Escape Read online

  Neighborhood watch list? I mouth the words as if that will help my mind wrap around the idea that, not only is our neighbor a demon, but that we have a committee.

  “It is.” Movement behind Fuyumi draws her attention into her house, and she murmurs, “No, precious, stay inside. It’s not safe.”

  A high-pitched mew sounds, far too loud for a normal sized house cat, and Tac perks up, tufted ears swiveling with interest.

  Fuyumi turns back to us, her expression frigid. “Get off my lawn before I file a complaint for trespassing.”

  Without another word, she turns in a swirl of white robe and marches back inside. The door snaps shut, the sounds of the lock loud in the quiet night.

  Not wanting to ruin whatever relationship she has with the guys, I fight down the urge to stomp up there and give her a piece of my mind. I’m exhausted from lack of sleep over the last week and tired of ice demons shutting their doors in my face.

  With a roll of my shoulders, I turn and walk over to Tac, giving the glop on the ground a wide berth.

  I pat his shoulder to gain his attention. “Come on, big guy, time to go home.”

  When his saucer-sized green eyes stay fixed on the house, I glance back.

  A large cat sprawls in the bay window to the right of the door. While not on the same scale as Tac in terms of size, it puts large dogs to shame. Cream and tan stripes form an uneven pattern in its sleek fur, and its large, golden eyes fix on Tac. Two tails slowly waft back and forth behind it in a lazy swirl of interest.

  I turn back to Tac and grab his head to pull his attention away. “You stay away from that nekomata. She’ll eat you.”

  He chuffs into my face, moist air blowing back my hair.

  I grab his nose. “I’m serious. Nekomata are bad news.”

  Reluctant, he turns away, one wing smacking me in the back as he passes.

  When I make a move to follow, Kellen’s voice stops me. “Grab that thing, too, so we can get a good look at it.”

  “Thing?” I stare at him in confusion before my eyes drop to the puddle of yuck. “No.”

  “We can’t leave it in the yard. Fuyumi will bury us in fines at the clerk’s office if we do.”

  I back away from the puddle of goo, my bare toes curling in the grass. “Then you come get it.”

  His hands wrap around an iron spike, and he leans back into our yard. “No way am I going through Fuyumi’s wards. Two invaders are enough for one night.”

  That explains the buzz against my skin when I hopped the wall. I was too caught up in going after Tac to notice it at the time. Not very strong wards if I could brush them off that easily.

  I stare in disgust at the glob of nightmare. “Hey, Tac, come get this.”

  His tail flicks at me in answer before he crouches, then springs into the air, clearing the wall easily.

  “Just pick it up,” Kellen instructs.

  My eyes search the yard for something to use. A shovel, a garbage can, even a plastic bag, and come up empty. “With what?”

  “You’ve got hands.” Kellen gestures to the thing. “Just grab one of those tentacles.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me.” Reluctant, I pick my way over to the thing, the ground turning soft and sticky beneath my feet.

  Closer, it smells like cat spit and rancid meat. I hold my breath as I bend and grab the nearest appendage. It smooshes between my fingers, and when I lift it, it detaches from the rest of the body with a wet slurp.

  My stomach heaves, and I bite down the urge to vomit as I walk the tentacle to the wall and throw it at Kellen.

  Laughing, he ducks out of sight, yelling back, “Make sure you get all of it!”

  Thirty minutes—and multiple trips to and from the wall—later, I join him in the backyard where he stands over the collected remains of the monster.

  While I gathered pieces and tossed them over the wall, he actually made himself useful and fetched a large, industrial black trash bag to hold the bits. When I came back over the wall, slick with things I don’t want to think about, he already had it mostly reassembled. Or as reassembled as a half-masticated gelatinous creature could be.

  Lucky him, his rain-cloud wings kept the goo off of him, so I’m the only one left covered in slime.

  Laid out, the creature is much larger than I guessed while it flitted around. It takes up the entire trash bag, with a few of the tentacles hanging off the end. In death, the gelatinous body looks almost translucent. Thick, black tubes run from the tip of its appendages up into a gray mass in its bulbous head, centered behind the basketball-sized eye. It oozes gray and red fluid, the light snuffed out.

