Chase the Dark (5 page)

Lyre looked shocked at Ash’s behavior too. He shifted in until the three of them were crowded in a tight little knot in the hallway.

“Piper,” he began again.

“No,” she said shrilly. “You can’t. He said no exceptions. If I let you go down there, I’ll be—”

“Possibly saving your father’s life,” Ash growled. “There’s a time and place for blind obedience. This is not it.”

She met Ash’s eyes, still dark with his gathering power—the air was starting to crackle—and felt a flash of dread in her chest. Her father was down there. The house was too quiet. He’d been way closer to the explosion than her. The image of him lying in a bloody puddle made her knees go weak. She spun and lunged for the stairs, forgetting the two daemons entirely.

Hands grabbed her waist and yanked her back. Someone shoved her to the floor before she knew what was happening and weight came down on her back. Her breath whooshed out in a furious yell and she slammed an elbow into her attacker’s kidney.

A grunt of pain. “Hold still,” Ash snapped above her, his voice no louder than a whisper. “Can’t you hear that?”

She realized, belatedly, that Ash was crouched over her, defending rather than attacking. Lyre hovered beside them, fear on his face but his body tense and ready.

“Hear what?” she whispered furiously.

A soft thump came from somewhere below them, followed by a muted crash like a door being thrown open into a wall.

“Father?” she gasped. She squirmed and Ash shoved her shoulders into the floor. “Let me go! What if he’s hurt?”

“Be quiet,” he hissed, then muttered, “Wasn’t that my argument?”

“What is it?” Lyre whispered. “I don’t like this.”

“Like what?” Piper snapped. “Let me go.”

“Quit panicking and use your senses,” Ash said. “Whatever that is, it’s not your father.”

“Huh?” She blinked at the carpet right in front of her nose and tried to slow her racing heart. Her skin tingled and her stomach twisted like she could smell something rancid but all she smelled was dusty carpet.

“What is it?” she demanded.

“I don’t know,” Lyre answered tersely. “Be quiet.”

The three of them made like statues as they listened to the thumps and crashes from the main floor. It sounded like someone—something—was tearing the house apart. A sudden skitter of fast steps on the stairs made Piper gasp. Ash’s dragonet whipped around the corner where the stairs waited out of sight. The little creature tore up to her master and threw herself into him, grabbing his shoulder and burrowing into the back of his neck. She chittered with unmistakable terror.

Then Ash was off Piper and hauling her to her feet. He lifted her right off the floor, spun her around, and dropped her facing the opposite direction.

“You need to
get out of here
,” he said, his tone unexpectedly fierce. His eyes had gone completely black. He slashed a glance at Lyre. “You too.”

“What is it?” Lyre asked, taking a tight hold on Piper’s arm while she gaped at Ash’s black, black eyes. It looked like the entire night sky had been condensed into his face. He’d fully shaded. Bad bad bad.

“It’s a choronzon.”

The blood drained from her face. Choronzons were a type of Underworld creature. They were bestial, simpleminded, and irrevocably, mercilessly violent. They never left the Underworld.

So what was one doing in the manor?

“Ash,” Lyre hissed. “What do we do? It’s too strong to fight.”

Piper flicked a stare at Ash. Was he even considering a fight? Choronzons were practically invincible.

The draconian hesitated, power sizzling the air around him. Something thumped downstairs and they all went still at the wet-sounding grunt that echoed up the stairs. The choronzon was at the bottom.

Sucking in a breath, she grabbed Lyre’s arm and reached for Ash—but changed her mind when his gaze sliced her way.

“Come on,” she hissed, tugging at the incubus. “I know a way out. Come on!”

Lyre grabbed the hood of Ash’s sweatshirt and yanked the draconian after them as Piper raced to her bedroom door, taking them even closer to the stairway and the choronzon. They piled into her room and she locked the door. She doubted it would slow the beast. She didn’t know exactly what a choronzon looked like—something about tentacles. None of her textbooks had pictures, but either way, she knew it was big.

