Rudy was sacked out on the couch. Loreli was curled up asleep in the recliner a few feet away, and the twins were sleeping upstairs. Will was acting as sentry, watching for movement in the dark outside the house. A few bats and birds and insects flitted around, and a couple of raccoons raided a trashcan. But other than that, the neighborhood was calm and quiet. Anyone else might have relaxed, but Will knew better than to let his guard down. Especially here. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Rudy sit up on the couch, grab another cookie from the plate, and scarf it down.
“Rudy?”
“Yeah? What is it?” said Rudy, his voice suddenly full of alarm.
“Don’t freak out. Just come over here a sec, okay?”
In seconds he was beside Will at the front window.
“What am I looking at?” he asked.
“Nothing so far. It’s been pretty quiet. Take watch for a couple of minutes, will you?”
“Done,” said Rudy.
Rudy squinted as he looked outside. Nothing but a light wind tossing a few dry leaves across the front yard. Will turned from the window and glanced at Loreli, asleep in the chair. He was still carrying so much anger toward her, he had half a mind to give her a good shock with the collar but decided to let her be. He grabbed a cookie and climbed the stairs to the second floor. The door was open to the room where Natalie and Emily slept. Will stood in the doorway and listened. Emily’s breathing was strong and rhythmic; she was out. But Natalie’s was uneven and shallow, and he sensed that she was awake. He took a couple of steps into the room.
“Natalie?” he whispered.
She rolled over and looked up at him. He marveled at her beauty. But then he felt a little piece fall out of his heart because her eyes were flat and emotionless. Her eyes used to light up with joy every time she saw him, but since her infection they just seemed dead. Was it just a side effect of her time as a demon? Or had something really changed in the way she felt about him? He hoped Emily was right, that she just needed time. But seeing her eyes like that made it hard to believe.
“You hanging in there?” he asked.
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
She couldn’t bear to look at him for too long, so she moved her gaze out the window, where a small bird landed on a thin branch and swiped its beak back and forth, preening. Will offered the cookie to Natalie.
“Cookie?” She shook her head.
“No thanks.”
Who doesn’t want a cookie? thought Will. She probably wanted it; she just didn’t want to take it from him. He laid it on the bedside table, just in case.
“Nat . . . we haven’t had much time to talk about . . . things.”
“There’s nothing to talk about,” she said, which was a crock of crap. They both knew there was more to talk about now than there had ever been. Why was she acting this way? Why was she so distant?
“Let’s start with you telling me one thing,” said Will. “Do you still . . .” He wanted to say “love,” the word he’d used to described how he felt for her, but right now it seemed too loaded, brought fear racing into his heart. “Do you still have feelings for me?”
Will waited, the moment stretching into agony as every second she hesitated spoke volumes.
“Yes,” she finally said.
Relief began to flood through him. But then she clarified.
“But . . . not like I did before.”
He felt like wasps were stinging his heart. “Why don’t you just say it?”
“Say what?”
“We both know what. Go ahead and say it. Say what your eyes have been telling me ever since I pulled you out of the Demon Tapper and cured you.”
For a moment it looked like Natalie’s hard veneer would split open and reveal the gentle, playful, loving girl whom Will had fallen impossibly in love with. Her lower lip trembled ever so slightly. Her eyes blinked away a potential falling tear. But then her face hardened.
“I don’t think I love you anymore,” she said.
The stars in the sky might as well have come crashing down. It would have been less painful.
“You don’t . . . think . . . ?”
She amended what she’d said. Like a hammer hitting an anvil.
“I don’t love you anymore.”
There are sanctuaries in the heart, places to take refuge, to clasp comfort. But no such place existed for Will now. His world was collapsing, all the good feelings he had stored in his heart twisting into ugliness.
“I don’t believe you,” he whispered.
He had no idea where the words came from. Because he did believe her; his broken heart told him so.
“I’m sorry, Will. But when I went to the dark side, I guess something inside me just died.”
The truth hung in the air between them, acrid and foul. Will’s hands were shaking. He spoke softly.
“Maybe . . . maybe it will come back to life. Like your sight . . .”
A slender thread of hope, on which only a fool would hang his heart. And yet there it was.
“Maybe,” she said.
But they both knew the chances of such a resurrection were slim.
“Look, Will, I’m really tired . . . I need to sleep,” she said.
She rolled over, turning her back to him. Slowly, Will walked out of the room. He told himself he wasn’t walking out of her life, that it wasn’t over. But he knew better.
When he went downstairs and looked outside again, he saw that the night had put on her darkest veil. In fact, he thought that this was the darkest night he had ever seen in his entire life.
He conjured a mental picture of the Dark Lord. This was all his fault. He pictured killing the Dark Lord—yes, my father, my father!—over and over, a loop of gory retribution going round and round. It made his blood boil. So when Loreli stirred on the couch and Will looked over at her, his eyes filled with loathing. This was her fault, too.
