Beautiful Darkness

Bad Girl

My optimism was short-lived. The more I thought about finding Lena, the more I thought about John. What if Liv was right, and Lena would never go back to being the girl I remembered? What if we were already too late? I thought about the swirling black designs on her hands.

I was still thinking about it when the words drifted into my mind. They were faint at first. For a second, I thought it was Lena's voice. But when I heard the familiar melody, I knew I was wrong.

Seventeen moons, seventeen years

Know the loss, stay the fears

Wait for him and he appears

Seventeen moons, seventeen tears ...

My Shadowing Song. I tried to figure out what my mother was trying to tell me. You don't have much time. Her words rattled around in my mind. Wait for him and he appears.... Was she talking about Abraham?

If she was, what was I going to do?

I was so absorbed in the verse, I didn't realize Link was talking to me. "Did you hear that?"

"The song?"

"What song?" He signaled us to be quiet. He was talking about something else. It sounded like dry leaves crunching behind us, and the low whipping of the wind. But there wasn't even a breeze.

"I don't --" Liv began, but Link shut her down.

"Shh!"

Liv rolled her eyes. "Are all American guys as brave as the two of you?"

"I heard it, too." I looked around, but there was nothing, not a single living thing. Lucille's ears perked up.

Everything happened so quickly it was impossible to follow. Because it wasn't a living thing I'd heard.

It was Hunting Ravenwood, Macon's brother -- and his killer.

Hunting's menacing, inhuman smile was the first thing I saw. He materialized a few feet away from us, so quickly he was almost a blur. Another Incubus appeared, and another. They ripped out of nowhere, one after the next, like links in a chain. The chain tightened, and they formed a circle around us.

They were all Blood Incubuses, with the same black eyes and matching ivory canines, except for one. Larkin, Lena's cousin and Hunting's lackey, had a long brown snake curled around his neck. The snake had the same yellow eyes as Larkin.

He nodded at the snake slithering down his arm. "Copperheads. Nasty little bitches. You don't want to get bit by one of these. But then there are a lot of ways to get bitten."

"I would have to agree." Hunting laughed, baring his canines. A rabid-looking animal crouched behind him. It had the huge muzzle of a Saint Bernard, but instead of big, droopy eyes, it had sharp, yellow ones. The hair on its back bristled like a wolf's. Hunting had gotten himself a dog -- or something.

Liv clung to my arm, her nails digging into my skin. She couldn't take her eyes off Hunting or his pet. I was pretty sure she had only seen a Blood Incubus in one of her Caster volumes. "That's a Packhound. They're trained to go for blood. Stay away from it."

Hunting lit a cigarette. "Ah, Ethan, I see you've found yourself a Mortal girlfriend. It's about time. And I think this one's a real keeper." He laughed at his own bad joke, exhaling wide smoke rings into the perfectly blue sky. "Almost makes me want to let you go." The Packhound growled low in its throat. "Almost."

"You -- you can let us go," Link stammered. "We won't tell anybody. We swear." One of the Incubuses laughed. Hunting jerked his head around, and the Demon didn't utter another sound. It was obvious who was calling the shots.

"Why would I care if you told anyone? In fact, I enjoy the limelight. I'm a bit of a thespian." He stepped closer to Link, but I was the one he was watching. "Who would you tell, anyway? Now that my niece killed Macon. Didn't see that one coming."

Hunting's Packhound was foaming at the mouth, and so were his other dogs, the Incubuses that only looked human. One of them inched closer to Liv. She jumped, tightening her grip around my arm.

"Why don't you stop trying to scare us?" I tried to sound tough, but I wasn't fooling anyone. This time, they all roared with laughter.

"You think we're trying to scare you? Thought you were smarter than that, Ethan. My boys and I are hungry. We missed breakfast."

Liv's voice was tiny. "You can't mean ..."

Hunting winked at Liv. "Don't worry, sweetheart. We may just bite that pretty neck of yours and make you one of us." My breath caught in my throat. It had never occurred to me that Incubuses could transform humans into their kind.

Could they?

Hunting flicked his cigarette into a patch of bluebells. For a second, I was struck by the irony of the situation. A pack of leather-clad, cigarette-smoking Incubuses were standing in a meadow right out of The Sound of Music, waiting to kill us while the birds were singing in the trees. "It's been fun chatting with the three of you, but I'm getting bored. I have a rather short attention span."

He whipped his neck around, farther than any human's could possibly turn. Hunting was going to kill me, and his buddies were going to kill Link and Liv. My brain tried to process it while my heart focused on beating.

"Let's do this," Larkin said, flicking a forked tongue that matched his snake's.

Liv buried her face into my shoulder. She didn't want to watch. I tried to think. I was no match for Hunting, but everyone had an Achilles' heel, right?

