The Devil's Dreamcatcher (29 page)

And directly ahead, sitting behind a large mahogany desk, is The Devil.

The Devil himself. A mythical entity who is, in fact, very real. And I'm actually standing in his office. I swap looks with Alfarin and
Elinor, and they are as dumbstruck as I am. Elinor is, in turn, grabbing at her neck and then wringing her hands.

The Devil hasn't seen any of us. We could back away now.

But Mitchell won't—and neither will I, regardless of how terrified the mere aura of this office is making me feel.

“Lucretia, I can't decipher Hannibal's writing,” The Devil wails. He is bent over a document lying on the desk in front of him. His face is so close, the swirl at the end of his goatee is touching the paper.

“Sir, you have visitors,” announces Lucretia.

“Not the French delegation again,” sighs The Devil dramatically. “How many times do I have to tell them? I'm allergic to cheese. Brings out the worst boils on my—”

Then he looks up and sees Team DEVIL, pockmarked and battle-weary, from a fight that he sent us into. Completely unprepared. Completely in the dark. It might have been Septimus who gave the orders, but it was The Devil pulling the strings. He released my stepfather from the circles of Hell; he told Rory how to unleash whatever toxin was stored in the Dreamcatcher. I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out to be The Devil's blood that was used to write that message.

“Interesting,” says The Devil, with a smile that bares his pointed teeth. “So this is Team DEVIL. They appear to have recovered better than the other lot. Speaking of which, how is the other lot doing, Septimus?”

“The effect was the same for all, Sir,” replies Septimus, but I'm shocked by how cold his voice sounds. The Devil picks up on it immediately.

“Oh, come now, Septimus. You were taking too long. Sometimes the bull has to be taken by the horns. It was only a test.”

Alfarin and Elinor are swapping confused looks, but Mitchell has nerves of steel, because he's looking The Devil squarely in the face with a ferocious glare.

“Operation H,” Mitchell says. “This whole thing was a setup to release Operation H, wasn't it?”

“Clever boy,” says The Devil. “Septimus speaks very highly of you, Mitchell. And this must be Medusa. What a fabulous name. I do love snakes, you know. My favorite drapes are the ones in the ballroom—”

“We don't give a crap about your curtains. That's not why we're here. I'm offering myself as your next Dreamcatcher,” interrupts Mitchell. “My little brother, my living brother, is next on the list. I'm offering myself in his place.”

But I run forward and place myself in front of Mitchell.

“Don't take Mitchell, take me!” I shout at The Devil. “I have nightmares that can't be worse than your dreams. I can take it.”

“Back off, Medusa.”

“You don't know what you're doing, Mitchell. You don't know what it's like to be truly haunted. I do.”

The Devil stands up and walks around the desk. His long fingers stroke the goatee on his pointed chin.

“Well, this is fun, and I must say that both you interns would make fine additions to my intimate staff, but alas, neither of you could be a Dreamcatcher. You've both been corrupted.”

Behind me, I hear the sound of Septimus whispering furiously to Elinor. From what I can tell, he wants her to leave the room, but she's refusing to go without me and Mitchell. Then The Devil giggles, and I want to retch at the sound.

“You're going soft on me, Septimus,” he says with a smirk.

“Miss Powell, leave now,” orders Septimus loudly.

“What do you mean, corrupted?” I ask, with a nervous glance toward Elinor. Both of her hands are on the back of her neck.

“A Dreamcatcher needs to be pure of heart, innocent in body and spirit,” replies The Devil. His shoes tap across the floor as he starts walking toward us. “Medusa, my dear, you have been corrupted by filth. The fact that it was not of your doing or acceptance is irrelevant. And Mitchell is a young man, and as I know all too well, all young men have minds as dirty as the squalid beings from the Dark Ages. Neither of you is capable of being a vessel for my glorious dreams.”

“Miss Powell,
leave now
,” orders Septimus. “Sir, we will find an alternative—”

“But we have one,” says The Devil quickly. “And how rare to find one of such beauty and maturity.” He raises his high-pitched voice, and it's like nails down a blackboard. “
Restrain the others!
” he screeches.

