Dana realized that she had been holding the pose too long, and now the released tension in her back returned. She lowered herself to the floor, then rolled onto her back and stared up at the ceiling. Outside there was a rumble of thunder that sounded like laughter. Not raucous party laughter or her own dad’s deep-throated laugh when he was in one of his rare happy moods. No, this was different. Darker. It was a mean little laugh. As if the night were laughing at a secret it didn’t yet want to share. Wind hissed like snakes in the trees.
In the next bedroom, the song started again and her sister sang and the clock ticked its way deeper into the night.
CHAPTER 4
Craiger, Maryland
11:59 P.M.
“It’s okay,” said the man. “I won’t hurt you.”
He had the face of an angel, and he had been that to her for months. Her angel. As real as any angel she’d ever believed in.
His voice was soft and young, but his eyes were old, and they made the girl cringe. The girl’s head hurt, and the room seemed to stagger and tilt. There was something wrong with her head—she knew that much, though she couldn’t remember exactly what had happened.
The car? Something about the car? Yes, no … maybe?
Was she even driving?
The girl remembered leaving the party, remembered not liking the way one guy was pawing at her. Or the way the other boys looked at her and laughed. She felt like a piece of meat on a barbecue spit, turning and turning, being cooked on the hot flames of their smiles.
The girl tried to think, to clear her head, but it was so hard. Thinking hurt. There was a dull, constant ache, as if hands were squeezing the sides of her skull, and a heavy throb behind her eyes. It was almost as bad as a migraine, but it felt different. She felt different. Not sick to her stomach the way she was that time she had cramps so bad they’d triggered a migraine. This was as bad, but the pain felt raw; it felt new. Sharper.
With a jolt she realized that her thoughts were sliding away from the moment, and she jerked out of a semi-daze. She was in the corner, with nowhere else to go. Her shoulders bumped against the wall, and it was cold. There was dust and trash on the floor.
“It’s okay, little sister,” said the man—the angel—and she had to blink several times to clear her eyes so she could see him. See his weirdly old-looking eyes and his mean smile.
“Why are you doing this?” she asked, and her voice was a rusted-chain creak that didn’t even sound like her. Her throat hurt, too. Had she been screaming? Was that why her voice sounded like that? Maybe. Screaming seemed like something she wanted to do. Something that maybe she should do.
“I’m not doing anything,” said the angel. “It’s you who offered this gift to me. It’s you who are helping to bring about the dawn of the Red Age.”
“N-no!” she barked.
“The arms of paradise are open wide to embrace you, to thank you, to accept such a wonderful gift so freely given.”
“Please…,” she said, and then she realized that her legs were bending, that her traitor knees had buckled. She sank down before him as he approached. Behind him, through the cracked window glass, she could see the glare of headlights. Fixed. Parked. Her mom’s car? Had he brought the car here or had she driven here? The girl wasn’t sure. All she knew was that if the car was here, then she was in so much trouble. It was too late.
Not by the clock, though it was late enough there, too, she had no doubt.
No. It was too late for anything.
The angel squatted down in front of her, reached out, took her hands. He pressed her palms together and held them in front of her chest as if she were praying. Then he bent and kissed her fingertips. Very lightly, his eyelids fluttering closed.
“Thank you,” he said in the softest of voices.
“Please,” she begged.
It was her last word.
Then all she could do was scream.
CHAPTER 5
Scully Residence April 2, 12:01 A.M.
Dana woke with a scream.
Small, strangled, painful. It punched its way out of her chest and past the stricture in her throat and then died in the dark, still air of her room.
It had not been a random, meaningless scream.
It had been a word.
“Please!”
Cried out with all the need and horror and desperation that any single word could bear to carry.
She sat up, panting, bathed in sweat, watching fireworks burst like magic in the shadows around her as the sound of her own cry faded, faded, faded …
… and was gone.
It took the memory of the dream with it.
Most of it. Not all.
She saw a flash of light on metal. She felt a burn in her own skin. Not one, but several, but when she dug and probed at her wrists and side and head, there was nothing. No cut, no lingering bruise, no trace of the warm wetness of blood.
Nothing.
Except the memory of the knife.
Except the feeling of dying.
Except the feeling of being dead.
And something else. A face. A teenager or young man. Tall, she thought, though he was squatting down. Broad-shouldered. Strong. But his face was unclear. Not hidden by shadows, not exactly. It was more that it was shadows. That he had no real face. That there was only darkness where a face should have been.
Please …