"On my count," growled Hunting. "No survivors."

My mind raced. The Arclight. I had the ultimate weapon against an Incubus, but I had no idea how to use it. I moved my hand closer to my pocket.

"No," Liv whispered. "There's no use." She shut her eyes, and I pulled her closer. My last thoughts were about the two girls who meant so much to me. Lena, the one I would never save. And Liv, the one I was about to get killed.

But Hunting never attacked.

Instead, he cocked his head to the side awkwardly, like a wolf listening to another wolf calling. Then he stepped back and the other Incubuses followed, even Larkin and the demonic Saint Bernard. His minions were disoriented, looking around at each other. They stared at Hunting, waiting for direction, but he didn't give them any. Instead, he backed up slowly and the others followed. They were closing in on us, but in reverse. Hunting's expression changed, and he looked more like a man again, rather than the Demon he truly was.

"What's happening?" Liv whispered.

"I don't know." It was clear Hunting and his lackeys were confused, too, because they kept circling and pacing, moving farther and farther away from us. Something was controlling them, but what?

Hunting locked eyes with me. "I'll be seeing you. Sooner than you think." They were leaving. Hunting kept shaking his head, as if he was trying to shake something -- or someone -- out of it. The pack had a new leader, someone he had no choice but to follow.

Someone very persuasive.

And very pretty.

Ridley was leaning against a tree a couple of yards behind them, licking away at a lollipop. The Incubuses dematerialized, one by one.

"Who is that?" Liv noticed Ridley, oddly not that out of place with her pink and blond streaked hair, weird miniskirt with some sort of suspenders, and spiky sandals. She looked like a Caster Little Red Riding Hood, taking poisoned muffins to her wicked grandmother. Liv may not have gotten a good look at Ridley at Exile, but she was impossible to miss now.

Link's eyes locked on Ridley. "A real bad girl."

Ridley sauntered toward us, overconfident as usual. She tossed the lollipop into the grass. "Damn, that really took it out of me."

"Did you save us?" Liv was still rattled.

"Sure did, Mary Poppins. You can thank me later. We should get outta here. Larkin's an idiot, but Uncle Hunting's powerful. My influence won't last long on him." Her brother and her uncle -- a lot of bad apples had fallen off Lena's family tree. Ridley zeroed in on my arm, or rather Liv's arm wrapped around mine. She took off her shades, and her yellow eyes glowed.

Liv barely noticed. "What's with you people? It's always Mary Poppins. Is she the only British character Americans have ever heard of?"

"I don't believe we've been properly introduced, although I keep seeing you everywhere." Ridley looked at me, narrowing her eyes. "I'm Lena's cousin, Ridley."

"I'm Liv. I work at the library with Ethan."

"Well, since I've seen you at a Caster club and now in a Caster Tunnel, I'm assuming we aren't talking about that hayseed library in Gat-dung. Which would make you a Keeper. Am I getting warm?"

Liv let go of my arm. "Actually, I'm a Keeper-in-Training, but my preparation has been quite extensive."

Ridley looked Liv up and down and unwrapped a piece of gum. "Obviously not that extensive if you don't recognize a Siren when you see one." Ridley blew a bubble. It popped in Liv's face. "Let's get going before my uncle starts thinking for himself again."

"We're not going anywhere with you."

She rolled her eyes, twisting her gum around her finger. "If you'd rather be my uncle's lunch, suit yourself. It's a personal choice, but I've gotta tell you, he has disgusting table manners."

"Why did you help us? What's the catch?" I asked.

"No catch." Ridley looked over at Link, who was recovering from the shock of seeing her. "Couldn't let anything happen to my boy toy."

"Because I mean so much to you, right?" Link snapped.

"Don't look so wounded. We had fun while it lasted." Link may have been hurt, but Ridley was the one who looked uncomfortable.

"Whatever you say, Babe."

"Don't call me Babe." Ridley tossed her hair and popped another bubble. "You can follow me, or stay here and try to take on my uncle by yourselves." She stalked off into the trees. "The Blood pack will be tracking you the second I get out of their heads."

The Blood pack. Great. They had a name.

Liv said what we were all thinking. "Ridley's right. If the pack is tracking us, it isn't going to take them long to catch up with us again." She looked at me. "We don't have a choice." Liv disappeared into the forest after Ridley.

As much as I didn't want to follow Ridley anywhere, getting killed by a pack of Blood Incubuses wasn't an appealing alternative. We didn't discuss it, but Link must have agreed, because we fell in line behind them.

Ridley seemed to know exactly where she was going, though I noticed Liv never put away the maps. Ridley cut across the meadow, ignoring the path, and headed for a cluster of trees in the distance. Her sandals didn't seem to slow her down, and the rest of us had trouble keeping up.

