Chapter Two
Twenty-Nine Days Later
Bang! Bang! Bang!
I peeled my eyelid open, cringing as piercing sunlight poured in. Wha... What’s that noise?
Bang! Bang!
“Miss Hunter? Miss Hunter, open up. I know you’re in there.”
Groaning, I scraped myself off the desk—straightening my aching back. I fell asleep in the office again for the third night in a row. I got out of the chair and made for the front door, clutching my aching neck as I threw it open.
An irate Detective Daniels stood on my welcome mat, arm raised in mid-pound. “Miss Hunter,” he barked. “Do you have any idea what you’ve—?”
“Detective, finally!” I grasped his arm and dragged him inside.
“I called the station twelve times a day, every day for the past week. I also went down there a bunch of times but the uniforms wouldn’t let me in to see you.
They lied and said you told them to turn me away, but I told them you’d never say that—”
“Miss Hunter!”
“But none of that matters now because you’re here, and I can finally show you this,” I cried, bursting into the office and tugging Daniels stumbling over the threshold.
Letting go of him, I raced to the corkboard and threw my arm out.
“Look. Look!” I burst out, making him jump.
“I did it. I finally figured out what took Dora.”
“Miss... Hunter...” Whatever Daniels had come here to say died in his throat. Jaw dropping, his eyes widened sweeping the space.
And okay, to the unprepared eye, the room could come across as a little... chaotic.
I had three corkboards set up and covered with articles, printouts, and screenshots from kidnapped or missing message boards.
One board for every tip and lead in the past month that I received in regards to her kidnapping—even the tips that didn’t pan out.
The only board covered with every detail of her kidnappers, down to artistic renderings of the monsters, and the final board devoted to one single item—the thing I ripped off and found clutched in my grip when I woke up on a bed of shards, wood, and grass.
The single trace left behind besides a ruined dining room—
A school patch for a place called Abaddon Academy.
As it was, I ended up filling all three boards to the brim, so I had to tack new information onto the walls.
And then that wasn’t enough, so I took down all the photos and wall art, so I could use the free space.
And then that wasn’t enough, so I ripped off the drapes, boarded up the windows, and tacked on all the information I got from the Memphis lead.
“Heavens above...”
“Oh, I know, it’s a bit dark in here.” I rushed to the desk and flipped on the lamp. “You woke me up.”
“Woke you up? You— You were sleeping in here?”
“Well, yeah, of course,” I cried. “I told you! I figured it out. I know what took Dora!”
“Miss Hunter—”
“Okay, here it is,” I began, crossing back to the suspect board.
“At first, I convinced myself that the monsters weren’t really monsters—because how could they be.
They had to be people wearing some realistic costume, or who were crazy into body modification.
But no matter how hard I tried to gaslight myself, it just didn’t add up.
“When I stabbed that thing, I broke skin—real and living skin. I didn’t stab plastic or fabric, so it couldn’t have been a costume—”
“Miss Hunter—”
“So, then, I looked into body modification.” I tripped across the room, landing on the wall papered with everything I learned about gene-hacking and body implants.
“There have been a lot of, rather shocking, advances in this area, but the scorpion monster had a tail. A huge, thick, prehensile tail that stretched as high as the ceiling. No one in the world of body mods has found a way to give humans man-sized scorpion tails, so that was out too.”
“Miss Hunter? Charlotte!”
“No, I know what you’re thinking,” I bleated, whirling on him.
“Because I had the same thought too. Maybe the horror of my sister being taken right in front of me made me hallucinate. My brain conjured up monsters because that was easier than facing the truth that Dora was taken by people we know. People we trusted!” My hand flashed out, slapping the lead board.
“That’s why I tracked down and interrogated every guy group that Dora and I knew—”
“You did what!”
“—especially any group of guys that had someone strong enough to send me flying out a window with just one hit.” I jabbed the faces pinned to my corkboard.
“Guys on the school’s football team—alibis.
It was graduation day, so they were all at twenty different graduation parties with their families.
” I held up a hand. “Don’t worry. I confirmed that through their texts and social media. ”
“That is not what worries me!”
“It was the same for the guys on the soccer team, rugby team, the swim team, the student council, the anime club, and the key club,” I plowed on.
