Waltzing into Damnation Read online

  So yeah, I’m pretty much screwed, along with everyone unlucky enough to live within a hundred-mile radius of me.

  I remember the announcement on the television officially declaring the area from Crescent City to halfway down Mendocino County as a “Carrion Flu Containment Area.” Footage panned over controlled explosions that took out all the bridges and mountain pass roads, causing intentional avalanches.

  The newswoman had spoken the words in a monotone, her eyes ready to bulge out of her pretty face. “The borders will be enforced with lethal force. For those inside the containment areas, stay safe, stay hidden, and God bless you.”

  If only that pretty newswoman knew the girl responsible for the birds and gangs targeting the area sat in a basement, judging her intonations.

  Within three months of the demonic birds’ return, Arcata alone had become an official safe haven. Within four months, everyone who tried to enter from without the city limits was given one warning, then shot.

  There’s a loud thumping on the attic hatch and muffled sounding, “Why is this locked? Open this door, Raven!”

  Even though it’s hard to hear, the voice sounds thickly accented, booming, and very angry.

  Albert.

  I stay at the window, watching as the birds continue their flight, just to settle on the ground again. The birds of prey have gathered, waiting for our city to die.

  The banging erupts again, but I ignore it. A loud cracking rips through the air, the flimsy padlock flies off, and the hatch breaks away, disappearing into the house below.

  Someone, presumably Albert, cries out, and then there’s another crashing. He lets out a long stream of Swedish curses, which is then followed by more crashing sounds.

  Tapping the floor to test its stability along my way, I cross over to peer through the brand-new gaping hole in the floor of the attic.

  Lying on the floor and covered in wood and plaster, Albert glares up. His pale complexion grows even paler covered in dust. Albert had lost weight in the last year, but he was still larger than most men, times two. And I was pretty sure the growth in his beard compensated for any weight he had lost in his body.

  I wave. “Heya, Albert, how’s it going?”

  He makes a loud, frustrated huff and kicks a large chunk of the attic floor off his leg. “There was a time where you at least pretended you two weren’t trying to escape.”

  “There was a time when you at least pretended we weren’t prisoners,” I return.

  “I do not need this! I am dealing with real issues. Like soulbound infiltrations and demon-infected breaking through…”

  Albert rages on, so I just back away.

  The top prongs of a metal and rubber ladder appear at the lip of the large hole in the floor. Thirty seconds later, another familiar blond head peeks up through the hole.

  Nicholas’ gaze immediately finds mine, an expression of disappointment and pity falling over his angelic features. “Hey, Raven.”

  “Is Linnie okay?” I ask.

  “Come on down now! We really don’t have time for this,” Albert calls up.

  Like I’m some sort of child, playing a game. . .

  “Linnie is fine. She made a pretty big mess in the kitchen. No one is going to thank you two, but she’s fine.” Nicholas’ accent only comes out when he’s truly upset, and I obviously managed to irk him enough. “But Raven, climbing on the roof? You can’t risk your life that way.”

  “I think you know my thoughts on that, Nicholas.” I clench my jaw to stop myself from repeating all the things I’ve already said so many times to him.

  “I’ll come by your room with dinner, and we can talk about it, okay? But for now, you need to head back down and stay safe.”

  I have a sudden urge to refuse, play the childish game they seemed to think I’m playing, act like this is all for attention.

  Sigh.

  There’s no use prolonging the inevitable.

  When I cross over to the hole in the ground, Nicholas clambers up off the ladder and offers me a calloused hand to help me descend.

  Three guards hold the ladder from the bottom next to where Albert waits, arms crossed over his wide chest.

  Wow. It’s like these guys think I can’t figure out a ladder or something. Unfortunately, they probably do think that.

  “Just climb down.” Albert shakes his head and huffs like a bull.

  I climb down, taking all the offered hands, yet ignoring the men who likewise ignore me. At one time, they ignored me because the whole lot of them thought if I made eye contact with a guy for more than three seconds, I’d fall in love with him.

