Chapter 18 Allie
ALLIE
The basement stairs creaked under our feet, each step taking us deeper into the dark.
Dad went first, a flashlight in one hand and a blade in the other. Mom followed close behind, and Jared’s hand found mine as we brought up the rear.
The door opens below that which binds enchantment.
Just a little bit farther, and we’d be directly under the Safe Room. Or, at least, I think we would. Please, please, let us not have guessed wrong or somehow veered off course in this dark and creepy basement.
“How far back do these passages go?” I asked, keeping my voice low. “We must be getting close, right?”
“No idea,” Mom admitted. “I’ve never had a reason to come down here. Who knows what these walls have seen? Or what they hide.”
A lovely thought.
The thing is, no one really knew what Theophilis did to this house—or what havoc Lilith’s break-in had wreaked back before this building housed Forza.
For that matter, Stuart and his business partners had done work before they tried to sell the place, and they could have shifted bits heavy with mojo and then sent them to the county dump.
After all, they’d made a lot of changes before Mom got the idea for Forza West.
In other words, none of us had a clue as to what was actually down here.
The passage narrowed as we moved deeper. The walls changed from drywall to stone, the floor from concrete to packed earth. The air grew colder, damper, and it smelled like something old. Something that had been waiting.
“There.” Dad stopped, his flashlight landing on a wooden door set into the stone. Heavy oak planks bound with rusted iron. “That shouldn’t be here.”
“What do you mean?” Jared asked.
“I’ve seen the original blueprints. There’s not supposed to be a doorway here.” He examined the door without touching it. “Someone added this.”
“Want me to text Stuart?” I asked.
“No need.” Dad pointed at the door. “See?”
I studied the door in the dim glow of his flashlight.
No handle. No visible hinges. Just a symbol carved into the wood at eye level—layers of intersecting lines and curves that looked almost like a fingerprint. I drew in a breath, then whispered, “Samarek’s mark.”
At least we knew we were in the right place.
“So what do we do?” Mom asked. “Knock?”
The door swung open.
“Well, okay then,” Mom murmured.
Beyond the door lay darkness so complete that the glow from Dad’s flashlight got swallowed three feet past the threshold.
“Jared?”
“I can’t see, either,” he said. “Haven’t run into that before. An enchantment?”
“Well, this isn’t ominous at all,” I muttered.
Of course, we stepped through anyway.
The room was wrong. Too large—much larger than the space above would allow.
The ceiling disappeared into shadow, and the walls curved in ways that made my eyes hurt and gave the sense that we were walking and tilting all at the same time.
This wasn’t the basement anymore. This was somewhere else.
Somewhere that didn’t care about physics or blueprints or the rules of the normal world.
Dad’s flashlight swept the room, and my heart stopped.
Trevor.
He lay on his back in the center of the room, arms flung out to his sides, his shirt dark and wet with blood. A deep wound gaped across his throat. His wrists had been sliced open, too.
“Oh God,” Mom whispered.
For one horrible second, I couldn’t move. Couldn’t think. All I could do was stare at the boy I’d trained beside just yesterday, now lying broken and dead on the cold stone floor.
Then Jared’s hand tightened around mine, and something clicked into place. I gasped, blinking back tears as I forced myself to be strong. To look around. To be a Hunter and assess the situation.
And to stay alive.
I made myself breathe. In. Out. In. Out.
With effort, I pushed down the scream building in my chest. There would be time to fall apart later. Right now, I needed to see. To understand.
Trevor’s eyes were open, staring at nothing. Gone. Whatever spark that had made him Trevor—angry, guarded, hurting Trevor—had left.
But it wasn’t just his body that made my stomach lurch. It was what lay beneath him.
He’d been placed on top of something. A shape on the floor, outlined in pulsing red light. Door-shaped. And on one side, two spheres glowed like freakish doorknobs.
Like Timmy’s drawings.
The portal.
My knees went weak. All those pictures. All those doors Timmy had been drawing obsessively for weeks. He’d been seeing this. This exact thing.
Trevor’s blood oozed away from him, as if called to seep into the door-shape’s outline. And with each drop of ruby red blood, the light pulsed brighter. Hungrier.
The thing was feeding. Feeding on him. On his death.
I thought I might be sick.
A circle of dirt surrounded him, glowing faintly, as if it was keeping him trapped while the life drained out of him.
But the worst part—the part that made me want to look away and never stop looking at the same time—was his left hand.
Someone had painted symbols on his palm in what looked like his own blood.
Geometric markings, intricate and deliberate.
The same layered lines and curves as Samarek’s mark on the door.
He’d been marked. Claimed.
Used.
Mom’s phone buzzed, and I jumped so hard I nearly screamed. She glanced at it, her face going pale as she tapped out a reply. “Trevor broke away from the group twenty minutes ago. They’ve been searching.” She looked at the body. “They’re too late.”
Twenty minutes. He’d been alive just twenty minutes ago. Walking around. Breathing. And now—
I sucked in air and forced myself to keep my shit together by squeezing Jared’s hand so hard it’s a wonder I didn’t crush his bones.
Trevor. Lying there like a sacrifice.
Because that’s exactly what he was. “The blood of an innocent,” I murmured.
Dad moved first, stepping carefully around the dirt circle and the glowing edge of the portal, his face a mask I recognized. A Hunter’s face. The one that let you function when everything inside you was screaming.
“Eric,” Mom whispered. “Be careful.”
He didn’t answer. Just knelt beside Trevor’s body and pressed his fingers to Trevor’s neck. Checking for a pulse we all knew wouldn’t be there.
“No pulse,” he said flatly. “But he’s still warm. This just happened. Minutes ago, maybe.”
Minutes. We’d missed him by minutes.
“The blood’s still flowing,” Jared said quietly. “The portal’s still feeding.”