He had many scores to settle, and no forgiveness to render. He almost wished that some of these island punks would hurry up and come after him, because when they did he could strike them down unhesitatingly, without mercy. He was a pressure cooker ready to blow.
Will gritted his teeth. He knew he needed to catch some shut-eye. Compared to the average human teenager, he needed very little sleep, but he did need some, or else he’d crash and burn like anybody else. Something told him that this island was the worst possible place for that to happen.
“Everything okay?” asked Rudy.
Will was hard to read, but Rudy had been hanging out with him for awhile now, and he could tell his friend was in a bad way. But Will was not about to go all Oprah on Rudy now; all he needed was a few minutes of sleep. He thought about waking Loreli up to stand sentry, but he still didn’t trust her.
“I’m gonna crash on the couch a few minutes. Keep your attention focused, okay?” said Will. “If you see anything, you wake me.”
“You got it, man,” said Rudy.
Rudy blinked and squinted out into the night. He put himself on full alert, even though he was dead tired and felt like his eyelids were made of iron. He wouldn’t let Will down. He glanced over and saw that Will’s eyes were already closed. Rudy looked back outside and his mind began to drift.
Up in her room, Emily opened her eyes. She’d heard everything Will and Natalie had said to one another. She felt a pressure on her chest, felt as though she’d somehow slipped into a parallel universe where down was up and black was white. I don’t love you anymore. Her sister’s words still echoed in the room, resonant with ruin. Emily gazed at her twin. She was still as stone, no tears of regret rolling down her cheeks. Had she truly meant what she’d said? It should have been easy to tell because all Emily should have had to do was to look into her own heart.
She’d always felt what Natalie felt. In a small place in her heart, she, too, had been in love with Will Hunter. Twin sisters, twin hearts, beating together and now breaking together. Emily could always feel Nat’s grief and pain, her pleasure and joy. But now all she felt was turmoil, as though a great war had erupted within her sister’s psyche. She knew this because her own heart beat anxiously, like a bird fluttering in a glass ball. Emily had to find out what was really going on. They couldn’t survive like this. She resolved to talk to Natalie first thing in the morning. Then she shut her eyes and pictured herself on a sailboat, felt the warm sun shining down on her body. In less than a minute she was asleep again.
The White Island demonteens convened deep in the woods surrounding the old Victorian home. A dense fog carpeted the forest floor, so that the demonteens appeared to be standing on clouds. They stood well apart, at intervals of twenty yards. It was a chilling sight, this group of teenagers standing calmly in the woods at night. From five hundred feet up in the sky, it would have been clear that they had formed a pattern, what Jasper had called the Gate of Death. It was, of course, the Dark Lord’s most beloved geometric shape: a pentagram.
The forest was deathly quiet. Few nighttime creatures were stirring. The aberration was coming. Boone was adjacent to Jasper, and he had Killer on a leash next to him. He knelt down to pet the dog, rubbing his thick head and whispering to him.
“Good boy, Killer, such a good dog.”
Jasper looked over at Boone and nodded. Boone nodded back. Then he let go of the leash. The big dog cut loose with a howl and began running toward Janie Walker’s place. Boone watched him go. He’d had the dog since they were both pups, and he had a feeling that he’d never see him again.
“I’m gonna miss you, boy . . .,” he said quietly.
Killer picked up his pace. In a few moments, a dozen timber wolves appeared out of the pale grey mist. Their teeth bared, they joined Killer, moving as swift as shadows, their heads low to the ground.
Over in the recliner, Loreli began snoring. The sound woke Rudy up, and he turned to look at her. He was continually amazed at how beautiful she was. But Emily was beautiful, too, and his song was for her all the way. Thinking about how and when he would kiss her, he turned and looked back out the window and his skin started to crawl. This must be a nightmare, he thought. In the distance was Killer, the monstrosity of a dog he’d seen at the diner, and behind him were a dozen wolves. It looked like the dog was leading them because when he paused on a small rise about twenty yards from the house, the wolves all paused, too. No way could this be anything but a bad dream.
“Wake up, man . . .,” Rudy said to himself. He shook his head and breathed deeply. “Come on, dude, wake up!”
Will had fallen into a hard sleep, the kind that grabs you and yanks you down into the black void and doesn’t want to let go. But something was happening up there on the surface, and Will knew, somewhere deep in his brain, that he needed to claw his way back up to consciousness. He could feel sleep fighting him, and then felt what he thought were the claws of the Dark Lord himself on his shoulders. He jolted upright.
“What?” he said.
It was Rudy, shaking him awake.
“We’ve got company!”
