Chapter XII
XII.
When I’m sure we’ve put enough distance between us and the two souldiers, I stop and hold out my palm. “Give me your hand. I need to fry the tracker in your arm.”
“The what?”
“We don’t have time for this.” Grabbing his forearm, I flip his hand over and tap the red numbers etched below his wrist. “All shadelings have a tracker embedded in their stamp. See this glow under the skin? That means they’ve activated yours.
That’s how they found us so quickly. We need to get rid of it. Now.”
His body tenses. “How do we do that? Cut off my arm? I’m all for getting out of here, but I was hoping to have all my appendages when I left.”
I frown as I study the light blinking beneath his tanned skin. “I think I can short it out.”
“That’s a way better plan than severing a limb.”
My fingers wrap around his wrist, and I peer up at him from beneath my hood with raised eyebrows. “It’s going to hurt. A lot.”
He stares over my shoulder, melancholy darkening his eyes. “After what they put me through the last few days, I’m not afraid of pain. Just get it over with.”
My grip tightens at his obvious distress, an instinctive attempt to provide comfort. He covers my hand with his and squeezes back. I blink rapidly.
What am I doing?
It’s not my job to comfort shadelings. The opposite, in fact. I tear my fingers from his and reach into the bag for the baton I’d taken from the souldiers.
I hand it to him. “You may want to put that in your mouth. Can’t have you screaming and giving us away.”
He turns the baton over in his hand, then shrugs and places it between his teeth.
I take his wrist again and squint at the tracker. The likelihood of this actually working is slim. I’ve never seen one of these things up close, much less deactivated it. My mouth dries as I settle my palm on his skin.
Closing my eyes, I focus on my own veins. On the heat that lies in wait there.
I conjure images of fire in my mind.
Nothing happens, and I cluck my teeth in annoyance.
I’m able to destroy Father’s most prized item and singe my own clothing, but I can’t produce a spark when it matters most.
“Demca?” Nathan Reynolds asks through the baton in his mouth. “You’k?”
“Shush. I need to concentrate.” My powers are strongest when my emotions run high. Especially the darkest ones, like anger, fear, hate. Those bring out my demon side. They make me strong like my father.
Father.
He kept my mother from me my entire life. Told me she was gone forever while secretly stalking her on Earth. He buried her deeper than humans bury their dead and didn’t even give me a grave to weep beside.
The fury starts in my belly and converges on my chest. It builds through my arm and surges into my palms. There’s no pain as my flesh sears his, only a release as the anger rushes from me to him.
Nathan Reynolds’s hand tenses in mine, and he grunts beneath the baton in his teeth. He tries to pull away, but I tighten my grip.
His flesh blisters, and the putrid smell mingles with the already smoky air. The baton mercifully mutes his screams.
His body’s replaced by that of my father. I grit my teeth and press harder, transforming every awful thing he’s said and done into fire and burning it alive.
There’s a popping sound as the tracker shorts out under my palm, but I don’t let go. My face is damp with tears, my cheeks hot with rage. I release everything into my fire, determined to remove them for good.
“Devica!” Nathan Reynolds’s voice pierces the air from far away, and I’m shoved into the wall behind me. The images of my father shatter as my spine hits stone, replaced by the boy from Lot Thirteen. He stares at me in horror and cradles his arm, the baton at his feet.
My palms still smoke, but the flames have retreated back into my body. I’m covered in sweat, my hair plastered to the back of my neck.
What was that?
Panting, I ball my hands into fists and allow my hood to fall over my face. “Sorry,” I whisper. “I’m not sure what happened. I’m still learning to use my powers.”
He blows on his seared flesh. “It’s fine. And it worked. No more blinking lights.”
I don’t look at his offered wrist. If I see what I did to him, I’ll retch.
It’s not like I care about hurting a human. I’m just disgusted with myself. The fact that I can still hear his painful screams ringing in my ears means nothing.
He squeezes my shoulder. “Hey, it’s okay. I’m a little more charbroiled than I’m used to, but I’ll be fine.”
I lift my head so that my hood falls from my face and meet his eyes. There’s no resentment there. No fear. I almost turned him into barbeque, and he’s not afraid. I scrunch my brows together. He really is damaged.
“Thanks,” I mutter, shuffling my foot against the gravel under us. I reach into my bag and produce the two knives I took off the souldier. “Here, you’ll need these.”
He squints at the blades. “I thought you said we can’t kill them?”
“We can’t. But they’ll slow down if we wound them.” He takes the knives and slides them into his belt before picking up the baton he’d spewed onto the ground when I broiled his skin.
We shuffle through the cave in silence.
I peek around my hood at him every so often. His face is pinched, like he’s lost in thought. A chill settles over me. It’s strange when the human who never shuts up doesn’t speak a word. It makes it impossible to read him.
“Damn,” Nathan Reynolds breathes when we finally step out the other end of the cave. “It’s huge.”
My heartbeat quickens. We’re higher than we were when we’d entered, the ascent so gradual I barely noticed.
