death,” I said in a hoarse whisper.
I saw Jake’s face harden. His cat eyes, which were black again, seemed to glaze over.
“Your stoicism is admirable,” he said. “In fact, I think it may be one of the things I like best about you. However, in this case I think you will come to regret the choice you have made.”
“You can’t hurt me,” I said. “I’ll only return to the life I knew.”
“That’s very true.” He smiled. “What a shame your
“Don’t you dare threaten him!”
“Struck a nerve?” Jake asked. “I do wonder how Xavier will react when he finds his precious one dead. I hope he doesn’t do anything rash — grief can make men behave in strange ways.”
“Leave him out of this.” I struggled against the rope. “We can settle this ourselves.”
“I don’t think you’re in a position to bargain, do you?”
“Why are you doing this, Jake? What do you think you’ll gain?”
“That depends on your definition of gain. I am but a servant of Lucifer. Do you know what Lucifer’s biggest sin was?”
“Pride,” I answered.
“Precisely, so you really shouldn’t have wounded mine. I didn’t appreciate it.”
“I didn’t mean to wound you, Jake…”
He cut me off. “That was your mistake, and this is the part where I get even. It will be quite a show watching the perfect school captain take his own life. My, my, what will everybody say?”
“Xavier would never do that!” I hissed, feeling my heart skip a beat.
“No, he wouldn’t,” Jake agreed, “not without a little help from me. I can get inside his head and offer some useful suggestions. It shouldn’t be hard. He’ll already have lost the love of his life, right? That ought to make him very vulnerable. What shall I make him do? Throw himself onto the rocks at Shipwreck Coast? Wrap his car around a tree, cut his wrists, walk into the ocean? So many choices to consider.”
“You’re doing this because you’re hurt,” I said. “But killing Xavier won’t make you happy again. Killing me won’t bring you satisfaction.”
“Enough tiresome talk!”
He drew a sharp knife from inside his jacket and bent to slice through the ropes that held me with small, deft movements. My arms and hands ached even more once they were free. Jake pulled me up so that I was kneeling at