Will turned and looked at the front window just as Killer came crashing through, showering glass everywhere. The beast landed, his right ear cut and bleeding, hanging down. He shook, and blood splattered everywhere. He raised his head and howled, then looked over at Will and took two bounding leaps. He was arcing through the air when Will rolled off the couch and unstrapped his Megashocker. Thankfully he’d set it to charge when he’d flopped on the couch, so when he brought it upward with a powerful stroke, it was sizzling hot and breached Killer’s shoulder, tearing through his muscles and scapula.
Killer’s eyes blazed a hot red. He was wounded but not down, not by a long shot. Will yanked on the Megashocker, pulling it back through the dog’s scapula bone.
Killer flipped sideways and began to morph, his paws growing larger, his teeth elongating, every muscle in his body doubling in size.
Rudy’s eyes were huge. “Um . . . I don’t think this is a regular dog, Will!”
“You think?” said Loreli sarcastically. She’d woken up when the window broke and, seeing Killer, had taken cover behind the couch.
Three wolves bounded in through the jagged, broken picture window and landed with tremendous force, their expanding claws tearing into the old polished hardwood floor. Like Killer, their eyes burned fiery red and their growls rattled the pictures on the walls.
Rudy was ready to wet his pants. “Will, what the heck are they?”
“Demonwolves,” said Will. “Take cover!”
Rudy dove to the floor, rolled to the fireplace, and grabbed an iron poker. He turned and swung it with all his might. He got lucky and connected with the jaw of a charging wolf.
Loreli reached out for Will, shouting above the roaring animals. “Will, my duster!”
Time crawled. Will stared at his treacherous half-sister. He didn’t—couldn’t—trust her, but her life was at stake here too. And he didn’t think he could take this threat alone—not without Rudy getting hurt, or something getting past him and up the stairs to Natalie and Emily. So he grabbed a backpack and tossed it to her.
She opened it with one deft move and whipped her duster out and on. It was still dirty and bloodstained from her escape from the Dark Lord, but at least now she was armed. She pulled out a small ceramic orb and threw it hard at the front door. It exploded into an expanding ball of green gas that caused the demonwolves to blink their glowing ruby eyes and snap at some unseen prey. Rudy heard a scream from upstairs.
“Emily!”
He ran for the stairs, leaping over a disoriented demonwolf.
Will continued to battle with Killer using the Megashocker, but the dog was immense. When Will thrust the weapon up through the roof of the creature’s mouth, it shook with rage and pulled the shocker right out of Will’s grasp. Without a second to lose, Will pulled the Blaster Magnum out of its holster on his hip. As Killer chomped at him, he dropped and rolled sideways and came to a stop, firing—blam-blam! The shots were thunderous and shook the house, but both missed, and Killer leapt through the air, all four hundred pounds of him ready to pin Will to the floor and rip his throat out.
The room filled with a whistling sound.
Zzzzzzzap! A deadly tendril of electricity lashed out, wrapping around Killer’s head, jerking it sideways. Will quick-rolled out of the way as Killer’s massive body slammed into the floor next to him. The dog’s face was lacerated, but still it scrambled to its feet, and Will dove over the back of the couch. Killer leapt again, and again the room filled with the whistling sound. Killer was caught in midair by three of the white-hot electric strands, and they wrapped around his neck, tightened, and sliced his head off. It landed with a thunk next to Will, its jaws still snapping madly. Will grabbed one of Janie Walker’s painted rocks and jammed it in Killer’s mouth. Then he stood up and saw that Loreli had pulled one of his weapons out of a backpack.
“Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it,” she said. “What do you call this thing?”
“Deathwhip,” said Will.
“Nice.”
Loreli cracked the whip again, this time connecting with one of the disoriented demonwolves and cutting its tail off. The beast shrieked, then charged. Will took it out with a couple of shots from his Blaster Magnum, blowing its demonwolf brains all over the ceiling. As with all demon creatures, the demonwolf, when it died, disintegrated into a swirling mass of heated particles that burned out in two seconds. As two more demonwolves knocked down the front door, Will reloaded the Blaster Magnum and fired off six shots. The reports from the gun sounded like the big guns on a battleship and seemed to do almost as much damage, blowing the wolves away and blasting four immense holes in the front wall of the house. Will and Loreli heard screams from upstairs. Loreli quickly cracked the whip, fending off another duo of demonwolves. She yelled to Will: “Go!”
He did, running across the living room, snagging a backpack, and then taking the stairs three at a time. Natalie! In the upstairs hallway, a demonwolf came crashing down through the ceiling onto Will’s back, knocking him to the floor. Will pulled a Flareblade from his side holster and thrust it upward, gutting the creature, who howled so loudly as it died that a nearby vase burst into tiny fragments.