Lapis sprawls out below us, all rocky ledges and bridges, each lot separated by granite peaks that stretch to the sky. Pools of black dot the walls like a painting—caves like the one we just traversed weaving in and out of the rock.
Long staircases lead into and around them.
There’s no rhyme or reason to their pattern.
They’re a puzzle meant to confuse anyone who attempts to leave.
Just as mystifying are the peaks themselves.
They don’t connect on every level. In order to reach some of them, we’ll need to travel down and back up again.
When Father designed this place, he made it challenging so no one would bother to break out. Of course, he’d never counted on me. I’ve never been one to back down from a challenge.
Below, the remaining lots in this city rest on high cliffs, connected to one another by wooden bridges. The tides are stronger here, water lashing the stone in white bursts. Torches of crimson flames pepper the land and sea, small bursts of light in a pit of darkness.
Even from this height, it’s impossible to see the end of the city. It stretches beyond the horizon, a sea of reds and grays.
“What all’s down there?” Nathan Reynolds steps closer to the ledge and peers below.
I stand beside him and follow his gaze, hugging my cloak around me. “Shadelings.”
“I heard Domino say that word back there,” he says. “What does it mean?”
“Sinners. Like you.” I point to a boat docking at one of the lots below.
The souls pour out of the ship like water from a glass.
They move as one, snaking over the bridge and into their lot.
Although it’s impossible to make out their expressions from up here, defeat hunches their shoulders and curls their heads to their chests.
Despair hangs in the air like thick clouds, and I turn from the scene so as not to choke on it.
“They aren’t fully human anymore. They’ve been stripped down to their souls.
They’re shades of what they used to be. So we call them shadelings. ”
“I suppose it makes it easier to think of them as anything but people.”
His words pierce my spine, and shivers roll through me. I can’t read him at all, but he sees through me like a pane of glass. I pull my cloak tighter and start down an embankment.
“Exactly. Now, come on. We have to keep moving.”
I breathe easier the deeper we descend into Lapis. If we can maintain this pace, we may put enough distance between us and the souldiers that they won’t be able to catch us.
“How far do we have to go?” he asks after we’ve made it a few miles in blissful silence.
I sigh, circling around a boulder blocking my path. “It’s a long journey. Weeks, at least. Months, if you mean Earth time. Time moves differently down here.”
“I’ve noticed. Hanging off that wall felt like a thousand years.”
My back is to him so I can’t see his expression, but his voice is pinched with pain.
My memory flashes to finding him in chains in Lot Thirteen, bleeding from too many wounds to count. Even though his cuts are now faded pink scars etching his skin, an ache creeps up my throat when I think about him like that.
“They mess with time in the lots to make your punishment drag on,” I say. “I’d prefer to avoid the lots altogether for that and other reasons, but I’m not sure we’ll have a choice if we want to remain undetected.”
I stop and scan the land ahead.
We’re closer to the water now, and that means staying in shadow to avoid being seen by the boats. The easiest way around the lots is to our left, through another cave and up a staircase. I squint and suppress a sigh. That’s a long climb.
He stops beside me. “You look lost. You do know where you’re going, right? You’ve left Hell before.”
I raise my chin before marching up an incline. “I’m not lost. And Father doesn’t permit me to go to Earth.”
“But aren’t you taking over for him someday? That’s what you told Dildo back there.”
“Diripo,” I huff. “And I don’t want to take over for my father. I want to come with you.”
He stops again, and I bite back a sigh at his uncanny ability to slow us down. At this rate, I’ll meet my mother by my thirtieth birthday.
“You want to come to California? You don’t strike me as the surfboard-riding, celebrity-stalking type.”
“I don’t know what those are, but I guarantee I’m neither of them.” My breath rasps as we reach the top of the embankment and curve into a tunnel.
I can’t tell him about my mother. If he knows I have someone on Earth, he may realize I’m using him and have no intention of letting him stay there.
It’s better if he thinks I want to help him more than myself.
I swipe at the sweat on my brow with the back of my hand. “I want to see it while I’m up there setting you free. I’ve never been. My plans aren’t really your concern.”
“Fine.” He jogs to meet my pace and walks beside me. “I’ll let you keep your secrets for now. But one day, my charms will win you over.”
I scowl at him in the darkness. “Doubtful.”
We exit the tunnel, and I stop so suddenly he almost collides with me. “Shit.”
The path arcs in two directions. The one on the right will lead us up another embankment around the lots. That’s the easiest route. But a flash of metal from above gives away the souldiers’ position. I count at least ten of them.
We barely made it past three.
“Which way?” he asks.
“Left leads us into Lot Eleven,” I whisper.
“That’s where we house the shadelings who committed the sin of Pride.
Going in there means we’ll have to pass through their punishment.
” I shiver. After visiting Lot Thirteen, entering another lot isn’t on my wish list. “Right leads up to those souldiers and who knows how many more hidden around them.”
He follows my gaze, then releases a long stream of air that flicks at the wisps of hair skimming his forehead. “We’re going left, aren’t we?”
I grip the sword at my side and steel myself. “You catch on quick.”