Eat Your Heart Out (Descendants) Page 5

  A door slammed, and Rachel sloshed coffee over her hand. “Shit,” she yelped, dropping the mug in the sink and running her hand under cool water.

  “There’s been another one,” Sid said by way of greeting.

  Rachel groaned, and over at the table, Daphne’s shoulders sagged.

  “What was it?” Kendra asked. She’d arrived back in Shipley from visiting her grandparents last night and jumped right into researching. A crease pulled the girl’s eyebrows together and her lips were sucked in as she watched Sid.

  “A juvenile witch from the Savannah coven,” Sid said. “They found her tied in an abandoned warehouse minus her heart.”

  A choking sound caught in Daphne’s throat. “A juvenile? God, that’s terrible. How old?”

  Sid poured himself some coffee and slid a glance to Rachel, his face grim and his mouth pulled down at the corners. He sighed heavily—apocalyptically—before turning back to Daphne, Kendra, and Bruno hunched at the table. “She was in her twenties, but appeared to be around eight.”

  “And you saw the body?” Bruno’s voice was savage. Rachel wasn’t sure if it was anger or despair that colored his words.

  Sid closed his eyes for a long moment. “They wouldn’t let me. The juvenile’s mother … she was not in a state to show her daughter’s body. But I got it confirmed from another in the coven.”

  Rachel slipped her hand down Sid’s arm and curled around his wrist. She squeezed, hoping it gave him some bit of comfort. She wished she had the power to give him strength. Sid seemed so tired, his skin ashen and a shadow of stubble crawling across his jaw. Sid shared another look with Rachel then tugged his hand free and pushed his horn-rimmed glasses further up his nose. Rachel frowned and chewed at the inside of her cheek. She tried not to feel slighted by the move and shoved her hand in her pocket before following Sid to the table.

  Daphne was writing in a notebook. “So that makes—counting Bernard—five demons or half-demons found killed with their hearts missing. All concentrated around Georgia and South Carolina.”

  Bruno leaned over the table to stare at the writing in Daphne’s notebook. “And none of the same species. A troll, a werewolf, a selkie, a half-vampire, and now a juvenile witch.”

  “Okay, and what connects them?” Sid’s arms were slack, one hanging at his side and the other curled limply around his coffee mug.

  Rachel collapsed into her seat and stared at the stack of papers and books she’d been searching through. The words blurred on the pages. “Other than all being demons? Nothing? What does a seal woman have in common with a half-vampire?”

  Bruno slapped a hand on the table, jolting Rachel. “There’s got to be something. We assume that Abbadon is killing and consuming the heart, yes? So there must be something common connecting these victims that draws him.”

  Rachel didn’t have an answer for Bruno. She didn’t even have the watery beginnings of an answer. She bent over a book she’d been reading. It was an eighteenth-century English translation of an early French demonology text. There was a lot about a suave werewolf who’d wooed and butchered the supple virgins of Renaissance Paris, but so far no mention of Abbadon. Their greater demon apparently wasn’t sexy enough for this particular text. Rachel set it aside and picked up a sheaf of manuscript papers about the hunting habits of demons.

  She flipped one page then another, but although her eyes ranged over the page none of the words penetrated her brain. She was like a full voicemail. We’re sorry, but the brain you’re trying to reach is unable to receive more information at this time. Please try again later.

  “I’m going for a walk,” Rachel said quite suddenly. Her back popped in three places when she stood.

  “Want me to go with you?” Sid asked. His eyes were glassy when he met her gaze.

  Daphne peered up at Rachel from where she’d bent over a roll of parchment faded with age. Her eyes flicked to Sid then back to Rachel. Heat crawled into Rachel’s cheeks. She shook her head. “No, I think I’d like to go on my own.”

  The sky appeared sick. A swirl of purple and gray tinged with green.

  Rachel stepped out the sliding glass door to the backyard and clicked it shut. She breathed deep and let her bare feet sink into the grass. The earth was warm against the soles of her feet, the grass coarse.

  The line of magnolia trees at the back of the property were dull and nearly black in the failing light, the air around her shaded with that same sickly green that splattered the sky. A storm was coming. As if in confirmation, another growl of thunder rolled across the sky, long and low and menacing.