  Now . . . not so much.

  Living here actually wasn’t all that bad until about five months ago, when Hayvee, baby Albert, and my father airlifted out to Leijonskjöld Slott. Linnie was supposed to go too but had refused to leave without me. When I’d told the soldiers just to kidnap her, they’d acted scandalized by the idea. Looking at that now, I found that hilarious.

  Up until the moment they left, Linnie and I were told the plan was to send us with a huge entourage of guards, a few days after. But the moment they were gone, the plan changed. Or more like, it was revealed that this was our prison, and they had no plans to release us.

  When my feet are firmly back on the attic floor, I turn around to face my big, hairy jailor.

  “We already altered the roof so it’s inaccessible from the ground.”

  “To keep the soul bound out or us in?”

  “Both.” Albert glares at me as he drops that icky truth bomb.

  “Well . . .” I take a deep inhale through my nose and shrug. “You can’t blame a couple captives for trying.”

  “Oh, yes we can. Come on back to your room.”

  Translation: cell.

  I want to punch Albert, grab his gun and make a break for the door. But I’m not going to do it. I know it, and he knows it. They have Linnie. And even though Andras is coming for me in less than a week, I will never abandon my sister.

  Chapter Two

  Four Days Before

  For the entire walk down to the small underground apartment that Linnie and I share, Albert goes on a tirade: I’m wasting his time, I’m wasting their resources. Good men are dying to keep me protected, and I’m throwing away their sacrifices by needlessly putting myself in danger. They’re tired of constantly having to babysit me, and blah, bibidy blah-blah-blah. I tune him out; it’s getting exceptionally easy to do.

  “Are you listening to me, Raven?” Albert says as I follow him down to the door that joins the basement apartment to the house.

  “Not at all,” I say, going in, then shutting and locking my door.

  The moment I hear Albert’s heavy footsteps boom away from my room, I pull the worn, threadbare Bible Stephen had stolen for me out of the back of my pants and look around the living room-like space.

  A huge, book-covered mess greets me. Papers and books cover the desk, walls, and floor, making the room look like one of those scenes you see in movies that reveal a person is criminally psychotic. Further proof of my deranged state of mind would be that most of the papers have sketches of demons and feverously scratched notes all around them.

  I’d just started taking things from the demon killers months ago. I took books mostly, but then also anything else that was whatsoever relevant, especially weapons. When they stopped letting me out, Linnie snatched things for me too, but they rarely turned out to be important. Also, in the frequent raids of our apartment, most of the items would be confiscated, but I’ve been able to keep some books. I walk through my low basement room, picking up a couple papers in my path.

  “Yo!” Linnie calls as she bounds out of her room. I used to think my sister was my opposite, short where I was tall, light brown haired where I had black, happy where I was angry. But I’m not so sure anymore. She leans against one of our only spaces of open wall, crossing her arms over her chest. “I was caught in the attic, hatch down. One of the guards just scooped me off the lad
der… didn’t say a word. How about you?”

  “On the roof.”

  I found it wonderfully hilarious that someone must have closed the hatch after they found Linnie on it, only for me to lock it from the inside. The soldier boys weren’t having a good day.

  “We so suck at escaping. And now Albert says I have lost my privilege to…” she clears her throat and speaks in a terribly bad impression of Albert, “walk around the house and get in everyone’s way ever again.”

  “Sucks.” Grabbing the remote from my bed, I switch the television on. The national news station appears, playing their usual news brief on the containment of the Carrion flu. I flip through emergency broadcast channels and finally find a station with early 1990s reruns.

  “T.G.I.F.” Linnie plops on our couch, feet going under her. “I have a feeling we’ve seen this one… yep, same as Tuesday,” she says dryly.

  Grabbing one of the somewhat blank pieces of paper from the desk, I write the message: ‘Roof won’t work, coming up with a new plan. Linnie is now confined to our rooms.’ I crumple the piece of paper, throwing it in my trash bin and tying up the trash bag. I cross the room to place the bag by the front door.

