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Chapter Thirty-Seven
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Nameless: The Darkness Comes Chapter Thirty-Eight
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHTI was sitting at the kitchen table staring at my ill-gotten vial of blood when the phone rang.“Hey,” Seth said. “I made a few phone calls today. I think we’ve been going about it all wrong. We’ll never get Lydia back this way. We’re going to have to make some changes to the plan.”I tossed the dark red vial from hand to hand. From the look of things, Bradley Guzman had an iron count that would make Nathan Stark blush. He also needed to hydrate more, but it didn’t seem in my best interest to track him down and let him and the demon know.“What plan? The fight at OK Corral plan? Where I heroically find Lydia and snatch her away from the jaws of Demonic Sparkles?”He sighed. “Yes. That plan. How’s it working for us so far?”I growled.“Exactly.”“So what does the new and improved plan entail?”He suddenly sounded very weary. “We have to look as stable as possible. Can you do that? Act like a fine, upstanding citizen? I’ll try not to kill myself, and you don’
Nameless: The Darkness Comes Chapter Thirty-Nine
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINEI was sitting on a carefully neutral couch, staring into the face of a carefully neutral woman.“What are you thinking?” she asked me. Her voice was, no surprise, carefully neutral.I was thinking that I hated this place. I was thinking that Seth’s idea of playing by the rules totally bites, especially since it meant meeting with a counselor to see if we’re crazycakes. I’m thinking that this broad could use a little pizazz, like some bright lipstick or highlights in her hair. That made me think of Reed Taylor, which made me think that I hate myself a little bit. And that made me mad, which made me hate everything else. A lot.“I was thinking about how my motorcycle is in the shop and how grateful I am to my kind brother for letting me borrow his car today. He’s so caring and responsible.”I tuck my combat boots neatly together and smile demurely at the woman. She almost smiles back but not really.“Luna, you know why we’re here.”“Yes.”“Why don’t you tell m
Nameless: The Darkness Comes Chapter Forty
CHAPTER FORTY“Therapy must be good for you. You hardly look homicidal at all.”“Ha ha, big brother.”I threw myself into an empty chair and tossed the car keys to Seth. He was crouched over the kitchen table, doing his ceaseless paperwork. Filing for custody, filing to see Lydia whenever she was found, doing whatever he could. Truth was, I was feeling pretty good. I wouldn’t say the counselor was playing for Team Luna, per se, but she wasn’t running around with the demonic hordes. That’s a step in the right direction.I looked at Seth. “Don’t repeat this, and if you do, I’ll deny saying it, but I think that things might eventually turn out after all.”“I wouldn’t count on it.”I was out of my chair so fast that Seth nearly fell over. Papers scattered everywhere. “What’s wrong? What’s going on?” he asked.Mouth was standing in the doorway. He looked equal parts grim and angry.“What are you doing here?” I asked him. My hands were balled against my sides, but I didn’t notice. “P
Nameless: The Darkness Comes Chapter Forty-One
CHAPTER FORTY-ONEIt took Seth about 60 seconds to come to. I was ready.“Tell me about this Tip-Toe Shadow.”He moaned, touched the back of his head where he had hit the floor. “I want a drink. Do we have anything to drink? Whisky? Vodka?”“Since when have you touched a drop? Stop stalling, and tell me about them. Now.”His face was dangerously white. Part of me said to stop riding him so hard, and the other part said to heck with it, press the guy until he squawks. I don’t know what exactly was going on with Mouth back there, but it had been major. And it had been ugly.“Did . . . did this demon really say to tell you about the Tip-Toe Shadow? I mean, did it use that name?” He turned huge eyes on me, and suddenly Seth seemed decades younger. It scared me.“Yes. What do I need to know?”He sighed, and it was such a hollow, broken sound. Chilling, really, especially from Pulled-Together Seth.“You know that name, Luna. You just don’t remember. You were too young. We both were.
