“You’re making a mistake,” Darien began in a strangled voice. “Loren can’t operate the Well—she doesn’t have that power you think she has.” He tried to say more, to come up with an explanation they might believe.
But Randal interrupted. “Wrong thing to say, my son.” He tightened his mental hold on Loren, squeezing so hard that blood slipped from her nose and dribbled down her lips. She gasped in pain, curling over her middle where she knelt in the Well, as though she’d been punched. Violet-scented waters splashed around her, the stench as cloying as the floral reek of vampire skin.
Darien stepped forward, hands curling into fists again, but Randal’s men converged on him. One of them offered him a plastic bag that was filled with chalky pills.
Darien bit out, “What the hell is that?”
“Take one,” Randal said. “Take one and perhaps I’ll stop squishing your girlfriend’s brain.”
His breaths were coming heavy and fast, and grey was closing around the edges of his vision. He’d never fainted before in his life, had never known how it felt to have the threat of falling unconscious looming like a shadow before him.
He would kill these fuckers—
“Next is her heart, Darien,” Randal said. “You and I both know human hearts are not as resilient as ours.”
Loren was shaking her head, blood gushing from her nose and dripping into the waters of the Well replica. When she blinked, red tears leaked from her eyes.
Darien didn’t hesitate any longer. He retrieved one pill from the bag one of Randal’s men was still holding before him and placed it under his tongue.
The effects were instantaneous. The drug short-circuited his thought process and had his Familiar Spirit flopping to the ground and disappearing into his shadow with a low whine. The ceiling began rippling as though it were an ocean, the shades of gray changing to bloodred. The faces of every person around him shifted into those of grotesque demons, with horns and pits for eyes. Even Loren—
Loren—
Darien blinked.
And blinked again.
“Fantastic, aren’t they?” Randal smiled. “I bought them at the Umbra Forum. They’re very addictive; that first high is so extraordinary, you’ll find yourself aching so badly for another that you’d gladly kill yourself to get one more pill.” Randal’s tone turned mocking as he said, “I thought if anyone would enjoy that, it would be you.”
He stepped up to Darien’s side and slapped either cheek, seeing how he’d respond, if at all. Darien’s body did not comply with the instructions his brain was screaming at him.
Unable to hold himself up under the crippling nausea that was suddenly gripping his gut, Darien fell to his knees, bone popping. He was only vaguely aware of someone tying his now-compliant hands behind his back, while another person removed every weapon that was on him.
As soon as his hands were tied, Darien grazed one wrist against his watch, turning the face of it with an inaudible click. Everything that was said from this moment on would be broadcast through a radio system to the other Devils, who he’d called on his way here. If they could somehow get to Loren and take her away from here…
The thought trailed off as the drug dug its claws into his brain, forcing the faces of demons into his vision. Maniacal faces with sharp teeth and curved horns.
“I’m going to ask you one more time,” Randal said. “How do we operate the Well?”
When Darien didn’t speak, Randal stepped up to the Well, reached over the curved edge of it, and grabbed hold of Loren’s hair, pulling so hard she gasped aloud.
Darien barked,“Don’t you fucking touch her!”
Randal clicked his tongue. “The Well, Darien,” he pressed. “Or I’ll feed your useless girlfriend to the river scum.” As if in affirmation, the water of the river flowing below ground trembled as the ridged back of a great serpent rose out of its depths.
Darien wracked his brain for an idea, but the drug was making it hard to think. Every sound in the room—the rushing of the river, the rhythms of multiple hearts, the thrum of the Well sitting there like some giant cauldron—was ten times as loud.
Randal was pulling on Loren’s hair again.
A sob burst out of her.“Darien,”she gasped.
“Alright,”Darien snapped with a shake of his head, as though it might rid him of the hallucinations. His brain was liquid. “Alright, I’ll tell you!”
Randal waited, a cold smile on his face.
“There’s a house near Dusk Hollow,” Darien gasped out, blinking against the hallucinations. He let his eyelids slip shut as he forced himself to concentrate. “On the corner of Bernard and Tulsen.” He saw that house in his mind, as clear as a photograph. He’d never forgotten it.
Not for a second.
