Read Charmed Online

Authors: Michelle Krys

Charmed (7 page)

BOOK: Charmed
7.39Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

I cross to the chair and sit, my hands gripping the armrests. She crouches back into the hole we came through and disappears.

I’m alone in a cave. This day hasn’t turned out at all the way I’d imagined.

I wait for what feels like forever. A drip sounds somewhere in the distance, but otherwise it’s completely silent.

After a while, I hear a shuffling sound in one of the tunnels behind me—not the one we entered through. My body shifts into panic mode and I picture a cave monster ripping
me to shreds, but then the witch emerges. She has her apron full of supplies, which she dumps unceremoniously onto the ground. As she tinkers, I peek over and spot a dirty chalice, a rusty dagger, and a rabbit’s foot, to name only a few things. Just what does she plan on doing with all this?

“Give me your hand,” she says suddenly, gripping the rusty dagger in her palm.

I white-knuckle the armrests.

“Give me your hand,” she repeats impatiently.

“What are you going to do with that?” I ask.

“Cut you.”

Well. Don’t beat around the bush or anything.

“That thing looks like it has hepatitis,” I say, eyeing the dirty blade.

She doesn’t respond.

“Haven’t you got a cleaner one? Or some bleach to disinfect it at least?”

She glares at me, what’s left of her patience rapidly evaporating.

I take a breath of courage and thrust out my arm. She catches it around the wrist, and I recoil at the surprising coldness of her hand. She poises the blade horizontally, just below the crook of my elbow. I look away before the metal makes contact with my skin, trying not to focus on the lifetime of treatments I might require after this ceremony is done. I gasp as the blade slices into me, then bite down hard on my lip as heat spreads across my arm. I can’t help looking
as the first pricks of pain burst from my arm, where bright red blood spills from a three-inch gash at an alarming rate. I was not expecting her to cut me that bad.

My instinct is to curl my arm against my body and try to stanch the blood flow, but the witch holds the dirty chalice—which now contains the rabbit’s foot, the black-rock crystals she was crushing earlier, and what appears to be a peacock feather—right under the wound, filling it with my blood.

In just moments, the crystals are completely dissolved and the brown fur of the rabbit’s foot is nearly fully covered in my blood, but still the witch holds my arm over the cup, staring into it with an unblinking gaze.

A damp sweat breaks out on my forehead. My head spins, though I’m not sure if it’s due to the blood loss, my revulsion, or a combination of the two.

After my last complaints, I’d decided to shut up and just go with it, but the way the witch is staring into the cup, I’m starting to get worried that she nodded off to her special place.

“Isn’t that enough?” I ask.

Instead of her usual nonresponse response, she deigns to speak. “No.”

“Well, how much do you need?”

“Enough to open your mind.”

“That’s cryptic.” I realize I’m hyperventilating. I bite
down on my lip again.
It’s okay. This will get me to Paige. I need to do this. It’s for a good cause
.

“The portal to Los Demonios lies in all of our minds,” she continues in a rare display of chattiness. I guess she feels bad for draining my lifeblood as well as my bank account. “But few people can access it. Only when your mind is in a fragile state can you see it. Even then most need help passing through.”

“How…” Black spots dance in front of my eyes when I try to speak. I focus on the words, wetting my lips. “How do you open the—”

And then everything goes black.

7

I
blink my eyes open and find myself lying flat on my back, two tall buildings rising up on either side of me into a sky thick with smoke. The air crackles with electricity; the scent of something sharp and dry fills my nose.

Where am I?

Hot pain radiates down my arm.

In a flash, I remember the witch. The ceremony. My blood in a cup.

I look down. Sticky streaks of red have dried all down my forearm, and fresh blood still oozes from a nasty gash below the crook of my elbow. Vomit rises up my throat, and I have to look away before I hurl.

I’m in Los Demonios.

Holy. Crap.

How long have I been lying here? How much blood have I lost?

I roll over and flatten my palms against the gravelly sidewalk, letting out a little grunt as I struggle to my feet. I cradle my arm against my body and, after a wave of nausea passes, take cautious steps toward the street.

