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“Great.”
“Pearl, don’t hurt her.”
“But she might be violent…”
“She might be,” he agreed. “As I said, I felt it. There’s something off and sinister growing inside her. But the Ruby we know is still there. Maybe we just need to convince her to come back.”
“You should have told us about your little excursion. About her losing her magic and taking it elsewhere.”
“You would have been disappointed either way. And you and your sisters would have been vocal about it.” Her lack of denial confirmed that, but he cleared his throat. “Anyway, the important thing now is to find her. We find her, we take her home, and we figure out how to fix this.”
Pearl agreed and closed the call potion, leaving him dazed as an aftereffect. He got over it quickly and continued his search, hitting the spots Ruby frequented before he went to the ones she didn’t. Then he tried to imagine he was her, wondering where she would go with that much storm inside her, and figured out the answer. Maddox felt like he had hit the jackpot when he spotted the figure on top of the cliff, but the relief was short-lived when he realized a sheen was blocking him from entering, and something was already happening from inside.
“Ruby!”
She didn’t hear him, and poking the barrier just ensured it was impenetrable. He looked around for another opening, found it, and gritted his teeth. Then he climbed down the cliff, careful to stay in the parts where the waves didn’t hit as he inched his way inside the barrier via that blind spot.
“Ruby?” he tried again when he had climbed inside the circle, eyeing her glow warily. “Can you hear me?”
She didn’t respond and didn’t so much as blink. Ruby was motionless as she looked ahead, her eyes closed and her body quivering from the force of her energy. It gushed in the glow and the sheen, a powerful display that he felt in his bones. He forced down a shudder when he felt the other part of it: dark, sneaky, always dancing around the edges. Something was happening when the darkness didn’t notice him at all, and he suspected there was only one way to find out.
Maddox inhaled, gathering his bearings. Then he stepped into the glow and immediately felt the surge, but again, it still didn’t try to get him. But the scenario was changing before him, a vision so different from anything in Broom’s Isle. Then he was swallowed by it as if he was standing in that new world, the old one gone. Thunderstruck, his gaze latched on to what Ruby was looking at…or, to be more precise, who she was talking to.
“Is it really you? Are you alive?”
“You are not supposed to be here.”
The voice came out croaked and was followed by a hard cough. The man’s body looked like it had muscles on it, but the posture was so shriveled-up and the pallor was so gray that it felt like the man hadn’t seen sunlight or eaten any decent food in a while. Still, the silver eyes were enough to tell Maddox who it was.
“Silver, oh, my heavens. Silver, you survived. You are really here.”
“Ruby, what are you…how are you doing this? How are you here?”
“The important thing is that I’m here. Where is this?”
“This is a very bad place, Ruby, and you are not supposed to be here. It’s dangerous.”
There was more, but the word dangerous sank through Maddox’s mind and had him sweeping his gaze over the area. The rocks, lava, and smoke gave him a pretty good idea, but it was still a tossup between two known but mysterious places. One was sinister because it was home to the demons, while the other…
“Listen, things are not what they seem. You can’t trust anyone.”
“What do you mean?”
The dead bodies came into focus, too many for his comfort. Instinct rang not to trust anything—not even Silver—before movement at the side had his shoulders stiffening. He eyed the hissing smoke that came out thicker from a hole, then the rocks that moved at the force of it. One of the rocks vibrated harder than the rest before it dawned that no, he wasn’t looking at a rock.
The figure stirred, then rose from its curled position as if just waking up from slumber. It looked around and stopped at the sight of Ruby and Silver, red eyes tinged with fire. Then it crouched, its body non-human but also very different from Milos and the creatures on the other island. Pus and boil were visible everywhere, with smoke hissing out from each one, but it was the crazy energy pulsing from it that told Maddox what he was looking at, even when he had never seen one before—like it was sucking the life and soul out of every living thing it touched or even came near to.
Demon.
That they might be in the Underworld, home to the demons and their creators, blew his mind, but the stalking demon brought him out of his stupor. It was clever enough to hide in the hole’s smoke, using the camouflage to move—and it was headed straight toward the two, who were too caught up in each other to notice.
“Ruby!” Maddox screamed, but no sound came from him. Just as the demon crouched, his body snapped into motion, picking up a rock and hurling it toward the jumping body. He picked up another rock when he landed in front of the creature, blocking its path. “Ruby!”
There was still no sound, and the creature wasn’t on the ground for long, finding its footing in the blink of an eye and attacking its next target: him. He ducked and swerved, cautious of what that smoke and pus could do. He hissed when pain struck his back and realized a tail had come out, plunging straight into him. The next wave of pain blazed down his arm and—
“Mad!”
His head whipped toward her and met brown eyes filled with horror. He sensed another attack and leaped, then threw the rock at the creature and landed on it to avoid physical contact. He repeatedly pushed down the rock until he heard the give in the skin…then, the crunch of something breaking inside. The creature howled in agony then was unmoving. He looked up again and felt his heart drop when he saw the two siblings surrounded by the demons that had woken up during his fight.