  Rachel rubbed her hands down her bare arms and wished for a cardigan despite the heat still burning through the evening air. The air was thick, full of the promise of rain and the tang of lightning. She stepped farther into the backyard, closer to the reaching arms of a giant oak and into the shadows of the magnolia trees.

  A wind kicked up, whistling through the branches overhead and making them groan. Under the oak, the world was painted in grays. Spanish moss dripping from the tree rustled in the wind, wavering like the tattered cloak of some old ghoul. Rachel shivered and walked faster.

  She needed to clear her head, to find her focus. She knew how to do this, to study despite the ache in her eyes or exhaustion in her shoulders. Rachel stepped from the shadow of oak and stretched. She pushed her hands to the small of her back and arched. She let her head fall back, her mouth stretch open. She rolled her neck side to side, then opened her eyes.

  Rachel blinked quickly. What the—

  Overhead, thousands of black shapes swirled in the sky. They were birds, thousands and thousands of them turning in a fierce circle. And not just one species. The black shapes varied in size, some flapping furiously and some soaring, yet they flew tight together. Swirling, swarming. They were a tornado. And the eye of their storm was directly over Rachel’s house.

  The wind died, and the bird calls prickled against Rachel’s upturned face. She shivered again at the sound. It was wrong, somehow, the birdsong. It spoke to some deep part of Rachel, the part that told her to flee. To get undercover immediately. But that deep part of her, that ancient instinct of predator and prey, knew there was nowhere safe from what these birds were screeching.

  Rachel ran across the yard just as the first bird fell from the sky. Dead. A thud hit her shoulder, and another dead bird—a sparrow by the look of it—tumbled to the ground. Three more fell at her feet, a heron, another sparrow, and a hawk, and Rachel tripped trying not to step on them with her bare feet. Rachel wrenched her neck to the sky, but the birds were suddenly gone. Heavy gray clouds cluttered the sky and opened up, driving rain against Rachel’s skin and soaking her in an instant.

  Her hands fumbled with the sliding door. The fine hairs along her arms stood on end. Static arced through the air, snapped around her with electricity. She heaved the door open as the world lit up in a shocking blue-white. There was a crack and a roar of thunder, and a fork of lightning connected with the metal rod atop the greenhouse. It split into a hundred serrated spikes and crawled across the glass panels of the greenhouse and burned into the ground.

  Rachel fell through the door and landed hard. She clamped her eyes shut, but jagged lightning still ghosted behind her eyelids. The air smelled like burning metal and scorched grass.

  “Rachel!”

  Rachel staggered to her feet, and her mom grabbed her shoulders, shook her.

  “Are you okay?”

  Rachel pushed her mom away and stumbled into the dining room. Her vision swam, and white bursts popped in the middle of her sight. Her knees quivered together, and she leaned heavily against the back of a chair.

  “The signs,” she said.

  Her sight was clearing, her head too. Three heads swiveled up to look at her, and she felt Daphne come stand beside her.

  “Bruno,” she said again. “Before, you said you followed signs to Georgia. They showed you where Abbadon was. What were they?”

  Bruno rubbed at his j
aw, his eyes far away. “Lightning clusters, animal swarms, strange weather patterns. Spikes in electromagnetism.” The man coughed and stole a look at Sid. “It’s all very subjective, and quite a few on the Descendants Council don’t believe in it.”

  “There’s a lot my father doesn’t believe in,” Sid growled.

  Rachel flapped a hand through the air. “There was a swarm of birds directly overhead just now. Like, thousands of them. And then lightning struck the greenhouse. I’d call that a sign, wouldn’t you?”

  Bruno nodded, slowly at first and then with vigor. He stood quickly, his chair scraping across the wood floors. He rounded the table and clapped Rachel on the back so hard she choked. “Rachel Chase, you are just as clever as Sid said. Outstanding job.”

  Rachel dropped her eyes to the table and pursed her lips to hide how she smiled at the compliment. And something else: Sid had told Bruno she was clever? Warmth spread through her chest. Beside her, Daphne rubbed her back and leaned close. “That’s my girl,” she whispered.

