CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
This time, the world
didn’t explode. It imploded as the connection between them and the
box and the demons grew so strong it smashed them together,
scrambling their souls like eggs in a pan. One second, Jace was
kneeling by Sam, his heart racing with relief to be holding her
hand. The next he was turned inside out.
The moment they
touched the box, he and Sam slammed into each other.
Not physically.
Physically, neither of them moved a muscle, but there was no other
way to describe what happened. It was as if their skin collided and
then evaporated, clearing the way for their souls to slide
together. Suddenly he was overlapping Sam, living her memories and
his own, remembering every trauma-inspired nightmare, awakening the
most deeply suppressed terrors.
He was looking out
through her eyes as her mother pulled her from her father’s arms.
She was crying, begging to go back to bed. But her mother’s fingers
dug into her skin, squeezing until she screamed in pain and dropped
her blanket on the ground. Jace felt her despair at leaving the
blanket behind, her longing to press her face into the pink
softness as her arms were tied behind her back and two men in robes
placed her in the center of a circle made of blood. Her little
sister was already nearby, wailing the piercing cry of an infant in
pain. There was no worse sound in the world than that, little Sam
thought. It was so raw and fresh, a wound that would never stop
bleeding … would never stop …
Jace’s mother was
never going to stop bleeding. The thing that had her kept
inflicting more and more wounds until the world swam in a sea of
blood, until he worried that it would fill the house and drown him
in his hiding place. Eight-year-old Jace cowered under the sink,
peeing himself with fear, wondering if the horrible thing outside
would smell it and come for him next.
But this time, he
wasn’t alone. There was someone else there, someone who watched and
wept for him and his mother, for the pain they’d both endured.
She was there. Sam. He wanted to draw
comfort from that, but he couldn’t. It was all too real. Jace had
never had a memory take him over so completely. It was as if he
were living it all over again, feeling the fear, tasting the shame
as he hid and watched instead of trying to protect the only person
in the world who had ever made him feel loved.
Instead, he hid and
listened to her cry and cry and cry….
It seemed like the
baby would never quit crying. The wailing went on and on until Sam
felt like she’d do anything to make it stop, to put an end to the
hysterical tears that made her even more afraid. But then the
crying stopped, and Sam hated herself for craving the silence. Baby
Emma’s wails faded to little snuffles, broken only by the
screeching of the demons that got louder and louder and louder as
they emerged from the box, seeking the bodies they’d been
promised….
The demonlike thing
screeched in excitement as it lapped at his mother’s blood. The
monstrous creature his father had become after he’d accepted the
box and said the sacred, foreign words was feeding on his mother.
And he wasn’t alone. There were other monsters, invisible but no
less terrifying than his father. Jace couldn’t see them, but he
could hear them.
They were wild with
delight, prolonging his mother’s death so they could dance in the
spray of her blood again and again. They thrived on the torture
they inflicted, feeding on her misery and pain as much as her
blood. It had been so long since they were free to play, since the
box had been opened by someone who knew what to place
inside.
But Jace’s father had
known. Only days after the emergence in China, when Jace and his
mother had been hiding in their apartment on the edge of Shanxi,
too terrified to leave his parents’ bedroom, Jace’s father had come
home with something horrible in a bag and placed it into the box
he’d found near his brother’s destroyed cave home. He’d said the
box had talked to him, and that what he was doing would be a new
beginning for all of them. Not only would the Lus survive the demon
infestation; they’d emerge as kings and queens of the new world.
They’d finally have enough to eat and never have to be afraid
again.
Instead, the things
he’d set free had transformed him into a monster that ate his own
wife. He would have killed Jace if he hadn’t hidden so well and
been so quiet, shoving his fist into his mouth to smother his
screams as he watched the monster feed….
The demons had gotten
a taste and wanted more. Sam, blind and petrified, clung to her
brother’s hand as he pulled her deeper into the forest. “Keep
running, Sam, keep running,” he said, the fear in his voice
terrifying six-year-old Sam as much as anything else that had
happened. Stephen was never afraid. Stephen was a teenager and rode
his bike as far as he wanted without having to tell anyone where he
was going. If he was afraid, then they were probably going to
die.
The demons would find
them. They could sense where they ran. The residents of the box
were connected to them both now, and they wouldn’t rest until they
had the bodies they’d been promised when the ritual
began.
“Under here, Sam. Get
under here and stay quiet.” Stephen shoved her under a fallen tree,
pushing her inside until her knees were covered in mud and rough
bark scratched at her bare neck. She’d been wearing her sleeveless
nightgown because it was always hot in the farmhouse, but now she
shivered. Uncontrollably. Until her teeth knocked together so
loudly she was certain the demons would hear.
