Chapter 12
ALEXEI
The Sinners and I gather around Matteo. I’ve got him by one arm, Brad by the other. As Luke removes the gag, Matteo—or whatever entity’s possessed him—turns to me. Now that I’m up close, I can’t distinguish between his irises and his pupils. They’re black as night.
The entity struggles, leaning toward me and sticking Matteo’s tongue out. “Come on, I want a quick taste. See for myself why he thinks it’s so fucking good.”
“Seth,” Brad says through his teeth. “You gonna handle this or what?”
“I want another taste of you too,” Matteo says, gnashing his teeth at Brad, mimicking biting him again.
“Seth!” Brad snaps.
“Alexei should see the consequences of his actions,” Seth insists.
“Oh really?” I say. “The guys who unleashed the monster last semester are gonna judge me?”
“That’s not what happened.” Cody sounds so confident about it, but maybe he just hasn’t made the connection between what they’ve done and the monster that escaped from the Rift.
“Come on. Lean in for me,” the entity says, and Brad spits out, “Seth!”
“Stop moving,” Seth commands.
But Matteo keeps struggling.
“I said fucking stop!”
Matteo stills in my hold, hissing and growling, his body trembling as he fights Seth’s push.
“Answer my questions, and answer them honestly,” Seth says. “Tell us why you’re here.”
Matteo rests his head against the floor, taking a deep breath.
Seth repeats his question, and Matteo chuckles. “I’ve returned from hell. I escaped through an opening, found my way back into this world.”
“So you were alive once?” Seth asks.
“I’m alive again now.”
“I’ll take that as a yes,” Seth says. “What’s your name?”
“Jonathan Farras. You may know me as the Buford Night Stalker.”
“Night Stalker?”
“It feels so good, I can’t resist the hunt. And now I have this body to get that delicious sensation again…that can only be felt by spilling blood.”
This guy was a murderer. And judging by his moniker, maybe a serial killer?
“Ask him if he knows about that thing in the woods last November,” Cody says.
“Answer him,” Seth demands.
“I don’t know what you mean. I told you, I just broke free from hell.”
“And why are you inside Matteo?” Luke asks, and Seth demands an answer.
“His light was so bright…so intoxicating, and when I got close enough, I saw a window…a chance at life again. I came to it before anyone else could take it. It’s mine. I’ve claimed it. I won’t let you take him from me.”
“Have you ever heard the name Kysar?” Cody asks.
I heard it when I was spying on them.
“I’ve heard many strange names, but not that one.”
I’m sure the questions they’re asking are important to them, but I remind them what’s really the priority here. “We need to get Matteo back.”
Seth nods. “How do we get you out of his body? Tell me now.”
Farras strains, struggling against Seth’s order. He grinds his teeth, his eyes widening. “I’ve claimed it. Mine.”
“You want to tell me,” Seth pushes.
“Pain. Excruciating pain. Make it unbearable for me to stay in it.” He laughs, his gaze meeting mine. “But then he won’t be able to come inside you again.”
“You piece of shit,” I snap, wishing I could punch him, but I can’t injure Matteo’s body. And I definitely can’t make Matteo’s body unbearable for it to live in.
“Do you guys have him good?” Cody asks.
“Yeah,” I say.
“Give me a go.” Cody crawls toward him.
“Are you gonna hurt Matteo?” I ask.
“Not physically, but what I do might hurt him, I can’t be sure.” I’m all tension as Cody says, “This might be our only chance.”
He’s right, and I hate that.
Seth takes Cody’s arm. “No.”
“I didn’t ask for permission.” Cody yanks his arm free.
Seth and Cody are usually all over each other. I’m not used to seeing this tension between them.
Seth grunts as Cody reaches under Matteo’s shirt, resting his hand against his chest. He clutches his necklace in his free hand, muttering to himself.
I’m listening for the words, but they’re so soft, I can’t make them out.
Farras grits his teeth, struggling in our hold, when I notice something in those black eyes, like a gray cloud moving across them.
“What are you doing?” Farras asks.
Cody doesn’t reply. He keeps muttering to himself until his expression twists up. “No,” he says. “Oh God, no.”
Farras rears his head back, crying out, and Cody screams with him.
“Enough,” Seth says. “Cody, stop.”