  On her other side, Bruno’s thick fingers flexed around the back of a chair. “Rachel’s got the right idea. If we can’t find a pattern in Abbadon’s victims, we can follow the patterns to get to the demon before he strikes.”

  Still seated at the far end of the table, Kendra cleared her throat. She’d been quiet since Rachel rushed back in, but now she looked up. Her blue eyes were troubled.

  “I don’t want to sound like Sid’s dad or anything, but how can a lightning storm tell you there’s some big ass demon nearby?” Kendra frowned and sat back in her chair. “Sorry, but this is summer in Georgia. We get storms, like, all the time.”

  Rachel looked from Kendra to Bruno. A muscle strained in the man’s neck. Kendra squirmed and self-consciously fluttered hands over her gills.

  “I’ve held my tongue because you’re a friend to this family, but your opinion is not welcome.” Bruno’s nostrils flared and his jaw jutted out in anger. “What do you possibly have to add to the research? You’re a half-demon who has already proven you can’t be trusted.”

  Kendra blinked against the nasty words. “Excuse me?”

  Bruno’s hands clenched the back of the chair, his large knuckles straining against his scarred skin. “You heard me, young lady. You’re not entitled to be here. You’re not a Descendant, and you never will me. You’re just a demon.”

  Kendra jumped to her feet, her chair crashing to the floor behind her. The air went thick and heavy, like another fork of lightning was about to crack through the roof and strike in the middle of them all. Anger built in Rachel’s chest and tightened in her shoulders.

  “You know nothing about Kendra,” Rachel snarled. She stood straight and backed away from Bruno so she wouldn’t need to crane her neck to look up at him. How could this man, who was so supportive of her and Sid, say those things to Kendra? “Mr. Guillory, you are not entitled to say Kendra shouldn’t be here.” Her voice was crawling higher, getting louder. Her hands shook, so she balled them into fists. “You have no idea how Kendra has helped us, even though she doesn’t need to put herself in danger. You have no idea.”

  Blotches of red splattered across Kendra’s neck and cheeks. “I am not just a demon,” she hissed. “And the sooner you realize that, the better this will be for you.”

  Kendra slapped her hand through the piles of papers stacked on the table before her. They kicked into the air with a snap and rustle and floated to the ground in a mess. Then she spun on her heel and stalked from the dining room.

  Rachel ran after her, grabbed at her best friend’s arm, but Kendra wrenched away. “That man,” she hissed through clenched teeth. Kendra shuddered and pulled the front door open. Rain swept into the open door and pelted them. “There is something wrong with him.”

  “Come back inside. I’ll make him see, make him apologize.”

  She batted a clump of hair out of her eyes. “Sorry, Rach. I’m not spending another minute with him.” Kendra pulled away when Rachel reached for her and ran out into the storm.

  Rachel clicked the door shut and leaned heavily against it. Shouts from the dining room raised her eyes from the floor. She pressed her teeth against her top lip and walked back into the dining room, where Sid was chest to chest with Bruno, yelling at him in French. Bruno shouted something back that made Daphne’s mouth drop open, then she joined in. She even poked Bruno in the arm for good measure.

  Rachel dropped to her knees in the pile of papers Kendra had slapped to the floor. The pages were scrawled in longhand, a slanted, spikey script that made Rachel squint to read.

  And then she saw the words: Vessel and Vale. Rachel sat back and grabbed the paper close to her face.

  “With the blood oath of the villagers, the coven forged a weapon from metal mined only in the enchanted Vale. The vessel and weapon were born of the same material. Brothers joined in composition and magic. With this weapon, the first Descendants were able to capture the great beast and drag it into the vessel, where the demon will remain trapped for all of eternity.”

  “Uh, guys?” Her voice was a mouse amid the lion roars of Sid and Bruno. Rachel scrambled to her feet, the paper still clutched in her hands. “Guys!” She shouted, and three heads turned her way. The room went absolutely silent.

  “I think you want to look at this.”

  CHAPTER 8

  Bruno and Daphne paced opposite each other, wearing two lines in the living room carpet. They were like a nervous double pendulum, only exchanging new ideas about this whole “connected weapon and vessel” angle when they met in the middle. It made Rachel dizzy.