  Did its core return to Dreamland to be reborn? Or did Tac chomping on it end its existence? Will the creature with a hundred eyes know of its death and send more? How did it even escape Dreamland in the first place?

  I shift and unglue my arms from my body, holding my hands out from my sides. Drying fluids create strings of goo like iridescent wings under my arms. “I feel so gross.”

  “You stink, too,” Kellen murmurs, not really paying attention as he stares down at the monster. “Do you think this is a witch thing? Maybe I should call up my people to come take a look.”

  As I shake my head, my loose hair sticks to my shoulders and arms. “I already told you, it came from Dreamland. This is what I was talking about running into on the outskirts the last time I went there on my own.”

  “Dreamland doesn’t have an outskirt,” he protests, but it comes out like something he heard and now repeats without any real knowledge of his own.

  “You’ve never been to Dreamland, so how would you know?” Annoyed to have this conversation again, I pat my pocket, then head toward the path that leads to the front of the house. “I’m going to rinse off, then call Julian. He can come over and try to tell me I’m imagining things again.”

  “He’ll ignore your call.” Kellen paces around the garbage bag. “Take a shower, I’ll get his ass here.”

  Annoyed he’s right, I lift a hand in acknowledgment. While my cousin may ignore me to his heart’s content, he won’t dare ignore Kellen, not when the storm demon can jack up his rental fees and fire the dancers that work in his club.

  Glee shoots through me, and I wish I could be there when Julian takes that call. Seeing my cousin jump would go a long way toward improving my night.

  I open the front door to find Tobias in the entryway, one foot up on the bench as he laces up his tennis shoe.

  We freeze, eyeing each other warily.

  Since our last encounter earlier in the evening, he switched out his suit for soft flannel pants and a black t-shirt that clings to his muscular chest. His chestnut-brown hair lays soft across his forehead, giving him a deceptively youthful appearance as it softens the hard planes of his face. The vibrations of anger have calmed, too, leaving him almost relaxed.

  That changes, though, as his nostrils flare, and he straightens, his foot dropping to the floor. “Why do I smell blood? And what is that disgusting stench?”

  I keep my arms held out from my sides. “That’s me. I need to go scrub this stuff off. What are you doing awake?”

  “I got a call from the neighborhood watch.” His narrowed eyes sweep over me. “Something about people walking on our roof. When I checked Kellen’s room, he was gone. I thought a storm might have lured him away, but I suppose it was you?”

  “Tac escaped.” I try to edge past him, but his large body blocks the way. My head tips back, and I glare up at him. “Don’t worry, we got him back.”

  “Yes, I saw him slinking up the stairs as I came down.” His gaze fixes on my chest with interest.

  I peer down at myself, horrified when I discover the slime from the monster turned my tank top transparent. My nipples pebble against the thin fabric, the pink areola clearly visible.

  Swearing, I hook a finger in the neck of the shirt and pull it out. It leaves my skin with a wet, suction-cupped slurp, and cold air rushes in to raise goose bumps on my exposed bod
y. “Ugh, I seriously need to get in the shower. Kellen’s in the backyard. Julian’s going to be here soon, too. Can you wake up Emil? Kellen said he’s probably warded himself into his room, so you might need to leverage some catalyst woo-woo against him.”

  Tobias’s thick eyebrows shoot up. “Leverage some catalyst woo-woo against him?”

  “Yeah, you know.” I wiggle my fingers at him. “Find something in his room ready to break and make it happen.”

  He shakes his head in disbelief. “That’s not how it works.”

  An irritated huff escapes. As the slime starts to dry, it turns my clothes into papier mâché. If I don’t get a move on, I’ll have to rip them off. “You’re the tipping point, so tip something. Just get him out of his cave.”

  Tobias folds his arms, an unmovable barrier between me and hot water. “Why’s Kellen in the backyard? And why is your cousin coming over?”

  “Just go out back and see for yourself.” I shove my sticky hands into his face. “I need the shower. Now.”

  Instead of moving, he grabs my wrist, pulls my arm straight, then runs a blunt finger along my forearm, lifting away a glob of red-tinted goo. “Is this your blood?” He wipes away more, revealing bright-pink flesh beneath. “Why does your skin look like that?”