Guards, completely camouflaged within the drapes, rush forward and grab Mitchell, Alfarin and me. The Viking tries to fight them off, but they overpower him with a metallic mesh net that sparkles like diamonds in sunlight. I'm screaming words, but I have no comprehension of what they are. Powerful hands are wrestling Mitchell and me to the floor. The only part of me that I can move is my eyes, and they are being dragged like magnets to Elinor. We're all yelling at her to run, to fight, but we know full well she can't. I'm retching and howling as Septimus's protests fall silent.

“It's your lucky day, Elinor Powell,” says The Devil.

Elinor is paralyzed with fear as The Devil runs his fingers through her long red hair. The guards are still coming out of the walls in droves.

“My next Dreamcatcher will be you or young M.J.,” continues The Devil. “Choose wisely, Elinor Powell, for I don't need to remind you that I have access to your own brother in my laboratory, and, as He well knows, I do like to hear angels scream.”

Mitchell, Alfarin and I are swept out of the Oval Office on a tide of gaudy-looking guards. We are thrown into the level 1 corridor, and the doors shut with a solid thump. The guards' colors shift once more and they become glistening black. They dissolve into the walls of the central business district and are gone.

“
Elinor!
” roars Alfarin. “
Elinor!
”

He pounds the door with his huge fists, but it makes little difference. Mitchell joins him and the two boys throw themselves, again and again and again, at the doors, trying to force them open.

Suddenly I remember there's another way in: through the accounting chamber. I run into Septimus's office and grab the door handle. It sizzles against my skin and burns an imprint of The Devil's smiling face onto my palm. It's locked, and my smoldering skin is the notice.

“
Septimus!
” I cry. “
Get El out of there.
”

I fall back as a strange sense of déjà vu takes hold of me once more. I've never called her El before, but it also feels as if I've called her that for years.

“Stand back, Medusa!” cries Alfarin. He rushes into the room with his axe raised high. His pale-blue tunic is torn from the shoulder to his waist. The skin beneath it is red and raw from where he was slamming his weight into the doors of the Oval Office.

He starts swinging the axe at the large oak door, but it just bounces off.

“Septimus will stop him,” says Mitchell. “Septimus will save Elinor.”

But the brief glance he and I exchange at his words lets us know neither of us believes it. Elinor is trapped in a locked room with the master of Hell: a maniac who released an Unspeakable and tricked him into taking a toxic virus to the land of the living with the sole intent of testing its effect on angels.

“What have I done?” I cry, ignoring my spitting and sizzling palms as I pull at the door handle again. “This is my fault. I thought I could reason with him.”

“
Elinor, Elinor!
” Alfarin continues to wail. He's thrown his beloved axe aside and is now beating on the door like he's beating a drum.

“I just wanted to save my brother,” sobs Mitchell. “I didn't want this.”

He falls back onto the floor and crawls on his hands and knees to the rune-covered cabinet.

My stomach is heaving. Every part of me has gone into uncontrollable spasms. The pain in my chest is worse than anything I felt when I was alive; it's worse than the burning from the toxic red mist. Something is eating me from the inside out, but while it chomps with a heavy gnawing, it speaks to me in my own voice. Its mocks me for being so arrogant as to think I could take on The Devil and win.

We've lost. Lost horribly.

We've lost Elinor, and for no other reason than she was the best of us all.

Days have passed. I've begun having that same nightmare over and over, night after night, again and again and again. There's a small child, the boy again, with a thick mop of blond hair that looks like straw. Tears are silently streaming down his pink cheeks. When I see
his ruby-red eyes, the tears are no longer clear. He's crying blood. He holds his arms out, as if he wants to be picked up. Mitchell is holding Alfarin back. I can't see Elinor, but there are two other people in the nightmare with a halo of light surrounding them. One is a young guy with bright-red hair. The other is also male, late teens, and he's dressed in an old brown army uniform.

“Johnny, you can't help her,” calls the soldier.

Then the screaming starts.

I turn around, and the little boy is no longer there. It's Elinor, and she's bleeding torrents of thick blood from her eyes into a pool around her bare feet. Someone has written on the walls in blood. The words read:
You can never have her back
.