Cody continues screaming with Farras, both wailing as though having their limbs sawed off. The sound’s so loud, it’s hard to hear anything else, but then I feel a breeze, as though a door or window is open. It picks up speed around the room, like a whirlwind.
“I said stop,” Seth says, grabbing Cody by his arms, pulling back, but Cody’s locked in place, as if his hands are joined at Matteo’s chest.
Cody rolls his head back, his eyes black like Farras’s, the veins in his neck popping forward. Our bags slide across the floor as the wind intensifies, howling, drowning the screams.
Seth hooks his arms around Cody, struggling to break him free, when something gives and sends them both flying across the room. Seth’s back hits the concrete wall, and he and Cody drop to the floor together.
Farras has stopped resisting, and when I turn to check on him, he’s limp, eyes closed, bangs soaked, face laced with sweat. He’s not moving, and I can’t even tell if he’s breathing.
“Matteo?” I ask before looking at the guys. “Is he okay?”
I can tell by the worried expressions on Brad’s and Luke’s faces that they don’t know, and Seth is too busy tending to Cody, who’s also unmoving on the floor, to hear me.
“Cody?” Seth says, pulling him close to his face, his cheek near Cody’s mouth, like this isn’t the first time he’s had to make sure his friend is still alive.
I do the same with Matteo, hoping I’ll get something, but he’s not breathing. I press my ear against his chest next, listening for a heartbeat.
Nothing.
“The fuck did you guys do?” I ask. “Put him down, put him down.”
Brad lets him go, and I position him on his back, interlocking my fingers and pressing them against his chest as I start pumping out compressions like I learned in CPR when I was in high school.
With his wrists bound behind his back, this is less than ideal, but I keep my pace steady, out of sheer desperation.
I haven’t pumped fifteen times before Matteo’s eyes pop open and he gasps, followed by a gurgling sound.
I lean down close to his face. “What’s wrong, Matteo? What’s happening?”
His gaze meets mine.
His hazel eyes have returned. He struggles like he has something lodged in his throat, then turns and coughs on the floor.
A thick, dark liquid spreads on the cement.
Blood? No, it’s black, not red. Matteo heaves before vomiting more and more of the tar-like fluid.
It spills from him as if there’s a pipe shooting the stuff up, until he begins coughing again before taking what seems like his first real breath.
Gasping desperately for air, he says, “The…fucking…hell?”
“Cody’s okay,” Seth calls from the other side of the room.
Thank fuck everyone’s alive.
Matteo’s gaze shifts around frantically, his body trembling. He looks so vulnerable, so frightened. I haven’t ever seen him like this, and it makes me want to put my arms around him and protect him.
“Why can’t I move my arms?” he asks.
“It’s okay,” I assure him. “You’re tied up. We’ll get these off you. You’re fine, though. I got you, man.”
Brad and I untie Matteo, then help him to his feet and into a chair by a desk. I grab one of the blankets the guys keep here and throw it over Matteo, who’s still pale and shaking. Luke pulls a thermos from one of the bags and brings water over in the cap to Matteo.
Both Cody and Matteo are recovering from trauma, Matteo suffering from shock, while Cody lies limp, barely able to speak as Seth holds him in his arms, whispering to him, “I’ve got you.
I’ll take care of you. Don’t worry.” Unlike the tension from before, this is more what I’d expect from Seth and Cody—unwavering loyalty.
Matteo takes a few sips from the thermos lid. As he sets it down, it trembles in his grip against the wooden desktop. He swallows, his gaze on the black goo pooled by the pentagram. Then he looks between Luke, Brad, and me.
“What the hell is going on?” he asks, looking slightly out of it still.
Throughout all this, I’ve been worried, but there’s also been a hint of guilt in the background. Now it’s switched, my guilt taking center stage because I know if he hadn’t helped me with that spell, none of this would have happened.
Brad tells him how he found him, and I explain that they brought him here and how Cody laid his hand on him and did something…not sure what.
“What did Cody do?” Matteo asks.
I look to Brad and Luke. If I say what I suspect, they’ll know just how much I’ve learned about the Sinners, but this is the least of my worries right now.
“Cody can reach into people’s minds,” Luke says. “Access memories. He did something like it to me when I first started here. He can activate these painful memories. I think he did that to this…Farras.”
Even with what I’ve shown him already, the way Matteo is glancing around makes it evident he thinks we’ve lost our minds, that this is a hard pill to swallow.
