The Devil's Labyrinth

she said, brushing his cheek with her lips. “Sweet dreams.”

Ryan neither opened his eyes, nor gave any acknowledgment that he’d heard her words.

† † †

In the car, Teri finally let her tears flow. Tom drove slowly and said nothing, letting her deal with her roiling emotions. But when he got to her house, he pulled into the driveway, killed the engine and turned off the lights. “I think maybe I’d better come in, at least for a while,” he said softly.

Teri blew her nose, took a couple of deep breaths, and nodded.

“I don’t know what to do anymore,” she said a few minutes later as she started making a pot of coffee. “We should be able to press charges against whoever did this to Ryan. But I know what he means — it could just make things worse for him!”

“I have a suggestion,” Tom said, taking the milk out of the refrigerator, setting it on the kitchen table, then sitting down.

“I know,” Teri sighed. “St. Isaac’s. But even if he agreed to go and we could get him in, I can’t see how I could possibly manage the money. Bill’s death benefits just weren’t that much.”

“St. Isaac’s has to have some kind of financial aid program.” He hesitated, then: “And I’m not totally broke.”

Teri’s eyes glistened with tears even as she shook her head. “That’s incredibly sweet of you, but you know I can’t take your money,” she said, then held up a protesting hand as Tom opened his mouth to argue with her. “And even if I could, I don’t think I want Ryan living somewhere else.”

“And those kids who beat him up will be back at Dickinson High on Monday morning,” Tom reminded her.

Exhaustion flowed through Teri like liquid lead. “Oh, God,” she sighed as she looked around for clean coffee cups, then just pulled two from this morning out of the dishwasher.

“Listen,” Tom pressed. “I know someone who works at St. Isaac’s. Let me at least give him a call and see what the possibilities are. At this point we don’t even know if we can get Ryan in. But let’s at least find out what the options are, okay?”

“Okay,” Teri agreed, too numb to argue. “And who knows? Maybe that’s where he should be.” She poured each of them a cup of coffee, set the pot down on the table, and sank into the chair opposite Tom, who reached across and took her hand, squeezing it as gently as she’d squeezed Ryan’s a little while ago.

“Hey,” he said. “You’re not completely by yourself, you know. And things will get better.”

She nodded her head. That was good to hear, even though she didn’t believe it.

CHAPTER 8

KIP ADAMSON WAS leaning against a brick wall. The thing was, he had no idea why he was there, or how long he’d been there, or even where the wall itself was. He felt oddly paralyzed, afraid to move, afraid even to look around, as if any movement at all might cause whatever reality he was in to vanish as abruptly as it had come.

But was it real? Maybe he was dreaming — in fact, he had to be dreaming, since nothing about either his surroundings or his body felt real at all.

Then his fingers brushed against the coarse bricks behind him.

They felt real.

He looked at his hands.

They looked real.

He curled his fingers into fists, and then relaxed them.

It was all real.

He sank to the sidewalk, trying to figure out what had happened to him. Where was he? How had he gotten here? And why was he here, wherever “here” was?

He looked down the dark, deserted street. A neon bar sign was glowing halfway down the block, but other than that all he saw were the stoops in front of a series of old brownstone houses. But not nice ones like the ones on Beacon Hill or in the Back Bay.

These looked more like slums.

And it felt late. After midnight? He couldn’t tell.

He rose back to his feet and moved slowly along the narrow city sidewalk, looking for landmarks — anything recognizable. But nothing looked familiar.

How could he have gotten here? He searched his memory, but the last thing he could really remember was eating pancakes for breakfast in the dining room at St. Isaac’s.

And he’d felt a little dizzy. He’d headed back to his room, but…

The memories tumbled through his head now. Hot! He’d felt so hot he thought his flesh was being seared right off his bones.

And all around him, vivid colors had pulsated, colors so vivid he could not only see them, but feel them, every nerve in his body tingling and vibrating.

And voices! Guttural, garbled sounds in a language he didn’t understand, but the meaning of which he’d understood.

Then the things — horrible, impossibly hideous creatures — had come. Even now, in the darkness of the empty street, they rose out of his subconscious to taunt him, their lips twisted, their burning eyes leered.

In the darkness of the night, he felt the same urge to flee he’d felt this morning.

Was that what had happened? Had it been some kind of nightmare that he’d tried to flee from? But if he’d been asleep, and dreaming, how had he gotten to these empty streets he’d never seen before?

Unless this was the dream, and in a minute he’d wake up, and be back in his room at school and Clay Matthews would be asleep in the other bed.

The things were back now, all around him, and he ran his hands over his face, sweating even in the cool of the night.

A drunk stumbled out of the bar and Kip shrank into a shadowed doorway, his vision suddenly blurring as if he were looking through a greasy window. He rubbed his eyes, but the blurriness remained.

Then the strange dizziness he’d felt this morning struck him again, and he clung to the brick wall, fighting the vertigo.

The man wandered toward him, singing softly to himself, and Kip watched from the shadows, a strange hunger growing inside him.

He wanted something — craved it.

But what?

The guttural voices were jabbering again, and, in the blurred periphery of his vision, Kip glimpsed the demons reaching toward him, wanting to touch him, to tear at him.

To devour him.

No!

His right hand slid into the deep front pocket of his cargo pants, his fingers closing on a hard object. A second later he was staring at a knife.

A large knife with a bone handle, into which was folded a thick blade.

He’d never seen the knife before — he was sure of it — but he knew what to do.

He pressed a small button on the knife’s haft, and the blade flicked out, locking instantly into place.

He tested it with the thumb of his left hand, and watched as blood began to ooze from a deep cut.

A searing pain shot through his hand and up his arm.

The voices of the demons gurgled with pleasure.