Deception So Dark Read online

  All four walls of this little cabin were covered with mirrors. Small, large, round, square. Dozens of mirrors, covering every inch of wall. A sunbeam streamed from a single round window in the door. One mirror caught it and bounced it to another, and another, and another, making the place glow with silver.

  This was Deirdre’s premonition. It wasn’t Lady Elke’s shed. It was this cabin. Cole’s mirror-lined cabin. I left Lilybrook for my brother and sister, and ended up in a little house with silver walls.

  And in Deirdre’s dream, after silver, came red.

  “Cole, what’s wrong with your eyes?” Nathan said. “How did they get so black?”

  “I got them from her,” he said. “She calls them Nightmare Eyes.”

  My fingers tingled, then my hands. I reached out to my brother and sister.

  “You’re awake,” Cole noted. “Good.” He nudged Jillian and Logan with his foot and tapped the gun at his waist. “I had to give these two an extra dose. Their PK makes them too powerful. But you, I want you awake for this.”

  My tongue heavy, I licked my lips. I tried to speak but it came out as a raspy huff of air.

  He looked down at me with my Nightmare Eyes, his solemn calm more chilling than my father’s crazed panic or Lady Elke’s frenzied fury.

  My arms and legs were tingling now, and I could move them enough to roll over and push myself up to my hands and knees. With my legs folded under me, I supported my torso by planting my hands flat on the floor. My head was heavy, but I lifted it. Nathan stood a few feet away, leaning against a wooden table with his arms crossed and glowering at me.

  Tristan wouldn’t even have a warning premonition about this. Not with Nathan here, blocking everything.

  “You’re feeling hopeless,” Cole said. “Probably because Tristan will never know what happened to you, right?” He gazed into one of the mirrors, his eyes hard and cold and black. “I can see him right now, through the reflection on the TV screen in the Connellys’ family room. He thinks you left Lilybrook already with your brother and sister. Dennis and Deirdre are there too. They’re trying to comfort him, but he’s despondent. Poor guy.” He put his hand to his chest. “You broke his heart.”

  Dennis was okay. He was alive. Cole had lied about the heart attack. I hung my head, not because of the drug, but because of relief for Dennis, and remorse and regret for Tristan.

  No one will know what happened to Jillian, Logan, and me. Everyone believed we got on a bus and left Lilybrook. I’d asked Tristan not to look for us. No one would even know that we were dead. And Nathan would safeguard any traces of evidence against himself and his brother.

  All around me, silver glittered and glimmered, sparkled and glowed, taunting me. Slowly, incrementally, the silver grew brighter. It seemed to pulsate, vibrate, hum, sing at a pitch I couldn’t quite hear. My reflection shone in the mirrors. So many mirrors. My face appeared disjointed, sliced into pieces.

  I closed my eyes against it. But when my eyes were closed, all I saw were the Nightmare Eyes, glowering at me. I called in the fog to numb my heart-pounding fear, but it resisted. It lifted instead, showing me visions of this little house with silver walls.

  ❀

  Through the mirrors, he watches the events unfurl at the APR. The Kitteridge Killers, the people who’d murdered his father, the people who’d plunged a knife into his back as he tried to crawl away, have been captured. They’re locked up forever, but that’s not good enough. Two of their spawn have run off, but he watches as one of them decides to stay in Lilybrook. With the Connellys, no less.

  Perfect.

  ❀

  Everywhere she goes, he watches her via reflective surfaces. Mirrors. Windows. Screens. The glass on his wristwatch. Silver crayon drawings. And knives. She feels shame, seeing those knives. Her guilt and grief burn through her blood. Her tainted, tarnished killers’ blood.

  He feels the girl’s despair along with her. It burns through his blood too. Her shame festers within her, manifesting itself into a pair of glaring, gleeful black eyes. They invade her dreams, and in her waking hours, they follow her around like a shadow. Nightmare Eyes, she calls them.

  He can use these Nightmare Eyes.