They didn’t. They
heard Stephen, heard him screaming for them to come and find him,
crashing away through the leaves. For a moment something drew close
to where she hid, close enough that Sam could smell the wretched
scent of it, but then …
Gunshots, so loud
they made Jace scream, filled the room, shattering glass, bursting
through the paper-thin walls. The military was out hunting the
demons that had emerged from the Shanxi caves, and Jace’s father
was too close to the window. One minute he was dancing in his
wife’s blood; the next he was dead on the floor beside Jace’s
mother.
As soon as the shots
faded, Jace crawled from his hiding place, trembling and weak from
too many days without food. It was hunger that had driven him out
so soon after the demons seemed to have left. If he weren’t so
hungry, he wouldn’t have crept from beneath the counter and hurried
past the fallen bodies to the tiny refrigerator across the room. If
he weren’t so hungry, he would have realized that he still wasn’t
alone.
The demons that
lingered inside what remained of his father’s body rose from him
like a swarm of flies and headed straight for Jace, overwhelming
him before he could slam the refrigerator door shut and run. They
surged in through his ears and pushed into his brain, eager to feed
on something fresh. Jace’s father had summoned the demons and given
them permission to feed on all that was his. The demons didn’t need
Jace’s consent. Jace was just a weak little coward who deserved
pain, who deserved to be food.
But they were wrong.
Jace had kicked the box on the floor open, spilling its precious
contents. Then he’d run so far and so fast that he’d been in Xi’an
by the time his uncle’s plane had touched down.
Of course, he could
have done more. If he had been brave enough, he would have
destroyed the box that housed the demons, made sure it never fell
into the hands of a certain archaeologist sifting through the
Shanxi rubble a few years later. If only he’d been a bit braver
…
Sam finally got up
the courage to raise her voice and respond to the men calling out
into the woods. They said they were policemen, and policemen were
supposed to be good. But then … parents were supposed to be good,
too, and they’d been bad. So bad.
Still, it was Sam’s
fault. If she hadn’t been such a horrible child, if she hadn’t been
so innately unlovable, her parents would never have dared to do
what they did. They would have cherished her if she’d been good.
They would have protected her. But she didn’t deserve protection.
She deserved everything she’d been through and more.
She deserved the
terror of feeling the ground disappear just as she dared to crawl
from her hiding place. She was a waste who no one would miss, whose
destiny was a pit so deep and dark that she would fall through it
forever, never reaching the end, the anticipation and absolute
terror of knowing she was about to die drawn out for
eternity….
The bitch deserved
it, but he didn’t. She deserved to die, but he could still live.
They weren’t children anymore, and they weren’t inside each other.
Now they were falling through the void together, two distinct
individuals who didn’t need to share the same destiny. All he had
to do was let go of her hand. If he let her go, she would fall, but
he would rise. Rise and rise until there was no more pain and fear,
until there was—
“No,” Jace grunted,
squeezing Sam’s hand even tighter, praying for the first time in
God Himself only knew how long that she wouldn’t give in to the
thing that pushed at his mind, filling his entire being with so
much terror that a part of him would do anything to make the
torment end.
Anything but let go
of Sam. He couldn’t do that. Wouldn’t do that. Ever.
Me either. Not ever.
Jace sighed with
relief. He couldn’t see Sam’s face in the darkness, but he could
still hear her thoughts. He hoped she could hear his, too, that she
knew he loved her completely, every part of her, inside and
out.
So let’s do it.
Jace didn’t have to
ask what she meant. He simply flexed the hand that was still
wrapped around hers, and knew that somewhere, in the real world, he
and Sam were closing the lid on the evil that would have possessed
them if they had tried to do this alone.
The shriek that
followed was truly deafening, so loud Jace could hear it for only a
handful of seconds and then it was gone, replaced by a ringing that
filled the darkness through which they fell. The sound was so big,
so strong, that Jace could feel it vibrating in his chest, altering
the beating of his heart, slowing everything down until the
darkness crept inside him.
In a way it was a
relief, that blackness. It was peaceful there, and he knew he’d be
all right inside it. Because Sam was there, right there beside him.
She knew every shameful secret and fear that had plagued him for
years. She’d even seen the things he’d forgotten, knew that he’d
been the one who allowed her father to find the artifact that had
ruined her life, and she still wasn’t going to leave
him.
Not ever. He heard her say the words again and then
he was gone, floating in an oblivion deeper than sleep, deeper than
anything he’d ever known except his love for the woman whose hand
he still held in his own.