  With the slime gone away, pain flares down my arm like a bad sunburn, and my whole body begins to itch. Reaching up, I scratch the exposed part of my arm, and my skin tears as if made of tissue paper, streaks of blood rising to the surface.

  Horror rushes through me. “Tobias, I really need to shower.”

  In answer, he scoops me into his arms, heedless of the slime that sticks to his shirt, and runs for the stairs. His voice thunders ahead of us. “Emil, get out here!”

  The house shudders in response, followed by the sound of things breaking.

  Emil’s door crashes open as we reach the second-floor landing, his frozen voice filling the hall. “What’s wrong?”

  “Call Landon. We may need him to come here.” Tobias shoulders his way into the bathroom, the door knocking against the cast iron tub.

  The top hinge gives, the door listing to one side. As Tobias kicks it out of the way, it falls sideways across the opening, the top corner digging into the wall next to the pedestal sink.

  Carefully, he sets me into the tub. “Lift your arms. I’m going to take your top off slowly. Tell me if it hurts.”

  Eyes wide, I obey the command. A fine tremor runs through my body, the pain in my arm intensifying with every second that passes. I don’t know what the slime did to me, but it’s starting to burn all over my body, and a vision of my skin sloughing off rises to the forefront of my imagination.

  I whimper, tears welling in my eyes. “Hurry. I think it’s eating through my skin.”

  Tobias ignores my plea as he carefully lifts the hem of my tank top. It sticks to my skin and burns like acid as he peels it away.

  All emotion melts from his face to leave a blank mask in its place. My fear heightens at his complete lack of reaction to what he uncovers, and I close my eyes, unable to look, to know for sure that my skin is coming off with my clothes.

  Emil’s voice drifts through the broken door. “Landon’s not answering.”

  “He might already be on his way,” Tobias says, his tone flat. “He seems to know when Adie’s in trouble.”

  I whimper again at the confirmation. Tobias wouldn’t think I needed Landon unless something was really, really wrong.

  My eyes blink open, and I stare at the ceiling. “This should hurt more, shouldn’t it?”

  “Yes.” The single word holds a wealth of acknowledgment.

  Air catches in my lungs, and I blink back the tears. “Why doesn’t it hurt more? It stings, and where my skin broke burns, but...”

  “I don’t know.” The fabric clears my breasts. “Close your eyes.”

  My lashes flutter shut, and I hold my breath as he pulls the tank top over my head. The thin straps give last with a slurping tug that makes my stomach heave.

  “You’re doing good,” Tobias murmurs. “I’m going to get your pants off now, okay?”

  Another whimper sticks in my throat, and I nod. “Emil?”

  “Yes, Adie?” The sound of shrieking metal echoes around the bathroom, followed by a thump from out in the hall. A moment later, Emil’s voice comes from right next to the tub. “I’m here.”

  “Check Tac.” A hard lump fills my throat. “He had this stuff in his mouth.”

  Cold fingers brush my cheek. “I’ll make sure he’s okay.”

  Tobias tugs on the drawstrings around my waist. “There’s not as much on your pants, but it’s dried some.” A hollow rap vibrates through my thigh as he taps on one part with his nail. “I’ll try my best to be gentle.”

  A choked laugh fights its way out. “Just get it off. Please.”

  He works in silence, the only sound in the bathroom the stomach rolling slurp as he moves the pants down my legs. When he reaches my thigh, the dried section comes off with the pop of a suction-cup and the tug of more skin peeling away.

  I clench my teeth, fighting down the urge to vomit.

  At last, Tobias lifts my right foot, then my left, and the sound of something wet hitting the floor makes me sigh with relief.

  The shower curtain rustles, and Tobias’s quiet voice breaks the silence. “We need to get the rest of the slime off. But I don’t know how your skin is going to react to the water.”

  I grit my teeth. “Just do it.”

  The showerhead clanks as Tobias lifts it from the holder, followed by the squeak of the faucet. “Ready?”

  Nodding again, I brace myself.

  “Stop!” Landon’s voice floods the bathroom, and a moment later, my ears pop with the suction of displaced air.

