Something ran across the rubble, and she froze. It was a rat, or a mouse, or a squirrel. Did they even have squirrels in the city? She didn’t really know anything outside of her hometown.
“Jack? When we get out of here, our next mission should be to Hawaii or something. And no demons.”
She reached the stairwell and found it blocked by debris—through her tired eyes it seemed a blurry mass.
“It’s collapsed, Jack,” she said, as she took a couple of tentative steps onto the fallen bricks and beams. She moved away, and glanced at the wall. “There’s been some gunfire here. The wall over the hole got hit by a shotgun blast. Two of them, it seems like. Birdshot. Nothing that went through the brick.” She forced a terrified laugh. “I don’t know about you, but if I were hunting a demon, I’d use slugs.”
She started back toward the hole in the floor. It looked to be the only way down.
“Then again,” she said. “I guess I’m hunting a demon and I’m not armed with
She stopped at the mouth of the hole, and looked back at the man with the shotgun. He was staring right at her, though he had no idea she was there. All she could see of him was the bright flare of the flashlight, but she knew that he was eager to fire.
“I should take his gun,” she said. “But then he’d freak out, and this whole school would clear out. It would probably wake the demon.” She took a long slow breath and rubbed her eyes. “I can barely see anymore, Jack. I’m going down the hole now.”
THIRTY-EIGHT
“DAMMIT,” JACK YELLED INTO THE mic. “She fell. She’s in water.”
“Is she okay?” Rowley answered.
“She says she is, but the water is gross—there’s oil in it, and mud. I think it’s from broken pipes, and runoff from the street. She’s covered. I can’t smell the perfume.”
“I’m moving the team up to get ready to follow her in,” the captain said. “Keep me posted.”
Aubrey wheezed. “Jack, I don’t know how much more of this I can do. I’m getting really weak. I almost lost it there—I almost reappeared.”
Jack relayed the information to the captain.
“And Jack,” Aubrey said, her voice straining to be flippant. “I was really liking these jeans. They’re ruined.”
There was another noise in the basement—another set of breaths that were slower and calmer than Aubrey’s. It didn’t sound like a demon. Or maybe it did.
It was down there, with Aubrey, the two of them all alone.
“This is Cooper,” Jack said into his radio. “There’s another person down there. I can hear it breathing.”
“How big?”
“No idea. The breaths are small—smaller than Aubrey’s. I mean, smaller than Parsons’s.”
“Any idea where it is?”
“No,” Jack said, annoyed. “And I still can’t find her. She’s down there somewhere, and I think I can hear dripping from her clothes, but the whole place seems to be dripping.”
Aubrey spoke again, quieter this time. “There’s a bed here—just some dirty blankets. No one is in it. And— it’s warm.” Aubrey’s voice faltered. “I don’t know how to get out of here. I’m all turned around, and I can’t see.”
“Captain,” Jack said. “You’ve got to go in. It has to know Aubrey is there.”
“Has it seen her?”
Jack was panicked now, ready to run into the school himself.
“I don’t know. All I can hear is that low breathing. Aubrey’s trapped. She can’t see.”
“We’ll be there in less than one.”
Jack wished that he could relay the information to Aubrey, but there was nothing he could do. All he could hope for was that she could stay hidden.
“I know you’re here.” That wasn’t Aubrey’s voice. It was a girl’s. Young, quiet. But there was darkness in the voice—a kind of wicked playfulness.
“Jack,” Aubrey whispered. “I can’t see anything.”
THIRTY-NINE
THE BASEMENT WAS PITCH-BLACK, AND the few bits of light—the flashlight beams coming through from the hole above—were blurred and unfocused.
Aubrey was dripping wet, soaked head to toe in filthy water. She could taste mud on her lips, and she knew she didn’t smell anything like Flowerbomb anymore. Her only consolation was that she was still invisible.
She couldn’t even get back out—she could barely see the hole, and it was in the ceiling twelve feet above her. She was trapped until the Green Berets showed up.
“Jack,” she said. “Send them in. I can’t do any more.”
She’d failed. She was supposed to give them important intelligence information, but all she could do was confirm that someone was in the basement. She’d failed her test. She’d probably get sent back to quarantine to live in one of those awful dorms.
She sat on the floor, next to the pile of blankets that was someone’s bed. Loose bricks were everywhere, and Aubrey couldn’t even get comfortable to rest.
“Come out and play,” the voice sounded, an odd mix of little girl and menacing monster.
“Jack,” she said, her hands balled into tight fists, her eyes closed. “You’ve got to help me.”
“You’re not the first, you know,” the little girl’s voice said. “Other people have come here, and they’ve done a whole lot better than you. But you can’t have me. I sent the SWAT team running like scared puppies with tails between their legs.”
Aubrey picked up a brick.
“And you think I’m not ready?” the girl asked. Her voice became muffled. “I’m ready. Ready and waiting.”
“Jack,” Aubrey said, her voice only a hoarse whisper. “If I don’t get out of here . . . just . . . I’m sorry. I tried.”
There was a sudden crash, and the room exploded with light and sound. The water burst upward and all around, like throwing dynamite in a pond, and all Aubrey could tell was that she was wet. She couldn’t see; she couldn’t hear.
In a daze, she rubbed at her ears, mashed her palms into her eyes. Things were happening all around her, but she couldn’t make out what.
Screams.
There were screams—that was the first thing to break through the mud in her head. But they weren’t the screams of the little girl; they were men, adult men.
She hadn’t heard sounds like this before. These screams were visceral, like the cries of men whose lives were ending. Like men who were being tortured. Men who had found out their wives and children were dead.
No one was shooting. Not one person was shooting at the demon. What had happened?
She cracked an eye and the room was still a blur of brilliant white light burned into her eyes. Flashlight beams danced all around the room as the men reeled and tried to regain their composure before reeling again.
And in the middle of everything was a tiny girl, certainly no older than thirteen. She wore a gas mask on her face, and every time a soldier made an effort to stand, she would lean toward him, shouting things too muffled by the mask to understand.