She threw open her closet doors and started flinging clothes out. Four shoe boxes followed, then an armload of old stuffed animals.

“What are you doing?” Lyre asked. The irritation in his whisper made her look up right as he pulled a pink bra off his shoulder and tossed it onto her bed. Ash edged behind Lyre to get out of the path of flying clothes, his attention on the door.

Piper threw another handful of laundry out of her way and found the tiny panel where the floor joined the wall at the back of the closet. She pressed it. A loud click echoed through the closet and a section of wall popped inward. She shoved it open to reveal a narrow, dark tunnel.

“Flashlight,” she muttered, backing out of the closet. “Need a flashlight and then—”

Wood groaned as weight pressed against the bedroom door.

Ash backed into Lyre to get away. He scooped his dragonet off his shoulder and tossed her toward the closet. “Lead the way, Zwi. Piper, follow her.”

The dragonet landed lightly and its scales turned white. The long line of its mane stayed black but its body was now bright as snow. It darted into the closet. Piper slid in after the creature. The passageway was so narrow she had to turn sideways to fit. Zwi almost glowed in the dark. Piper followed, shuffling as fast as possible. Lyre swore when his clothes caught on something and tore. The soft click of the panel closing again told her Ash had made it in.

Wood splintered loudly, muffled through the walls. The choronzon was in her room.

She followed the beacon of Zwi’s scales until the dragonet vanished. Piper stopped dead, her foot finding the edge of a drop-off in the dark. Lyre was right behind her, his breathing quick.

She reached out, feeling blindly for the first rung. “Damn it,” she whispered. “The ladder is gone.” She hadn’t been in the passage in a few years because her father had taken out the ladder to keep her from sneaking around the Consulate at night. She wished she’d remembered that five minutes ago.

A huge bang made Lyre jump into her, almost knocking her in headfirst. The hideous sound of tearing wood echoed down the tunnel and a dim light filled the cramped space.

“It’s in the passageway,” Ash growled. “Just jump!”

She hesitated on the edge. Wood shrieked as it was torn from its nails, gunshot snaps as the studs broke. The choronzon was bulldozing its way into the narrow passage.

“Go!” Lyre didn’t wait for her response. He shoved her.

She plummeted, knees bent for the impact. Pain shot up her legs when she landed. She tried to roll to absorb the impact but slammed into a wall. A whoosh of air was her only warning and she pressed into the side of the chute as Lyre landed beside her. There was no room for a third person.

“Go!” Lyre yelled.

She squeezed into the last stretch of the passageway. A flash of dim white ahead—Zwi, waiting for them at the exit. The crashing and snapping from above was as deafening as a landslide.

Piper reached the panel. Panic gripped her as she felt around wildly for the release latch. Lyre crowded in behind her. Ash joined them, breathing heavily. Piper thought she smelled blood. Where was the latch? Her hands slid all around the edges, picking up slivers from the rough wood.
Where was it?

The floor shook as something impossibly heavy hit it. The choronzon was on their level. Bile jumped into Piper’s throat as the horrible stench of carrion filled her head and her nose.

A rough hand grabbed her shoulder and flattened her into the wall. Ash slapped his other hand to the panel and all the hair on Piper’s body stood on end as electricity filled the air. With a flash and a boom, the door was blasted right out of the wall. Lyre somehow squeezed out ahead of her and into the front foyer. He spun and snatched Piper’s arm, hauling her out. They both turned back as Ash appeared in the opening. Half out of the opening, his eyes went wide.

His feet went out from under him as something grabbed him from behind. A blood-red tentacle as thick as an arm spun around his neck and he was yanked back into the dark passageway with a strangled shout.

“Ash!” Lyre roared. He lunged to his feet, then spun to shove Piper toward the hallway. “Get help,” he yelled. “Get your dad. Quick!” Without a backward glance, he dove in after Ash. There was a soundless concussion from inside that made dust sift from the ceiling. A low, bestial howl tore through the air.