  When I return, a special report interrupts the programming.

  Beep, beep, beep. “This is a Tsunami warning,” says a mechanical voice as lines of text cross the screen, listing earthquakes and their magnitude.

  “Lame,” Linnie mumbles.

  “Yeah.” Grabbing the remote, I change the channel, but the same warning is on the next station as well. Turning off the television, I toss down the remote next to Linnie.

  “We could play tic-tac-toe,” Linnie suggests, sitting up straight.

  “I should probably study,” I say, turning to my disgustingly cluttered desk.

  “And… I guess I will nap,” Linnie says.

  “You could help me.”

  “Hmm, read about torture and dismemberment or dream about hot guys serving me alcoholic beverages… that’s a hard one.”

  As her footsteps retreat into her room, I grab up the Ars Goetia, the demonology reference book with an unfortunately incomplete record of all the greater demons in Hell and their abilities. I flip it open where I left off, but my mind fuzzes out the words, and I can’t concentrate.

  I raise my eyes to what I had been avoiding looking at as much as possible lately, the same thing that had spurred us into our very stupid escape attempt this morning—the calendar. When I had raised my marker to cross off another day, June twentieth stared back at me, outlined in red. I have three more full days until he takes me.

  The days whisper to me, “one, two, three…” ticking forward to the end of this waiting game, the day Andras collects me and chooses never to let me go.

  A knock comes at the door. I freeze, staying silent. The person would either go away or unlock the door and come in whether I want them to or not. I’m not going to give anyone permission to invade my life any more than they give themselves permission to.

  “Raven, it’s me, Nicholas.” It’s hard to hear his voice through the door, but I’m pretty sure it’s him.

  I cross the room and hesitate at the lock. Another softer knock comes again, and I slowly turn the deadbolt and the knob.

  Peeking out, I see Nicholas’ crooked grin and guilt-heavy eyes. He holds out a tray of food like a shield against me.

  I open the door just wide enough so he and the tray can slip inside, and I shut it directly behind him. Nicholas steps over the papers on the floor and searches for a clear spot to place the tray. Obviously giving up, he sets it down on the couch and spins to regard me.

  I lean against the wall. “So, what is it today?”

  His shoulders stiffen. “What is what, Raven?”

  “Are you going to help us escape, or are you going to change your mind again?”

  He sighs. “You guys can’t do things like go on the roof. Especially you, Raven. You could have fallen so easily from there, especially as the roof was wet.”

  “I told you, every opportunity I see to escape, I’m going to take it. I’m only going to get more desperate.”

  He ran a hand down his face, looking exhausted. “Albert is only trying to keep you both safe.”

  “Albert has strapped us to a ticking bomb.”

  “Andras can’t get you in here, I’ve told you a thousand times, Raven.”

  “Don’t even…” I look Nicholas straight in his eyes. “How stupid do you think I am, Nicholas? We both know that Albert plans to hand me over. I’m being held here, against my will, waiting to be given away to a demon.”

  Closing his eyes, he sighs. “We will extract you after twenty-four days.”

  “After twenty-four days with Andras, do you really think I’m going to be the girl who wants to be extracted?”

  “If it was just your life…” He shakes his head. “There are hundreds of soulbound right there… right out there, just waiting to kill you. If you and Linnie had escaped and run off together, how long do you think you two would have even survived? This is Copenhagen all over again, Raven, just beyond the city limits. If you die before the twentieth, your deal with Andras is broken. If it was just your life, then I would help you, you know I would help you. But you won’t survive one day out there, and then that’s the end for all of us.”

  I glare. “Excuse me if I want to find a way to defeat Andras instead of sitting and waiting to be gifted to him. You know what, Nicholas? Go away.”