Link jogged ahead to catch up with her. "So what're you really doin' here, Rid?"

"It's pathetic to admit, but I'm here to help you and your merry band of fools."

Link stifled a laugh. "Yeah, right. The lollipops don't work anymore. Try again."

The grass was higher as we neared the trees. We were walking so fast the blades cut against my shins, but I didn't slow down. I wanted to know what Ridley was up to as much as Link did.

"I don't have an agenda, Hot Stuff. I'm not here for you. I'm here to help my cousin."

"You don't care about Lena," I snapped.

Ridley stopped and turned to face me. "You know what I don't care about, Short Straw? You. But for whatever reason, you and my cousin have a connection, and you may be the only person who can convince her to turn around before it's too late."

I stopped walking.

Liv looked at her coldly. "You mean before she gets to the Great Barrier? The place you told her about?"

Ridley's eyes narrowed, and she glanced at Liv. "Give this girl a prize. Keeper does know a thing or two." Liv didn't smile. "But I wasn't the one who told her about the Barrier. It was John. He's obsessed with it."

"John? You mean the John you introduced her to? The guy you convinced her to run away with?" I was shouting, and I didn't care if the whole Blood pack heard me.

"Slow down, Short Straw. Lena makes her own decisions, whether you believe it or not." Ridley's voice lost some of its edge. "She wanted to go."

I remembered watching Lena and John, listening to them talk about a place where they could be accepted for who they were. A place where they could be themselves. Of course Lena wanted to go there. It was what she had dreamed about her whole life.

"Why the sudden change of heart, Ridley? Why do you want to stop her now?"

"The Barrier is dangerous. It's not what she thinks."

"You mean Lena doesn't know Sarafine is trying to pull the Seventeenth Moon out of time? But you knew, didn't you?" Ridley looked away. I was right.

Ridley was picking at the purple polish on her nails, a nervous habit Casters and Mortals shared. She nodded. "Sarafine isn't doing it alone."

My mother's letter to Macon flashed through my mind. Abraham. Sarafine was working with Abraham, someone who was powerful enough to help her call the moon.

"Abraham," Liv said quietly. "Well, that's lovely."

Link reacted before I did. "And you didn't tell Lena? Are you really that crazy and screwed up?"

"I --"

I cut her off. "She's a coward."

Ridley straightened, her yellow eyes glowing with rage. "I'm a coward because I don't want to end up dead? Do you know what my aunt and that monster would do to me?" Her voice was shaky, but she tried to hide it. "I'd like to see you face those two, Short Straw. Abraham makes Lena's mom look like your little kitty cat."

Lucille hissed.

"It doesn't matter, as long as Lena doesn't get to the Barrier. And if you want to stop her, we need to get moving. I don't know the way there. I just know where I ditched them."

"Then how did you plan to get to the Great Barrier?" It was impossible to tell if she was lying.

"John knows the way."

"Does John know Sarafine and Abraham are there?" Had he been setting Lena up all along?

Ridley shook her head. "I don't know. The guy's hard to read. He's got ... issues."

"How are we going to convince her not to go?" I had already tried to talk Lena out of running away, and it hadn't gone well.

"That's your department. Maybe this will help." She tossed me a battered spiral notebook. I would have recognized it anywhere. I had spent enough afternoons watching Lena write in it.

"You stole her notebook?"

Ridley tossed her hair. "Steal is such an ugly word. I borrowed it, and you should be thanking me. Maybe there's something useful in all that disgusting, sentimental dribble."

I unzipped my backpack and slid the notebook inside. It felt weird to hold a piece of Lena in my hands again. Now I was carrying Lena's secrets in my backpack and my mother's in my back pocket. I wasn't sure how many more secrets I could handle.

Liv was more interested in Ridley's motives than Lena's notebook. "Hold on. Now we're supposed to believe you're one of the good guys?"

"Hell no. I'm bad to the bone. And I could give a rat's ass what you believe." Ridley shot me a look out of the corner of her eye. "In fact, I'm having a hard time figuring out what you're doing here in the first place."

I stepped in before Ridley used another lollipop to get Liv to offer herself to Hunting as a snack. "So that's it? You want to help us find Lena?"

"That's right, Short Straw. We may not like each other, but we have common interests." She turned toward Liv but spoke to me. "We love the same person, and she's in trouble. So I defected. Now let's get a move on before my uncle catches the three of you."

Link stared at Ridley. "Man, I didn't see this comin'."

"Don't make more of it than it is. I'll be back to my own bad self as soon as we get Lena to turn back."

"You never know, Rid. Maybe the Wizard will give you a heart if we kill the Wicked Witch."

Ridley turned away, digging the spikes of her sandals into the mud. "Like I'd want one."