It takes me a moment to realize where I am. Gone are the charming boutique shops, hipster bars, and outdoor terraces pushed up against luxury high-rise apartments, the towering palm trees and massive billboards stacked one on top of another, fighting for every inch of available retail space, but I’d recognize the wide, twisting street, with its Hollywood Hills backdrop, anywhere: Sunset Boulevard. Only it looks more like a war zone than the iconic street I know.

Fires blaze on nearly every rooftop not yet blown clean off, cracking and spitting as they send huge tunnels of smoke into the sky. Some of the buildings are nothing but a heap of bricks, while others look like they’ve recently been used for target practice, small holes peppering their char-blackened facades. Most of the billboards have holes ripped through them, save for one of Jennifer Aniston, who smiles at me as she holds a bottle of water.

Something red flashes across the sky. I duck low just as an explosion sounds, so violently it rockets me off my feet. I land on my ass, a barb of pain shooting up my back. A shop
across the street erupts in a huge ball of fire. Screams come from inside, and a victorious battle cry sounds above all the other noise.

My blood curdles.

There are people in that building. And someone is trying to blow them up. And seemingly enjoying it.

What have I gotten myself into?

I consider my options:

1)
Run. I could probably make the Olympic team what with all the adrenaline pumping through my veins, but I don’t know which direction is safe, and with my luck I would run straight into enemy hands.

2)
Fly. Considering the fireballs, this option doesn’t seem appealing, not to mention that I’m hidden right now and flying would definitely put me on a few radars.

3)
Hide somewhere while the battle rages on and hope no one finds me and I don’t get blown to smithereens.

Not exactly the best options.

There’s a flicker of movement in the sky, and then a pair of boots crunch onto the roof of a car parked next to the curb across the street. I gasp as a man stretches up to his full
height, his back to me as he scans the street. I scurry against the building, my heart a jackhammer.

The man ducks just as a ball of flame whizzes past him. It smacks into the side of the building across the alley from me. My ears ring as a shower of stucco shards sprinkles down on my head. I’m too shocked to scream.

The man on the car drops to one knee and extends his hand up. A bolt of lightning shoots from his palm, rending the sky as it strikes a shop across the street. The building lets out a low groan before it crumbles, sending a huge puff of dust and smoke into the sky. More screams pierce the air. I just catch the man’s smile before he springs back into the sky.

Option #3 seems considerably less sucky all of a sudden.

Adrenaline courses through my body so intensely I no longer notice the pain in my arm as I dash back through the alley. Where is a large garbage bin when you need one? I sprint to the back of the building and sweep a glance down either side of the lane.

Empty.

Voices bellow from the street. I quickly turn the corner before anyone sees me.

The ornate cast-iron back door of the building swings open in the breeze.

I’m gripped with indecision. There could be baddies in that building. But when footsteps crunch in the alley I just came from, I can’t rush through the door fast enough.

I enter a large room that looks like it used to be the lobby of a boutique hotel for trendy Hollywood types. The flowered wallpaper is ripped halfway down the wall so that a yellowed corner curls back on itself; I can see mold growing on the drywall beneath. The reception desk and the banister leading to the second floor are made of rich carved wood, and a crystal chandelier hangs crookedly from a single remaining chain over an antique carpet caked with boot prints and dust and random garbage, like the place has been used recently for squatting.

A closet behind the receptionist’s desk beckons to me. I cross over to it and whip the door open, nearly shrieking when a pair of green eyes set in a dirty face stare out at me. I leap back from the girl in the closet.

“Get out of here, this is my spot,” she spits, before pulling the door closed. I swallow, but my heart doesn’t move from its spot in my throat. I hadn’t expected to see another teenager in this place, let alone one in a freaking closet.

“Get out of here!” the girl hisses between the door slats. “You’re going to get me caught.”

I step backward, nearly tripping over a stack of yellowed phone books, then spin around. A silhouette moves past the back door. I need to hurry. I scan the lobby and spot a door with a small pane of frosted glass. I dash to it, and nearly cry with relief when it’s not locked: a set of stairs winds down into the dark basement.

My pulse races as I step inside and let the door quietly
click closed behind me, plunging me into darkness. I think about the girl in the closet and wonder if the basement will hold more fun surprises. I hesitate, but then a set of male voices echoes through the lobby and a bolt of fear goes through me. I want to run, but I force myself to tiptoe down the stairs.