I made myself step closer. Made myself really look at Trevor’s face, even though every instinct screamed at me to turn away. There was something in his expression that looked almost like surprise. Whatever he’d thought was going to happen down here, dying hadn’t been part of the plan.
I looked at the symbols on his left palm. “Those markings... Did he draw them? Or did someone put them on him? Did he come down here willingly?”
“It fits.” Mom’s voice was hollow, and I could hear her own struggle to stay in Hunter mode. “He broke away from the group tonight despite knowing we were facing a real threat. And his attitude... We may never know.”
“What if he was working with someone?” I asked. “What if he thought he was getting something out of this?”
“And when he’d served his purpose...” Dad didn’t finish the sentence. He didn’t have to.
I shuddered, then leaned against Jared as his arm tightened protectively around me.
I’d seen death before. I’d caused death before—demon death, sure, but I’d felt bodies go limp under my hands, watched the light leave eyes that had once been human before something else moved in.
I’d faced down Hell itself and walked away.
But this was different.
Trevor was seventeen. Same as me. He’d arrived three weeks ago with anger radiating off him like heat, and I’d been so wrapped up in my own problems—the prophecy, Samarek, my complicated family—that I hadn’t even tried to see past his hostility to whatever was underneath.
I’d written him off as difficult, and someone had used that.
Used the fact that none of us had really seen him.
Now I’d never get the chance to know him. Never get to find out what he was so angry about, or what he might have become if someone had just bothered to reach past his walls.
“Allie.” Jared’s voice was soft. His hand rested on my shoulder. “It wasn’t your fault.”
“It was,” I said. “At least a little. But I’ll be okay,” I said. Because I had to be. Because that’s part of who I was now. The girl who kept going. The girl who didn’t get to fall apart until the job was done.
I sucked in a breath and looked between the three of them. “Something’s still wrong,” I said. “How did whoever did this know the portal was here? I mean, someone had to lure him down here. Had to cut him. It wasn’t Samarek. He’s still bound.
Mom and Dad exchanged a look. “Still bound? Are you sure?”
I nodded, feeling a little icky about that tidbit of knowledge.
“I can feel him,” I said, as Jared took my hand, giving it a supportive squeeze.
“I can’t explain it, but I’m sure. The door isn’t open for him.
He’s still trapped, but he’s calling to his minions in this realm to come.
To bring sacrifices to make the cracks bigger so the portal will open for him.
” I shrugged. “Blood. He needs more. And we have a supply of sacrifices right upstairs.” I looked between the two of them.
“We have to figure out how to seal this thing back up. And,” I added, “we need to do it fast.”
“We do,” Daddy said. “And we need to know how Trevor was lured down here, especially if it was someone upstairs.”
“No way,” I said. “We know them all.” Which, of course, was just a reflex.
Because we didn’t. No one ever truly knows anyone but themselves.
And most people aren’t even that aware. But.
I didn’t think it was anyone on the staff or any student from last year.
And I didn’t want to think it could be Zane or Sophie.
I’d seen them fight at my party, and both kicked demon ass.
It had to be an outsider. Because if it wasn’t, then Trevor’s killer was someone we trusted. Someone who walked these halls, ate at our table, trained beside us.
Someone who was probably still up there right now, pretending to be scared about what would come next.
My tears fell to the ground, and the portal pulsed a deep ruby red. Brighter. Hungrier. Like it was feeding on my grief too. Taking everything it could get.
I wiped my face angrily. I wasn’t going to give it anything else.
“We need to get him out of here,” Mom said, her voice cracking just slightly before she steadied it. “For that matter, we need to all get away from this portal.”
But I couldn’t move. Not yet. I stood watching it pulse like a perverted heartbeat, almost mesmerized by the way the door seemed to shrink inside the glowing frame, letting an eerie red light leak out around the sides to cast unnatural geometric splashes of light on the dingy walls.
“It’s not fully open,” I whispered. “But it wants to be.”
Mom nodded, looking a little ill. “How long do you think?”
“Depends on how long it takes to lure another sacrifice,” Daddy said. “Never if I have any say in it.”
“I like the sound of never,” I said.
Daddy grimaced. “Chances are it will be sooner than that. Unless we close it, those pulses are like a demon magnet, luring all sorts of demons our way. They’ll kill whoever stands in their way and drag whoever they can to the portal so they can kill them there.
We need to tell the kids to be prepared to fight whatever’s coming.
And we need to figure out how to close the portal. ”
“How long?” Jared asked.
Daddy shook his head. “No idea. But if I had to guess, I’d say San Diablo will be overrun within an hour of that portal fully opening.”
“Maybe I can close it,” I said. “I’ve done it before.” It didn’t feel the same. Before, I felt the power flowing through me. Now, I just felt hope.
Maybe that would be enough.
With that thought bolstering me, I took my knife from my pocket, slit my palm, and pressed it to the pulsing rectangle, my mind and body braced for torment as the portal fought back.
Except nothing happened.
The portal continued to pulse, wanting and craving. My blood just sat there on the surface, doing absolutely nothing.
I met Daddy’s eyes. “You try it.”
I could tell from his expression he didn’t think he’d do any better, but he did have the connection to Samarek, so I crossed my fingers as he bled on the portal.
Nothing.
“There has to be a way,” I said.
Jared took my hand. “We’ll find it.”
“And we need to find it fast,” Mom said. “But no pressure.”
I actually laughed, a tiny bit, anyway. And it felt good.
“Let’s get back up,” Mom said. “We need to brief everyone. And I want to know they’re all safe.”
“We’ll figure it out,” Jared said as he wrapped a handkerchief around my hand. And we’ll stop it.”
“Promise?”
“Yes,” he said, but we both knew that might be a promise he wouldn’t be able to keep.