Piper spun and charged down the hall. Ash might freak her out but she wouldn’t stand there while a choronzon tore him apart. She reached the meeting room and flung the door open. It was empty. She’d known it would be. The meeting had ended half an hour ago when the ambassadors left. That meant they’d gone to get the secret object. Throwing herself back out of the room, she ran down the hall, through the kitchen, and plowed into the back door. With shaking hands, she undid the bolt and burst out into the cool night air.

Across the dark yard, before trees swallowed the grass and the forest took over, a small tool shed stood alone beside a huge oak tree. Piper sprinted to the shed. The entrance to the Consulate’s top security vault was outside because the spells protecting it were too dangerous to be in the house. Only the Head Consul could open it and he visited it only once or twice a year. She threw the flimsy doors open and stopped dead.

The six-inch-thick metal door of the vault set into the concrete floor of the shed hung wide open, but that wasn’t why she stopped. If there were people inside, of course the door would be open.

What she hadn’t expected was the dead man sprawled across the floor, his slit throat gaping like a bloody, toothless grin.

After one terrified heartbeat, she noticed his black eyes. The man was a daemon—one of the ambassadors? Breathing too fast, she stepped over him and started down the stairs. Her hands trembled and she wished she’d grabbed a weapon. Barehanded, she wasn’t much use.

The stairs went far deeper than a single story and at the bottom was another steel door. It too was wide open and there was another bloody body beside it; the daemon slumped against the wall, staring blindly. Skirting around his legs, she walked into the main vault. Steel shelves lined the walls on both sides to create one wide corridor down the center. Metal boxes, each neatly labeled, sat in rows on the shelves. Close to the entrance, the shelves were untouched. At the opposite end of the vault, boxes were tumbled across the floor and the shelves were bent and twisted like a massive force had blasted them backward.

Dead ahead the last door waited, open and beckoning.

Piper darted through the obstacle course of deformed metal and scattered debris. She reached the threshold and grabbed the frame to stop. Her gaze flashed across the cement cube and what she saw didn’t immediately register.

Bodies. Blood. Dead people.

This was where the explosion had detonated. The walls were stained black. Burnt blood made fantastic patterns over every surface. She couldn’t tell how many people were in the room, only that all of them had been thrown with killing force into the unyielding cement walls, their bodies burned and broken.

Her father was one of them.

A choking sound scraped her throat as she fell to her knees beside the nearest body and turned it over. Blackened skin flaked at her touch. The face was burned away but the clothes were wrong. She staggered to the next. These mangled corpses were all that was left of the ambassadors. But where was her father?

She stumbled to the other side of the room. Heedlessly grabbing the legs of the top body on a pile of four, she dragged it out of the way. She couldn’t see properly. Tears flooded her eyes and she couldn’t breathe right.

“Father?” she choked. “Where are you?” She kicked an arm out of her way and shoved another burnt corpse into the wall. Under the last body in the pile, the edge of a familiar white shirt peeked out, splattered with blood.

“No,” Piper gasped. Grabbing the burnt thing on top—not even recognizable as a body—she heaved it away to reveal the last one. Her knees hit the floor. Shielded behind the other three, this one hadn’t been burned as badly. Ghostly white, slack and lifeless, the face was turned away but she recognized the clothes, the build, and the shape of that so-familiar person.

“Uncle Calder?” she whispered. Of course her uncle had accompanied the Head Consul. Of course.

Hands unexpectedly gripped her upper arms, pulling her away. She couldn’t stop staring, couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe. Arms crushed her against a chest that smelled like spices and cherries.

“Shh,” Lyre crooned to her, his voice trembling. He rocked her, his arms too tight. “Don’t cry, Piper. Shh.”

She was barely aware of the sobs tearing out of her chest. She clung to him, eyes squeezed shut against the sight of her uncle’s burned face.

“Damn,” another voice whispered. Ash’s dark presence slid past her left side. “Is this . . . ? Damn, it’s Quinn.”