Mitchell and I have no choice but to return to work. We don't know where Alfarin is. His cousin, Thomason, said he got arrested after smashing up his dorm, but when Mitchell and I ask the HBI, they plead ignorance.

We barely see Septimus, either, and I know Mitchell is as worried about that as he is about Alfarin going missing. Without Septimus's presence to influence The Devil, we can't bear to think about all of the horrible things The Devil is thinking, and that just makes Elinor's imprisonment even worse. Septimus knew Mitchell and I could never be Dreamcatchers, and that was why he allowed us to try, to make us feel better. He just didn't realize until it was too late that Elinor could.

“
I hate him!
” yells Mitchell on the fourth day. He throws his calculator across the room, where it smashes into the opposite wall, breaking into several pieces. I know he's trying to immolate. We both are—but we can't.

We're back in Hell, and it's mocking us.

I don't know what to say, so I keep quiet. I want to ask questions, but I don't know who will give me the answers. Mitchell, Alfarin and even Septimus are dealing with their grief and guilt by turning away from me.

Then the door opens, and Septimus walks in. His red eyes look
unnaturally bloody and much larger than normal. He's lost his swagger. In fact, he's walking differently. More heavily. He has the weight of the Underworld on his shoulders.

“The master has instructed me to invoice Up There for the cost of the medical treatment Team ANGEL is receiving,” says Septimus. There's no intonation in his voice—it's even lost some of its southern twang.

“I hate him,” repeats Mitchell. “I hate him.” It's all he says these days.

“Medusa, would you prepare the invoice?” asks Septimus. He stopped calling me Miss Pallister on my first day in the office. I nod. If I open my mouth to reply, I'll start screaming, and I'm afraid I won't be able to stop.

“Private Jones has been released from the quarantine unit,” continues Septimus. “I understand from Healer Travis that Miss Jackson will have her final assessment today. I have suggested to the housing section that they be moved into segregated quarters for their own safety until they have acclimatized.”

Mitchell and I swap looks, but he moves his gaze from mine first. Sometimes I want to kiss him like I kissed him on the shores of Lake Pukaki. Not with passion, but because I think it will revive me from this death. I know Septimus wants us to feel compassion toward the angels, and I do, but it's hard to feel sorry for them when Elinor is trapped in a nightmare that has no end.

Still, the cruelty that has been forced on Owen, Jeanne, Angela and Johnny is desperately unfair. They were sent out to “save” the Dreamcatcher, too, and like Team DEVIL, they were duped. The authorities Up There knew the Dreamcatcher could be used as a weapon, and they wanted to capture it to use against Hell.

But the search party ended up getting infected, and because of that, Up There won't take them back. Owen and Angela have apparently taken the news better than Jeanne, who screams in a nonstop fit for twenty-four hours a day. And as for Johnny, the moment he found out that Elinor had replaced the original Dreamcatcher, he fell into a catatonic state and hasn't moved. He refuses to talk. I
haven't seen him—no one is allowed to see him—but Septimus has spoken to the healers, and they say Johnny's in shock.

No shit. How the Hell did they expect him to react to the news that the sister he's only just found is being perpetually tortured by The Devil? The idiots in this place make me sick. They're just vessels. There's no soul or humanity in anything anymore.

I can't concentrate. The figures and words written on this invoice just swirl into one amorphous mass. I pick at the toxic scabs on my arms and make them bleed, just to see the lumpy red gravy that is dead blood, because—for a second—it makes me feel like I'm sharing Elinor's fate.

We have to get her out of there. There must be another way, but I'm out of ideas. Which leads me to realize that I'm going to have to do some research.

In the vast arena of books that make up Hell's library, there just might be a tome that will give us enough information to figure out how to get Elinor back. But I'll need help to find it, and unfortunately, the only person I know who works in the library is Patty Lloyd. She won't help me—but she might help Mitchell.

I shake my head and manage to print up the final invoice. I leave it in Septimus's in-box for approval and clearance. Mitchell is watching me, and his eyes look so fierce with contempt, it's a wonder the paper doesn't burst into flames.