  “Raven, I am your friend. I don’t like to see you like this…I don’t like to…”

  “The girl said ‘go away’!” Linnie yells from the other room, her door muffling the sound.

  I point at him. “You can call yourself whatever you want, but friends don’t imprison their friends, Nicholas. You and your buddies lost the right to call us anything but your prisoners a long time ago. Most of them call me less pleasant names anyway.”

  He closes his eyes and nods in obvious defeat. As he passes me, he whispers, “We’re on the same side, Raven. Remember that.”

  The moment the door closes behind him, I glare at the padlock and whisper, “Not anymore.”

  For the rest of the evening, studying is impossible. All I can manage to do is seethe as anger makes my heart race and my face heat. When Linnie tries to pull me into conversation, I can’t even manage that. Eventually, I shove my books and papers to the edge of my bed and attempt to sleep.

  Nope. Switching off my brain turns out to be an unachievable task. All I can think about is that tomorrow, there will only be two full days left. It’s in the last hours of the night that my mind finally drifts off.

  As the stars peer down in the open sky, I stand in the dark grounds of Leijonskjöld Slott. Inching along the outer stone wall of the castle, my breaths echo loudly in the darkness. I pull a heavy fur-lined hood over my hair, tucking long blonde locks into its fold.

  Deep darkness waits around the apartments reserved for the stable hands. I lift my gown and heavy cloak and ascend the stair leading to the line of doors. The wooden stairs creak their protest, and I hold my breath, slipping down the open corridor to the third door. I lift up my hand to knock but think better of it.

  Taking a deep inhale, I push the door open and stare into two glowing green eyes. They are greener than a meadow in spring and brighter than embers in a dying fire.

  A spark of tinder ignites a candle wick, illuminating one side of a handsome face. I recognize him immediately, his crooked nose, full lips, and strong cheekbones have carved into my memory. Yet, the candlelight bleaches out his usually tawny complexion and golden blond hair.

  “Lady Elena,” he whispers, a smile in his voice.

  My stomach drops as I stare at his smile. It’s the kind of smile a person wears when they have you where they want you.

  Hesitating a moment, I walk inside and close the heavy wooden door behind me. “And your name is Karlsson?”

  “Andras is what I prefer to be called. Would you like to sit?” He
gestures to a bed.

  Blanching at the insinuation, I glance around the room wildly, only to realize he probably didn’t mean I should climb into bed with him. The candlelight flickers over what looks like a row of unoccupied cots, the only furniture in the cluttered room. “You don’t prefer a room in the barracks, or the church?”

  “I do not.”

  I lower my voice. “My husband does honor those who keep with . . . the old ways. Openly, he must quell the rebellions for the crown, but in private it’s a different matter altogether.”

  “I prefer these accommodations, especially as your husband has taken the entire stable and staff with him to quell those rebellions. And . . . now we are alone.” He stands and opens a hanging lantern, lighting the red candle inside. Blowing out the candle in his hand, he turns and stalks toward me.

  “What are you doing?” I take a step back.

  “If you will not sit, then I will stand.”

  I do as my innkeeper mother always taught me to when I felt intimidated by a rowdy man at the tavern: I straighten my posture and glare, showing no fear. “I’ll ask you not to come any closer.”

  “Did you come to ask about my welfare in my accommodations?” Darkness consumes his features now; only his eyes shine out.

  I inhale deeply, steadying myself for what I know I must say. “Did you mean what you said?”

  “I always mean the words I say.” He takes just the barest of steps closer. If I reach out, my fingers will brush against his coarse white tunic.

  “Yes, but what was your meaning precisely?” I resist the urge to back toward the door.

  “I could help you.”

  “That is… quite a vague statement. You could help me. Anyone, I suppose, could help anyone else, but most choose not to.” It’s something I’ve learned the hard way over and over again.

  “I suppose you are right.” He shifts forward even more into my space. “But yet, you came.”

  From under my cloak, I pull out a long, thin stiletto. “I told you not to come any closer, Karlsson.”