  Sid too, apparently. “Can someone sit down, please,” he sighed. He slid his glasses off his face and pinched the bridge of his nose.

  Outside the dining room windows, the night had gone black and still. If Rachel didn’t see a dim light filtering through the trees from the houses nearer the coast, she’d fear the entire world had dropped away. The air was clear, silent, cocooning them in night.

  The tang of metal from the lightning strike had disappeared, and the birds too. The five that’d plummeted from the sky had been cleared away by Bruno. Poor things. Rachel shivered at the memory and then winced at the ache in her neck from sitting hunched over research for so long.

  It’d been a long night, and she was afraid it wasn’t nearly over. A clock over the living room fireplace ticked loudly in the silence, agreeing with her. There were still a few hours until morning. And Bruno didn’t seem ready to retire. She wanted to defy him, on Kendra’s behalf, but couldn’t quite make herself.

  Sid slid a glance Rachel’s way. “Anything new?”

  Rachel picked up the pile of papers before her and ruffled the edges. “Not a damned thing. But I could barely recognize my own name at this point, so I’m kind of an unreliable narrator.”

  Sid groaned and stretched in his chair. His blue T-shirt pulled across his stomach and exposed a strip of skin. Rachel tried to look away, but her eyes were mutinous. She stared at the vee of muscle at his hipbone that disappeared beneath the band of his jeans. Heat prickled her cheeks. God, what was wrong with her? This was Sid, for chrissakes. Sid … who’d pressed his forehead to hers. Who’d entwined his fingers with hers and seemed like he wanted more.

  Sid caught her staring and raised an eyebrow, then hitched the hem of his T-shirt up a bit. “Yes, it’s another scar.”

  Rachel’s eyes went wide, then she noticed what he was talking about. Three long, thin marks raked over his side. “Right, yeah. I noticed that,” she lied. She totally hadn’t noticed that.

  “Don’t believe what you read about leprechauns. They’re crafty little things.” He grimaced at some unknown memory. “And they have claws.”

  Rachel didn’t know if it was the image of an attacking leprechaun, or the time, or the fact that only a few hours ago she’d been pummeled by dead birds and come thisclose to being struck by lightning, but she started laughing. She doubled over and heaved with it. Her eyes teared up, and she sucked i
n a breath through the chortles. And then Sid joined in with a guffaw. They sat cackling at the dining room table, heads shaking, shoulders jumping, laughing at nothing and everything in particular. They definitely sounded crazy.

  * * *

  “Wait, so there’s some sort of weapon involved in this too?” Kendra’s eyes were wide behind her sunglasses.

  Rachel rolled over onto back and dug her toes into the sand until they found coolness. The lightning storm last week was nothing but a memory, and the Georgia sky was jewel blue above them. “Yeah, there’s a weapon. Though we have zero clue what it could be. But it’s somehow connected to the vessel and traps Abbadon.”

  Kendra poked at her gills. She hadn’t stepped foot in Rachel’s house since the incident with Bruno five nights ago. Rachel missed her best friend, but kind of couldn’t blame her. Kendra kept poking, her lips pursed together. “But you still don’t know what sort of metal it needs to be. You said that was important, right?”

  “I guess,” Rachel said with a sigh. She really didn’t want to talk about it. Not with soft sand underneath her and a salted breeze off the ocean playing in her hair. The crash of waves on the shore lulled her.

  “You guess,” Kendra pressed.

  Rachel sighed again. “Bruno and my mom have been looking into it basically non-stop for the past week. It’s the first big lead that is actually telling us something new. But—”

  “But we needed a break,” Sid said from Rachel’s other side. Sid was stretched out on his stomach with a book propped in his hands. Rachel glanced over at him but quickly looked away. That little vee of muscle had made her cheeks red, and this was a whole new scale of nakedness from Sidney Martin. He was shirtless and wearing short swim trunks that were so painfully European. The American guys at the beach had stared at him when they’d arrived. The American girls too. He kept talking, face still buried in his book. “We had to track a third wendigo a couple days ago. And then a colony of scavenger harpies living over off I-95 went nuts after that freak earthquake yesterday. Rachel called this a mental health day.”