“All of these groups had at least four guys who were friendly enough with each other that they might plan to kidnap the pretty, popular girl before she moved away, but again, they all had plenty of pictures of them at celebration dinners and parties during the time she was taken.
“So, then, I looked at guys who knew me and not Dora.” I slid down to the board to a shot of a guy with a scruffy beard and surprised expression.
“This is Nelson Chance. He was a regular at the Grill who would not stop hitting on me. It got so bad, that whenever he came in, it didn’t matter if he sat in my section.
My boss would have one of the male servers wait on him.
“I knew it was thin, but if there was any chance he was so pissed at my constant rejections, he got a bunch of his buddies and broke into our house that night, I had to know,” I said.
“At first, he didn’t want to tell me where he was or what he was doing, so I hired a private investigator.
Ms. Abreu tailed him for a week and figured out that on Friday nights”—I winced—“he sees his mistress.
“The same private investigator crossed off my coworkers,” I told him, pointing to their X’d out faces, “and my bosses. All of them had verifiable alibis for the night Dora was taken. But where did that leave me?” I shot at his slackened jaw.
“If they were taken by masked or modified strangers, and I didn’t hallucinate their horrible bodies because I couldn’t face the truth of Dora being taken by people I know, then that left me with one clue.
The only true clue to their identities.”
That sent me running to the second board where pinned, directly in the middle, was the Abaddon Academy patch. “The logo.” I beamed at him—brimming with the satisfaction of my new discovery.
He didn’t smile back.
“The logo,” I repeated. “Don’t you see? The logo was the key the whole time!
I know you said it was a dead end because there is no Abaddon Academy.
Anywhere. In the world. No school. No band.
No club. No gang. No nothing. But I couldn’t just accept that.
Too much was going on for me to notice before, but even though they were all wearing ripped, burned, or dirty clothes, I’m one hundred percent positive they were all wearing this patch.
“Why?” I beseeched him. “Why would all four of them glue this thing to their clothes if it meant nothing at all? Answer: they wouldn’t.”
He tossed his head. “Well, of course, it must mean something, Miss Hunter, but whatever it means was known only to them. For all we know, it was the patch for their band, gang, or club. Either they’re not very popular, or they haven’t shared the name of their group widely, because said group is involved in criminal activity,” Daniels said.
“Not a far leap considering the name they chose for the group.”
“But that’s it, don’t you see?! The name,” I cried. “Abaddon is a Hebrew term, and of course, you’re not going to grasp all the cultural significance and translations of a word just from messing around online. That’s why I had to go to Israel and consult an Old Testament scholar who—”
“Excuse me, what?” he broke in. “You went where? Did you just say Israel?”
“Yes, of course.”
He goggled at me. “How did you afford that? I spoke to your boss yesterday. He said he had to let you go two weeks ago.”
I shrugged. “It wasn’t a big deal. I just sold my car.”
“You sold—!”
“That doesn’t matter,” I sounded off. “Are you listening to me? You’re not listening to me! I’m telling you that I spoke with a scholar who told me that in the Bible, Abaddon is a place of destruction or—get this!—a realm of the dead.” I met his eyes, sharing in the shock of this revelation.
He blinked. “Okay... and?”
“And?” I cried. “Don’t you get it? Hideous, unnatural creatures with super strength and red eyes who come from a land of the dead? And not a nice land of the dead. A land of the dead that’s synonymous with destruction.” I held my hands out to him, waiting for the penny to drop.
“Hell, Detective Daniels! Hell! They came from hell which means...” I tapped the lone, single word I scribbled on a piece of paper the night before and stuck on the board. “Demons. My sister was taken by demons.”
He stared at me, his unnerving gaze stretching the silence past comfort.
“Didn’t you hear me?” I pressed. “Demons.”
“No... I heard you.”
I blew out a breath. “Okay, yes, I know how it sounds. I saw them with my own eyes, and it’s taken me this long to accept it, but now that I have, we can finally stop looking in all the wrong places for Dora.”
Again with the long, uncomfortable look. “So, you’re saying you expect me to look for your sister... in hell.”
“What? No,” I cried, surging forward. “Obviously you can’t do that.”
“Obviously.”