My feet finally hit the floor. The scent of musty cardboard and gasoline fills the chilly air. After a moment, my eyes adjust to the dark, and the silhouette of storage crates and boxes set against a brick wall comes into view. I dash over and shove aside a stack of boxes, then climb behind them. I sink to my butt and wrap my arms tightly around my drawn-up knees. My whole body shakes, but not from the cold.

Someone screams.

The girl’s voice is so loud it’s like she’s right in front of me instead of a whole floor up. There’s the sound of a struggle, and then, just as quickly as it began, it’s over and the eerie quiet is back.

The girl in the closet—something awful has happened to her. And if she hadn’t been hiding there when I came in, that awful thing would have happened to me.

The door at the top of the stairs creaks open. I slap my hand over my mouth, stilling my breath even as my heart races. A shaft of light slants onto the basement floor. I shrink into the wall, trying to make myself invisible in the dark. Boots clomp down the stairs, then across the concrete. Through the space between the boxes I see someone pass
by just feet from me, cracking his knuckles loudly. He stops. I hold my breath until my lungs feel like they’re going to explode. A silent tear trails down my cheek. This is it. This is how it ends.

Then the footsteps begin to retreat.

I don’t want to breathe, don’t trust myself to breathe until he’s clear of this room, but when his boots stomp up the stairs, my face grows so hot that my cheeks prickle with lack of oxygen, nausea overwhelming me until the need to exhale is too much. The air puffs out of my mouth in one huge rush.

The footsteps pause.

Shit, shit, double shit
.

In a flash, a man’s face appears above the boxes. His mouth pulls into a grin when he sees me. The guy looks wild, feral, and ready to rip me apart with his bare hands.

I scream.

8

W
ith one sweep of his forearm the guy shoves the heavy boxes aside and then yanks me up by my wrist.

“Let go!” I pull and twist against his grip, but his fingers clamp my arm like a vise. I dig my heels into the floor as he marches steadily across the basement, but he doesn’t so much as glance back at the girl he’s dragging behind him.

I drop to the ground, so it’s like my captor is a mom dragging a screaming toddler through a grocery store. He grunts and takes a few labored steps with my dead weight in tow before swinging me easily over his shoulder so that I’m
upside down. Blood rushes to my head, my face mashed into his dirty canvas jacket.

My stomach warms with the promise of magic. I call it down to my fingertips only to come to the realization that moving objects and flying aren’t going to help me out of this particular situation. I try to summon the wind power I used on Jezebel in my room, but no matter how hard I concentrate, my body doesn’t react.

Panic takes over, and I give up on magic, straining instead to grab on to the banister as he carries me up the stairs. All I get for my effort is some serious palm burn. When we reach the top of the stairs, I try to latch on to the doorframe, but my fingers can’t catch purchase. The lobby carpet flashes beneath me, and then we burst into the pale outside light.

“Help! Somebody help me!” I scream.

“Quiet,” he orders, a hint of a Spanish accent coming through.

“Screw you!” I shout back.

“Have it your way.”

I open my mouth to scream again, but this time, no sound comes out. I scream at the top of my lungs. I scream until my face is red and hot and I can’t scream anymore. But the only sound is the distant crackle of the fires. Icy fear shoots down my spine.

I beat and pound against his back even though I know it’s a waste of effort, until he unceremoniously drops me into the back of a van. The wind is knocked out of me when I
land on my injured arm, my mouth yawning open in a silent scream.

“You’re hurt,” he says.

He reaches for me, but I scuttle back on the dirty carpet, cradling my arm against my body.

Someone kicks me.

“Watch it!”

I gasp. The girl from the closet cowers next to a sweaty blond guy who looks no more than fifteen. They’ve both got their hands tied behind their back.

My captor grabs the fleshy part of my good arm and pulls me out of the van. I get my first good look at him in the dim light of dusk.

He’s got close-cropped dark hair, blue eyes, and straight, white teeth that stand out against his darkly tanned skin. He’s average height, but beneath his jacket, his shoulders are broad with muscle. He could be eighteen or twenty-eight. I don’t know.

He shrugs out of his jacket, and in one swift motion reaches back and pulls his shirt over his head, revealing a stomach absolutely ripped with muscle. A trail of hair leads from his belly button to the boxer briefs that peek out over his pants.

My God.