“So…I think now’s a good time to ask what you guys were doing with this spell,” Brad says, which catches Matteo’s attention.
“Really? Because Alexei and I are both curious to know what you guys are up to here.”
It’s clear by the way the accusation comes out that he’s not just upset about what went down. He’s hurt, I imagine because he considered himself and Brad friends.
“Well, maybe you and Alexei need to explain why you guys were spying on us,” Brad claps back.
“Wait, no, I was spying on you,” I explain. “Matteo, I showed him what you could do once because he thought I was making this shit up or was in a cult. Then we wound up agreeing to do this spell… It’s a long story.”
And we have so many other things to deal with right now without me having to recap everything.
“We have plenty of time,” Seth snaps. He’s a few feet away. While we’ve been talking, he’s fashioned a makeshift mattress out of the blankets for Cody, and places another over him. “Considering you nearly got Cody and Matteo killed, I figure it’s important for us to have all the facts.”
“You’re one to judge,” I say, “after what happened last semester.” I avoid mentioning the monster, since I left that part out with Matteo, but also wondering if he might’ve heard something when I brought it up while Farras was inside him.
“We were told we didn’t have anything to do with why that thing got out of the Rift,” Luke says.
“Wait, what thing?” Matteo asks, squinting like he’s straining with all the new information coming at him at once. “The Rift? I’ve seen that before, in that spell. And what do you mean thing?”
Luke glances between us. “You remember but didn’t tell him?”
All these goddamn secrets are catching up with me.
“Didn’t tell me what?” Matteo presses.
“How do you know about us?” Brad follows. “And why were you watching us?”
I jump in. “I love how you want all these answers from me, but what about you? You gonna tell me what you guys have been fucking around with for the past few years? How Seth can manipulate people’s minds, and Cody was able to heal me that night and tonight, and how Luke was able to lock my arm up like that? ”
“I want to get to all that, but I’d like to know more about this thing,” Matteo asks.
“A fucking monster,” Seth spits out. “Cody and Luke had visions of it escaping, and we used those visions to find it, hunt it, and destroy it. Alexei was there that night, but we thought he didn’t remember. Apparently, he was lying.”
“You knew they unleashed a monster with this stuff?” Matteo asks me.
“Yes,” I confess.
“Why didn’t you mention that before we did the spell?”
“At first because I knew you were worried about me, and then when you said you wanted to help, I didn’t think it’d be an issue because I wasn’t using the dark magic these guys used that set that thing loose.”
“Dark magic?” Luke asks.
“You know damn well what you’re playing with here. I was just doing one thing from a source I trusted, knowing once we did it, I would get what I needed and then we’d both move on and never have to deal with it again.”
“What did you need?” Luke asks. “And who is this trusted source?”
“My fucking head,” Matteo says, resting his face in his hands. “I don’t know how much more of this I can take right now.”
“Yeah, this is a lot,” I say. “Can we focus on Matteo and Cody tonight and sort this mess out tomorrow?”
“He’s right,” Seth says. “I need to get Cody back to the dorms and into bed.”
“I have my car nearby,” I tell him.
Seth considers it, clearly not thrilled, but finally says, “Fine. Whatever.”
“What are we gonna do about Matteo?” Brad asks. “We don’t know if that thing in him is gone for good. Maybe we should put a spell on him to make sure he can’t leave the circle. Keep him confined to bed just to be sure.”
“Maybe you should ask him,” I say.
“Brad’s right,” Matteo says before groaning. “I would rather be cautious.”
“And then I can watch him for the rest of the night,” Brad goes on.
“Fuck that,” I tell him. “You and Luke stay in our room, and I’ll stay with Matteo.”
Brad tilts his head. “You think I’m gonna do something to him if you’re not around?”
I’ve got so much shit racing through my brain, from things I’ve already seen with my own eyes, to things the Saints have told me about, to things that came up tonight. “I don’t trust you guys.”
Brad winces. “Yeah, you’ve been lying to us all this time, but we’re the bad guys here.”
“You haven’t exactly been upfront about what you’ve been up to,” Matteo spits out, which catches Brad’s attention.
“Sure,” Brad says, raising his hands in surrender. “I think we could benefit from a little time to think this through.”
“Well, let’s just get back,” Seth says. “Cody’s warm, and I want to get some washcloths on him.”