Will raced into Natalie and Emily’s bedroom, where the twins were crouched low by the bed next to the wall. Rudy stood in front of them, swinging the fireplace poker at an attacking demonwolf that must have come in through the window. The wolf was smart. He ducked low and came up at Rudy so fast that he knocked the poker out of Rudy’s hand. Then he bit Rudy on the arm.
“Ahhhh!”
Will was across the room in a flash, pulling the demonwolf off of Rudy and slitting its throat with a Flareblade. As the wolf’s body slumped to the floor, sparking and smoking, Will whipped out a healing patch and tossed it to Rudy, who slapped it directly on his wound as he got down next to Natalie and Emily. Above them, the ceiling was being torn apart as more demonwolves scratched their way through.
Will holstered the Flareblade, then took out the Shock Bombardier, set it on level 9, flicked it on to charge, and waited three seconds as the room filled with a high-pitched whine. Then—KA-BOOM! A massive shockwave radiated upward. It felt like an earthquake. The whole house shook. Demonwolves were knocked off the roof and fell to the ground below, howling in rage. Will looked out the window and saw even more demonwolves, pack after pack, racing toward the house. They were under siege. In the distance Will thought he saw the shadow of several humans. The island teens? He couldn’t tell. But it was time to take advantage of that cellar. He reached out for the twins.
“Come on!”
Natalie and Emily jumped up, and after a moment’s hesitation, Will tossed Rudy the Blaster Magnum.
“Be careful with that!” he shouted.
KA-BLAM! Just catching it, Rudy had inadvertently fired off a shot that whizzed by Will’s head and took out one of Janie Walker’s insufferably cute driftwood wall sculptures.
“Sorry!” yelped Rudy.
They ran down the stairs to find Loreli throwing another of her explosive orbs at a horde of charging demonwolves. The orb exploded with a tremendous bang! The ensuing gas cloud created a whirling vortex of minute razor-sharp particles that sliced and diced, tormenting the wolves, who yelped and snapped at the air around them.
Will ran to the cellar door and yanked it open. Natalie, Emily, and Rudy went through, and Will tossed their backpacks after them. He yelled to Loreli:
“Let’s go! Down here!”
She’d sustained some minor flesh wounds and was all too willing to join Will in the cellar. As he slammed the door behind them, a demonwolf crashed into it. The door shook but held.
Will knew it wouldn’t be long before the horde clawed and chomped their way through the door, so, after tossing Loreli a healing patch, he unzipped one of the backpacks and removed a small device that looked like a futuristic air horn. It was an Ultrasonic Sound Blaster that sent out sound waves via powerful piezoelectric emitters.
The wolves continued ramming and clawing at the door. Will switched on the sound blaster. It took a few seconds to power up, and then emitted a high frequency sound wave that humans couldn’t hear—but animals could. The demonwolves paused in their fervor, their ears perking up, then flattening. They began circling, then attacking each other in their agony, their sharp claws and teeth gnashing and tearing and quickly drawing blood from the weakest of the pack as they converged on her, releasing all their pain into her, ripping her to shreds. After a few moments they could take no more and retreated from the sound, scrambling out of the old Victorian.
Will looked over at Loreli and watched as she tended to her wounds. So far, she was doing a good job of acting like she was part of the team. The question was, could he trust her? It seemed like she was sincere, but she’d certainly seemed sincere before. He thought about all the ways she’d betrayed him—taking his blood, using it to resurrect the Dark Lord. Driving him and Natalie apart. Tricking Natalie into turning into a demon. Trying to kill him. She acted like she regretted having done those things, but did she really? Maybe she had changed sides, maybe she was on their team now. But even if he did choose to trust her, at least for the moment, that didn’t mean he had to forgive her.
Out in the fog-shrouded woods, Jasper and the others watched as the demonwolves rushed past them covered in blood. Jasper smiled, mistakenly concluding that the blood on the wolves’ coats was that of the human intruders. He turned to Boone and nodded.
Boone ran through the woods until he reached Janie Walker’s place. He opened the door and stepped inside. The room was silent and empty. No sign of the visitors. But all that remained of Killer was his collar. Boone picked it up. Rage and sorrow flooded his brain. He looked around and, seeing all the blood, deduced that the wolf attack had been successful, that the demonic beasts had killed and eaten the human intruders. Boone took solace in that.
He ran back and reported to Jasper. Jasper turned to the other demonteens and gave a thumbs up as he began walking back toward Plorret’s Field, where they’d parked their trucks and cars. There, they opened beers and cranked up heavy metal music. They drank and smoked and made out. The inevitable drunken fistfights broke out. Without fear of recrimination—other than by the Voice—they were running wild.
Jasper pulled Wendy into his arms and bit her on the neck. She squealed in mock horror.
“You seem happy,” she said.
“It’s all good,” said Jasper. “They’re taken care of. The threat is over. We’re going to get it done.”
But Jasper and the other island teens had badly miscalculated. It was going to cost them.