Nameless: The Darkness Comes Chapter Forty-Two
CHAPTER FORTY-TWOSeth was right about the rain. It started when I was about half a mile from the house. I could feel the anger on my face, and my mascara was surely running. I had to look like a lunatic.I snorted. The irony of it was that I had been trying so hard to be normal. Not just lately but always. Life isn’t kind to outcasts, and nobody is on the fringes more than the Demon Girl. And Seth knew? Had caused it?I couldn’t think about it anymore. My head would explode, and I would murder my brother. Besides that, Seth was the only person in the world I had at the moment. No matter how angry I was, I still loved him.Although there are different levels of love and now he’s just dropped down a few hundred pegs. Bottom rung love. Subterranean love.A demon wisped by. It had the body of human and the head of a dog. Great. Just what I needed: another reminder of demonic Lydia’s wolf murderer. Like that scene hadn’t already played itself out in my head a zillion times today.Mou
Nameless: The Darkness Comes Chapter Forty-Three
CHAPTER FORTY-THREEMy thoughts were going wild as I drove to Reed Taylor’s house. Anubis had very nearly stolen my soul as well as breaking my face, and I was still cursing myself for that. I had misjudged him. I thought about Seth’s confession about the Tip-Toe Shadow, and my eyes narrowed. I had misjudged everything.Well, if I was so great at misjudging, perhaps I had misjudged Reed Taylor.I pulled into his driveway and felt like pulling right out again. His house was perfect. His lawn, although more overgrown than I had ever seen it, was a thing of beauty. The flower bed was blooming with more flowers and . . . wait, are those actually weeds? Real weeds dared to invade Reed Taylor’s yard? Suddenly, every sense was alert. I slammed the car door and scanned the area. Something creepy and relatively harmless hovered around the backyard, yes, but that wasn’t alarming. But weeds? And the too-long grass? For such a cool, laid-back guy, Reed Taylor usually kept things surprisingly ti
Nameless: The Darkness Comes Chapter Forty-Four
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR“Oh, Luna,” Reed Taylor said and squatted down beside me. I was too dazed to move. I noticed the blood running from my face and soaking into the porous stone steps. Nice color, good body. I wasn’t as iron deficient as I had told the counselor.“Sorry,” I tried to say, but the word came out funny.Reed Taylor cupped my face gently, turning it tenderly this way and that. I closed my eyes.“I haven’t seen you attacked on the street like this before,” he said finally. I missed his hands when he pulled them away.“They usually don’t . . . ” I stopped talking, tried to touch my mouth. The mere thought of my own searching fingers made me cringe, and I blinked tears out of my eyes.Reed Taylor stood up. “You need to go to the hospital. Is Seth home? I’ll give him a call, tell him to pick you up.”“Can’t . . . you take me?”My words were slurred. I suddenly felt very tired and cold. I shivered, and Reed Taylor looked away.“I can’t,” he said. “And I can’t have an amb
Nameless: The Darkness Comes Chapter Forty-Five
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVEThe sun was starting to rise by the time we bailed out of the hospital.“I am so tired,” Seth told me. He yawned as he got into the car. “I can’t wait to go to bed.”“Spill,” I demanded. “You said I wasn’t astute about Reed Taylor. What was I missing?”“Cripes, Luna. You sure you want to do this? You’ll be wound up, and we’ll never get any sleep.”I grabbed the lapels of his shirt and yanked him halfway out of his seat. “Seth Masterson, if you don’t tell me right this minute, I swear I’ll . . . ”“He was high, okay? He was high. Or coming down from it. That’s why he couldn’t bring you in or risk the ambulance. They would have known.My fingers went slack. Seth pulled himself gently out of my grip. “Listen, maybe now isn’t the time to talk about it. We already have a lot on our plates, and there’s nothing you can—”“He’s using again.”“Looks like it.”“After being clean for so long.”“It happens. I’m sorry, Luna.”“Because I broke up with him?”He shrugge
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Nameless: The Darkness Comes Epilogue
