held in a separate building. They called it the Death House.”
“Look.” Alara pointed at the gray metal door next to us. Words were written on this one, too:
Darien Shears
“That must have been his cell,” Lukas said.
“Who?”
“The prison serial killer. A local war hero who was convicted of killing a girl who turned up dead after she left a bar with him. Shears swore he didn’t do it, but the jury didn’t believe his story and sentenced him to life. After a few weeks, prisoners started dying—stabbed in the shower, strangled on the yard, suffocated in their sleep. Shears confessed to all the murders even though there were no witnesses.”
Alara raised an eyebrow. “A serial killer with a conscience?”
“Who knows?” Lukas nodded at the white door. “But they executed him in the electric chair right there.”
Shears’ cell faced the Death House. If he looked out the tiny square window of his cell, the only thing Darien Shears could see was the room where he would take his last breath.
Jared peered through the square cut into the metal and froze. “No way.”
“What?” Alara angled for a better look.
He unbolted the door, and the hinges groaned. The room was empty, but it didn’t feel that way because every inch of the walls was covered with words, symbols, and pictures, overlapping in a dizzying pattern. In the center of the madness, one drawing stood untouched by the edges of the others.
The Shift.
It looked exactly like the one in Priest’s journal, though clearly drawn by a different hand.
Priest pushed his way past Jared and stood in front of the enormous sketch. He reached out and held his hand over it, without touching the smooth concrete on which it was rendered. “It’s not possible.”
“Maybe Shears found the casing hidden in the prison,” Lukas offered. The fifth and final piece of the Shift was the casing itself, the cylinder the four disks slid into.
Priest wasn’t convinced. “But how did he know what the disks looked like? This sketch shows the Shift assembled.”
As I scanned the walls, my mind memorized the pictures and symbols automatically. My eyes rested on the words scrawled over and over above the drawing of the Shift, words I knew I’d never forget: THE SPIRIT IS NOW AT WORK IN THE SONS OF DISOBEDIENCE.
Alara read them, too. “That’s not crazy or anything.”
“It’s a verse from the Bible.” Jared studied the wall. “But it should say, ‘the spirit
Demons were bad enough. I didn’t want to deal with the sons of disobedience.
“There was something else in the article about Shears.” Lukas hesitated. “When he confessed, he told the warden he was just a soldier following orders.”
“You think the devil was giving him orders?” I couldn’t hide the shock in my voice.
“I was thinking more along the lines of a demon,” Lukas answered. “One that doesn’t want us to find the Shift.”
The hinges creaked again, and the heavy door slammed shut behind us.
A tall man stared wide-eyed like he had caught us breaking and entering. His hair was buzzed down to nothing, pale eyes lost in the shadows of his gaunt face. A dark band of scarred skin cut across the man’s forehead and circled his skull.
Every muscle in my body urged me to run, but there was nowhere to go. I couldn’t tear my eyes away from him.
“I’ve been fighting this war too long to lose now.” Darien Shears was still in the orange jumpsuit he was probably wearing when he died.
“There’s no war.” Lukas kept his voice even. “Nothing to lose.”
We all knew it was a lie. The spirit stepped away from the door. It was covered with more writing: YOU DO NOT KNOW THE DAY WHEN YOUR MASTER IS COMING.
The spirit pointed at Lukas. “I sacrificed my life to protect it. Don’t tell me there’s nothing to lose.”
My eyes darted around the room. There was nowhere to hide a cylinder the size of a coffee can.
Shears straightened. “I’m a good soldier. Stopped everyone who tried to take it. The same way I’m gonna stop you.”
Priest raised the paintball gun. He fired off round after round, but the balls burst against the vengeance spirit’s chest—holy water, salt, and cloves spraying onto the walls. I waited for the spirit to explode, but he only flickered for a second and vanished.
I stared at the paintball casings lying on the floor. “Why didn’t they destroy him?”
“He’s stronger than the average vengeance spirit.” Lukas ran his hands along the walls checking for cracks. “The rounds weakened him, but I’m not sure how much. We need to find the last piece of the Shift before he comes back.”
“It’s not here,” Jared said. “The walls are solid concrete.”
“Then where is it?” I asked.
Alara stood in the doorway, staring at the view from Darien Shears’ cell. “I think I know.”
30. DEATH HOUSE
Alara kept her distance. “Do you think any of them were innocent?”
A crude wooden chair with heavy armrests was bolted onto a raised platform in the center of the room, like a dead man’s throne. Padded leather wrist and ankle cuffs were buckled below the thick straps that secured the prisoner’s chest to the chair. A coiled black wire snaked up the back and attached to a medieval-looking headpiece, with a metal band that matched the scarred skin around Darien Shears’ head.
Lukas stopped in front of a row of numbered switches under the words CAUTION—HIGH VOLTAGE. “I don’t know, but it looks like they all suffered.”
Rows of hatch marks extended across the wall beside the panel. Someone must’ve been keeping a tally of the men who had died here.
“Maybe they deserved to suffer.” Jared sounded like the guy who burst into my house the first night I met him, not the boy I kissed inside the wall.
Echoes of murmuring voices bombarded us, too faint to decipher, and the unmistakable sound of frantic scratching coming from behind the walls.
“Well done, Jared.” Alara sprinkled salt around the base of the chair. “Good to know you can piss off the living and the dead.”
The scratching grew louder. Then all at once it stopped, plunging the room into an eerie silence.
Priest took a step back and bumped into the panel of switches.
“You’re all monsters.” A disembodied voice slithered through the room. “That’s what they said right before they threw the switch.”
Alara’s body lurched back violently and she fell into the electric chair. The padded cuffs unbuckled themselves and closed around her wrists and ankles. The leather chest strap snaked around her torso and tightened, completely immobilizing her.
“Stop it!” she screamed.
Jared and Lukas struggled to unfasten the cuffs, but the leather straps held tight.
“Leave her alone, Darien,” Priest shouted.
The voice laughed. “It’s not Darien.”
Faces appeared one by one, solidifying into full body apparitions—men still wearing their prison-issue orange jumpsuits. With their shaved heads and identical scars circling their foreheads where the metal had seared