  ❀

  There are no reflective surfaces in Wendy Carson’s cinder-block cell, but there are plenty in Andrew Carson’s hospital-cell. He watches him every day through the reflection on the heart monitor, whispering to him, torturing him with threats against his darling Tessa Blessa. He tells him that she is going to pay the ultimate price for his sins. He tells him that he and his wife will finally know how it feels to have the life of someone they love snuffed out like the flame of a candle.

  ❀

  Nathan wants revenge. Retribution. Retaliation. Sending the Kitteridge Killers to prison isn’t good enough. Nathan is dismayed that Tristan, his best friend, doesn’t feel the same way as he does. Tristan is in love with the Spawn of the Kitteridge Killers. Tristan even broke up with Melanie, a fellow victim, to be with her.

  He understands Nathan’s pain because he feels it too. He can feel Nathan’s sense of betrayal. He can feel Nathan’s need for retribution along with his own, and it grows exponentially.

  But Nathan’s doing it wrong. He’s being too obvious, bullying her and blocking Tristan from his premonitions. When things get bad for the Spawn—and things will get very, very bad—everyone will immediately suspect him. He needs to rein Nathan in.

  ❀

  He harnesses the Spawn’s Nightmare Eyes and, using reflective surfaces, projects them into others. It only works with the weak ones. It almost worked on Aaron the computer geek with the concussion, but he wasn’t quite weak enough. Her father with the brain hemorrhage, that trashy one-eyed psychic with the brain injury: they were weak. Vulnerable. Open. He makes their eyes turn black. The Nightmare Eyes are her grief and despair and shame, and he projects his own hatred and rage into them too. He makes them want to hurt her. He makes them want to kill her.

  And all the while, he pretends to be her friend.

  ❀

  There has been a development. A good one.

  The Spawn knows how to find the brother and sister, the other two spawn of the Kitteridge Killers.

  They’re coming here, to Lilybrook. Now he can have all three of them at once, and he and Nathan can do to them what their parents did to his father.

  ❀

  The fog fell like a curtain over the visions, and they disappeared.

  Cole Gallagher. It had been him all along. I thought he’d been protecting me from Nathan, but he wanted revenge for his father’s death as much as Nathan did. Maybe even more.

  The Nightmare Eyes pulsated and my blood burned.

  “I understand how you’re feeling,” Cole said. “The shame. The despair. The guilt. Your blood is burning. It’s tarnished. Tainted. Killers’ blood pumps through your veins with every beat of your heart. You feel it. I feel it too. That time in the Underground when you were so consumed with guilt and grief and shame that you tried to slice your wrists in the shower? That was the first time I watched you. I watched you through that little silver blade on the razor, and I felt your shame then, too.”

  “You did that?” Nathan asked me from across the room. “You really tried to kill yourself once?”

  The Nightmare Eyes, both the invisible ones above me and the ones that had replaced Cole’s brown eyes, glowered and burned through my blood, setting my soul ablaze with shame. I had created the Nightmare Eyes, and Cole was feeding on them. He felt my guilt and shame as if they were his own.

  “What are you going to do with them?” Nathan asked Cole.

  Cole pulled a corrugated box from the corner, and from it he withdrew a clear plastic bag with something long and slim inside, wrapped in bubble wrap and tape. I’d seen bags like that before; in the evidence room at the APR, when I’d tried to prove my parents were innocent.

  I knew exactly which piece of evidence was in that bag. Terror shot through my limbs like an elec
tric current, spurring my muscles to move, and I scooted between Cole and my unconscious siblings in a pathetic attempt to shield them from the object in his hands. “No,” I croaked.

  Cole slid the top open and pulled it out. He unwound the tape from around it, then unwrapped it from the bubble wrap, and held it up triumphantly.

  Nathan sipped in air. “Is that—”

  “Yes it is,” Cole said. “This is the knife. The knife. I took it from the evidence room.”

  He gripped the black handle, and silver flashed again, this time from the long sharp blade of the knife my parents had used to kill Cole and Nathan’s father.

  Nathan looked from the knife to me and my siblings, and back again. “You’re going to kill them with that knife?”

  “No.” Cole angled the blade so it caught the light. “We are.”