EPILOGUEI wish I could say I had imagined everything. For once, I wished that I was crazy, but that isn’t how life ends up. I’ll tell you how it ends up: It finishes out in its own fine way.After Seth bailed out of the House of Horrors, he headed straight for the police department. Half of what he said didn’t make sense, but they managed to piece together something about the mother of his child being totally strung out and unresponsive, and his daughter was missing, and demons were frickin’ everywhere. “Demons everywhere” is usually code for “Holy crap, everybody has gone nuts in that crack house” so they loaded up their gear and came. They made Seth wait outside while they came in and found me sobbing over Cecilia’s boyfriend, who had overdosed on heroine. Poor little me, I was absolutely traumatized by seeing death so up close and personal, they thought. They carted Reed Taylor off and took Sparkles away in an ambulance. Then they turned their attention to Seth and me. Good, hard
Nameless: The Darkness Comes Chapter Fifty
CHAPTER FIFTYI opened my eyes and gasped. The stabbing between my shoulder blades was too much to take. Every nerve was raw, a silver blade raked down each centimeter of skin. It felt right somehow, like hitting somebody on the head and killing them felt right, like running your car into a retaining wall felt right.“Let me die let me die let me die!” I screamed. I writhed on the floor, trying to cover my head and curl my body into a protective ball.“I have you,” Reed Taylor shouted to me over the noise. Wind roared and howled. No, not wind. The Tip-Toe Shadow. The shadow and somebody else.Mouth.My eyes were rolling up in my head. Reed Taylor gently shook me.“Luna, stick with me. I have to tell you something, okay? Okay?”My lips were pulled back from my teeth and my body convulsing from the agony, but I struggled to meet his gaze, blinked.He tried to smile, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “Baby, I’m sorry. About everything. All of it. But I have to tell you something very
Nameless: The Darkness Comes Chapter Forty-Nine
CHAPTER FORTY-NINEIt hurt me to see the ones I loved damaged like this. Seth chased away, Reed Taylor broken, Mouth angry and helpless. All of these people brought together involuntarily because they cared about me in one way or another. Each, in their own way, only wanted to help.“Luna,” Mouth said, and he sounded worried. “Why are you looking at me like that? What are you thinking?”I reached for his hand, smiled. I ran my fingers down his cheek. “Thank you for everything, Mouth. I hope you know how special you are to me.”“Luna,” he said warningly, but I had already turned to Reed Taylor. “Reed Taylor, I . . . ”There wasn’t anything more I could say. His wild hair, his gorgeous greens that had gone frightened and worried and were now narrowed with resolve. He was perfect. He was my everything. How can you explain that to someone?“I love you,” I said simply, and then I turned to the Tip-Toe Shadow. “Demon!” I screamed and spread my arms wide. “Taste The Mark! I invite you i
Nameless: The Darkness Comes Chapter Forty-Eight
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHTMouth wasn’t happy. I could tell it by his wispiness. I could tell it by the way his mouth set itself into a firm line.I didn’t care.“Dolly, dolly,” sang the Tip-Toe Shadow, and he ran his long fingers down my hair, twisted them around my neck. They went around several times.“Can . . . can you let Reed Taylor go now, please?”I wanted to sound strong, but the feel of those dark fingers on my skin made my mouth go dry.“Reed Taylor, where is Lydia?”“There’s magic in the water.”Reed Taylor’s voice but not his words. I reached for him, but the demon pulled us further away.“No, dollies. Bad dollies.” He shook us, and I choked, grasping at my neck. Mouth clenched his fists but did nothing.“Hey, knock it off,” I hissed as soon as I had my voice back.The Tip-Toe Shadow giggled. “You want to talk to the puppet? Hear what the puppet has to say? Okay. Okay okay. Oh, it will make you cry. Big, soft, sad tears, and I will lap them from your face, and I will b
Nameless: The Darkness Comes Chapter Forty-Seven
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVENSeth was crouched over somebody on the floor. My heart sunk. It’s Reed. It’s Reed. It’s Reed.“It’s Sparkles,” Seth said, checking her pulse and breathing. She looked like she was barely conscious. Her demon twined around her arms and legs. “I heard her moaning in the back room.”I narrowed my eyes at the sight of her and spit on the ground. “What’s she doing here?” My eyes widened. “Wait, if she’s here, where’s Lydia? Is she here too?”Seth shook his head. “I didn’t see her. I looked everywhere.”I knelt by Sparkles, tried to make her eyes focus. “Sparkles! Where is Lydia? Lydia?” Her eyes rolled. I slapped her in the face, but she didn’t even react. Even her demon was moving slower than usual.What was going on here? Suddenly I had a thought. I yanked up the sleeve of her shirt. Fresh track marks. She was using. Disgusted, I let her arm fall to the ground with a thud.“You’re useless,” I spat. “You’re a waste of a person and a mother. You deserve everything