It takes me a half second to snap out of it and realize it’s not such a great thing when an angry prison inmate takes off his shirt in front of you.

I frantically search for an escape route, only to feel fabric wrap around my injured arm. He’s…binding the shirt over my wound.

I—I don’t get it.

I look up at him for an answer.

“I don’t want you bleeding all over my van,” he says gruffly.

“Yeah, right, Cruz.” I glance over to see a guy in a trucker hat coming around the corner with a cocky strut.

“You just wanted to show off for the chick.” This comes from a dark-skinned guy in a blood-splattered tank top who jogs up the alley.

“Laugh it up,
pendejos
,” Cruz answers, without so much as a glance over his shoulder. “I bagged three. That’s a record. How many did you get?”

Silence.

“Exactly,” he says. He pushes me back into the van, then slides the door closed. A moment later, he’s climbing into the driver’s seat. He turns the key in the ignition, and the engine rumbles. Latin club music fills the van.

The guy in the hat pokes his head inside the open passenger window.

“Need some help with your catches?” He glances back at me, his eyes roving over my body. I become acutely aware of my layered tank tops and jean cutoffs that show a lot more tanned skin than is strictly necessary in a jail setting.

“I think I can handle a few humans,” Cruz answers.

Humans? If Los Demonios is a prison for the paranormal, then why would he think I’m a human?

I open my mouth to tell him as much, but no sound comes out. I kick the back of his seat in frustration.

“Do I need to tie you up too?” Cruz asks, putting the van in drive. He peels out of the alley. “I would have thought you’d relax a bit since I helped you and all.”

A vein the size of a highway pops out in my forehead.
Help me?
I mouth.
You’re freaking kidnapping me!

He chuckles at my silent rage. “Relax,
mamacita
.”

That blows me over the edge. I struggle to my feet and stagger to the driver’s seat.

“What are you doing?” he asks, glancing away from the road to look over his shoulder at me. I lunge for his neck. The van swerves, throwing me off-balance. I slam against the door hard and slump to the floor. Pain splits my arm. The other two kids watch me with a mixture of fear and shock.

Cruz sags into his seat as he gets the van back under control. “Serves you right,” he mumbles before turning up the music.

I could attack him again, but the simple truth of the matter is I’m no match for him. Panic and desperation overwhelm me, and I feel a sob build in my chest that I work hard to choke down. I need to think. I need to be smart.

Small fires flash by in the growing dark, but before long the view changes to the silhouette of a mountain range.
Where is he taking us? If I had an idea, that could inform my decision. I almost laugh. My decision. Like I have a plan. Like I’m not being kidnapped.

The same song restarts for the third time, but Cruz taps his hands on the steering wheel as though it’s the first time. It makes me want to scratch my eyes out.

“Can we hear something else already?” I scream.

I touch my throat, surprised to find I actually said the words out loud.

“I love this song,” he says.

“So did I,” I retort. “The first five hundred times.”

“Any requests?” he says.

I huff, which only makes him chuckle.

“Do you find this funny?” I ask.

“What?”

“Kidnapping girls. That’s funny to you?”

“There’s a boy in here too.”

I exhale.

“And to answer your question, no, I don’t find it funny. But it’s a job, and I have to do it.”

“Who makes you do it?” I ask.

“You’ll meet him soon.”

I can’t hide the shiver that passes through me. “Why do you do it, then? If you don’t like it, why don’t you just quit? Tell your shitty boss to find someone else to do his ’nappings.”

The girl gives me a kick in the thigh.

“That’s not the way it works,” he answers.

“Why not?”

“Because…that’s just not the way it works. You got here, what? An hour ago? You don’t know squat.”

“Maybe I’ve been here a year,” I say defiantly.

“You haven’t.”

“Okay, how about this?” I say. “Maybe you do this because you’re a spineless asshole.”

“Shut up,” the boy in the back warns me.

“You’re going to get us killed,” the girl hisses.

Cruz’s jaw tenses in the rearview mirror.

“Is it because you’re scared to speak up?” I continue. “Or do you secretly enjoy taking young kids against their will?”

When he doesn’t answer, I know I’ve hit a nerve.

“That’s it, isn’t it?” I laugh.