  Next to me, Logan moaned and twitched his fingers. I didn’t see Cole shoot him again; I only heard the whisper of the tranq bullet, then saw the thin needle sticking from his neck. Cole shot Jillian again, too. But he didn’t shoot me. He wanted me awake. He wanted me to suffer. He wanted to tell my father how I’d suffered, the way his father had suffered as he died.

  Nathan stared at me through the silver, his mouth slack, like he was anxiously, greedily, waiting to see my tarnished, tainted blood spill from my veins.

  Cole reached into the corrugated box again and pulled out a green binder. The evidence binder. His eyes feverish and Nightmare black, he ripped out the pages, one by one, flinging them at me. They landed like a flurry of enormous snowflakes, the faces of every one of my parents’ victims staring up at me, wounded and accusatory. He shouted their names as he flung each page at me.

  The politicians and businessmen my parents had blackmailed or murdered or both, starting it all.

  The Georgia waitress my mother killed with a heart attack because she’d spilled coffee on me.

  The college professor my mother killed with an aneurysm because I’d contacted him, asking for help.

  Gavin, the boy my mother killed because my sister loved him.

  Aaron Jacobs, whom my siblings had scarred for life, and his mother, who was grieving.

  So many pages. So many faces. So many eyes glaring and accusing me. “No more,” I begged. “Please stop. Please.” Yet Cole continued to tear page after page from the binder.

  Mr. Milbourne, the warden, had a page because my mother had given him a heart attack during her escape attempt.

  Dennis Connelly had a page, because my parents had tried to kill him, too.

  Tristan had a page because my parents had tried to kill him twice.

  Deirdre and Ember had a page because they’d almost lost both of them.

  Timothy Brunswick and Kip Gallagher, innocent agents sent to our house to recruit my family to come work for the APR, had a page because that visit was their last.

  Melanie Brunswick had a page because she’d lost her father, her mother had a page because she’d lost her husband, and John Kellan had a page because Timothy Brunswick was his brother-in-law and best friend, but he’d loved him like a brother.

  Cole and Nathan and their mother each had a page for losing Kip Gallagher.

  Everyone my parents had hurt, directly or indirectly, had a page in Cole’s binder. And with each page, the Nightmare Eyes darkened and the silver blades brightened. I couldn’t see past my shame, past my grief, past my guilt.

  There were too many pages to count. All those pages. All those people. Their eyes crushed me, squeezed my heart, turned my lungs to stone. Despair crawled up my throat and lodged there. I was choking on it, couldn’t get air past it. I closed my eyes, covered my face with my hands, but even with my eyes closed, I still saw the victims.

  Too much. It was too much. My blood boiled, blazed, blistered. My parents’ blood, my killers’ blood, my tainted, tarnished blood. I had to get it out. I had to get it out of me, it hurt too much, it burned, it burned, and I had to stop it, I had to end it.

  “Stop!” I shrieked. “Make it stop. Make the burning stop. Please.”

  Cole stopped shouting. Stopped ripping pages.

  Breath shaky, I sniffled twice. Wiped my damp cheeks with the sleeve of my sweater. Cole and Nathan stood above me. Cole’s eyes: hot black. Nathan’s eyes: cold steel.

  Cole picked up the knife. “It’ll be over quickly. And then no more burning,” he said. “No more grief. No more shame. No more Killers’ Spawn.”

  Sobbing, I nodded. “Please.”

  As Nathan watched, Cole approached me with the knife, his boots tapping on the wood floor. The blade reflected the light, and it glowed, glimmered, glistened.

  I took Jillian and Logan’s limp hands in each of mine, and squeezed them even though they couldn’t squeeze back. My only hope was that once I was dead, Cole would stop feeding upon my shame and grief. His emotion supply would be cut off at its source: me. Without those shameful, hateful feelings burning through his veins, he would spare my brother and sister.

  My death would save Jillian and Logan.

  I couldn’t watch him as he knelt down. Blood burning, I stared at the papers strewn around me, at the dozens of victims.

  There was a page missing.

  I sniffled. “Where’s my page?” I asked Cole.

  “Your page?”

  Trembling, I released Jillian and Logan, then lifted my sweater to reveal the five twisted scars on my belly. “My mother did this to me. She hurt me, too. My entire life was a lie because of my parents. I should have a page in your binder.”