  My eyes snap open, and I turn my head to see my mentor now standing next to the bathtub. He wears his usual dirty sweats and t-shirt, his flesh degenerated from loss of energy. His disheveled, white curls stick up haphazardly around his head as if he arrived through a wind tunnel.

  Monarch yellow eyes fix on Tobias, wide with panic. “Turn off the water. You’ll burn her alive.”

  Tobias blanches and swiftly shuts the water off. “But we need to wash off the slime. It’s eating her skin.”

  “It’s acid. Don’t you know anything about science?” Landon reaches into the tub to pull me farther back. “If you douse her with water while all this slime is still on her, it will eat through her flesh and destroy her corporeal form.”

  Alarmed now, Tobias snatches a towel and throws it into the bottom of the tub, soaking up the small amount of water that escaped the faucet. “How do we get it off her, then?”

  “Ethanol would be best.” At Tobias’s blank stare, Landon says, “Alcohol-based hand sanitizer? Sixty percent or higher?”

  Tobias slowly shakes his head. “Why would we have that in the house? We don’t get sick.”

  Desperation fills Landon’s voice. “Vodka? Something really expensive?”

  “We have that,” Kellen says from the doorway. “Landon, when did you get here?” His lightning kissed eyes sweep the bathroom. “And what’s going on?” His attention lands on me, and his lips part. “Oh, my god. What happened?”

  “Bring the vodka,” Landon snaps. “As much as you have.”

  Kellen’s reaction makes the terror rush back, and I jerk my eyes away from the mirror over the sink before I see myself. I don’t want whatever’s wrong burned into my memory.

  Landon strokes my cheek. “Don’t worry, you’re going to be okay.”

  “What did this?” Tobias demands on a growl.

  “Something that shouldn’t have been able to leave Dreamland.” Landon searches my face. “Where is it?”

  “Tac killed it. It’s in the backyard.” I whimper as the panic builds, and my eyes jump to Tobias. “Why hasn’t Emil come back? Is Tac hurt?”

  “I’m sure he’s fine,” he soothes. “He eats all sorts of things without any harm coming to h
im.”

  “But this is different.” My toes curl against the curved bottom of the tub. “If he’s hurt, Emil will never forgive me.”

  Kellen runs back into the bathroom, crowding into the space. He holds a crate with large bottles of vodka poking from the top. “Is this enough?”

  My eyes swing to him. “Kellen, go check on Emil and Tac. He had that thing in his mouth.”

  “What thing?” Tobias demands, the scent of forest fires creeping into the room. “Why isn’t Adie already healing?”

  “She can’t until the slime is removed.” Landon takes the first bottle from Kellen and rips off the top. He turns to Tobias. “Get your shirt off.”

  My horror-filled eyes drop to Tobias’s front, where slime slicks his hands and arms, sticking his t-shirt to his body.

  Tobias grabs the hem and yanks it over his head, and I sigh with relief to see his skin stay in place. It glows red like he has a sunburn, but otherwise, he seems fine.

  As he holds his arms over the tub, Landon pours the open bottle of vodka over him, using a hand towel to wipe away the slime. Once Tobias’s arms are free of goo, he takes the towel and swipes at his torso, then tosses it to the tiled floor where the rest of our contaminated clothes lay.

  Landon opens another bottle and thrusts it at Tobias. “Start at her top. Use your hands. The towel will be too rough with how far it’s progressed. She must have been in contact with the slime for a lot longer than you. Once the slime is gone, you can safely wash her off.” He then turns to Kellen. “Where is it?”

  “In the backyard.” The muscles in Kellen’s jaw jumps. “Did that thing do this? I made her bring it back over the wall. Is this my fault?”

  “You can blame yourself later.” Landon takes the crate from him and sets it next to the tub. “Take me to it. I need to make sure it’s dead.”

  “Check on Tac!” I yell as the two men stride out of the bathroom, then yelp as cold liquid splashes down my front, followed by the sweep of Tobias’s hands.

  Vodka fumes sting my nose, and it burns on my raw flesh, but again, not as much as it should. That worries me more than if it had set my body on fire. Does the slime have some kind of numbing agent in it to make its victim unaware of the true danger as it slowly eats through their skin? The implications make my gorge rise, and I clench my teeth before I vomit all over Tobias.