He slams on the brakes. Tires squeal against the pavement as we rocket forward into the seats. He jerks the parking brake on and rounds the front of the van before I can even rearrange myself.

“Now look what you did,” the girl says.

Cruz whips the door open, then flourishes an arm toward the road. I look out, past his shirtless chest. We’ve stopped in the middle of a residential street. Massive Gothic mansions rise up against the dark sky like the jagged fangs of some predatory animal. Wind whistles, and a coyote howls nearby.

“Go on!” he barks. “Don’t be shy, girl. Get out.”

I inch forward, then hop out of the van.

“Any of you want to get out too?” he asks, poking his head inside the van. The girl and boy blink back at him, stunned. He slams the door closed.

My heart bangs a steady beat.

He locks eyes with me and pauses in mock shock. “What? This is what you wanted, right?”

“It is. Thank you,” I spit. But I can’t help the edge of fear that enters my voice. I wish I could turn back time four seconds just so I wouldn’t have to see the satisfied smile on his face.

I bite my lip to keep it from trembling. Cruz’s eyes fall to my mouth.

“Mierda,”
he mutters, wiping his chin with his thumb.

“What?” I ask.

He sighs. “Listen. I’m going to give you some advice because I think you sorely need it, though I’m not sure how much it’s going to help. The only people that matter here are the Chief and Zeke. The Valley, East L.A., downtown, and Hollywood are the Chief’s turf—sorcerer turf—and trust me, the Chief is
not
someone you want to run into. Beverly Hills, the west side, and the beaches down to Redondo Beach are where Zeke’s people hang out. You don’t want to run into them either.”

I nod, committing his words to memory. “So where is safe?”

His face cracks into the barest of mocking smiles, and I get my answer.

“Okay, one last question,” I say. “I’m looking for a friend. Her name is Paige Abernathy. She’s got shoulder-length brown hair and bangs, and she’d probably be wearing leopard-print glasses. Any thoughts on where I might find her?”

He stares at me, but this time like he feels sorry for me. “Look, I don’t know anything about this Paige, but I do know this: you don’t have any friends. The minute you stepped into this place, you were on your own.”

Cruz takes a step back and turns, when high-pitched laughter rises from the darkness behind the houses. He pauses, shoulders tensing as if ready for battle.

“What was that?” I ask, backing up toward the van. Everything is still and quiet. A breeze shushes through the trees.

And then: the laughter sounds from right behind the van. I shriek and spin around. With a
whoosh
, something passes by on my left, but whatever was there is gone in a flash. I back up against Cruz, my breath coming in gasps.

“Thanks a lot,” he mutters.

“What the hell did I do?”

“Made me stop the van right in rebel territory, that’s what.”

“Rebels?”

“Zeke’s people. Witches and warlocks,” he answers, scanning for movement in the dark.

A cackle rises up from behind the houses again.

Witches.

“What do they want?” I ask.

“Right now? To kill us.”

“Duh,” I say. “But why? Just because we stumbled into their territory by accident?”

Cruz smacks his forehead, like I couldn’t possibly have said anything more naive. “You don’t just ‘stumble into’ someone’s territory,” he says, doing air quotes. “In jail, your turf is religion. It’s the only thing keeping witches and sorcerers from blowing each other to shit.”

“So witches hate sorcerers here too?”

His eyebrows draw up suddenly, and I realize I’ve slipped up big-time. I’ve let him know that I knew about the magic underworld before I came here. Before he told me. I open and close my mouth, searching for a way to backtrack. I almost admit that I’m a witch, but a realization stops me short: Cruz is a sorcerer. And he’s probably taking me to some sort of sorcerer headquarters—the most likely place in all of Los Demonios for Paige to be held. Ever since Cruz captured me, I’ve been trying to escape, when he could be taking me straight to my best friend.

Idiot.

He’s still looking at me with suspicious eyes.

Something moves against the sky, saving me from having
to continue this conversation. A shape flashes in front of the crescent moon. And I swear I see a wing.

BOOK: Charmed
7.39Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

The Oracle of Dating by Allison van Diepen
The Games by Ted Kosmatka
Penelope by Marie, Bernadette
No Rest for the Dove by Margaret Miles
Written in the Stars by LuAnn McLane
Fugue: The Cure by S. D. Stuart
The Knights of Christmas by Suzanne Barclay