  Above me, the Nightmare Eyes blinked. When they opened again, the blackness was dimmed. Just a little. Charcoal gray instead of solid black.

  “Jillian and Logan too,” I said. “They’re victims too. We should each have a page.”

  With each word, the Nightmare Eyes faded, from charcoal to slate to ash.

  I looked at the photos on the floor, one by one. Those people were still my parents’ victims, but their eyes no longer glowered at me.

  Above me, The Nightmare Eyes lightened to the color of smoke. I could see through it.

  They lightened again, becoming the color of fog, the fog I used to keep the visions away.

  They blinked, and this time, the lids stayed shut.

  And then they disappeared.

  The Nightmare Eyes were gone.

  My blood cooled. The shame was still there, it would always be there, but now it was directed at my parents. It was no longer directed at myself.

  For the first time in months, my lungs expanded, and I took a deep breath. No longer shackled by shame, I felt airy and light and free.

  Cole and Nathan still had my siblings and me trapped in this cabin, and they still had the knife. But now that I was no longer feeling the incredible burning shame of the Nightmare Eyes, Cole should stop feeding on it.

  I looked up, into Cole’s eyes. They had returned to their usual tawny brown.

  But they were full of fury.

  He was no longer feeding on my shame, but he was feeding on Nathan’s rage and desire for retribution, or his own, or both. A storm brewed behind his eyes, and, jaw clenching, neck cording, his face grew tight, and he opened his mouth and roared.

  He dove, tackling me onto my back. Panting, he sat on my legs and grabbed the knife. I struggled, but couldn’t get him off me.

  Deirdre’s premonition was about to come true. I looked at Jillian and Logan one last time. “I’m sorry,” I choked to them. “I’m so sorry.” At least they would be unconscious. At least their last moments wouldn’t be filled with terror and pain.

  Cole clutched the knife in both hands and raised it over his head. I covered my eyes with my hands, not wanting to see the knife plunging down.

  Tristan! I screamed silently, knowing it was useless, that he would never hear me, but I said it anyway, because I wanted my last thoughts to be of him. I love you Tristan I love you I love you I love you…

  “Stop!”

  It was Nathan who’d shouted.

/>   I uncovered my eyes. Was he trying to help me?

  “Give me the knife,” he said, hand outstretched. “I want to do it.”

  Once again, my hopes sank.

  Cole snickered and climbed off of me. As he stood, I scrambled up and grabbed Jillian and Logan’s hands, and fueled by fear and adrenaline and the desperation to live, I tried to drag them toward the door.

  “No!” Cole whirled around with a roar, and plunged the knife into my stomach, right through one of my scars.

  Hot pain exploded like a firebomb and spread through my limbs. Cole pulled out the knife and held it up, and the blade was covered in blood.

  I dropped Jillian and Logan’s hands, then dropped to my knees.

  Blood. My blood. Sticky. Thick. Red. Soaking through my sweater. Covering my hands. Pouring out of me.

  So much blood.

  An ocean of blood.

  I was floating away in it.

  The fog was closing in. Lower, thicker, closer.

  I couldn’t stop it.

  As I lay bleeding, dying, my mind played tricks on me. It gave me a show. Shadows dancing in the fog.

  One of those shadows was Tristan. Bursting through the door. Shouting my name.

  Cole howling. The knife sailing.

  Nathan diving. Nathan screaming. Nathan plummeting.

  Tristan and Cole, fists flying, slamming into walls, mirrors shattering with ear-splitting clatter. Broken glass falling like rain.

  Jillian and Logan moaning.

  Cole pinning Tristan on his back, gripping a jagged piece of mirror like a dagger.

  And me. I was in the show too. Sliding a large piece of glass to Tristan.

  Tristan, with a war cry, jabbing the glass into Cole’s side with a mighty thrust, then scrambling out from under him and over to me.

  Cole crawling, dragging, arms folding then straightening again, after Tristan.

  Me, dizzy, woozy, using my last ounce of strength to crawl to the bloody knife on the floor and plunge it into Cole’s…