Nameless: The Darkness Comes Chapter Forty-Six
CHAPTER FORTY-SIXSeth opened the door from the inside.“I don’t see him,” he whispered. “I thought maybe he’d come to investigate the window.”I stepped inside and was immediately assaulted by the stench of rotting meat. Flies buzzed around the room in a swarm, blackening the broken window.“Ugh,” I said and covered my nose with my hand.“What? What is it?” Seth peered around me anxiously. “What do you see?”Something that looked suspiciously like entrails hung from the walls. Spider webs made out of skin covered the ceilings. I noticed my feet soaking in the familiar, bloody carpet.“I see a slaughterhouse. How about you?”He touched the walls gingerly. “This wallpaper is atrocious, but that’s the worst of it. That’s it. It’s not real, Luna. Let’s go.”I nodded and removed my hand from my nose. If it isn’t real, it isn’t real.A small boy swam through the air. He kicked his feet and splashed in nothingness. His dark eyes ran over Seth curiously.“Soul surfer?” I asked and
Nameless: The Darkness Comes Chapter Forty-Five
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVEThe sun was starting to rise by the time we bailed out of the hospital.“I am so tired,” Seth told me. He yawned as he got into the car. “I can’t wait to go to bed.”“Spill,” I demanded. “You said I wasn’t astute about Reed Taylor. What was I missing?”“Cripes, Luna. You sure you want to do this? You’ll be wound up, and we’ll never get any sleep.”I grabbed the lapels of his shirt and yanked him halfway out of his seat. “Seth Masterson, if you don’t tell me right this minute, I swear I’ll . . . ”“He was high, okay? He was high. Or coming down from it. That’s why he couldn’t bring you in or risk the ambulance. They would have known.My fingers went slack. Seth pulled himself gently out of my grip. “Listen, maybe now isn’t the time to talk about it. We already have a lot on our plates, and there’s nothing you can—”“He’s using again.”“Looks like it.”“After being clean for so long.”“It happens. I’m sorry, Luna.”“Because I broke up with him?”He shrugge
Nameless: The Darkness Comes Chapter Forty-Four
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR“Oh, Luna,” Reed Taylor said and squatted down beside me. I was too dazed to move. I noticed the blood running from my face and soaking into the porous stone steps. Nice color, good body. I wasn’t as iron deficient as I had told the counselor.“Sorry,” I tried to say, but the word came out funny.Reed Taylor cupped my face gently, turning it tenderly this way and that. I closed my eyes.“I haven’t seen you attacked on the street like this before,” he said finally. I missed his hands when he pulled them away.“They usually don’t . . . ” I stopped talking, tried to touch my mouth. The mere thought of my own searching fingers made me cringe, and I blinked tears out of my eyes.Reed Taylor stood up. “You need to go to the hospital. Is Seth home? I’ll give him a call, tell him to pick you up.”“Can’t . . . you take me?”My words were slurred. I suddenly felt very tired and cold. I shivered, and Reed Taylor looked away.“I can’t,” he said. “And I can’t have an amb
Nameless: The Darkness Comes Chapter Forty-Three
CHAPTER FORTY-THREEMy thoughts were going wild as I drove to Reed Taylor’s house. Anubis had very nearly stolen my soul as well as breaking my face, and I was still cursing myself for that. I had misjudged him. I thought about Seth’s confession about the Tip-Toe Shadow, and my eyes narrowed. I had misjudged everything.Well, if I was so great at misjudging, perhaps I had misjudged Reed Taylor.I pulled into his driveway and felt like pulling right out again. His house was perfect. His lawn, although more overgrown than I had ever seen it, was a thing of beauty. The flower bed was blooming with more flowers and . . . wait, are those actually weeds? Real weeds dared to invade Reed Taylor’s yard? Suddenly, every sense was alert. I slammed the car door and scanned the area. Something creepy and relatively harmless hovered around the backyard, yes, but that wasn’t alarming. But weeds? And the too-long grass? For such a cool, laid-back guy, Reed Taylor usually kept things surprisingly ti
